Tag: asoiaf meta

Anon Asks: Advice to Bittersteel

What advice would you have given to Bittersteel and the Blackfyres after he formed the Golden Company?

Oooh….now, this is a question I can sink my teeth into.

Bearing in mind that we don’t know almost anything about the Third Blackfyre Rebellion (or the Fourth for that matter), the first of the Blackfyre Rebellions in which the Golden Company fought, I do have some advice based on my studies of the Blackfyre Rebellions. 

Take the Disputed Lands First

Say what you like about Maelys the Monstrous – kinslayer, bit of a loser in the genetic lottery – he did have a good political mind. He understood that, if you were going to take Westeros, you needed a strong base on the continent to draw resources from. 

And I think that the Golden Company could have seized the Disputed Lands (including Tyrosh, Myr, and Lys), fairly effectively. For one thing, even after several losses in Westeros, they were able to almost pull it off under Maelys. For another, we see that under Bittersteel, the Golden Company was easily capable of taking out Qohor. 

Holding the Three Daughters and the land in-between (which doesn’t exactly look barren to me), would give the Golden Company far more resources than they would have already, which would allow for the recruitment of local troops, the hiring of more mercenary companies, a strong sellsail navy, and supplying the expeditionary force.

Taking the Disputed Lands would also demonstrate to the Blackfyre supporters on Westeros who had been burned by Daemon II that Haegon Blackfyre was a warrior like his father in contrast to the incompetent Aerys I. 

Build Up Logistical Infrastructure

To me, this is the one area where I think Bittersteel may have fallen short as he seems to have focused on winning field battles over anything else. Given that the Golden Company was, when you get right down to it, trying to conquer a continent with 10,000 men and no dragons, getting your logistics right is an absolute necessity.

First of all, you need to feed tens of thousands of men – you’re trying to win over Westeros, you don’t start that by commandeering all their food. Also, since you’re hoping to expand your army by enrolling loyalists into your ranks, not only do you need to feed your own, but you also need to feed them. 

Second, it’s even more crucial for arms, ammunition, and equipment. One of the few advantages that the Golden Company have going for them is that the quality of their infantry is generally better than most Westerosi forces. Now, you don’t have to equip and then train your new enrollees to the same standard, but it does open up a potential weakness – if your enemy can break your less disciplined contingents, they can really screw with your formations. Being able to arm your infantry to the standard of the Golden Company – and hopefully have time to train them – is a way to greatly improve your odds. 

Third, naval resources. Given that Bloodraven was focusing the whole of the royal navy on the Narrow Sea to prevent a crossing, being able to throw three city-states worth of ships into the mix is crucial not only to ensuring that your army can cross safely but also that you can keep a supply line open to Essos, allowing for reinforcements and resupply so that Bloodraven can’t simply wear you down. 

Take and Hold

This is my advice that runs most contrary to Blackfyre tradition. Rather than trying to go for King’s Landing right off the bat, I would urge the rebels to grab onto significant territory and try to hold onto it. 

Here’s why – back during the First Rebellion, Daemon looked like a real going concern in no small part because he had grabbed the better part of three of the Seven Kingdoms. His death and the flight from Westeros, and especially Daemon II’s contemptible failure at Whitewalls, has badly diminished the extent to which anyone would think that the Blackfyres have a shot at taking the crown.

But if the Blackfyres could, say, take and hold the Reach, the marcher lordships of the Stormlands, and maybe the Westerlands (given that Gerold is almost dead and Tywald’s in tight with the Reynes), and hold them for an extended period of time, that’s a clear sign that this is not another Daemon II, that the Blackfyres are not going away, and that the Targaryens might have lost the metaphorical mandate of heaven. 

At the same time, given that the Blackfyres are probably going into the fight outnumbered, it’s a wise move to force the Targaryens to attack, to bleed the loyalist forces dry in assaults on castle after castle, and then counter-attack at times and places where the superior discipline of the Golden Company can be of most use. 

Build A Counter-Establishment

Moreover, on the political side, holding onto territory allows the Blackfyres to do what Daemon I did best and what succeeding rebellions don’t seem to have emulated – build a political counter-establishment that really threatens the Targaryens. Haegon I should be crowned and acclaimed on Westerosi soil, he should be minting coins with his face on them, he should be levying taxes and dispensing law, if the Ironborn are still raiding the Reach and the Westerlands by this period he should help repel them or at least aid in the rebuilding, and anything else that becomes a king.

Because the greatest asset the Blackfyres have right now is that Haegon is a young man whereas Aerys I is in his 50s and in poor health, he’s an unpopular and incompetent king, Bloodraven’s a tyrant, and the succession is iffy. Haegon is the clean slate, the chance for a new beginning after 13 years of misrule. The more he can get the lords of Westeros to turn to him, the more likely ultimate victory will be his. 

In order for Dany to succeed, would she need to completely eradicate the master classes of Slaver’s Bay, or is there a more peaceful option?

Generally speaking, there’s really only two ways to prevent a revolution like Dany’s from going backwards – eliminate the population of the master class or eliminate what makes them a master class. 

The former involves a lot of revolutionary violence and/or exile. Deeply morally problematic, certainly, but a big part of Machiavelli’s chapter on cruelty in the Prince is an argument that it’s better to do it all at once, rather than leave things undone and deal with years and years of insurrectionary violence and reprisal-killing that will either bring down the new regime or require an incredibly heavy hand to put down, leading to more overall violence. 

The latter is much, much harder to pull off, because it means keeping alive a class that has an existential impulse to pull down the new order, and it requires a thorough power analysis – in other words, what made the master class the master class, and what would the newly-overthrown class need to get back on top, and how can we confiscate and redistribute the former while preventing them from getting their hands on the latter? And the reason why this is hard to pull off is that if you miss one element that gives the former masters a foundation to build power from, they’ll come roaring back with a vengeance. 

Let’s take Slaver’s Bay for an example. 

Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen were slave societies, and particularly intense ones at that. Numbers were not what was keeping the Good/Wise/Great Masters in power – they are in fact outnumbered about 6:1. This is an advantage for a new regime, because the supermajority of ex-slaves itself can help keep the ex-masters in check. But since that ratio obtained back during the old regime, numbers alone aren’t sufficient.

So what did the master classes have that kept them in power? 

  • Firstly, a monopoly on violence, which they used with abandon to put the slave population in a state of terror – Astapor especially is a comprehensive example of how you use conspicuous exemplary punishment to instill fear in a population. Likewise, you look at how the Sons of the Harpy operated in Meereen and how the Yunkish put down the new regime in Astapor, and it’s pretty clear that the Masters really prefer this method of control to any other. 
  • Secondly, a monopoly on the means of production. Now, in the old regime this meant control on the slave training system that was the basis for much of the economy in Slaver’s Bay. However, as we see in Dany I of ADWD, it also crucially meant control over farmland, pasturage, mines, workshops and machinery, and shipping – the building blocks of a post-slavery economy. 
  • Thirdly, a monopoly on capital. This refers primarily to liquid capital, which is especially important when you consider how the Yunkish use their cash to hire mercenaries and bribe the Volantines into intervening.

So the question before us is how should Dany have dealt with these factors when embarking on her crusade? 

Violence:

Here, Dany made some good moves initially. Liberating the Unsullied of Astapor reduced the Good Masters to a few dozen inexperienced cavalrymen. Destroying the Yunkish army of slave infantry and mercenaries left the Wise Masters unable to resist any of Dany’s demands. Similarly, her decision in Meereen to mobilize the ex-slaves into the Brazen Beasts, the Mother’s Men, the Stalwart Shields, and the Free Brothers is a good one, in that it allows the freedmen to potentially defend themselves rather than relying entirely on Dany’s own forces and especially her dragons.

However, Dany made some significant mistakes along the way, as I discussed in my Laboratory of Politics essay and on my tumblr. In Astapor, she pulled out all of the Unsullied, meaning that the new government had no military to defend itself with from usurpers. In Yunkai, she left the Wise Masters in place while removing tens of thousands of ex-slaves from the city, allowing the new regime to re-arm itself without interference at home. In Meereen, while the city is sacked, the pyramids of the Great Masters are untouched and the former military elite are able to hide underneath Dany’s amnesty to form the hard core of the Sons of the Harpy. Similarly, the ex-masters were seemingly not disarmed following the Siege, allowing them to strike at both civilians and isolated soldiers. 

What Dany should have done was to leave a decent-sized garrison in Astapor and Yunkai to support the new government in both Astapor and Yunkai, which she should never have left in the hands of the Wise Masters. These Unsullied could have also provided training to the men of military age who would have joined the Mother’s Men, Stalwart Shields, and Free Brothers, providing those cities with a more substantial defensive force. Moreover, with the garrisons giving more security to the regime, it’s more likely that the tens of thousands of refugees who followed Dany, complicating supply issues, spreading disease, and eliminating the land route to Volantis would have stayed home.

Means of Production:

This is much more of a mixed bag. While the destruction of the ruling class of Astapor gave the ex-slaves control of the entire city’s resources, Dany’s decision to have the Yunkish only a limited reparation of “a weapon, and as much food, clothing, coin, and goods as he or she can carry” guaranteed that the ex-slaves who followed her would be starving refugees in short order. In Meereen, while a few ex-slaves with skills were able to set themselves up as weavers or prostitutes, her decision to allow the Great Masters to live and retain all their property meant that “they had freed their slaves, yes … only to hire them back as servants at wages so meagre that most could scarce afford to eat.“ 

At the same time, with no way of supporting themselves independently, tens of thousands of ex-slaves were thrown onto a buyer’s labor market, driving down wages and creating such a degree of economic insecurity that ex-slaves with human capital turn to selling themselves back into slavery, which symbolically threatens Dany’s revolution even if the majority of ex-slaves remain free. 

What Dany needed to do in both Yunkai and Meereen is to expropriate the workshops, farms, and urban real estate of the former masters and distribute it to the former slaves, so that the freedmen have a baseline of economic security and have an alternative to throwing themselves on the labor market for whatever wages are going as a means of survival, and so that the former masters can’t use their economic power to coerce the ex-slaves and non-slave-holding free people into subservience or use those assets against Dany personally (in the case of Meereen’s navy). In addition, giving the former slaves workshops and farms gives them a very personal and active stake in the survival of the new order – as we see with Rylona Rhee, slaves who have economic independence get active politically, forming the leadership of a new political class. 

Capital:

As I’ve suggested above, control over access to liquid capital is very important, both because the ex-masters are going to use their cash to hire mercenaries, bribe Volantines, and entice non-slaveholders into joining the Sons of the Harpy, and because Dany badly needs that liquid capital to create a new economic order that doesn’t rely on the training and selling of slaves.

Yes, it’s true that Slaver’s Bay doesn’t have a huge amount of currently exploitable resources to build an economy on – copper being less valuable in a post-iron era, the Great Master’s damaging scorched-earth strategy, etc. But one of the things you can buy with money are saplings to plant in place of the vanished cedars and the burnt olive groves, tools and labor and materials to improve irrigation systems so that the hinterlands can make the cities more self-sufficient for food, equipment and labor to expand salt and copper mining and prospect for other minerals, ships to compete in non-slave based commerce, and so on.

More importantly, getting that cash out of the masters’ hands – as Dany belatedly does when she imposes the blood tax – means that they don’t have the resources to hire mercenaries, bribe anyone, or recruit Sons of the Harpy. 

Conclusion

In addition to all of this, we can’t neglect the importance of the symbolic. A big part of the reason why the Masters were able to hold such sway over their cities was that they could afford display of power and importance – hence the tokar, the crazy hair, and so on and so forth. While the Masters lost most of their human wealth with Dany’s revolution, they still had the money and the property with which to undergird their public image.

But take all of that away from them, reduce them to the level of just another ordinary citizen who has to work for a living, and you eliminate the mystique. Non only does the ex-slave not have to knuckle under to them to live, but the ex-non-slaveowner has no reason to show them political or social or cultural deference. Rather than being the one-and-former rulers revenging themselves on the occupier, they’re a bunch of impotent dead-enders. 

In that circumstance, Shavepate’s cultural revolution seems like the better bet – whether that’s a position in the Brazen Beasts, a job working in Dany’s palace, a seat on the ruling council, etc.

Is ASOIAF noble’s use of a permanent garrison realistic? How common were permanent guards during times of peace in the Middle Ages? Where did they come from (levies, sons of soldiers…)? How many guards could the Earl of Salisbury afford, for example?

Sure, it’s realistic – depending on what period you’re talking about.

Generally speaking, the earlier you go, the more the army looks purely feudal – land is literally divvied up by how much it takes to support a heavily-armed and armored mounted soldier – whether we’re talking about the knight’s fee/knight-service as a unit of land in England, or the fief du haubert (i.e, a fief that can pay for a hauberk of chainmail) in France – and armies are made almost entirely out of men providing military service as their rent. 

For reasons that have been talked about in the fandom a lot, this was always a bit of a pain for rulers – armies take a long time to assemble, armies start to dissolve if the fighting lasts longer than the term of service laid down in their contracts, and so on. It was also not hugely popular from the lower end either – once they’ve got their nice fief, and especially once that fief becomes hereditary and much harder for kings to revoke or transfer, military service for the higher ups interferes with your nice local land-grabs and feuds, managing your estate, hawking and hunting, and the other pastimes of the aristocracy. 

So somewhere between the 12th and 13th centuries across a wide swathe of Medieval Europe, people came up with the scutage as an alternative. This is a cash tax paid in lieu of military service, and it was rather convenient all-around. It meant that the king had regular cash-in-hand (especially once they figured out you could impose a scutage during peace time as well as during a war) and could hire mercenaries to supplement their feudal levies, and it meant that landowners who didn’t want to fight could pay cash instead. And the popularity of this system meant that increasingly armies were more professional and less feudal in nature.

And this is how we get to the situation around the time of the Wars of the Roses where we have what historian Charles Plummer called bastard feudalism. In this period – the 14th through 16th centuries – kings and nobles realized that it was a lot easier to convert rents and taxes from service into cash, and then use that cash to hire people to fight for them, than the old feudal system. In this new system, people would join the affinity of a nobleman and, in addition to room and board and cash and an inside track to lands and appointments, would wear the livery of their patron. And nobles found out that they could afford to hire a lot more people this way than with the old land-sharing system. Hence the phenomenon of over-mighty vassals who could put a lot more men under arms than the monarch could deal with their more traditional armies – and why Edward IV and Henry VII both spent a good deal of their reigns trying to abolish the system. 

Now, who were these men who were fighting for a living? Well, one thing to understand is that, from the beginning of this period, there’s always been a class of people who took room and board and a cash wage to serve as permanent soldiers of a household  – the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians had their housecarls; the Franks had their socii or scara, who served as the retainers and bodyguards of the various counts, dukes, kings, and emperors; and so on. Later on, the impact of primogeniture within the nobility meant that you had a significant population of men who had been trained as knights who weren’t going to get land – those men need work. During “bastard feudalism,” it gets even more complicated, because you had iterative affinities as the Earl of Salisbury’s affinity was part of the larger Neville affinity, and he would have had lesser lords in his affinity. 

As for examples – the Earl of Salisbury during the Wars of the Roses had a personal affinity of at least a thousand men, while the Earls of  Darby had about 2,000 men in their affinity, and so on. 

Jimmy Asks: Ned as a swordsman

Hi,

I have read the analysis of Ned’s chapter when he breaks his leg during the scuffle with Lannister’s. In the ‘What if’ section it only discusses Jaime beating Ned in a duel. Why do so many fans doubt Ned’s sword fighting ability? He survived the rebellion without many scars (physically at least) and killed the sword of the morning. He is even modest enough to give the credit for that kill to Howland Reed. He must have been a seriously skilled swordsman to achieve what he did.

Well, GRRM has said that Ned was an average swordsman, although an excellent general, and that Jaime is one of the best swordsmen alive. So odds are Ned loses that fight. 

OTHO, as Ser Barristan says in ASOS:

 “I have seen a hundred tournaments and more wars than I would wish, and however strong or fast or skilled a knight may be, there are others who can match him. A man will win one tourney, and fall quickly in the next. A slick spot in the grass may mean defeat, or what you ate for supper the night before. A change in the wind may bring the gift of victory.“ He glanced at Ser Jorah. "Or a lady’s favor knotted round an arm.”

So it’s certainly possible that Ned could beat Jaime. Maybe because Jaime’s overconfident and Ned’s fired up, but more likely in that scenario is that the  rain/cobbles/horse situation applies to both men.

So…what’s the deal with Aegon IV legitimizing his bastards? A “fuck you” to his heir, or just another symptom of his YOLO lifestyle? Even for a guy as amoral as A the U, it seems kind of stupid.

Let’s start by saying that GRRM seems bound and determine to leave the question of whether Aegon IV actually wanted to name Daemon his rightful heir a mystery of history, so ultimately this is a bit unresolvable. At the same time, though, Aegon IV did go to some effort to throw the whole question into doubt. 

It does seem that it was bound up in a lot of personal and political things. Personally, Aegon was horribly ill-suited for a relationship with Naerys, probably viewed his marriage as a puniushment from his eternally disapproving father, and had huge ongoing problems with Aemon’s relationship with her. Whether those problems were rooted in his ongoing Goofus and Gallant relationship with his Dragonknight brother, a genuine belief that physical adultery had happened (remember Lancelot!), or an undeniable truth that what we would today call emotional infidelity was going on, I don’t know. So when Daeron becomes so close to Aemon, I think his mind would be predisposed to look in that direction. 

Moreover, Aegon IV was, like his historical counterpart Henry VIII, a former jock who had nothing in common with his son Daeron – whereas he showed a lot more interest in his sons Aegor and Daemon who were talented warriors. Thus, I think we could say that regardless of their paternity and legitimacy, Daeron was Aemon’s spiritual son and Daemon was Aegon’s spiritual son. 

But, as I argue here, we can’t ignore the politics. Aegon IV was a veteran of Daeron’s Conquest who had a severe reaction to Daeron I’s murder (handing over Cassella Vaith to be executed), and then his son was married off to the Martells without his say-so. And as he grew older, his son’s Dornish marriage both gave him an independent power base with which to oppose his father and made him a vocal Dornish partisan who fought every attempt by Aegon IV to avenge his cousin’s murder and win glory for himself. What king or crown prince would look at a crown prince actively opposing him on public policy as anything but an attempt to supplant them? In that light, his son’s un-filial disobedience and quasi-treasonous love of the enemy would have seemed like political bastardy, even if physical bastardy could not be proved.

At the same time, Daemon had been raised by Daena the Defiant, who had shared his admiration of Daeron I. Daemon was a military prodigy who was every inch the Valyrian dreamboat that Aegon had been in his youth, who probably had been raised with the belief that it was his mission to complete the unfinished work of his uncle and father. Here was everything that Aegon wanted in a son and heir, and unlike his other dalliances, Daemon was indisputably Targaryen on both sides. The only thing preventing him from being the perfect heir was his bastardy, and a king could do something about that. 

Do the members of the small council (Master of Ships, Laws, Coin, Hand of the King, etc) draw a salary? Or maybe get some kind of break on taxes owed? Or does having such political influence make payment unnecessary?

I could have sworn I wrote about this before, but can’t find where I wrote it, so at the risk of repeating myself, I’ll do it again.

Yes, they probably get a salary, but probably not a large one in part because the Small Councilors are supposed to be noblemen who live off the incomes of their lands.  

If Westeros is like Medieval and Early-Modern England to any extent (and since GRRM is largely drawing from English history here it probably is), then there are salaries that come from working for the monarch, either in the private household or the government itself.

For example, Queen Elizabeth I’s laundress got paid 

£4 annually, plus another 

£6 to pay for livery (i.e, clothing with the queen’s sigil, her required uniform). Her Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, a high-ranking Privy Councilor charged with keeping the seal of England, got paid 

£919 pounds annually, and that was pretty good for the time.  

At the time, however, there was also a form of socially accepted bribery and kickbacks. As Lacey Baldwin Smith points out in The Elizabethan World:

“…no Elizabethan official ever received a salary that was commensurate with his position: the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal earned a stipend of 919 pounds a year; the Lord Admiral 200 pounds, and the principal secretary 100 pounds, but in 1601 all three posts were actually valued at approximately 3,000 pounds a year. Gratuities and fees for promoting a friend, urging a favor, giving information, and above all, for tapping and directing the bounty of the queen made up the difference…they were considered the legitimate perquisites of office in an age that regarded governmental posts as both public trusts and private sinecures.”

So chances are that the Master of Laws gets gratuities from people seeking to have their cases heard by the King, the Master of Ships from merchants or shipbuilders looking for business, etc. However, as we see with the case of Littlefinger and Janos Slynt, there are informal norms about what’s ok to do and what isn’t – Stannis recognizes that bribes happen, but treats selling officer positions in the Gold Cloaks as unacceptable; Littlefinger putting his own men in office is normal, but using public funds as his own investment bank is not. 

Why do you think Harrenhal was left without a lord between the end of the Dance and the Lothstons getting it in 251? From the royal family’s perspective, what could have been done with it?

Between 131 when Larys Strong was executed, and 151 when Lucas “the Pander” Lothston was made Lord of Harrenhal in exchange for marrying Falaena Stokeworth and probably claiming Jeyne as his own daughter, Harrenhal was royal property, just like Summerhall or Dragonstone or King’s Landing. 

Aegon III and his brother Viserys the Hand were probably focused on using Harrenhal’s revenues to help rebuild the royal finances – after all, while Tyland Lannister did send portions of the treasury to Casterly Rock, Oldtown, and the Iron Bank, we never find out what happened to that money and whether the crown got any of that back, and a lot got spent by both the greens and blacks during the war.

The year 131 and after was a bad time – the aftermath of the Dance, an especially hard and long winter, a Winter Fever epidemic, the political dysfunction of the regency, the Red Kraken raiding in the west, etc. When Aegon III took over in 136, his policy of “full bellies and dancing bears” would have required revenue to work, and someone as tight-fisted as Viserys would have looked to the incomes of Harrenhal as a way to make the books balance. 

By 151, there had been 20 years of recovery, and Viserys could afford to give away this royal favor to hush up his son’s indiscretions. 

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Sansa VII, ACOK

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Sansa VII, ACOK

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“It was not the song of Florian and Jonquil, but it was a song.”
Synopsis: Sansa has to clean up Cersei’s mess, deal with Sandor Clegane, and gets some surprising news from Ser Dontos.
SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.
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Anon Asks: Gregor’s anger

You once said Gregor is perma-angry. What do you think is the source of his anger?

Besides being a sadist and psychopath? Well, from Cersei II of AFFC: “Ser Gregor is overly accustomed to the poppy, I fear. His squire tells me that he is plagued by blinding headaches and oft quaffs the milk of the poppy as lesser men quaff ale.”

It’s possible that these headaches are a symptom of Gregor’s gigantism, but I know plenty of people who have persistent migraines who don’t wantonly murder people.