Renly didn’t know anything about incest. Idk why people seem to think so, but why would he hide it? He’s not that stupid. Robert would marry Margery if he needs Tyrells – and he would need them, their money and their army, if he’s going against Tywin. Renly could’ve gotten what he wanted without doing anything. Hell, it was easier to quietly kill Stannis (Tyrell style) if Robert refused to marry rather than bother fighting a war. No one will fight to put Shireen over Renly on the Iron throne.

I’m not sure how much to put into this response, because I’ve written about this here here here here here, here and here.

But to answer your questions:

Renly hid it, because until Robert signs on the dotted line with Margaery and the Tyrells, revealing the truth would have made Stannis the heir to the Iron Throne. Renly doesn’t want that, nor do the Tyrells.
If you think about it, it’s the exact same reason why Littlefinger and Varys withheld the same information, despite ultimately intending to bring down the Lannister regime.
Rather difficult to do that when Stannis has withdrawn to Dragonstone and started raising an army and navy to protect himself.

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Sansa III, ASOS

“Sansa tried to run, but Cersei’s handmaid caught her before she’d gone a yard.”

Synopsis: a pre-teen girl is forced into marriage with an enemy of her family and for some reason people think she is the bad guy.

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.

(more…)

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In your Westeros economic development series you often say that you would, if in charge of Westeros, build lots of canals to bolster trade. I’m wondering how common or feasible this was during the actual middle ages. I mean, I know it’s possible; the Chinese built the Grand Canal during the early middle ages, but, as I understand it, that was an undertaking comparable to, if not exceeding, the construction of the Great Wall. Would medieval lords and kings actually build a lot of river canals?

The Grand Canal is something of an outlier, both because of its immense length (1,115 miles) and because because it involved the construction of summit-level canals (i.e, canals that rise and then fall, in order to connect two separate river valleys) rather than simple lateral canals (which have a continual fall).

But it’s not like there weren’t canals built in the Middle Ages outside of China. You have the Fossa Carolina, which Charlesmagne had built to link the Rhine to the Danube: the Glastonbury Canal which dates back to the 11th century, the Navigilio Grande which was built to connect Milan to the Ticino river in the late 12-13th centuries, and the Stecknitz Canal build in the 14th century.

So in terms of whether canal building is feasible in Westeros, it depends on how long and/or complicated the canals are built.

Same anon that asked about Land Reform. I noted you also mentioned guild charters, as part of Industrial Policy. Couldn’t that also be counter productive, as you hand the reins of power in towns to monopolistic, rent seeking and close minded groups. Guilds were insular by nature, to protect their secrets and often stifled trade with price fixing, limited production and narrow membership. Entrenching them seems the best way to stifle the capitalists that would be created by the other reforms.

In your economic development plans, you mention multiple infrastructural, technical and financial reforms to farming. However a issue that seems to have gone largely unmentioned is the process of Land Reform. Unreformed land practices mean you can’t easily or quickly implement new innovations, due to the land being fragmented or held in common. So it seems a Enclosure or something similar should be a major part of any plan. But of course they come with some nasty social issues to address.

As for the question of land reform:

To start with, we don’t really know how land is distributed in Westeros. There doesn’t seem to be any textual evidence for common land being a thing, but that doesn’t mean it does or doesn’t exist. Likewise, there isn’t a very clear description of hierarchies of land tenure among the peasantry.
I would take exception to the argument that land being evenly distributed or held in common would necessarily prevent innovations in agriculture. Rather, it would simply require different forms of social coordination – a lot of medieval agriculture was coordinated through manorial courts, for example.

As for the guilds:

That certainly is the picture of guilds that we get from Adam Smith et al., but whether that’s the whole story is another question. The guilds, as I have written, primarily existed to ensure a balance between labor supply and labor demand that would allow for their members to earn a living wage. Whether that’s viewed as stifling trade depends on one’s position vis-a-vis labor supply and labor demand: it’s certainly to the advantage of the merchant that there be as many weavers as possible, but that’s not to the advantage of the weavers, if they’re underemployed and poorly paid as a result.
Indeed, when it comes to the long-run of economic development, I don’t think you get the critical mass of skilled workers, especially skilled workers with capital, one needs to kick off a commercial and later industrial revolution without a guild system to train and protect them, especially in the fledging phases of development. This last part becomes particularly clear when you see how often guild masters become merchants and industrialists themselves, once again in the early phases of economic development.
Finally, economic development and the development of capitalists are not the same objective.

Is westeros following civil or common law?

Great question! It seems like a bit of both:

In these progresses, the king was accompanied not only by his courtiers but by maesters and septons as well. Six maesters were often in his company to advise him upon the local laws and traditions of the former realms, so that he might rule in judgment at the courts he held. Rather than attempting to unify the realm under one set of laws, he respected the differing customs of each region and sought to judge as their past kings might have. (WOIAF)

However, these traditions were then blended in with new decrees from the Iron Throne into a common law; for example, see “The “rule of six,” now part of the common law, was established by Rhaenys as she sat the Iron Throne while the king was upon one of his progresses.”

In the reign of King Jaehaerys I, this changed:

“With Barth’s aid and advice, King Jaehaerys did more to reform the realm than any other king who lived before or after. Where his grandsire, King Aegon, had left the laws of the Seven Kingdoms to the vagaries of local tradition and custom, Jaehaerys created the first unified code, so that from the North to the Dornish Marches, the realm shared a single rule of law.” (WOIAF)

As I’ve said before, it’s entirely unclear how this legal code is enforced, or how this code brought the different legal traditions of seven kingdoms plus the accretions of two generations of Targaryens into harmony. However, it’s quite likely that the previous “common law” was the foundation of Jaehaerys’ Code, which was revised in the reign of King Viserys II.

Considering that the Lannisters currently control the Iron Throne, how does the crown’s debts to Casterly Rock work? Are the Lannisters now in debt to themselves?

As far as House Lannister is concerned, the Iron Throne belongs to House Baratheon; indeed, they must uphold that fiction at every point if they are to have any pretense of legitimacy. Hence, the debts of Robert Baratheon are passed on to his heirs, Joffrey and Tommen.

Now, it is entirely possible for Tywin to forgive those debts, as Tyrion asks him to. Tywin’s refusal is more personal in nature; he’s spent his entire life paying the king’s debts, first with Aerys II and then with Robert, and he views the reign of King Joffrey as where he will be repaid in every sense of the word.

Tywin’s refusal, and Cersei’s blind spot in this matter, points to a certain failure of imagination on the part of the Lannisters, that they don’t think of the Iron Throne and House Lannister as part of a single institution – in which case, the best strategy would be to forgive the Iron Throne’s debt, massively improving the Crown’s financial standing and allowing them to deal with Braavos and the Faith without need for default or concession – but rather see the Iron Throne as a means of extracting power and wealth for House Lannister.

Can anyone who can trace descent from the noble families of old valyria go inside the black wall of volantis? Like if a targaryen, velaryon or rogare visits volantis would they automatically gain entrance, or would they still need an invitation?

Here’s how it works:

“…the Black Wall that had been raised by the Valyrians when Volantis was no more than an outpost of their empire: a great oval of fused stone two hundred feet high and so thick that six four-horse chariots could race around its top abreast, as they did each year to celebrate the founding of the city. Outlanders, foreigners, and freedmen were not allowed inside the Black Wall save at the invitation of those who dwelt within, scions of the Old Blood who could trace their ancestry back to Valyria itself.” (ADWD)

Emphasis mine. Even if you’re of the blood of Old Valyria, if you weren’t born within the Black Walls of Volantis, you need an invitation.

What might the average annual income of a peasant in Westeros be? Would it vary from region to region? Would peasants pay their taxes in goods or coin, and would that go directly to their local lord? Sorry if you’ve answered these before, I did try searching your previous posts.

See here for incomes.
I imagine it would, with peasants in less fertile regions like the North or the Iron Islands or the rockier parts of the Vale having a lower income than in the Reach or the Westerlands, etc.
Tended to be more in kind than in coin, although there would be taxes you had to pay in coin which is why people would grow and market surpluses.
It would be a bit of a mix, with local lords collecting and keeping local taxes and rents, but also collecting royal taxes, which they would send to the monarch minus a share for their troubles.

There’s a lot of talk about people being given “offices and honors” but outside of the Small Council and Wardens, we don’t seem to see a whole lot. What do you imagine these “offices and honors” would be?

I don’t think we need to need to examine, exactly, as much as we need to extrapolate from what we know.

Thanks to Littlefinger’s importance to the plot, we know quite a bit about the offices that fall under the office of the Master of Coin:

“The keepers of the keys were his, all four. The king’s counter and the king’s scales were men he named. The officers in charge of all three mints. Harbormasters, tax farmers, custom sergeants, wool factors, toll collectors, pursers, wine factors; nine of every ten belonged to Littlefinger.”

Now, as I’ve written, not all of these people are royal officers, but a lot of them are. So those are offices that can be handed out to people as royal favors, and I would imagine you’d see a similar level of staffing in the other offices of the Small Council:

the Master of Ships oversees dozens and dozens of captains, and probably hundreds of lesser ship’s officers, then you have the officers of royal navy yards, quartermasters who handle naval logistics, etc.
the Master of Laws…sigh, so much is unknown here. But we know that at the least there are chief gaolers, chief undergaolers, undergaolers, the King’s Justice, and the officers and rank-and-file of the City Watch.
the Master of Whisperers must have handlers and clerks and the like as well as spies.

While not exactly canon, we also have Westeros.org’s MUSH, which has a more well-developed list of the court offices of King’s Landing.

Aside from the super-obvious, like Asshai & Valyria, what are other locales you think might be, or definitely are, thin places like you call Harrenhal? What evidence or signs would definitively indicate such? Would that weird black stone be one, meaning maybe Pyke & Oldtown are? What about places with possible magic defenses, like Winterfell, the Wall or Storm’s End? Does their long-term magic make a thin place, or does being a thin place make the magic possible?

There’ a lot of places which could qualify: Asshai; maybe High Heart; Chroyane definitely is one, given what’s going on with time and space in that vicinity; the Night Fort is a good contender; the Twins might become one although I think it might need to marinade a bit longer.

However, I think other places don’t fall into that category. We have other terms, like “hinge of the world” for places of power – thin places would be a subset which are places that are concentrations of human suffering as well. Winterfell doesn’t count – it’s clearly a place where human life is protected – and I think Storm’s End, etc. are in that same category, although less important to the narrative.