How could you make Westeros more democratic, or meritocratic, without pushing the nobility into rebellion? Give more power to Guilds maybe, let cities and their urban classes become more wealthy/powerful?

Well, democratic and meritocratic are not the same things; got to be careful when thinking about virtues and political systems, because a lot of people from 18th century liberals to the present day fox themselves by blurring those categories.

So I’m torn between my Team Smallfolk side and my historian’s side. My Team Smallfolk side says we go full Wat Tyler, let the nobility rebel, and then crush them like we’re Flemish artisans. My historian’s side says that revolutions can go backwards and that change is often gradual and long-term (but also that it often goes in a process of “punctuated equilibrium” where you have to push as far as you can in the moment, but always being careful that you push for what’s sustainable).

I would say that you build on existing institutions:

First, institutionalize the Great Councils of Westeros, as a quasi-representative body that embodies an alternative principle of legitimacy beyond the right of blood or conquest, and which seems to operate under the principle of all lords being equal (that’s something you can build off of. (Likewise the Kingsmoot, the elections of the Night’s Watch, etc.) Eventually, build the Great Councils into something akin at least to the Tudor Parliament if not yet at the level of the Parliament of the 17th century.
Second, extend the tradition of “any knight can make a knight” and the quasi-revolutionary nature of the knight’s oath. On a cultural level, encourage storytelling about Ser Duncan the Tall and other knights who expressed their virtues by defying their superiors rather than obeying them. Expand the class of knighthood down into the elite of urban society by making guild masters, burghers, etc. knights. This should create a class of people who have something to lose from the old order coming back, who can mobilize other people to fight counter-revolution. Eventually, give all knights representation on the Great Councils – although the principle of “one lord, one vote” might have to shift to something more elective, because getting everyone in one room is hard enough already.
Third, restore the reforms of Aegon V, whatever they may be. Really work on enforcement, so that the law is uniform whether it’s under the king’s eye in the Crownlands or out in Dorne or in the far North or out in the Westerlands. Work to extend royal justice vis-a-vis the right of pit and gallows, perhaps compromising with the local lords by letting them recommend candidates for justiceships. Eventually, work to expand the idea that individuals and communities have inalienable rights – perhaps building off of the ideology of the Seven that we’re all children of the Gods, etc.

A world building question in regards to your knightly orders. Would each of these orders having an valyrian steel weapon passed down from each grand master to the next work?

So with my knightly orders I tried as much as possible to make them different from each other as opposed to just “reskins” to use a video game term.

Having each order with a Valyrian blade feels a bit too samey – that they all were rich enough to buy one in the first place, that they had the same access to merchants from the great empire to the east, and so on.

Moreover, I think there’s something about the way that Valyrian blades work ini the setting, the way that they engender this obsession to have them, to take them, to never sell them, to pine after their loss, that would make it extremely difficult for a corporate body to own one. The temptation would be too strong for each man to try to claim the blade for their own House rather than let it pass later into the hands of a man from another House.

What are the roads in Westeros like? Do they have regular matinence and upkeep? If so who does the upkeep? Are the Gold Road, Roseroad, Kingsroad, etc the Westeros equivalent of highways? Because somewhere it’s said Ellyn Reyne built roads. So I’m curious, what were medieval roads like and what would you expect Westeros roads to be like?

(First off: there’s a big caveat here that GRRM hasn’t put every road on the map, so there may well be roads we can’t see that change our perception. But based on what we know…)

They’re not great.

Network:

There’s some pretty obvious missing connections when it comes to the system of royal roads created by Jaehaerys:

The River Road should absolutely extend to Maidenpool, and there should probably be a Trident Road connecting Riverun Fairmarket and Seagard.
The Kingsroad should connect to White Harbor and Barrowton, with feeder roads linking White Harbor to Ramsgate, Barrowton to Torrhen’s Square to Winterfell, Kingsroad to Last Hearth to Karhold, and maybe Winterfell to Deepwood Motte to a ferry to Bear Island?
The High Road should continue past the Eyrie to Gulltown, with a spur connecting the Eyrie to Ironoaks, Old Anchor, and Longbow Hall.
We’re missing a north/south connection from Riverrun down to the Gold Road via Stoney Sept (which also connects you to the Blackwater Rush), and then down to the Roseroad via Bitterbridge.
The Ocean Road should extend west to Kayce and north up the coast to the Banefort.
The Reach needs an orbital road connecting Old Oak, Red Lake, Goldengrove, Bitterbridge, Ashford, and Horn Hill, connecting back to the Roseroad south of Highgardern.
The Stormlands should have a direct route from Bronzegate to the Roseroad that doesn’t require going more than a hundred miles north out of your way through a congested King’s Landing. It also needs the Kingsroad to extend further south than Storm’s End, linking up with the Weeping Town and Stonehelm where it can connect to the Boneway.
Dorne could use an eastern road continuing the Boneway from Wyl to Yronwood and Yronwood to Godgrace, and a western road linking Skyreach to Sandstone to Hellholt to Vaith.

Bridges:

There are not enough bridges in Westeros, and a lot of the bridges that do exist are wooden structures that don’t fare well under heavy flooding. So I would definitely add the following:

Bridge over the Trident at the Ruby Ford, so that the main north/south highway in the whole kingdom doesn’t have to rely on a ford and some ferry boats.
Bridge over the Rush at King’s Landing, so that southbound traffic from the capitol to the Reach and the Stormlands doesn’t have to rely on ferries.
Bridge over the Mander at Cider Hall or Longtable, over the Blueburn at Grassy Vale, and over the Cockleswent at Ashford, and over the unnamed Silverhall River at Goldengrove. In general, the Reach is bizarrely under-bridged and seriously impedes land traffic in favor of river-traffic.
Bridge over the Red Fork south of Riverrun, and a more secure bridge over the Blue Fork at Fairmarket.

And yes, I know in some of these cases bridges might not exist due to defensive reasons (although that’s a double-edged sword; bridges work really well to stop Ironborn sailing their longboats up your rivers), but that’s why swing/draw bridges were invented.

One question why is their a large lack of large scale big knight orders like the knights templar knights hospitaler and Teutonic Knights even warhammer has the down with the reiksguard knights of the white wolf and knights of Moore so for example I think their would be say a knights of the golden lion and you should make up orders for all the kingdoms

Ok, well you’ve pushed me into it…

The Vale: The Brotherhood of Winged Knights, natch. Seven knights to honor the Seven. Chosen by a tourney of no less than 77 applicants to guard the King of the Mountain and Vale for seven years. To honor the memory of Artys Arryn’s victory, the Brotherhood have a custom of insisting that any Arryn who takes the field of battle must don an eighth set of the armor and livery of the Brotherhood, to ensure that his enemies cannot spy him out. And hey, let’s go nuts and say that the Winged Knights are especially feared for their horse-frightening harnesses.

The Riverlands: The Order of the Trident. One of the more recent chivalric orders in Westeros, the Order of the Trident was founded by House Teague in order to bolster their hold on their newly-won kingdom. By their original charter, the knights of the Trident were charged with maintaining the peace on the “roads and rivers of our kingdom,” which led to the construction of many chapter houses at fords and other intersections where travelers could sleep protected – in more recent centuries following the fall of House Teague, many of these chapter houses were abandoned and later converted into inns. This charter also requires each member to maintain a shallow-drafted warship of no less than 10 oars a side, which may explain their ceremonial weapons. Notably, rather than implicitly stating it, only members of the Faith of the Seven are allowed to join, which is why no Blackwood has ever participated and why every single generation of Brackens have held membership (with no less than a dozen grand-masters among them). According to rumor, the Order may have been instrumental behind-the-scenes in many of the rebellions against those rulers who succeeded the Teagues to the crown of the Riverlands – which is probably false…

The Westerlands: The Grand and Most Puissant Order of the Golden Mane. Unlike most orders of chivalry in Westeros, the Order of the Golden Mane was primarily not a martial order – rather, the Order was established during the reign of King Norwin Lannister as a means of raising revenue, with membership dues being originally listed at 100 grains of pure gold annually. In exchange for their dues, members were granted knighthoods if they did not already have them, but also a number of privileges including the right to be tried only by the Order, the right to arbitration by the Order in all disputes between fellow members, and even the right to advise the king on “weighty matters.” During the rule of Tytos Lannister, these privileges were badly abused by dozens of social climbers, leading to the diminishment of the order’s prestige and an increase in public disorder, as many used the order’s immunity from normal criminal procedure as a shield against Casterly Rock itself. Shortly before the Reynes of Castamere, Tywin Lannister raised the membership fee to five times the member’s body-weight in gold, and then took advantage of a number of sudden vacancies to have the order declared extinct due to lack of quorum.

The Reach: since the Order of the Green Hand is taken, let’s talk about the Lady Companions of the Blessed Maris. Given the Reach’s love affair with tourneys, pageants, dances, and other social occasions, someone has to do the organizing of the social calendar, otherwise the whole thing goes haywire and vendettas set up. Guided by an inner circle of noblewomen who can trace their descent to Maris the Maid, Rowan Goldenhair, or Ellyn Ever-Sweet (all women of acceptable moral purity, although of course the Gardener Queen was always given a position out of respect for Highgarden), the Lady Companions make sure that each seat of note is appropriately honored with fetes, that there are always enough tourneys to keep the knights occupied while ensuring decent attendance at each, and that enough mixed-gender events are held to ensure that the right young ladies meet the right young men. While the Green Hand may have perished on the field of battle, the work of the Lady Companions continue to this day, although there was much grumbling when a certain Tyrell claimed the Gardener Seat for her house on the grounds that Aegon had deeded Highgarden to them.

The Stormlands: The Ancient and Most Honorable Guild of Castlewrights. While the origins of the Guild are lost to legend and myth (some tales claim that the founders of the guild were the assistants of the mysterious Brandon who built the final castle of Storm’s End), the Stormlands takes the construction of castles more seriously than any other realm. To that end, the Durrandon kings gave (in addition to the honor of knighthood) this order the “responsibility for inspecting and maintaining the castles of my kingdom,” along with some fairly wide-ranging powers to commandeer labor and materials to make repairs when necessary for the defense of the realm. Over the centuries, the Guild turned into an order of knights who were experts both in the construction of castles and siegecraft. Many a seemingly desperate siege was won or lost due to the presence of a single Guildman using their authority to take over direction of assault or defense of the castle, especially in the Marches. Famously, the Guildmen take an oath never to allow themselves to be captured alive, lest they be tortured into revealing their occult wisdom.

Dorne: The Knights of the Wells. If there is anything that unites the often fractious peoples of Dorne, it is their common love of horse-riding. Thus, to keep their people happy and distracted, the Martells have organized both hippodrome races and cross-country races for the better part of a thousand years. Recruited from among the ranks of the winners, the Knights of the Wells were trained in the arts of cartography by maesters from Sunspear, given the best sand steeds that the Martells can buy and, formally, charged with little more than accurately mapping the oft-foreboding terrain of Dorne. Informally, the Knights of the Wells were the Martells’ best spies and scouts, who use their superior knowledge of the land to guide the armies of Dorne and track the armies of her enemies, and many wars have been won (or lost) because of the bravery and cunning of these swordless knights. Membership in the Wells is a dangerous proposition, however – both in Aegon’s War and Daeron’s, the order saw casualties of more than nine in ten of their members, with the Targaryens frequently posting lavish bounties for their deaths. Indeed, it was a significant provision of Daeron II’s treaty that the Martells were forbidden from re-establishing the Knights of the Wells, although some claim the order continues in secret…

Steven, I’m not sure you’ve written on this before… what does an extended period of peace do to the Westerosi social order? How does the nobility dispose of younger sons when they can’t inherit, there’s no standing army for them to join, no war to kill them off, can’t conquer new lands, and there’s prejudice against working at a trade? My understanding is that historically IRL, this state could cause serious problems. Do the Church and the Citadel just get a ton more people sent to them?

Good question!

I mean, in the Westerosi context, there’s still quite a bit of violence and other causes that deals with younger sons – I mean, technically there hasn’t been a fighting war in any of the Dunk & Egg stories, but for all their lighter tone, they have a pretty high body count – tourney deaths, plagues, “pissing contests” between local lords, bandits, stupid coup attempts, etc.

But in terms of how the social order would react, it’s a bit tricky because an extended period of peace probably also means an extended period of prosperity as well, if only because the opposite tends to intensify resource conflicts and thus lead to war. And prosperity is a great social lubricant.

When the harvests are good, trade is up, and people have cash on hand and good terms of credit, it’s easier for the social order to deal with surplus kids – get them dowers/dowries to smooth the way for a marriage that wouldn’t have made fiscal sense otherwise, give them jobs around the castle or pay a neighbor to take them off your hands or send them to court, or even set them up as a landed knight or cadet branch if you’re particularly rolling in it. And yes, I imagine you’d see quite an uptick on younger sons and daughters getting sent off to septries and motherhouses with generous donations, as well as an increase in acolytes and novices sent to the Citadel.

Steven, you’re put in charge of creating some holidays for the major religions of Planetos. What significant events from each religion’s history would you choose?

Well,

For the Faith of the Seven, I’m thinking significant events: the Anointing of Hugor of the Hill, the first landing on the shores of Westeros, the Battle of Seven Stars, the founding of the Starry Sept, the crowning of King Aegon I, the birth and/or death of Baelor the Blessed. Oh, and days to praise each of the Seven, which we already knew about.

For R’hllorism, I’m going to guess more solar-based events: the solstices, the equinoxes, the eclipses, etc.

The worship of the Old Gods seems too decentralized to have holidays, but I could see holidays around the changing of the seasons, the harvest cycle, etc.

The Drowned God thinks that holidays are for the weak.

As to why there’s no center of Faith in Vale that tried to compete with Starry Sept, maybe the Arryns & Graftons couldn’t ( or maybe wouldn’t) match the amount of money that the Hightowers & Gardners could sink into the Starry Sept ? Add to it the fact that Oldtown is far easily accessible & the routes doesn’t involve braving barbarian raids, masses must have increasingly turned to the Starry Sept as their Mecca ?

I understand why the Starry Sept would have become the center of the Faith eventually, but there was a period of 300 years when the Vale was all the Andals had, then came the conquest of the Riverlands, and the Andals didn’t come to the Reach until “generations had passed” since the conquest of the Riverlands.

In that intervening period, you’re going to get a major center of faith in the Vale. There’s no way the Arryns aren’t going to use some of that Vale to raise up a Sept to glorify Ser Artys Arryn and his gods-ordained victory over the First Men, and by extension to emphasize their authority over the lesser Andal kings of the Riverlands. And with hundreds of years of pilgrimages and donations from guilty-conscienced knights and lords looking to buy their way into Heaven, that Sept is going to be very, very fancy and the Septon who runs it is unlikely to tug their forelock to some lackey of the Hightowers without a fight.

Anon Asks

How much trade does the iron throne do? Like what percentage of gdp would a typical medieval state have as imports and exports? What does this trade consist of? And how effected would westeros be if it were completely cut off from the rest of the world?

Well, if @warsofasoiaf asks…

The Iron Throne doesn’t do much trade itself, since it’s a government that derives most of its revenues from taxes as opposed to trading directly on its own account. Yes, Littlefinger has gotten into the wool trade, for example, but it’s unclear how much if any of that revenue actually goes to the crown instead of to Littlefinger.

If you’re asking how much international trade Westeros does, I think it’s rather low given that A. the overwhelming majority of the population works in subsistence agriculture, B. as Westeros is rather underdeveloped, there are severe limits to the spread of markets due to the inability to get goods to market, and C. Westeros’ exports are almost entirely natural resources (food, wine, wool, timber, etc.) and its imports are higher valued-added manufacturing.

If you’re asking for a percent GDP figure, there are estimates that 16th century England had a foreign trade of less than 8% and that was after a huge surge in the wool trade and we haven’t seen in Westeros anything like the social and economic transformation that the rise of the commercial wool trade had on England from the 14th through 16th centuries. Likewise, I’ve seen estimates that the agrarian economy (i.e, just that part of the economy that came from producing crops) made up 85% or more of English GDP in 1300, which also suggests a low figure for Westeros.

How is it that all the wars during the Targaryen era last between one to two years only? Given the size of Westeros and the travel distances therefore involved shouldn’t the Dance, the Blackfyre Rebellions, etc. have been longer?

opinions-about-tiaras:

“Seasonal fighting” may mean something much different in a world where the growing season can last six years as opposed to six months.

(Seriously, you want to talk about significant worldbuilding issues? The goddamn inconsistent seasons not really having much effect beyond “oh, during hard cruel winters people die in the north” are Exhibit A.)

alittleonward said:Wouldn’t the length of seasons be a major reason for the brevity of wars on planetos? Campaigns only need to end for winter and many don’t stop for that (Cf Battle of Ice)

Adding this one on to talk about the topic.

So here’s how I’ve rationalized the long seasons, because beyond the question of how wars would work, there is a bigger problem of how everyone isn’t dead. I’ll quote this in full b/c it’s a complicated argument:

racefortheironthrone:

Yeah, this is a pretty significant worldbuilding issue. Leaving aside Westerosi travel distances, most real-world wars in the Middle Ages and before were pretty long-lasting affairs. Sieges lasted a long time, fighting was seasonal, etc.

Anonymous asked: The intended amounts of food cached for winter seem far too small relative to the populations they must support and uncertainty of winter’s duration. Does this suggest that the primary strategy is to buy food, with the winter stores as more of a backstop?

You raise a good question, and all I can say is GRRM seems to think it’s enough.

Well, that’s not exactly true, there’s a bunch more I can say:

There’s an underlying world-building problem here, which is that the multi-year seasons don’t really make sense when you consider the ecology of the life cycle of flora and fauna. If winter was just unrelenting night and cold and nothing else, you’d expect 100% die-off as seeds wither in the frost and animals run out of plants to dig up from the snow. (Either that or there are some truly baroque evolutionary adaptions that you’d think we’d have heard about by now) Likewise, it doesn’t matter how much you store and how cool your cellars are, there are hard limits to how long you can store food in a pre-modern context.

So the way that I’ve rationalized it is that the seasons are really closer to climate cycles than what we think of as seasons – summers are extended warm periods, winters are mini-ice ages. While agricultural productivity is going to be much much higher in the “summer” than in the “winter,” it’s not the case that there’s no growth at all during the winter.

Because even within the “winter,” you’re going to get variation in temperatures – your “false springs” and “spirit summers” – that allow for short bursts of agriculture productivity. Those little bursts are vitally necessary to stretch out your supplies, replenish fodder for whatever livestock and game is still around, repair some of the damage done by malnutrition, etc.

But I would imagine that those are very chancey – if the lull in the snows and the cold ends before you can harvest whatever crop you’ve been able to get into the ground, you’re going to lose it all.

BTW, I forgot to add GRRM’s So Spake Martin that supports my theory. One of the main occupations of the Citadel of Maesters is tracking the seasons, trying to predict how long they’re going to last and when they’re going to change, and providing advice about “when to plant and when to harvest and how much food to store” to take maximum advantage of the “false springs” and “spirit summers.”

So you still have the problem of needing your manpower on hand to sow and to reap every year, which is going to produce seasonal fighting. And we even have evidence of this happening: “we have lost men in battle, and others to the harvest.” (Catelyn II, ACOK)

So the Citadel was founded by Peremore Hightower in the Age of Heroes thousands of years before writing existed in Westeros? Are we to take that as historical embellishment? I’m tempted to chalk it up to a mistake on Martin’s part but that seems like a really obvious and silly one if that’s the case. Could an order like the Maesters exist in any meaningful way before the invention of written records? It seems like the answer would be no.

The issue of the literacy of the First Men is one of the biggest inconsistencies in ASOIAF worldbuilding – although it’s possible to parse one’s way to coherence. On the one hand, Sam says in AFFC that:

“The oldest histories we have were written after the Andals came to Westeros. The First Men only left us runes on rocks, so everything we think we know about the Age of Heroes and the Dawn Age and the Long Night comes from accounts set down by septons thousands of years later.”

And in WOIAF, Maester Yandel omits the First Men from the list of “lettered races” who left behind written records from the Dawn Age. So that’s the evidence we have that writing post-dated the Andals.

However, there is counter-evidence. WOIAF also repeatedly mentions “runic records” that were “written in the Old Tongue” which Maesters from the Citadel can read and have translated into the Common Tongue. A lot of these records go back into the Age of Heroes, and some even go back into the Dawn Age…and if you think about it logically, in order for the records of the Night’s King to have been destroyed, there must have been written records of some kind back in the Age of Heroes.

(Further confusing the issue, the WOIAF has a rather ambiguous statement that the Starks’ “legends came before the First Men had letters” – which suggests that the First Men gained writing at some period, although whether pre- or post-Andal it doesn’t say.)

Here’s my theory: Sam doesn’t speak the Old Tongue and probably most Maesters don’t, unless they’re among that rare breed of Maesters interested in ancient history and archaelogy who took the time to learn how to speak the Old Tongue and thus read the runic records of the First Men. So Sam’s being a bit of an Andal cultural supremacist, in that he’s treating translations of surviving First Men records that were done after the Andal invasions as the only real records. But if you think about it, the Citadel is the one place in Westeros where, because it’s been kept safe by the Hightowers, First Men records and the ability to read them have survived.