If the Lannister-Baratheon dynasty and its major supporters survived the War of the Five Kings, how do you think Tywin’s “divide and rule” doctrine would have worked long term? How manageable would the Riverlands have been with the Freys in control of the Twins and Riverrun and the lord paramount based out of Harrenhal, or the North with the Lannister of Winterfell as lord paramount and the Dreadfort holding the title of Warden of the North, compared to the previous centralized models in each?

I don’t think it would have worked well:

The Riverlands are going to be incredibly unstable, since the Freys are hated, over-extended (with half of their forces sent North, and the rest trying to hold the Twins, Riverrun, Darry, Seagard), and likely to face a rebellion. On top of that, the de jure Lord Paramount (who’s also Lord Protector of the Vale) is looking to overthrow the Lannister-Baratheon dynasty.
At the heart of the regime, the Tyrells want to become the power behind the throne as the Lannisters were for the Baratheons, which includes assassinating inconvenient monarchs to replace them with a compliant child monarch; the Martells want to violently overthrow the current regime and restore the Targaryens; and none of Tywin’s children want to cooperate in his plans, which means that there’s.
The North is in a state of chaos, the Boltons are planning to betray the Lannisters when they get a chance while the Lannisters were planning to do the same to them, Stannis is in the field and slowly working towards an alliance with the Stark loyalists and the wildlings, etc.
The Ironborn aren’t in-pocket at all, and are destabilizing the whole system by attacking the Reach at the time when Tywin needs the Reach as his muscle.

After he captures Griffin’s Roost, Jon Connington says he will obfuscate the matter by writing to the Iron Throne and claiming he is merely reclaiming his lands. Is that not also an offence likely to result in brutal retaliation?

This is historically grounded. Henry Bolingbrooke of Lancaster, Richard Duke of York, Edward of York, there was a long tradition of exiles making a landing and then claiming that they were only intent on reclaiming their family lands and bygones be bygones.

While almost always a cover for a coup, it was a good bit of political cover, because feudalism being what it was, the nobility were generally in favor of lands staying in the family and looked with deep suspicion on the monarch taking people’s lands (indeed, in the case of Henry Bolingbrooke, one of the main reasons why his coup succeeded was that the nobility really did not like Richard II seizing the Duchy of Lancaster from Henry as a matter of precedent and principle).

Thus, it made it difficult for the monarch to go all-out against the invader, in part because their vassals might be quite slow to respond to the call.

Concerning House Manderly: (1)Among the “dozen petty lords and a hundred landed knights” they count as vassals, what percentage of them do you imagine fled alongside the Manderlys and how were the rest acquired (Carrot vs Stick)? (2)How did the northern lords react to the meteoric rise of these foreigners, especially after the discovery of silver in their demesne? (3)Given how they got their lands, would the Starks have a disproportionate finger in the Manderly’s silver pie? Thank You, RSAfan.

Most of the knights I think probably started as Manderly household knights and got a promotion as thanks for their continued loyalty during the long trek to the North, as well as folks like Ser Bartimus. The lords I think are mostly Northern houses who washed out as lords of the Wolf’s Den (the Lockes, the Flints, the Slates, the Longs, the Holts, the Ashwoods, etc.) and non-Wolf’s Den locals like the Woolfields (between Ramsgate and the Sheepshead Hills, they seem rather substantial), with a salting of Reach vassals who kept the faith.
There was definitely some grumbling, but with the direct patronage of the Starks – the Boltons are definitely going to complain but no one wants a Bolton for a neighbor, the Lockes and Woolfields and Flints might bristle (depending on when they were vassalized) but the Lockes and the Flints don’t have much pull at Winterfell after their failures in the Worthless War, the Karstarks and Umbers might complain on general principle but they’re too far from the action, the Dustins would worry about the economic threat, but at the end of the day no one is willing or able to pony up enough cash to replace the Manderlys, which is what the Starks would probably say to anyone who complained directly.
Well, there’s definitely a quid-pro-quo of “build me a castle and a fortified city that no Valeman will ever capture again” and there’s definitely a good chunk of silver flowing upriver, b/c the Manderlys know the Starks’ benevolence was the only thing that kept them alive. As I talked about in my essay, I think Stark-Manderly relations were a mixture of the Manderlys being the mostest loyalest vassals ever while at the same time grabbing for power with both hands as if it might vanish if they looked away, and the Starks keeping the Manderly ambitions in check while still rewarding good service.

Say a peasant had a crippled child or infants to care for or nature was not cooperating or all of the above. Was it possible to appeal to his local Lord for a reprieve on his obligations? Obviously it would depend on the Lord’s character but I’m curious if there was flexibility in the system given 100% exploitation all the time seems like an impractical model yet on the face of it feudal contracts seem hilariously one sided and unfeeling.

Yep, happened all the time. Feudal obligations were very much tied to all kinds of traditions, which included things like tax or rent exemptions for a given period or privileges (collecting firewood from the lord’s forest, being allowed to trap rabbits in the lord’s deer park, gleaning grain after the harvest on the lord’s fields, etc.) or even donations (old clothes, leftovers, maybe some money).

So there was always a back-and-forth, where peasants pushed as far as they think they could get, and lords always had to shift on a spectrum from granting those favors when it suited their interests to be seen as generous to denying them if they felt their revenues were being cut into too much.

It’s actually not that different from the ways that scholars of slavery have talked about slave systems involving both resistance and accomodation as well as terror, brutality, and exploitation.

Did Renly know about the Stannis/Jon incest investigation/plans? Why didnt Renly bring Stark in on things, since he probably knew and had weeks of time being in the capital with Eddard but does basically nothing till Robert is dead. Or heck why not bring Jon Arryn in on the replace lannisters with tyrells plan?

Renly knew.

Actually, Renly did sort of bring Eddard in on it, rather inadvertently:

Ned was not sure what to make of Renly, with all his friendly ways and easy smiles. A few days past, he had taken Ned aside to show him an exquisite rose gold locklet. Inside was a miniature painted in the vivid Myrish style, of a lovely young girl with doe’s eyes and a cascade of soft brown hair. Renly had seemed anxious to know if the girl reminded him of anyone, and when Ned had no answer but a shrug, he had seemed disappointed. The maid was Loras Tyrell’s sister Margaery, he’d confessed, but there were those who said she looked like Lyanna. “No,” Ned had told him, bemused. Could it be that Lord Renly, who looked so like a young Robert, had conceived a passion for a girl he fancied to be a young Lyanna? That struck him as more than passing queer.

See, here’s the thing about Renly and the investigation: it is not in Renly’s interest for the truth to come out unless and until he’s succeeded in getting Margaery into Robert’s bed. Because if the truth comes out and Robert is unattached, then Stannis becomes the heir to the Iron Throne.

However, if Robert is remarrying to Margaery, then the Tyrells replace the Lannisters in the King’s Landing power structure but because Renly’s brokered the deal and is romantically attached to Loras, they become allies to his faction. And while Stannis might temporarily be the heir to the Iron Throne, the moment that Margaery becomes pregnant, Stannis is out of the picture and Renly’s path to a Handship/Regency is clear.

So what’s happening above is that Renly is both trying to get info as to whether the Margaery as Lyanna 2.0 thing will work but also seeing if he and Ned are sympatico, and neither works. It previews Renly’s pitch to Ned, in that he completely misunderstands how to appeal to Ned and win him over.

As to why not Jon Arryn, well A. Jon Arryn suddenly dying kind of makes that impossible, and B. there’s no reason to assume that Jon Arryn would favor Margaery – he might push for some other marriage.

How well do westerosi/medieval lords understand/do lobbying?

Great question!

The answer is they do it quite a bit. Except during those rare times in which the Great Council is in session, there are no legislative politics per se – governments take action through the decrees and decisions of the king and his ministers, so if you want anything from the government, you have to do it through lobbying.

And we have a lot of examples of this in the series, leaving aside the omnipresent chivvying for lands and titles:

…the septa could not have known that today’s court would be anything but the usual tedious business of hearing petitions, settling disputes between rival holdfasts, and adjudicating the placement of boundary stones. (Eddard XI, AGOT)

Lord Redwyne asked only for thirty years’ remission of the taxes that Littlefinger and his wine factors had levied on certain of the Arbor’s finest vintages. When that was granted, he pronounced himself well satisfied and suggested that they send for a cask of Arbor gold, to toast good King Joffrey and his wise and benevolent Hand. (Tyrion III, ASOS)

Jalabhar Xho was the first to petition her that day, as befit his rank as a prince in exile. Splendid as he looked in his bright feathered cloak, he had only come to beg. Cersei let him make his usual plea for men and arms to help him regain Red Flower Vale…Lord Hallyne of the Guild of Alchemists presented himself, to ask that his pyromancers be allowed to hatch any dragon’s eggs that might turn up upon Dragonstone, now that the isle was safely back in royal hands…(Cersei VIII, AFFC)

Indeed, one could argue that courtiers are essentially lobbyists with better fashion sense.

Hi again, i’m the anon from the northern and southern style of politics, i was wondering how different is ned’s ruling style from other lords of winterfell, and if that difference is more from been raised by jon arryn or some other reason (his uniquely strong sense of honour, the fact that he was a second son, raised to served his older brother) ? thanks for the fast answer btw!

That’s a good question – we don’t really have a good sense of how Ned’s very personal approach to power and his benevolent paternalism compares to the Starks who came before him. We know Rickard Stark was interested in continental power politics, dynastic marriage alliances, and fostering agreements but we don’t know much about how he related to the lords of the North.

What we can say is that Ned Stark was widely respected and beloved by his lords even past his death, so his style couldn’t have been been that far from the norms of Northern politics.

Hi Maester Steven, its very common in the asoiaf fandom to contrast northern and southern politics, usually saying that the northern lords are way more honest and loyal than their southern counter parts, and on the main series there are very evident differences. But after reading woiaf i’m now under the impression that the political styles aren’t really that different, but that ned ruled in a different manner than before. What is your opinion on this?

I’ve been saying that Northern feudal politics are just as complicated and ruthless as Southern feudal politics since Bran VI of AGOT. Leaving aside the manifest disloyalty of the Boltons and the Karstarks as shown in ASOS and later, we can see from the Hornwood Crisis in ACOK that the lords of the North are constantly jockeying for position and power and that the Stark in Winterfell has to work very hard indeed to keep the Manderlys and the Umbers or the Glovers and the Tallharts working in harness.

Thank you for the answer to my question on strengthening the crownlands but it’s not really what I was asking. To clarify I’m wondering why the King didn’t strengthen his military might by taking lords sworn to the different Lords Paramount and have them swear fealty directly to him. For example, Harrenhal has been granted to numerous people by numerous kings. Why did he not keep their vassalage instead of transferring it to the Riverlands?

Ah, I see.

I think what you’re running up against here is that feudal politics don’t work like nation-state politics.

Sure, the King could expand the Crownlands vis-a-vis the other kingdoms (he already did with Massey’s Hook and the southern Crownlands across the Blackwater), but…unless he’s going to rule them himself (and that’s not easy to do – you need bureaucrats to manage your manors, you need bureaucrats to keep records, you need bureaucrats to pay the taxes, you need soldiers to make sure people don’t rob your tax collectors, etc.), he still has to give that land to someone in exchange for their fealty. Sure, you could get rid of one layer of subinfeudation, but that’s a huge political effort for not really that big of a change.

Moreover, and this is the real kicker, a king is supposed to be open-handed, a ring-giver. Indeed, giving stuff away is the primary way you get armed men to fight for you in a context where you don’t have the state capacity for a standing army. So a king who gets a reputation as miserly or greedy is going to find themselves lacking in armed men to fight for them no matter how much land they control.

That’s the catch-22 of feudal politics: you have to give away the thing that people want from you to get them to do stuff for you, but the more you give away, the harder it is to get them to keep doing stuff. And historically, while kings did eventually grab more and more land for themselves (hence the coalescing of nation-states from nuclei like the

Île-de-France), the main route that kings used to increase their power was to convert feudal military service into taxes paid in cash (the so-called scutage) that would allow them to hire mercenaries and other professional soldiers, gradually building up the state capacity so that they no longer had to rely on the old way.

Do you feel that GRRM is a bit unfair in his depiction of the Brackens and the Peakes vis-a-vis the Blackwoods and the Manderlys?

goodqueenaly:

Read my Peake essay

Building off of a discussion that I had with @goodqueenaly, I thought I’d share some thoughts I had about the expulsion of the Manderlys from the Reach. We don’t know much about what precipitated this event other than that Perceon III “feared their swelling power in the Reach.” Now, this could be pure feudal politics, with Perceon III wanting to take down an "over-mighty vassal.”

However, I think it’s notable that when the Manderlys fled, “the wealth that the Manderlys had brought with them from the Reach” was enough to build both the New Keep and the city of White Harbor. It takes an enormous amount of money to do that. This makes me think that the conflict was over money.

Now there are a couple ways this could happen. One possibility is that, as the Mander is named after the Manderlys, they probably had a dominant position on the river (probably somewhere near the mouth, given their conflict with the marcher lord Peakes) which allowed them to put a toll on river traffic – not only would this make the Manderlys reach indeed, but it would create a natural point of conflict with the Gardeners upstream at Highgarden.

Another possibility is that it was a John of Gaunt situation. The Manderlys were a very wealthy and thus envied house, Perceon III needed money for a war or something, and decided to confiscate the estate of the richest house in the kingdom, similar to how Richard II confiscated the estates of his uncle John of Gaunt to help pay for his failed war in Ireland.

A third possibility is that, similar to how Wyman Manderly wanted to become Robb Stark’s master of coin, the Manderlys were the masters of coin in the Reach. From that position, the same techniques that made Thomas Cromwell one of the richest men in England might explain how they had so much moveable wealth during their exile, in a society where most wealth is tied up in the land. And it might also explain how they were brought down, through allegations of corruption or embezzlement, true or false.