All the peerage ranks were originally due to some certain service or position they did that became hereditary titles, but were each of those ranks responsibilities and privledges? I know only that marquess was in charge of marches, aka border lords

Good question!

Since different courts and different languages developed their own system of titles – you don’t get earls outside of Britain or Scandivia, landgrave and freiherr have a very specific Germanic context – it sort of depends on which one you’re looking at.

But there are some etymological roots that can tell us what the original responsibilities of these different titles were (said roles shifted hugely over time):

Duke originates from the Latin dux, and was originally a Roman title indicating the highest-ranking military commander in a given province.
Count comes from the Latin comitem, meaning companion or delegate of the emperor, and was originally a Roman title indicating a high-ranking courtier, and the title continued to have this association with courtly service, see also count palatine, which referred to someone who served in the royal palace. Viscount comes from the Latin vice-comitem, meaning the deputy of a count.
Earl, which is pretty much only used in Britain and Scandinavia, comes from the Anglo-Saxon and means chieftain.
Marquess/Marquis does indeed refer to a lord who holds land on the borders, and thereby has additional responsibilities of defense and fortifications and additional privileges to go along with that.
The etymology of Baron is a bit contested, but is generally held to originally be a military title similar to dux, although indicating a lower rank.

Hey, It seems like there’s not much the lord actually does in the feudal economy? How easy would it be to just cut him out of the process? (I understand it was extremely hard in practice but I’m curious if there were any attempts to cut them out of the process and just manage the estate without them)

Well, primarily what the lord did was to take all the rent and taxes, the free labor, the extra income from mills and bridges and the like, and all the other feudal privileges to which they felt entitled, and not work for a living and instead focus on hunting and jousting and war and politics and really stupendous levels of conspicious consumption.

In terms of how easy it would be to get rid of them, well, that was most of what the 14th century peasant revolts were all about. When you look at how the revolts start, one of the first targets of the peasantry were court records – chiefly manorial court records that were the only source of information about who was a serf and who wasn’t, who owed feudal obligations and who didn’t. Even before they got to the point of capturing capitol cities and demanding royal charters of liberty, the peasants would just burn the records that said they were serfs or villeins or owed any kind of free labor and then dare their landlords to prove that they weren’t free men.

So ultimately, I’d say the main difficulty with getting rid of the nobility is that they were perfectly willing to 1. renege on any agreement or oath made to rebellious peasants, 2. ignore a flag of truce and murder the peasants’ leadership, 3. call out the army and kill thousands of people to restore compliance with the ancien regime.

Does each new lord/lady of a vassal family have to swear fealty to their overlord, or is it explicit continuation from their predecessors? Does each new overlord or monarch summon their vassals to swear fealty to them upon ascension?

Good question!

The short answer is that it depends on the particular feudal culture and the particular period, because it matters whether the fiefdom was seen as the personal gift of the monarch or the rightful inheritance of the son, and so on.

In most feudal systems I’m aware of, however, there was a necessity to have the new vassal make homage to their new overlord. It’s an opportunity to redo the ceremony – which is handy for the sovereign because it means that they get to do the ceremonies regularly and display their power. It’s also an opportunity for revenue-generation – a lot of feudal systems assessed a one-time tax when a fiefdom was inherited. And the same goes for a new overlord – you want to make sure that all the vassals know who’s in charge now, and to firmly establish their direct loyalty to the new man.

Moreover, if you think of it in symbolic/ideological terms, it makes sense that you would want to renew whenever there’s a transfer of power between generations. Remember, medieval politics is all about the body – the king is physically annointed, they give status and title by touching you or giving you a ring, and political influence comes from how close you are physically to the king.

So if you have a new body or bodies standing in as vassal or overlord, it’s a new physical relationship and you need to enact the ritual again.

If a Westeros noble’s wealth depends on agriculture, how much does he know about agriculture? Can Mace Tyrell sow and harvest a wheat crop?

A noble doesn’t need to know how to sow and harvest a wheat crop and wouldn’t ever learn – indeed, it would be injurious to the dignity of a nobleman to suggest that they should undertake the work of a smallfolk.

However, depending on the nobleman, they might well learn from their maester a good deal about agriculture from a managerial standpoint – what kind of land is best suited for what crops or livestock, how best to rotate crops to maximize yield, the theory of livestock breeding, the uses and siting of various agricultural improvements, etc. – so that the various manors and lands of their fiefdoms are run well. On the other hand, it may be considered that this too is the province of lesser men – bailiffs, stewards, reeves, maesters, etc. – and that all a nobleman needs to know is the old Parthian curriculum.

And that would largely come down to the ideology of the house. Randyll Tarly clearly leans to the latter view, whereas I would be willing to bet a substantial amount of dragons that, while no Redwyne earns their living by stomping grapes or cutting weeds, they pride themselves on being really, really obnoxious oenophiles.

seguemarran Asks:

How come that the boundaries of the old kingdoms and family lands in Westeros seem to be so unchangeable? Has there ever been something like a dynastic union in order to enlarge family dominions? If, for instance (not interested in this particular speculation), Sansa came to be the only heir to the North, the Riverlands and then married Robin Arryn, wouldn’t that make a huge kingdom then united by her children? Thank you!

I don’t think it’s accurate that the boundaries are unchangeable – the histories of the various kingdoms from WOIAF show the opposite, with the borders of the various kingdoms flowing hither and yon repeatedly throughout history. In addition to the gradual and often painful process of the unification of each of the Seven Kingdoms from the hundreds of petty kingdoms that once existed, we know of a good deal of back-and-forth. The Durrandon conquest of the Crownlands and the Riverlands, the Ironborn’s conquest of much of the west coast of Westeros and the Hoare King’s conquest of the Riverlands, Gyles III Gardener who conquered most of the Stormlands before falling prey to tall poppy syndrome, the North’s attempts to conquer the Sisters and the Fingers, etc.

As to your question about dynastic union, there’s plenty of internal examples: the Stark’s dynastic marriages to the Barrow Kings, Garlan II Gardener marrying into the Hightowers and gaining Oldtown for the Reach, the dynastic union that allowed Meryn III to successfully incorporate the Arbor into the Reach, and so on.

However, there is a Westerosi custom that says that one man shouldn’t control more than one great seat of power, both out of respect for the balance of power, and the feudal limitations of trying to administer geographically separate fiefdoms. That likely has limited the reach and extent of dynastic marriages.

Krim here, are you really suggesting a pre-modern abolition of monarchies for large nation states and replacing them with a fully representative people’s assembly? Would that realistically be feasible during such troubled eras in history, RL or Westeros?

Let me tell you a story about my ancestor. His name was Adam Attewell, he was a London butcher, and in the 14th century, he joined an illegal organization created by John Ball, known as the Great Society, dedicated to the proposition that peasants should be free and equal people under the law, and that the land belonged to the man who works it. And when Wat Tyler rose up, here’s what Adam did:

When I say Team Smallfolk 4 Life, I mean it.

I just read that link on Henry VII and bonds, pretty interesting, thank you. Just one question, the article mentioned that Henry recieved money for knighting his son, could you please elaborate on this occurrence?

So this is an example of Henry VII looking back into the statute books to find old rights or powers that hadn’t been invoked in a while – in part because earlier kings had abused the hell out of them and in the process helped to provoke the Barons’ Revolt and the Magna Carta – and then using the hell out of them.

In this case, Henry VII was invoking the right of feudal aid. Feudal aid was a special one-time payment to be made to one’s liege lord on special occasions: when the oldest son became a knight, when the eldest daughter was to be married, when the lord was going on crusade or needed to be ransomed, etc.

Henry VII missed few tricks, so not only did he invoke feudal aid when he knighted his eldest son Arthur, but when Arthur died and Henry became his new eldest son, he did it again, and then again when he married his daughter to the King of Scotland. And each time, he raised the equivalent of at least £11-20 million pounds in today’s money.

You convinced re: Maidenpool! Your ED series is brilliant, and I appreciate the discussion of the nuts and bolts of feudalism – it all adds to the feeling of a medieval world + magic. Concerning taxation: was this a means of punishing rebel lords, e.g. post Trident or Blackfyre rebellion? And would each tax rate for each lord be determined individually? The bureaucracy required for this system would have been monumental, so I presume there is another way I have not thought of. Thanks!

Thanks!

As for taxation, it could be used to punish taxation, but it was a bit more common to simply confiscate the property of rebels or to levy a one-time fine, rather than expect compliance with taxes in the long run. Henry VII had a lot of success using bonds instead – people who chose the wrong side in the Wars of the Roses ended up having huge liens put on their estates that the King could call in at any time, which gave him a lot of control over the nobility.

In terms of the tax rate of lords, it would be generally fixed by tradition – whether it’s a knight’s fee or the specific terms of a feudal contract – although when the king wanted to raise new revenues, it was usually by levying a flat percentage tax because that was a lot easier to do bureaucratically.

Steven Xue Asks: Do lords normally sell food right before winter?

I did a reread of the Alynne spoiler chapter and I find the way the lords of the Vale are trying to sell off their gain reserves and doing it so eagerly as lord Grafton says “the lords are eager to sell” very baffling because winter is fast approaching. I find this really bizarre because I’ve always been under the impression that before the 19^th century, people had a tendency to stock up on food supplies before winter to ensure they had enough food to last the winter months.

In Westeros where winter can last for many years, I would have thought that right now the conservation of food would be considered a huge prerogative for both the nobility and the smallfolk (who should know that winter is just right around the corner). I suppose these lords are just trying to make a quick buck while the going is good, but even from a monetary standpoint it doesn’t make a lot of sense as Littlefinger points out that when winter is in full swing, he will then be able to sell their grain back to them at a higher rate.

With all this in mind I’m just wondering if it makes any sense at all for the lords of the Vale to be selling off their grain reserves right before winter and did this actually happen in real life?

I would disagree with “winter is fast approaching.” Autumn may be lingering in the fields of the Vale, but Jaime has seen snow falling in the Riverlands, which means winter is here.

And the lords of the Vale want to sell their food now because that’s what they (and the Reach) have historically done: exported their surplus so that the rest of Westeros can eat. While they’ll make a substantial profit due to higher prices – which is a significant source of their wealth and power – they wouldn’t dream of holding back supply from the market to maximize profit.

That would violate the honor code of noblesse oblige, their reciprocal obligation to their smallfolk. It would be precisely the kind of selfish and materialist action that marks one out as a merchant rather than a nobleman, who acts in a disinterested fashion.

What Littlefinger is doing is known as “Engrossing, forestalling and regrating.” He’s withholding goods from market and buying up other supplies to resell later, with the intended purpose of raising prices. And historically, this kind of monopolistic behavior was considered highly illegal, because creating artificial scarcities threatened social disorder (bread riots).

Help me solve a dispute- do the secondary lords pay taxes to their Lord Paramount lieges?

It’s not entirely clear how taxation interacts with the process of subinfeudation, and it’s not helped by the fact that when we see lords interacting with their vassals, it’s almost always between immediate vassals.

The only clue I can think of is that the Redwynes have to pay excise taxes on wine to the Crown despite being vassals of the Tyrells. That may suggest that lords pay taxes both to their immediate liege lord and that lord’s liege lord, or that the Redwynes are a special case because they are directly exporting goods to foreign countries on a scale that most vassals wouldn’t.