Are all the men on ironborn longships freeborn fighters, or do you think some are thralls who solely row? We see Vic using such to Meereen with captured slaves he “freed”. And do you think all the regions were involved in Greyjoy’s Rebellion? If not, which ones weren’t? Did Jon presumably staying in KL mean the Vale wasn’t rallied? Did Doran not seek to build (fake) trust with the Iron Throne by sending levies? Did Mace only “provide” the Redwyne fleet? Did Hoster leave it to the Mallisters?

opinions-about-tiaras:

The ironborn definitely use thralls as rowers. They may or may not solely row, but they are certainly thralls.

From the Victarion preview chapter of TWOW:

The oarsmen were all big. One was a boy, one a brute, one a bastard’s
bastard. The Boy had been rowing for less than a year, the Brute for
twenty. They had names, but Victarion did not know them. One had come
from Lamentation, one from Sparrow Hawk, one from Spider Kiss. He could not be expected to know the names of every thrall who had ever pulled an oar in the Iron Fleet.

Victarion did not oft forgive a thrall for talking out of turn, but the
Boy was young, no more than twenty, and soon to die besides.

If it made the three feel braver to believe they had a choice, let them
cling to that. Victarion cared little what they believed, they were only
thralls.

That strikes me as a case of the Ironborn social contract beginning to break down once you shift from the smaller-scale longships to actual warships, because otherwise the Ironborn very much separate out thrall’s work from freeborn work:

racefortheironthrone:

I think that usually there’s a pretty strict code that there’s thrall’s work and Ironborn’s work and the two should not be mixed. Hence why Euron’s crew is an aberration.

The Reach, the North, the Westerlands, the Riverlands, the Stormlands, and the Crownlands were definitely involved. We don’t hear anything about the Vale or Dorne tho.

“Amongst the ironborn, only reaving and fishing were considered worthy work for free men. The endless stoop labor of farm and field was suitable only for thralls.”

Incidentally, this also suggests that argument about the Ironborn having larger army #s are wrong, because if they have to resort to thralls to fill out the oars of a ship a third the size of mainlander warships, no way in hell they have 30,000 men under arms.

Politics of the Seven Kingdoms: The Iron Islands (Part I)

Credit to J.E Fullerton/Ser Other-in-Law Introduction: If there’s one thing that I hope I have done in this series, it’s to push back against the idea of essentialism – whether it’s the idea that Northmen are inherently honorable, Valemen inherently isolationist, or the Riverlanders inherently divided. Cultures, societies, polities are all too complicated for such simplistic narratives. This is…

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Huh, I went over the asoiaf wiki, and to aggravate you even further about the Ironborne timeline House Mallistar apparently only conquered the Cape of Eagles during Torgen the latecomers reign, that suggests the Ironborne still had colonies in the Riverlands throughout House Justmans reign and could be the perfect source for conflict you wondered about. I’m getting the weird sense of deja vu of the back and forth between the Ironborn and the North now…

On the Justman-Hoare conundrum: Is one possible solution simply Qhored the Cruel being a brief resurgence of Ironborn supremacy such that that after his death no Ironborn leader had the capabilities to arrest their decline as he had?

Regarding the ironborn timeline issues, I remember a couple people on Reddit put forward a theory a few months ago that the Andal Conquest happened over the course of around two thousand years (noting the 1-200 years between the (final) conquest of the Vale and the reign of Tristifer IV), and thus didn’t come to the Iron Islands until well over a thousand years after they came to the riverlands. Does this theory hold water for you?

Going to consolidate a couple questions from different people on the whole Ironborn timeline thing:

W/R/T the Mallisters, since Torgon Latecomer was one of the earliest of the Greyirons, since he was elected at a kingsmoot, and Torgon’s son Urragon came before Urron Redhand, who A. lived five thousand years before the War of Five Kings and B. whose line ruled for a thousand years before the Andals arrived in the Iron Islands, I don’t think Mallister’s conquest of the Cape happened during the reign of the Justmans but significantly before. (For one thing, if Qhored the Cruel was a Hoare, that conflicts with the Greyirons ruling for a thousand years.)

That Qhored solution wouldn’t work, because Qhored is listed as a driftwood king and the height of Ironborn power BEFORE the Greyirons abolished the kingsmoot and the Hoares replaced them and ruled as Iron Kings. I think the better fix is to say that either Aeron and WOIAF were wrong about Harrag and Qhored Hoare being driftwood kings – rather, if Harrag is a contemporary of Theon Stark, and Qhored of House Justman, they were in fact Hoare kings of the “black line” who came about after the Andal invasion (although that creates other problems relating to thematic arcs) – or that the bit about Qhored extinguishing the Justmans is simply not accurate.

As to the delayed timeline, that solves some problems but not others. Honestly, I think the Ironborn chapter needs to be rewritten from the ground-up with an eye to consistency and an eye to a much simpler succession of dynasties.

Dear maester steven, I was wondering if I could ask you something regarding Deepwood Motte. You mentioned the coast nearby was one of the few places on the west coast of the North where a large number of ships could be held, and this seems right as Asha docked enough ships here for the 1000 Ironborn that took the castle. However, the books describe the coast as being tidal flats, which aren’t good for docking ships unless they have been dredged. Did they dock somewhere else on the Bay of Ice?

Ah, I see what the issue is. You’re thinking deepwater ships, whereas the Ironborn primarily use longships which have extremely shallow drafts and a fairly flat bottom.

Unlike a deepwater ship, which can’t really be beached without some very complicated launching procedures, longships can be hauled up off the beach and pushed out to sea very easily, which is part of the reason they were so suited to hit-and-run riverrine missions when you wanted to go a-viking.

So a tidal flat is actually ideal for longboats, as you can sail/row them up pretty close to the tide line, portage them if necessary, and the tide makes launching them again super-smooth. Meanwhile, galleys and other ships with long fin keels and deep drafts can’t pursue the longship onto the tidal flat lest they run around.

What would you think of my opinion that the Drowned God’s resemblance to Cthulhu is only superficial. The ironborn give off the “stupid-crazy” vibe, not the “eldritch-crazy” vibe. Their version of divinity seems more along the lines of Odin mixed with a really dark interpretation of Christ. I mean, its kind of hard to be driven mad by knowledge when education, literacy, and intelligence are considered unholy. (Patchface could’ve easily seen Elenei’s dad, all sea gods need not be the same)

Well, this is more @boiledleather‘s specialty than mine, but…

there’s the legend of the Seastone Chair predating humanity and it’s made out of the same oily black stone found at the base of the Hightower, the Isle of Toads, the city of Yeen, the city of Asshai, the Five Forts, etc. That oily black stone is linked by Maester Theron to the Deep Ones.
Speaking of Maester Theron, he argued in his Strange Stone that “These Deep Ones, as he names them, are the seed from which our legends of merlings have grown, he argues, whilst their terrible fathers are the truth behind the Drowned God of the ironborn.”
The Ironborn believe that “we did not come to these holy islands from godless lands across the sea…we came from beneath those seas, from the watery halls of the Drowned God, who made us in his likeness,” which makes “the ironmen…closer kin to fish and merlings than the other races of mankind.”
the Grey King, first of the Ironborn King, “took a mermaid to wife, so his sons and daughters might live above the waves or beneath them as they chose.”

Seems a bit more than superficial to me. Or maybe you’re trying to fool the surface world into thinking the Deep Ones don’t exist…

Anon Asks: Ironborn hypocrisy

In the distance, half a dozen of southron longships were racing back toward the Mander. Let them go, Victarion thought, let them tell the tale. Once a man had turned his tail and run from battle he ceased to be a man.

Isn’t it a bit hypocritical for Victarion to think that given he did the same thing at Fair Isle when he turned his tail and fled when he saw the battle was lost?

It’s hugely hypocritical. Because Victarion is an enormous hypocrite. Because the “Old Way” is riddled with hypocrisy.

Steven Xue Asks: Why didn’t the Ironborn reave an independent Dorne?

I’ve been going through the World Book and I find it strange how during the first century and a half of living under Targaryen rule when Dorne was still an independent kingdom at that time, the Ironborn didn’t take the opportunity to go there for pillage and plunder. I can understand that after submitting to Targaryen rule the Ironborn stopped raiding lands that are under the protection of the Iron Throne as they would not stand a chance against the combined might of the Seven Kingdoms (as Balon Greyjoy would later learn).

However during the time Dorne was still a sovereign country it was outside of the Crown’s jurisdiction so it wasn’t off limits. Surely Dorne should have been the perfect hub for Ironborn raids during the years before it was finally integrated into the Seven Kingdoms. It is closer to home than the lands beyond Westeros and it’s very rich. Its coastal regions especially like Planky Town which brought in a lot of trade seem like ideal targets for eager Ironborn captains as there is plenty to plunder there and they could take their chances with the Martells as there would have been no interference from the Iron Throne.

Given how tenacious the Ironborn have proven themselves to be throughout history when it came to sating their desire to pillage and plunder and attacking pretty much anywhere that’s vulnerable (eg. The North), what was stopping them from conducting full scale raids in Dorne?

They probably did raid Dornish trade in the Narrow Sea, but the thing about Dorne’s southern coastline is that it’s really not good for sailing: “Nor is the long southern coast of Dorne more hospitable, being for the most part a snarl of reefs and rocks, with few protected anchorages. Those ships that do put ashore there, whether by choice or chance, find little to sustain them; there are no forests along the coast to provide timber for repairs, a scarcity of game, few farms, and fewer villages where provisions might be obtained. Even freshwater is hard to come by, and the seas south of Dorne are rife with whirlpools and infested with sharks and kraken.”

So the basic problem is that the Ironborn couldn’t really raid anywhere in between Skyfall and Plankytown because there aren’t really any coastal villages to raid. Also, the trip to Plankytown is a pain in the ass – if a storm blows up, you’re going to be wrecked and unable to repair your longboat or find food and water, and that’s assuming you don’t get eaten by sharks and krakens.

So my guess is that what the Ironborn would do instead is to run the gauntlet to the Narrow Sea and then prey on Dornish shipping there.