Hey, I’ve been looking up stuff about the finances of the Iron Throne to understand some stuff I didn’t notice on reading, and I see that in a couple of places you refer to a seeming discrepancy in Littlefinger’s success rate with the customs in Gulltown. The 10fold figure comes from Lysa & the 3fold figure comes from Tyrion, in the context of his studies of the ledgers. Doesn’t this basically just suggest hyperbole from a character whose incompetence is one of the 1st things we learn about her?

Here’s why I don’t think it’s just hyperbole: this isn’t the only place where Littlefinger and tenfold increases comes up.

In A Storm of Swords, Tyrion states that while “crown incomes are ten times higher than they were under Aerys… [so] are the crown’s expenses. Robert was as generous with his coin as he was with his cock… the incomes are considerable, but they are barely sufficient to cover the usury on Littlefinger’s loans.”

As I explain in my essay, this claim on its own is suspect, because if incomes have grown by tenfold (highly unlikely on its own) and so have expenditures (likewise highly unlikely), then debt-to-income shouldn’t have grown, but somehow a tenfold increase in income is only sufficient to cover the interest rate, let alone the principal of the loan.

To me, this makes Littlefinger’s claims from Gulltown part of a pattern of behavior, where he makes extravagant claims of increased income, and then takes on much larger levels of debt than would be necessary to meet expenditures. (For example, his practice of not paying back any principal on the debt and taking out new loans to pay the interest, which is accounting malpractice likely covering up fraud.)

By Popular Demand: “Who Stole Westeros?”

Who Stole Westeros? One of the most persistent controversies of fact among fans of A Song of Ice and Fire is the question of whether Robert Baratheon or Petyr Baelish is responsible for the Iron Throne’s bankruptcy. Many leading scholars of our community have tackled the question (including one of the contributors to this volume); it’s a common topic of debate on r/asoiaf and Westeros.org, as…

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I’m always confused on whether we know when Littlefinger learns he slept with Lysa instead of Cat. Do we have any indication he knows this before the moon door scene?

That’s an excellent question, because I realized that I was also unsure about this question. My asearchoficeandfire-fu was failing me, but @goodqueenaly found this rather interesting passage from Tyrion III of ASOS:

“My lords, with your leave, I propose to travel to the Vale and there woo and win Lady Lysa Arryn. Once I am her consort, I shall deliver you the Vale of Arryn without a drop of blood being spilled.”

Lord Rowan looked doubtful. “Would Lady Lysa have you?”

“She’s had me a few times before, Lord Mathis, and voiced no complaints.”

It’s a rather surprising moment, because I had been looking in AGOT for where Tyrion discusses Littlefinger’s boasting at court, and had had a false memory of him boasting about both Tully girls when in fact the text only mentions Catelyn.

So this raises some interesting possibilities: either Littlefinger had realized what happened at Riverrun, but was unwilling to admit the full truth either to himself or anyone else, or he and Lysa had actually had an affair either in the Vale or King’s Landing (which is something that’s been debated but never proven), or Littlefinger was inadvertently telling the truth while lying.

The Master of Coin is said to be in charge of many officers. Among them are wool and wine factors. What do they do? The closest I’ve come to an answer is that a wool factor was a wool merchant’s agent, but I still don’t know what that agent does.

Ah yes, the factors. Factors are, indeed, agents who buy and sell goods on commission for a principal. Historically, factors were useful intermediaries who could do the buying and selling for a principal who couldn’t be at an important location, they warehoused people’s goods, they guaranteed credit, etc. The word factory actually originally meant a factor’s place of business, a trading post.

However, I think you’re getting too focused in on the idea of them being royal officers. Let’s take a look at the passage from Tyrion IV of ACOK as a whole:

“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.”

These are all men who are loyal to Littlefinger, but not all of them are royal officials. The Keepers of the Keys, the King’s Counter and the King’s Scales, the harbormasters, and customs sergeants are government officials. But tax farmers are private citizens who buy the right to tax from the government; pursers are the officers on ships responsible for handling supplies and repairs, and factors are commercial intermediaries.

All of them rely on Littlefinger in different ways, as I discuss here. The royal officials and tax farmers bribed him to get their posts and now pay him kickbacks, but the wool factors are tied to him because Littlefinger “bought wool from the north…stored it, moved it, dyed it, sold it” and thus controls a good deal of the textile trade, and the wine merchants are tied to him because there’s a royal excise tax on wines. And the pursers are tied to him because Littlefinger has close ties to King’s Landing merchants who supply the merchant ships.

Isn’t littlefinger supposed to seem trustworthy and amiable? He seems to easily befriend people (before betraying them or using them in his schemes) The scowl more than the sword is what seems off to me in that drawing. how cartoonishly evil the show’s version speaks is one of the main things that bugged me (why would ANYONE trust him?!) like he IS evil but he should at least TRY to hide it.

Look at how trustworthy and amiable he looks:

No one in King’s Landing likes or trusts Littlefinger: not Varys, not Pycelle, not Cersei, not Jaime, not Stannis, not Renly, not Tyrion, not Tywin, no one. He’s an incredibly obvious schemer who can’t stop monologuing in front of people he’s trying to scheme against or reminding people he’s betrayed that he’s betrayed them. He should try to hide it, but his compulsive need to prove he’s smarter than everyone else won’t let him.

Littlefinger gets away with it because A. most people don’t see him as a threat because he’s got no lands and no armies, B. he’s made himself indispensible as the only person who understands the royal finances, and C. he’s pretty good at hiding his actions.

Where is Littlefinger spending all the money he is embezzling, that his lands are a pile rocks with one guard, 23 sheep, and seaweed for breakfast? He can’t afford, i don’t know, a better house, or maybe some more sheep? Actual food?

I’d recommend reading “Who Stole Westeros?” to find out more of my thoughts on this, but…

The short version is that Littlefinger is using his money to buy ships, urban real estate, lending money at interest, speculating in commodities markets, and acting as your classic putting-out merchant type with an eye to vertical integration.

If you’re asking why he doesn’t have more land (other than the lands of Harrenhal, which are quite extensive if slightly cursed), it’s that Westeros doesn’t have a free market in land, wherein land becomes a fungible commodity that can be bought and sold at will and abstracted into derivatives and futures, etc.

Land in Westeros is distributed through feudal relationships that are traditional and customary in nature – fiefdoms are hereditary, taxation and rent levels are fixed, and tenancies are more likely to involve feudal obligations than pure cash rents.

So I was just thinking about ASOIAF in the bath, and I was wondering what Jeyne Poole was doing between the time Ned’s household guards were killed and when she was sent North to be “Arya”? She was probably a prisoner, but I have no idea where she was, or what was happening to her. I don’t know if this is something you would know, but you seem to know a lot of things about the books, so I figured I’d ask you.

Putting this below the cut because it’s gross as hell.

Jeyne Poole was “given” to LIttlefinger in AGOT:

Queen Cersei looked at each of the councillors in turn. “I won’t have Sansa fretting needlessly. What shall we do with this little friend of hers, my lords?”

Lord Petyr leaned forward. “I’ll find a place for her.”

“Not in the city,” said the queen.

“Do you take me for a fool?”

The queen ignored that. “Ser Boros, escort this girl to Lord Petyr’s apartments and instruct his people to keep her there until he comes for her. Tell her that Littlefinger will be taking her to see her father, that ought to calm her down. I want her gone before Sansa returns to her chamber.”

When Jeyne arrives for her wedding to Ramsay in ADWD, we find out that:

“I was told that you’d know how to please a man. Was that a lie?”

“N-no, my lord. I was t-trained.”

…What was it the girl had said, before the godswood? They all said that I was pretty. She was not pretty now. He could see a spiderweb of faint thin lines across her back where someone had whipped her. “… she is beautiful, so … so beautiful.”

“I’m a good girl,” Jeyne whimpered. “They trained me.”

So Littlefinger took her to one of his brothels and had her tortured so that she would “willingly” train as a prostitute and take up Arya’s place later on. Which is one of many reasons that I can’t wait for Sansa to destroy him as the prophecy foretells.

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Tyrion VIII, ACOK