Tag: maester’s chain

So Maesters get paid for their services? I always thought of them as being a bit like largely secular priests, like those who served as advisers, educators, and administrators for minor and major lords in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. If they do get paid, I expect some of what they’re paid goes straight to the citadel rather than to the maester himself?

In a recent post you mentioned lords paying for the services of a maester. Did they actually pay a stated fee, make a “not so voluntary” contribution to the citadel, or just pay for the maester’s upkeep? Did the citadel “sell” maesters with a higher ‘gpa’ for more? That quote really turned the gears in my head and got me wondering and I would love to hear a follow-up, thanks!

According to a So Spake Martin:

4. How does the Citadel get financed? 

Lords pay for the service of the Maesters and the Citadel collects some of the revenue of Oldtown via taxes.

So the lords have to pay the Citadel to receive the service of a maester, and they also have to provide for the maester’s upkeep (I doubt that maesters have personal incomes, given their vows, but they undoubtedly have budgets to pay for necessary supplies like medicines, paper and ink, and the like). We don’t know exactly what the terms of these agreements are; however, it stands to reason that that lesser lords don’t have the same ability to pay as the Great Houses, so the fees probably aren’t uniform. 

We also can tell how many areas of expertise various maesters have (and how deep their expertise goes by the number of links of each kind of metal): Luwin has a relatively short chain, but he knows history, healing, herblore, ravenry, architecture, astronomy, and the higher mysteries (which is pretty rare); Pycelle has multiple links in ten different subjects (including warcraft, mathematics, ravenry, medicine, astronomy, history, but noticeably not the higher mysteries) indicating extensive expertise in a number of areas; Aemon has multiple links in medicine and either math and economics or whatever red gold indicates, as well as warcraft, ravenry, and a number of other subjects. 

Beyond that is supposition: I would assume that these additional services are more in demand by the Great Houses, since they have need of more complicated services (if you only have the one castle, you probably don’t need a maester who knows how to design castles; if you’re the lord paramount of a kingdom, you might well need a maester to design new castles for you), and they have a higher expectation for the education of their children. Moreover, since maesters with more subjects on their chain means acolytes spending more years being trained at the expense of the Citadel, I would imagine the Citadel would charge more for their services.   

Hello, What kinds of links in the Citadel would you find wise to get? (Imagine that you are a very extra son and not going to get the family seat without murder) I would want to get a comfortable life in a nice castle. Or at least make myself very useful and hard to replace. Not sure if you would have the same priorities. Ravenry and economics are important. I would think warfare wouldn’t be the most pragmatic choice. The nobles would think they know better than a weak man of education. Thanks.

I would argue that ravenry and medicine are the bare minimum for service outside the Citadel; no lord is going to pay for a maester without getting those base services. I’m sure there’s plenty of maesters who prefer an academic’s life who get by without those skills, but they can really only earn a living at the Citadel itself. 

Everything beyond that is about making yourself a more attractive advisor and teacher: so it’s not that learning warfare is important because you want to advise your lord on strategy, it’s important because you can teach his sons that while you’re teaching them to read and write. Likewise, learning math and economics and/or astronomy means that you can keep the account books and tell people when it’s best to plant and when to harvest, so that you can assume the role of a steward, giving you more influence in the lord’s household. Metullurgy or history or architecture or foreign languages might not be necessary for a marcher lord, but they would be useful to a great lord.

And so on.