should a trident-gods eye canal start from the trident or the god’s eye?
The Godseye.
When you’re building a canal, one of the trickier bits of engineering is that, until you’ve dug out the channel connecting the two ends and gotten the slopes, depth, and lining right, you need to keep out the water on either end, which usually involves building a temporary dam/levee on either end. This is especially the case if you’re building locks and gates which need to be put in place beforehand.
It’s a lot easier to do that with a relatively still body of water like the Godseye lake than it is with a river which has a current behind it.
A handful of maesters, influenced by fragments of the work of Septon Barth, hold that Valyria had used spells to tame the Fourteen Flames for thousands of years, that their ceaseless hunger for slaves and wealth was as much to sustain these spells as to expand their power, and that when at last those spells faltered, the cataclysm became inevitable.
Of these, some argue that it was the curse of Garin the Great at last coming to fruition. Others speak of the priests of R’hllor calling down the fire of their god in queer rituals. Some, wedding the fanciful notion of Valyrian magic to the reality of the ambitious great houses of Valyria, have argued that it was the constant whirl of conflict and deception amongst the great houses that might have led to the assassinations of too many of the reputed mages who renewed and maintained the rituals that banked the fires of the Fourteen Flames.
Do you think that like the Night’s King made sacrifices to the Others, the Valyrians made sacrifices to beings (maybe fire versions of the Others) in Fourteen Flames in exchange for learning sorcery?
If the FM whacked the mages, then the shortage of sacrifices could have pissed those beings off enough to cause the Doom.
I don’t think that’s quite how it worked. The Valyrians were not the kind of people to sacrifice to a metaphysical entity; as the WOIAF puts it:
“Some scholars have suggested that the dragonlords regarded all faiths as equally false, believing themselves to be more powerful than any god or goddess. They looked upon priests and temples as relics of a more primitive time, though useful for placating “slaves, savages, and the poor” with promises of a better life to come.
The Valyrian practice of human sacrifice was squarely focused on blood magic (as Marwyn puts it “All Valyrian sorcery was rooted in blood or fire.”) rather than religious ritual.
Outside the realm of Robin Hood, is there any basis for a social/guerrilla movement like the Brotherhood Without Banners from actual medieval history, or would we have to look to the post medieval era to find a group as complex and organized as this resisting an overlord?
These uprisings tended to involve at least some organized groups – craft guilds, local notables and local governments, former mercenaries, John Ball’s “Great Society,” Yorkist sympathizers in Cade’s example, the German peasant haufen which were organized along professional military lines, etc.
Aren’t R’hllorism and magic fundamentally connected? Every red priest we’ve seen openly practices magic. They also seem to use magic as a selling point for the religion. Melisandre is a true believer, while some of her magic is intentional misdirection, she thinks and does real magic and attributes it to R’hllor. If today high ranking Scientologists came out and started performing real magic and predicting the future and performing miracles, you’d think they’d get a lot of converts from other religions. Like whether the religion is true can’t be proven from the books, but she is in an honest to god magic cult, and that seems like it should be appealing.
Fundamentally? No.
As I’ve discussedbefore, there are R’hllorite priests who know non-R’hlloric magic (like Melisandre or Benerro), there are R’hllorite priests who do not know non-R’hlloric magic who do R’hlloric magic (Thoros, Moqorro although he could be in the first camp), and there are people who are not R’hllorite priests and who don’t know non-R’hlloric magic who are able to spontaneously perform magic associated with R’hllor (Beric).
At the same time, there are plenty of examples of people who use the same kinds of magic without any associations to R’hllor: Dany sees fire-mages and meets shadow-binders in Qohor, there’s Bloodraven, etc.
Moreover, R’hllorism is not the only faith that is associated with magic – the greenseers of the Old Gods, the water-wizards of the Mother Rhoyne, the miracles attributed to the Seven or the Drowned God, the secret association between Valyrian steel, blood magic, and sacrifices to the Black Goat of Qohor, and so forth.
How was Harys Swyft able to consolidate power over the government so fast? The two Kettleblacks were arrested by Kevan, not Swyft, so why’d they stick around for Kevan to show up? Why’d Osfryd tolerate being stripped of command of the Goldcloaks without causing a Goldcloak civil war between himself and Humfrey Waters? And what was Osmund doing? Why didn’t Swyft remove him too? Wouldn’t the two have reason to skip town once they heard of Cersei’s arrest, like Owen Merryweather and Aurane Waters? And why did Qyburn tolerate being kicked off the Small Council? Why didn’t he move first and have Swyft ousted?
It was really Pycelle running the show, and Pycelle has decades of experience in royal government.
Osmund couldn’t run, he was a member of the Kingsguard. Osfryd was either loyal to his brothers or lacked the initiative to go on his own.
Who’d fight for Osfryd? Osfryd’s a transparent henchman of a deposed queen, so he doesn’t have any political influence after Cersei’s arrested. (Add to that that his brother’s just confessed to treason, perjury, aatnd murdering the High Septon.) Osfryd is an incompetent and frankly a bit dim, and he has absolutely no connections to the Goldcloaks, having been named about two months prior. By contrast, Humfrey Waters is the former captain of the Dragon Gate – he’s got substantial experience in the City Watch and likely made more than his share of friends – and has the backing of the King, the Hand, and the Grand Maester.
Probably stuck guarding the King.
Pycelle probably considered him less of a threat b/c he’s just one knight.
See above.
What’s Qyburn’s alternative? He’s Cersei’s appointee, and Cersei’s just been arrested. He has no pull with Tommen, no one in royal government knows or trusts him.
aspis vs scutum?
These are two forms of shields used by the ancient Romans at various times. The aspis is theshield we think of when we think of the Greek hoplite and (pre-Alexandrian) phalanx: a large round shield, covered in bronze, and largely supported by the shoulder and the Argive grip. Borrowing as they had much of their military technology from the Greek-influenced Etruscans, the early Romans used this kind of shield quite heavily.
However, the aspis wasn’t that well-suited to the more flexible and less tightly-packed ranks of the maniple (a tactical formation that the Romans borrowed from their neighbors the Samnites) and so the Romans replaced the aspis with the iconic scutum. By contrast, the scutum was a curved rectangle, with iron edging and an iron boss in the center of the shield:
Without all of that heavy bronze plating, the scutum was much lighter, so that it could be wielded easily in one hand without the need for shoulder support, which made it easier to hold up the shield while throwing the pilum or stabbing with the gladius, as opposed to relying solely on spear thrusts. Moreover, the longer scutum did a better job at covering the legs and feet during combat, so that despite being lighter than the apsis, it actually provided more protection. And finally, the scutum’s design allowed for tactical innovations: the testudo formation, for example, wouldn’t really work with the aspis because it would be more exhausting to lock shields and you wouldn’t be able to huddle together closely enough, leaving gaps.
How much land would huge cities like Rome or Constantinople or Athens or the free cities in ASOIAF need to feed the population of just that urban city?
Great question! The answer is: large cities in any period of history, be it during classical antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, well into the Industrial Revolution, require a very large hinterland to provide the necessary food to feed their populations.
On a general rule of thumb, you’d generally expect cities of those size to command the resources of the countryside around them for at least several day’s travel distance from the city (basically, as far back as you can reasonably get goods to market before they go bad).
However, all of the cities you mention are port cities, which changes the story somewhat: Rome drew its food supply not just from Italy but also from western North Africa etc., Constantinople drew its food supply both from nearby Anatolia and Thrace but also from Egypt, and the Free Cities can draw their food both from their hinterlands but also from Westeros or other parts of Essos.
The tercio was a Spanish infantry formation that was highly effective during the Early Modern era of “pike and shot,” and a big part of the reason why the Spanish were so dominant in European warfare in this period.
In essence, the tercio was a tightly-packed, well-drilled square formation of mixed pikemen, musketeers, and swordsmen, designed to be extremely durable and very hard to be broken by cavalry. The pikemen would protect the musketeers from cavalry, and the musketeers would in turn direct their firepower at opposing pike, while the swordsmen would be used to attack weakened formations or to fill any gaps in the line. On the battlefield, the Spanish would field multiple tercios in a kind of checkerboard fashion that allowed the tercios to support one another with enfilade fire against enemy units, making them incredibly daunting to assault in hand-to-hand combat.
But more than just a clever formation and use of mixed arms, the Spanish tercio was dominant because Spanish soldiers were experienced professionals with incredible discipline, executing the complex drill of the tercio (where lines of pike and musketeers had to move past one another repeatedly) in the most difficult of circumstances, and keeping their lines together even after absorbing hideous amounts of casualties, which often allowed them to exhaust their opponents.
Gradually, the tercio became obsolete as other strategies evolved to deal with the dominant Spanish. Because of how close-packed and thus slow-moving the tercios were, they were incredibly vulnerable to massed firepower, both from infantry and artillery. For example, Maurice, Prince of Orange moved his armies into longer, thinner lines that could bring more guns to bear on the enemy than square blocks where the sides and rear couldn’t always fire, and found success at the Battle of Nieuwpoort. Likewise, the Duc d’Enghien at the Battle of Rocroi used a combination of superior cavalry to encircle the tercio and massed artillery to blast them to pieces.
How much were various medieval taxes like the scutage on a knights fee? Like in terms of percentages (or were taxes fixed amounts not percentages?)?
Some taxes were “fixed” by tradition – so for example, at various times scutage was one mark (2/3 of a pound), one pound, or two marks. King John got himself into trouble by demanding first two and then three marks. On the other hand, starting in 1166, there was a tax on moveable property and income which was known as the “tenth” that was a percentage tax (10%, natch).
Generally speaking, over time, there was a movement by monarchs away from fixed taxes – which didn’t keep up with inflation or economic growth – and towards percentage taxes, which did.
You may have already covered this, but I wonder exactly how fertile is the Vale? According to the wiki: “The Vale proper is a tranquil land of wide rivers, and hundreds of lakes. Wheat, corn, barley, pumpkins, and fruit grow in its fertile soil.”
By all accounts the Vale seems to be more bountiful than the North and probably the Westerlands. Yet for some reason the Vale can only muster about 30,000 or more soldiers at its peak, which is on par with the North.
I find this a bit peculiar because though the Vale proper cannot compete with the Reach and Riverlands in producing as much food (according to your estimates the Riverlands could boast an army of 80,000 at its full potential), surely it should still be able to sustain a larger population than the North and therefore be able to raise more troops.
I’ve discussed this here. The issue you’re missing here is one of size; the Vale proper is quite fertile (“a tranquil land of rich black soil…even in Highgarden the pumpkins were no larger nor the fruit any sweeter than here”), but it’s not very large compared to other regions of Westeros (”Though the Vale itself is famously fertile, it is small compared to the domains of other kings (and even some great lords), and the Mountains of the Moon are bleak, stony, and inhospitable.”)
Take a look at the map:
That blue circle is the Vale proper; the rest of the Vale is all mountains. That little triangle is just about the size of the Trident, far smaller than the Riverlands or the Westerlands as a whole, let alone the huge expanses of the North or the Reach. So while the Vale is quite fertile on a per-acre basis, and far more so than the North, the North has so much more land than the Vale that it evens out.
(Incidentally, I said the Riverlands at full strength ought to be able to raise 40,000, not 80,000 men).
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