You mention that feudal rents were nominal so didnt account for inflation, what difference would it make if they did adjust according to inflation/how could that be done?

Given that the Price Revolution played a major role in the relative decline of the nobility’s economic and thus military and political power, allowing for the rise of both the bourgeoisie and the monarchical nation-state…it would change a lot.

Not that things wouldn’t happen – the commercial and industrial revolutions are still going to happen, and the early modern military revolution is still going to happen, regardless of the position of the nobility – but it’s more that the nobility would be better positioned to fight the political ramifications of these changes. Whether they would succeed and make all of Europe look like a rationalized Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or fail and the only difference is that it takes a lot more violence for those political revolutions to succeed, I don’t know.

One of the major changes that would happen is that the peasantry of Europe would be much, much worse off, because one of the few routes to upward mobility they had was making more money off of the increase in food prices relative to their rent. So maybe you’d see a lot more peasant rebellions than in OTL?

How was Balerion during conquest and at the time of its death?

I’m guessing the missing word there is “old”?

Balerion was born ~106 BC, so would have been around 100 or so during the Conquest, and died aged around 200 in 94 AC.

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.

How much land would the faith own?

It’s hard to say, because the historical context by which the Faith of the Seven came to Westeros is entirely different than the context by which the Catholic Church became hegemonic across Western Europe. A very quick example: there’s no Westerosi equivalent of the Donation of Pepin and thus no equivalent of the Papal States.

Notably the Faith seems to have relatively little political authority even where it has physical structures – the Hightowers rule the land on which the Starry Sept is located, and the Kings of Westeros rule the land on which the Great Sept of Baelor stands, but we can see this even on a more modest level. Despite the fact that Stoney Sept’s economy is probably based around it being a religious center, the septons don’t rule the town – rather, there’s a knight of Stoney Sept. This suggests that the Faith’s landholding hasn’t extended to lordship, which is an important point.

On the other hand, if we look at the septries we encounter in the series, they do have property, both real estate and otherwise: the Quiet Isle has “terraced fields, with fishponds down below and a windmill above…sheep grazing on the hillside,” and has orchards and vineyards besides; the sept where the Brotherhood Without Banners corners Septon Utt was quite large: “Before the war we were four-and-forty, and this was a prosperous place. We had a dozen milk cows and a bull, a hundred beehives, a vineyard and an apple arbor.” And given this is a feudal society, there has to be some sort of formalized relationship that underpins it – but whether that tenure is freehold or something else, we don’t know.

Finally, there is a cryptic comment in WOIAF that “many lords complained of unscrupulous septries and septons making free with the wealth and property of their neighbors and those they preached to,” prior to the Reconciliation of Jaehaerys. So it may well be that the Revolt of the Faithful and the Reconciliation severely curbed the position of the Faith compared to the medieval Catholic Church.

What would the ceremony for a king confirming the land and title of a vassal consist of? I assume their would be some kind of formal script like the vassal kneeling and pledging loyalty in front of the throne followed by a feast.

Well, here’s how it worked in Medieval Europe. From Wikipedia by way of Anne Duggan’s Nobles and Nobility in Medieval Europe:

“The would-be vassal appeared bareheaded and weaponless as a sign of his submission to the will of the lord and knelt before him. The vassal would clasp his hands before him in the ultimate sign of submission, the typical Christian prayer pose, and would stretch his clasped hands outward to his lord. The lord in turn grasped the vassal’s hands between his own, showing he was the superior in the relationship, a symbolic act known variously as the immixtio manuum (Latin), Handgang (German), or håndgang (Norwegian).[1] The vassal would announce he wished to become “the man”, and the lord would announce his acceptance.

Now there were variations on this model: often there was an exchange of tokens, such as rings, to signify mutual aid and fidelity; when a king was confirming a religious office, he handed the new bishop or whoever a crook staff (although this was a major source of disputes between church and state); sometimes, the ceremony of homage would be combined with the knighting ceremony so that there would be a dubbing; etc.

But the basics of a symbolic show of submission and trust on the one hand and protection and honor on the other were usually the same.

Anon Asks

How much trade does the iron throne do? Like what percentage of gdp would a typical medieval state have as imports and exports? What does this trade consist of? And how effected would westeros be if it were completely cut off from the rest of the world?

Well, if @warsofasoiaf asks…

The Iron Throne doesn’t do much trade itself, since it’s a government that derives most of its revenues from taxes as opposed to trading directly on its own account. Yes, Littlefinger has gotten into the wool trade, for example, but it’s unclear how much if any of that revenue actually goes to the crown instead of to Littlefinger.

If you’re asking how much international trade Westeros does, I think it’s rather low given that A. the overwhelming majority of the population works in subsistence agriculture, B. as Westeros is rather underdeveloped, there are severe limits to the spread of markets due to the inability to get goods to market, and C. Westeros’ exports are almost entirely natural resources (food, wine, wool, timber, etc.) and its imports are higher valued-added manufacturing.

If you’re asking for a percent GDP figure, there are estimates that 16th century England had a foreign trade of less than 8% and that was after a huge surge in the wool trade and we haven’t seen in Westeros anything like the social and economic transformation that the rise of the commercial wool trade had on England from the 14th through 16th centuries. Likewise, I’ve seen estimates that the agrarian economy (i.e, just that part of the economy that came from producing crops) made up 85% or more of English GDP in 1300, which also suggests a low figure for Westeros.

RE: Kingdom vs Empire

Does that mean westeros is full of empires more than kingdoms?

Nymeria’s conquest of dorne led to a polity composed of multiple ethnic groups and cultures, there is the first men, andal, and rhoynar or the division between, stony, salty, and sandy dornish. That seems to be an empire.

Likewise, the Gardners realm was said to be made of four seperate kingdoms (arbor, hightower, marches, and reach proper).

The North has the mountain clans, the ‘regular’ northmen, skaggos, the craggomen, and the southerns from the manderlys.

The vale, has the andals and andalized first men, the mountain clans (though they are rebels) and the sistermen.

The riverlands has two different religious groups.

And thats not even mentioning the stormlander and both ironborn empires.

Plus of course the Targaryen realm.

Also, I find that many people, including myself, have this perception or disposition to think or view empires as somehow ‘better’ in someway than kingdoms (though definetely not necessarily morally better). Would you care to comment on this belief and how it holds up to scrutiny?

To answer your last question first, I don’t see why empires would be considered “better” than kingdoms. They’re not more efficient or effective as political structures – the sheer coordination issues that crop up in empires alone – they don’t lead to more political stability or internal peace, etc. etc.

I would push back a bit on your descriptions above:

Nymeria could have been said to have conquered an empire, if she and her dynasty hadn’t made it a central policy to eradicate all differences between her subjects in the name of creating a common Dornish identity.
The Gardeners might have been considered Emperors if they had left the Kings in place instead of absorbing them into one Reach.
The North’s divisions don’t come close enough to constituting different nations – with the exception of the Manderlys, they’re all First Men, they all worship the Old Gods, etc.
The Vale either forcibly assimilated or excluded the First Men from the polity, so they don’t reconize multiple peoples.
Two religious groups in the Riverlands isn’t enough to distinguish two “nations” in the sense of peoples, not without a lot more religious division on the level of the Thirty Years War.

What you could say is that, by claiming to be the “King of the Andals, the First Men, and the Rhoynar,” Aegon implicitly claimed an empire in Westeros, although hasn’t used the title (or indeed an imperial crown).

Anon Asks:

What is the difference between a kingdom and an empire?

Good question!

An empire was historically supposed to be made up of multiple kingdoms (hence why so many emperors also had some title akin to “King of Kings”) and nations (in the sense of peoples), ruled over by a single all-powerful figure (to distinguish an empire from a federation).

A kingdom, by contrast, was seen as made up of one nation (hence why you would have titles like “King of the Franks” or “King of the Belgians”) that supposedly shared a common language, origin, ethnicity, etc. Now, obviously this was usually more of a shared fiction than strictly objective fact, but that was the idea.

So to take a historical example: Charlesmagne was King of the Franks, King of the Lombards, and was then crowned Emperor of the Romans, although arguably by holding the Kingdom of the Franks and the Kingdom of Lombardy he already ruled an empire before he was crowned.

Anon Asks:

Would it be possible for say a powerful merchant prince or pirate king to sweep away most of the pirates in the stepstones and establish a lsting kingdom there? The closest we see is Daemon Targaryen but he just got bored and gave it up, he had his dragon and the velaryon fleet but he also had to deal with the triarchy.
Also why are the free cities static, like no new city rises up and replaces an existing one, its just the nine and no new ones appear? Its mentioned that the flatlands are bare of villages because of the dothraki, but there are other non-free cities like the ghiscari or Elyria and such, why don’t we see any of them rising into greater prominence?

1. Probably not. If it took the Triarchy to sweep the Stepstones clean of pirates in the first place, you’re unlikely to see a single merchant prince or pirate king manage on their own. There is one caveat: Racallio Ryndoon did build a pirate kingdom in the Stepstones, but we don’t know whether he held the whole of them, and in any case the Oakenfist put paid to him rather quickly.

2. I mean, there are other significant cities in Essos:

“We speak of Nine Free Cities, though across the width of Essos one may find many other Valyrian towns, settlements, and outposts, some larger and more populous than Gulltown, White Harbor, or even Lannisport. The distinction that sets the Nine apart is not their size but their origins. At their height before the Doom, other cities, such as Mantarys, Volon Therys, Oros, Tyria, Draconys, Elyria, Mhysa Faer, Rhyos, and Aquos Dhaen were grand and glorious and rich, yet for all their pride and power, none ever ruled itself.”

And you can add on the Ghiscari cities and Qarth and so on and so forth. The Nine Free Cities are a historically and culturally derived term that specifically counts the self-governing cities that existed before the Doom.

To use a real world analogy: the Ivy League in the U.S consists of a particular subset of particularly old elite colleges and universities that have been sportsballing one another for a long time now. Stanford or MIT are still elite universities even though they’re not Ivies.

Anon Asks:

What exactly is ‘royal land’? how is it run? is it all directly ruled by the king or does it have petty lords/landed knights on it? if it does have petty lords/landed knights, how does it differ from other land in the realm that isnt ‘royal’? Like what is the difference between a great knightly house like templeton sworn to arryn or a powerful masterly house in the north and landed knights, besides size/lineage? Or would such territory be considered royal land rather than vassalized land because they aren’t lordly houses or sworn to one between them and the royal house?

>_> Feudalism is way more confusing than people like to think, though it does make things more interesting and its nice that GRRM can catch that sort of political incoherency for his setting.

Welp, shoulda known I’d opened up a can of worms.

Royal land is land that the monarch holds themselves, rather than giving out as a fiefdom to any of their vassals. So it probably wouldn’t have petty lords or landed knights on it unless the monarch had decided to give away that land to said lord/knight as a reward for some service. (There’s an exception to this that I’ll discuss in a bit.)

In terms of how it is run, it would be run quite like other land. Typically, territory would be divided into various manors – manors being an economic and judicial unit run by the manorial court. Manorial courts both were the main source of records on and made the legal decisions on just about everything: who had rights (primarily tenant’s rights) to what bit of land (but also usage rights to the commons or to the water or hunting rights or wood-gathering, etc. etc.); who owed what in rents, taxes, and feudal obligations of labor and to whom; what would be grown, where and when, and who would labor; and crucially, the court also dealt with contract law and torts in the manor, so when you loaned your best milk cow to your neighbor and it died, everyone knew where to go for adjudication.

That manor would be run by various officials:

at the top was the steward, who oversaw the manorial court and who was responsible for the overall condition of the manor.
immediately below them was the reeve (adding to the complication, this is the Saxon term; Normans called them bailiffs and then started using the word for all kinds of judicial offices and then started using reeve again) who was the chief overseer of the peasants and was usually a peasant himself (sometimes appointed, and sometimes elected, subject to veto by the lord). The reeve’s job was to make sure that the crops got planted and harvested in line with the manorial court’s decisions and to carry out the marketing of the manor’s produce; to collect rents and debts (if a given tenant was late on their rent, for example) but also to make disbursements; and to make sure that the peasants performed their feudal obligations.
And then there were assistant reeves and assistant stewards and under-bailiffs and all kinds of minor functionaries.

So the main difference, as far as the peasants were concerned, between royal land and fiefed land really was just who appointed the steward and signed off on the reeves. Now here’s where it could get tricky, because sometimes the King would lease out their lands to their friends and people who gave them money (sometimes not the same people!) without giving them away.