So Daemon invaded the Riverlands with the force of two kingdoms behind him and most likely dangled the Lord Paramountcy of the Riverlands in front of rebellious and powerful lords like the Freys, Lothstons, Brakens, etc. How badly did the Riverlands get crushed?
How did his invasion differ from the Lannisters in OTL?
Well, we know almost nothing about Daemon’s strategy in this theater, so it’s hard to say how it differed. Although I’m guessing that, with those rebellious lords in his coalition, he didn’t go with Tywin’s reaving.
But to me, the main difference is that the Riverlands were divided during the Blackfyre Rebellions. And, as we see with the various invasions of the Riverlands – the invasion by the Stormlanders where the Blackwoods invited in the Stormlanders to help them overthrow the Teagues, the invasion by the Ironborn where the Brackens sided with the Hoares to revenge themselves on the Brackens – when the Riverlands are divided, they lose badly.
Your thoughts on why Lord Frey got off so easy at the end of the Whitewalls tournament? Peake gets decapitated, but all Brynden Rivers aka Maynard Plumm says to Frey is “We will speak again later.” Further, why was Bloodraven so lenient with the other second-time rebels? Houses Costayne and Sunderland don’t seem to have been strongly demoted (like say, Osgrey was in the first Blackfyre) and while wouldn’t expect them to be Reyne-ized or Darklyn-ized, but how did House Peake even still exist in strong enough form to resist and kill King Maekar not too many years later?
Frey didn’t actually fight him or commit any open acts of treason, and had a plausible reason to be at the wedding. Indeed, it’s possible he was one of the informants who tipped off Bloodraven. Regardless, he now has a homeless son in law who brings nothing to the table.
Houses Sunderland and Peake are both in the category of probably not worth the effort to destroy, given that the former requires sending out the royal navy and an amphibious landing party at a time when Bloodraven needs the seas covered against Bittersteel, and the latter is a particularly hard nut to crack, given that the eventual Storming of Starpike takes out Maekar, Robert Reyne, and Tywald Lannister.
What advice would you have given to Bittersteel and the Blackfyres after he formed the Golden Company?
Oooh….now, this is a question I can sink my teeth into.
Bearing in mind that we don’t know almost anything about the Third Blackfyre Rebellion (or the Fourth for that matter), the first of the Blackfyre Rebellions in which the Golden Company fought, I do have some advice based on my studies of the Blackfyre Rebellions.
Take the Disputed Lands First
Say what you like about Maelys the Monstrous – kinslayer, bit of a loser in the genetic lottery – he did have a good political mind. He understood that, if you were going to take Westeros, you needed a strong base on the continent to draw resources from.
And I think that the Golden Company could have seized the Disputed Lands (including Tyrosh, Myr, and Lys), fairly effectively. For one thing, even after several losses in Westeros, they were able to almost pull it off under Maelys. For another, we see that under Bittersteel, the Golden Company was easily capable of taking out Qohor.
Holding the Three Daughters and the land in-between (which doesn’t exactly look barren to me), would give the Golden Company far more resources than they would have already, which would allow for the recruitment of local troops, the hiring of more mercenary companies, a strong sellsail navy, and supplying the expeditionary force.
Taking the Disputed Lands would also demonstrate to the Blackfyre supporters on Westeros who had been burned by Daemon II that Haegon Blackfyre was a warrior like his father in contrast to the incompetent Aerys I.
Build Up Logistical Infrastructure
To me, this is the one area where I think Bittersteel may have fallen short as he seems to have focused on winning field battles over anything else. Given that the Golden Company was, when you get right down to it, trying to conquer a continent with 10,000 men and no dragons, getting your logistics right is an absolute necessity.
First of all, you need to feed tens of thousands of men – you’re trying to win over Westeros, you don’t start that by commandeering all their food. Also, since you’re hoping to expand your army by enrolling loyalists into your ranks, not only do you need to feed your own, but you also need to feed them.
Second, it’s even more crucial for arms, ammunition, and equipment. One of the few advantages that the Golden Company have going for them is that the quality of their infantry is generally better than most Westerosi forces. Now, you don’t have to equip and then train your new enrollees to the same standard, but it does open up a potential weakness – if your enemy can break your less disciplined contingents, they can really screw with your formations. Being able to arm your infantry to the standard of the Golden Company – and hopefully have time to train them – is a way to greatly improve your odds.
Third, naval resources. Given that Bloodraven was focusing the whole of the royal navy on the Narrow Sea to prevent a crossing, being able to throw three city-states worth of ships into the mix is crucial not only to ensuring that your army can cross safely but also that you can keep a supply line open to Essos, allowing for reinforcements and resupply so that Bloodraven can’t simply wear you down.
Take and Hold
This is my advice that runs most contrary to Blackfyre tradition. Rather than trying to go for King’s Landing right off the bat, I would urge the rebels to grab onto significant territory and try to hold onto it.
Here’s why – back during the First Rebellion, Daemon looked like a real going concern in no small part because he had grabbed the better part of three of the Seven Kingdoms. His death and the flight from Westeros, and especially Daemon II’s contemptible failure at Whitewalls, has badly diminished the extent to which anyone would think that the Blackfyres have a shot at taking the crown.
But if the Blackfyres could, say, take and hold the Reach, the marcher lordships of the Stormlands, and maybe the Westerlands (given that Gerold is almost dead and Tywald’s in tight with the Reynes), and hold them for an extended period of time, that’s a clear sign that this is not another Daemon II, that the Blackfyres are not going away, and that the Targaryens might have lost the metaphorical mandate of heaven.
At the same time, given that the Blackfyres are probably going into the fight outnumbered, it’s a wise move to force the Targaryens to attack, to bleed the loyalist forces dry in assaults on castle after castle, and then counter-attack at times and places where the superior discipline of the Golden Company can be of most use.
Build A Counter-Establishment
Moreover, on the political side, holding onto territory allows the Blackfyres to do what Daemon I did best and what succeeding rebellions don’t seem to have emulated – build a political counter-establishment that really threatens the Targaryens. Haegon I should be crowned and acclaimed on Westerosi soil, he should be minting coins with his face on them, he should be levying taxes and dispensing law, if the Ironborn are still raiding the Reach and the Westerlands by this period he should help repel them or at least aid in the rebuilding, and anything else that becomes a king.
Because the greatest asset the Blackfyres have right now is that Haegon is a young man whereas Aerys I is in his 50s and in poor health, he’s an unpopular and incompetent king, Bloodraven’s a tyrant, and the succession is iffy. Haegon is the clean slate, the chance for a new beginning after 13 years of misrule. The more he can get the lords of Westeros to turn to him, the more likely ultimate victory will be his.
I have read the analysis of Ned’s chapter when he breaks his leg during the scuffle with Lannister’s. In the ‘What if’ section it only discusses Jaime beating Ned in a duel. Why do so many fans doubt Ned’s sword fighting ability? He survived the rebellion without many scars (physically at least) and killed the sword of the morning. He is even modest enough to give the credit for that kill to Howland Reed. He must have been a seriously skilled swordsman to achieve what he did.
Well, GRRM has said that Ned was an average swordsman, although an excellent general, and that Jaime is one of the best swordsmen alive. So odds are Ned loses that fight.
OTHO, as Ser Barristan says in ASOS:
“I have seen a hundred tournaments and more wars than I would wish, and however strong or fast or skilled a knight may be, there are others who can match him. A man will win one tourney, and fall quickly in the next. A slick spot in the grass may mean defeat, or what you ate for supper the night before. A change in the wind may bring the gift of victory.“ He glanced at Ser Jorah. "Or a lady’s favor knotted round an arm.”
So it’s certainly possible that Ned could beat Jaime. Maybe because Jaime’s overconfident and Ned’s fired up, but more likely in that scenario is that the rain/cobbles/horse situation applies to both men.
You once said Gregor is perma-angry. What do you think is the source of his anger?
Besides being a sadist and psychopath? Well, from Cersei II of AFFC: “Ser Gregor is overly accustomed to the poppy, I fear. His squire tells me that he is plagued by blinding headaches and oft quaffs the milk of the poppy as lesser men quaff ale.”
It’s possible that these headaches are a symptom of Gregor’s gigantism, but I know plenty of people who have persistent migraines who don’t wantonly murder people.
How do tax farmers work? I understand they are assigned a region and promise the king they will produce a certain amount of revenue with everything past that being theirs to keep. However I don’t understand the actual process. Do they bring troops with them to help shake down the people? Were the taxes just arbitrary? Was there a tax season? How did the smallfolk feel about this? Merchants? Nobles?
You’ve kind of missed a step in the process that goes a length to explaining why the system was so messed up. The promise in question was usually an up-front lump-sum payment given in exchange for the right to the ongoing revenue-stream in that province. Yes, sometimes the lump sum was seen as a loan that the state would pay back, but most of the time the state just took the lump-sum and moved on.
Now, this is an auction process – various people are bidding for the rights to tax and the government takes the highest bid. So not only does the winner needs to collect a sum equal to what they paid for the license (in order to break even), and then has to keep on taxing above that to turn a profit, but because there’s competition, their initial bids could quite possibly exceed the normal amount of revenue that a province could produce, let alone the added burden of the farmer’s profit margins.
This is somewhat useful for relatively weak states – they don’t have to pay a large bureaucracy of tax assessors, collectors, and accountants to keep track of the money. Lump-sum payments means that you have more cash on hand at certain periods of time then if you were waiting for money to come in from different regions at different times of the year – and that’s very useful when you’re starting a military campaign and need supplies and a paychest to keep the army going.
But, it often means higher tax rates than if the state was collecting it themselves, which increases discontent in the provinces potentially leading to revolts that you then have to put down with your army, and reduces the growth rate of the provincial economy because money is going to tax collectors (both as payments and as investment flows into buying up those contracts) rather than being invested in agriculture or manufacturing. And in the long run, it’s better to have a growing economy than a stagnant one.
So….to answer your actual question: how did it work?
Tax farmers both employed their own leg-breakers debt collectors and had the right to call in royal troops. This is one of the things that made the practice less useful for governments than was originally thought – you’re supposed to be saving money on tax-collecting bureaucracy, but now you are detaching soldiers to protect tax collectors. And that means that your soldiers, rather than protecting your provincials from bandits and raids from enemy kingdoms, are shaking them down for money. That’s not good for loyalty to the regime.
In terms of the rates, it depends on the place and time. In the Roman Empire, tax rates tended to be set at whatever rate the auction price plus profit hit, but it’s also true that taxes were basically assessed collectively for certain cities and regions and local elites figured out the process of how to gather the money, usually by paying the tax collector out of their own pockets and then repaying themselves by taxing the lower orders. In medieval England, however, feudal grants given in “fee-farm” clashed with the fact that rents tended to be fixed sums established by written contracts or by custom.
Tax season in premodern eras tended to be centered around the agricultural season, because after the harvest is when 90%+ of the population had something worth taxing and had it all in one place where you can easily count it and grab your cut.
In terms of how people felt about it – well, peasants tended to hate it, because they were the ones paying most of the taxes, and while they generally accepted the legitimacy of the King or Emperor, that got really fuzzy when some pushy businessman is waving some piece of paper at you that says he has the right to seize your property. Likewise, because the agricultural cycle doesn’t necessarily synch up with the auction process back at the capitol, a bad season could mean that you’re paying the old rates or higher with much lower incomes. Merchants tended to be of two minds – to begin with, they’re usually the folks engaged in tax farming, so those guys are very pro-tax farming. However, when it comes to contracts to collect tolls or excise taxes, merchants were the ones paying those taxes and weren’t happy about it. Unless the nobles were the ones letting out the contracts, nobles tended not to like it – tax collectors are upjumped commoners coming onto your estates and pushing around your people, and that’s your job. And when the pushy tax collectors caused a riot or whatever, you were the one they would call in to provide protection. And if the whole thing started a rebellion, you would get the blame from the central government.
Yep, saw it, really liked it, went to a rewatch party of the Original Trilogy the next week.
– Loved the visual style, very much felt like New Hope but with the modern capacity to do the Millenium Falcon in wild dogfights that wasn’t possible in 1977.
– I actually liked that it was so close to New Hope, but playing with all the characters and recombining elements: Han being Obi-Wan, Rey being Luke but with elements of Han too, Poe being a bit of Han and a bit of Leia, Finn having a bit of all three.
– Really liked Kylo Ren, but it took some thinking to wear away some of my issues. Still kind of liked it better when he was wearing the mask.
– Rey is not a Mary Sue. Her power set is almost exactly the power set of Luke and Anakin, and there’s a reason for that.
– Disappointed that Phasma was given so little to do. Not original to me, but there’s absolutely no reason why the Storm Trooper with the Shock Baton who fights Finn couldn’t have been Phasma, and the character arcs work better if it had been.
–
Takodana/Maz Kanata. I feel almost heretical for saying it, but I don’t think the music in the bar hit the same spot that the Cantina song did. Maz feels a bit underused, but I’ve learned that they cut out 45 minutes of material and I think that’s there along with how Poe Dameron got off Jakku and a bunch of Leia stuff at the HQ. The vision sequence is great and I think will be obsessed about until Episode VIII comes out.
– Thought that the space part of the attack on the Starkiller Base was undercooked a bit. Very noticeable how few X-Wings and Tie Fighters were involved. While I know you need to avoid the overbusy compositions of the Prequels, it felt smaller than a New Hope’s Deathstar sequence, and should have been as big.
– Loved everything with the showdown between Ren and Han and then Ren and Finn and Rey.
“Anonymous asked: Stefan Sasse: By the way, Joffrey ordered Mandon Moore. Cersei is railing so much against incompetent underlings in AFFC that she surely would have spared a thought for Mandon Moore, the stupid-ass fuck who didn’t save her from the volonqar.
I am leaning in that direction now.“
I know the show isn’t always a great barometer but Season 3 near enough states that it was Joffrey who ordered it, which is more evidence that it is canon in the books too
1. How did Daeron recruit a force that size? I understand from your Blacks ad Red series that the lords were promised political favor and new land. What did the common men stand to gain besides honor, gold and a glorious death?
2. How large was the host personally under Daeron’s command? Was it a mix of stormlanders/reachermen/crownlanders or was the source a single province?
3. Can you elaborate on the logistics of the Dornish campaign? How do you forage in Dorne considering the state of agricultural output and water scarcity? How do you resupply horses and pack animals?
4. How do knights campaign in Dorne? Wouldn’t the weight of their armor and the intense heat force them to abandon their arms? How did this influence their tactics?
5. Was the Conquest of Dorne inspired by the crusades?
1. Well, it’s a feudal army. Daeron calls upon his Lords Paramount, they bring their own household troops and call upon their vassals, who bring their own household troops and call upon their knights, who are bound by feudal oath to not only fight themselves but bring some infantry as well. Some of the common soldiers are there partly out of legal obligation – it’s probably part of the contract that gives them the right to their land – but most of them are professional soldiers who earn their living by fighting.
2. It doesn’t say precisely how many men Daeron commanded, but given that he “divided his host into three forces,” I’d say about a third of the overall army and somewhere between 20,000 and 90,000 men. Given that Lord Tyrell was likely in command of most of the Reachermen, and Lord Oakenfist was likely in command of most of the Crownlanders, and the fact that Daeron attacked via the Boneway, I’d say his army was probably mostly made up of Stormlanders.
3. The main logistical innovation that allowed Daeron to succeed was almost certainly Oakenfist’s naval superiority, which would have allowed both Daeron and Lyonel Tyrell to resupply by making a forced march to the headwaters of the Greenblood (and in Daeron’s case, probably via the coast as well).
4. Look to the history of the Crusades, where knights fought in full armor throughout, and indeed many of the Crusader victories were due to their heavy armor, leading the Turks to dub them “men of iron.” It’s not ideal, but you can adapt – chiefly, by wearing robes of light cloth over your armor so it doesn’t heat up. But the heavily-armored knights were actually quite successful against their lighter opponents – as long as they didn’t let themselves get drawn out and surrounded, the weight of the heavy cavalry was actually an asset because it added momentum and shock to the charge, literally bowling over the enemy.
5. Yeah, there’s elements of the Crusades – especially the parallel between Oakenfist’s seizure of the Greenblood and Richard of England’s use of ships along the Mediterannean coast to resupply his army as it marched south from Antioch to Arsuf. But there’s also elements of Alexander’s conquests – the goat track, the extreme young age of the commander. And there’s elements of Caesar’s Gallic Wars – Daeron’s book and the three kinds of Dornishmen come from Caesar’s commentaries on his conquest, which begin with the line “gallia omnis divisa est in tres partes.” (All Gaul is divided into three parts)
The Brackens have a history of being opportunists. They even kind of remind me of the Campbells.
When the Ironborn attack, Lord Bracken betrays his fellow riverlords to join them in hopes of a reward. He was an idiot to think it would be a crown. They also fought for the Blackfyres thanks in no small part to Bittersteel who was using Daemon to secure a place at the royal court. Now we see Jonos Bracken fighting his former ally on behalf of the Lannisters who attacked his fief without provocation, and burned his castle and raped one of his daughters. Something tells me he’ll join Aegon.
On top of that, Bracken was responsible for “they lay with lions,” and isn’t loyal to his wives or his fellow riverlords.
What do you think?
Honestly, I kind of feel bad for the Brackens, because GRRM has clearly picked them out to be an family of heels (in the wrestling sense), similar to the Peakes, Florents, etc. Compared to the Blackwoods, who are clearly his special favorites – they follow the Old Gods, they’ve got a special weirwood tree, they’ve got magic in their background, etc. The Brackens almost always end up on the losing side of any conflict – whether it’s the Dance of Dragons, Aegon IV’s mistresses, the Blackfyre Rebellions, etc.
And honestly? I think the Brackens are probably in the right, to the extent that anyone can be in the right of a blood feud. Let’s take the origin of their dispute:
“The Blackwoods say they were kings and the Brackens little more than petty lords set on betraying and deposing them, while the Brackens say much the same about the Blackwoods.”
Given that the Blackwoods were originally a Northern House who had to immigrate to the South (”the Blackwoods of Raventree, whose own family traditions insist they once ruled most of the wolfswood before being driven from their lands by the Kings of Winter”), it’s a lot more likely that the Brackens were the kings and the Blackwoods the disloyal vassals than vice versa. Sort of puts the whole dispute in a different light, doesn’t it?
And if you look deeply, there’s always two sides to the same story – the Brackens backed the Ironborn because the Blackwoods had invited the Storm Kings to invade the Riverlands to make Lord Rodrick Blackwood King of the Rivers and Hills, which makes the Blackwoods rather horrendous traitors to their liege lords the Teagues. (Although they’d say they were fighting for their faith)
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