Tag: the first men

As far as we know, was First Men society feudal? If so, what does the structure of a feudal society look like when polygamy is widely practiced?

I talk a bit about it here, but part of the problem we have in assessing whether First Men society was feudal is that a lot of the sources (although not all) are non-contemporaneous and written down by Andals who were bringing something more recognizably feudal with them (iron armor, better castles, knights, and lots ot feuding warlords, kings, lords, and knights all struggling to claim their own bits of land). 

Based on what we learn from the WOIAF and the ways in which the culture of the mountain clans of the Vale or the wildlings beyond the Wall have maintained certain aspects of First Men culture with as little admixture from the Andals, I think “the ancient Kings of the First Men [had] far more in common with Agamemnon or Hammurabi than they would with Edward III.” Consider, for example the Thenns:

“The Thenns were not like other free folk, though. The Magnar claimed to be the last of the First Men, and ruled with an iron hand. His little land of Thenn was a high mountain valley hidden amongst the northernmost peaks of the Frostfangs, surrounded by cave dwellers, Hornfoot men, giants, and the cannibal clans of the ice rivers. Ygritte said the Thenns were savage fighters, and that their Magnar was a god to them. Jon could believe that. Unlike Jarl and Harma and Rattleshirt, Styr commanded absolute obedience from his men, and that discipline was no doubt part of why Mance had chosen him to go over the Wall.”

“Aye, my lady. The Thenns have lords and laws.” They know how to kneel. “They mine tin and copper for bronze, forge their own arms and armor instead of stealing it. A proud folk, and brave…”

Think about the way that a lot of the Heroes who founded Great Houses have a connection to the divine – whether we’re talking about Brandon Stark learning the wisdom of the Old Gods, or Durran the First’s war with the gods of sea and storm, or Garth Greenhand being a fertility god – and I think you can see a model of early First Men kings who were a lot like the Magnar of Thenn. Add onto that the way in which the clans of the Mountains of the Moon or the Northern hill country operate more on the basis of “fictive kinship” than strict hierarchy between the social orders of feudalism, and I think you have a good picture of what the early First Men societies looked like.

However, it’s not like there was nothing between the king and the rank-and-filer, as we see in WOIAF, there was a process in pretty much every kingdom where the petty kings were beaten down by stronger kings and made to submit, initially as vassal kings to high kings and then eventually as lords to kings. 

As to polygamy, well it’s got advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that you can marry into multiple families at once, which allows for more dynastic alliances. The disadvantage is that you then have heightened competition within the royal dynasty as to which half-sibling will succeed, which can potentially lead to infighting. This is why having some combination of primogeniture and acclamation is quite useful. 

So the Citadel was founded by Peremore Hightower in the Age of Heroes thousands of years before writing existed in Westeros? Are we to take that as historical embellishment? I’m tempted to chalk it up to a mistake on Martin’s part but that seems like a really obvious and silly one if that’s the case. Could an order like the Maesters exist in any meaningful way before the invention of written records? It seems like the answer would be no.

The issue of the literacy of the First Men is one of the biggest inconsistencies in ASOIAF worldbuilding – although it’s possible to parse one’s way to coherence. On the one hand, Sam says in AFFC that: 

“The oldest histories we have were written after the Andals came to Westeros. The First Men only left us runes on rocks, so everything we think we know about the Age of Heroes and the Dawn Age and the Long Night comes from accounts set down by septons thousands of years later.”

And in WOIAF, Maester Yandel omits the First Men from the list of “lettered races” who left behind written records from the Dawn Age. So that’s the evidence we have that writing post-dated the Andals.

However, there is counter-evidence. WOIAF also repeatedly mentions “runic records” that were “written in the Old Tongue” which Maesters from the Citadel can read and have translated into the Common Tongue. A lot of these records go back into the Age of Heroes, and some even go back into the Dawn Age…and if you think about it logically, in order for the records of the Night’s King to have been destroyed, there must have been written records of some kind back in the Age of Heroes. 

(Further confusing the issue, the WOIAF has a rather ambiguous statement that the Starks’ “legends came before the First Men had letters” – which suggests that the First Men gained writing at some period, although whether pre- or post-Andal it doesn’t say.)

Here’s my theory: Sam doesn’t speak the Old Tongue and probably most Maesters don’t, unless they’re among that rare breed of Maesters interested in ancient history and archaelogy who took the time to learn how to speak the Old Tongue and thus read the runic records of the First Men. So Sam’s being a bit of an Andal cultural supremacist, in that he’s treating translations of surviving First Men records that were done after the Andal invasions as the only real records. But if you think about it, the Citadel is the one place in Westeros where, because it’s been kept safe by the Hightowers, First Men records and the ability to read them have survived.