What do you think is Dalbridge’s backstory? Which king did he squire for? How come he was never knighted despite his obvious martial skills ? And how did he end up at the wall?

Dalbridge squired for Jaehaerys II, and he probably wasn’t knighted because Jaehaerys II died unexpectedly. Like Ser Hugh of the Vale, Dalbridge wasn’t of a family sufficiently ennobled to merit a last name; unlike King Robert, who honored Jon Arryn’s memory by knighting his squire, Aerys II was rather keen to replace his father’s favorites and didn’t feel beholden to a young squire of no family of significance.

And, I would guess, unlike Ser Hugh who had Littlefinger’s gold to pay for a suit of armor, a horse, and the other necessary equipment of knighthood, Dalbridge didn’t have the money to become a knight.

As to how he ended up at the Wall, I don’t know. It could be that he remained in King’s Landing and was sent to the Wall for being a Targaryen loyalist by Tywin Lannister along with Aliser Thorne; it could be that without any other means of income, he turned to banditry or some other criminal pastime to keep body and soul together; it could be that he went of his own volition, because the Night’s Watch offers room, board, and clothing to anyone who joins.

Was Randyll acting within the bounds of the law in forcing his legal heir to surrender all property rights ? Theoretically, could Sam have gone to Highgarden to seek intervention from their liege lord? Do you think there was any chance of Mace standing up for Sam against one of his principal bannerman (& most able general) ?

This is what GRRM has said on the matter:

“Well, the short answer is that the laws of inheritance in the Seven Kingdoms are modelled on those in real medieval history… which is to say, they were vague, uncodified, subject to varying interpertations, and often contradictory.

A man’s eldest son was his heir. After that the next eldest son. Then the next, etc. Daughters were not considered while there was a living son, except in Dorne, where females had equal right of inheritance according to age.

After the sons, most would say that the eldest daughter is next in line. But there might be an argument from the dead man’s brothers, say. Does a male sibling or a female child take precedence? Each side has a “claim.”

What if there are no childen, only grandchildren and great grandchildren. Is precedence or proximity the more important principle? Do bastards have any rights? What about bastards who have been legitimized, do they go in at the end after the trueborn kids, or according to birth order? What about widows? And what about the will of the deceased? Can a lord disinherit one son, and name a younger son as heir? Or even a bastard?There are no clear cut answers, either in Westeros or in real medieval history. Things were often decided on a case by case basis. A case might set a precedent for later cases… but as often as not, the precedents conflicted as much as the claims.”

Keep in mind, Randyll Tarly wasn’t proposing to write a will that bypassed Sam in favor of Dickon, or any such legal manuever. He was straight-forwardly threatening to murder Sam if he didn’t comply.

So yes, potentially Sam could have gone to Highgarden and protested that his father was not only breaking the laws of inheritance but was an attempted kinslayer and murderer on top of that. I doubt that Mace Tyrell would have been particularly interested in championing Sam’s claims, however.

Bloodraven gets a lot of flak for not deploying the royal forces to fight Dagon Greyjoy, but isn’t the whole point of having regional Wardens with tens of thousands of men at their command, is to have a decentralized military command who can rapidly react to threats from their cardinal direction without having to rely on central reinforcements?

No. For one thing, the Wardens are not royal generals of a standing army, their titles simplify military chains of command in national crises, but they don’t come with budgets and warehouses and staff officers. Most importantly for this particular crisis, they don’t come with fleets.

The problem that the Wardens of the North and West faced is that while they had land armies with which they could rush around trying to put out Dagon’s fires, they didn’t have the naval power to go after him directly. Nor did they have any authority over the only fleet on the west coast – the Redwyne fleet – that could have gone after him directly.

The Iron Throne did, but didn’t use it. And that’s a problem for the whole feudal social contract, because “a king who does not protect his people is no king at all.”

In regards to the War of 5 or 4 Kings, what do you think about this legalism? Balon’s claim actually predates all of the others, by a decade & folk were aware of it (notably Robb in his offer, sent while Renly was alive) even if he hadn’t held a coronation. His argument to Robert was that he wasn’t a traitor, since his duty to the throne died with Aerys and Robert seems to have tacitly accepted that, by demanding the missing oath. Thus Balon’s reign would date from Robert’s death.

I think Balon mooted that particular claim by himself:

“Quellon Greyjoy still sat the Seastone Chair when Robert Baratheon, Eddard Stark, and Jon Arryn raised their banners in rebellion. Age had only served to deepen his cautious nature, and as the fighting swept across the green lands, his lordship resolved to take no part in the war. But his sons were relentless in their hunger for gain and glory, and his own health and strength were failing. For some time his lordship had been troubled by stomach pains, which had grown so excruciating that he took a draught of milk of the poppy every night to sleep. Even so, he resisted all entreaties until a raven came to Pyke with word of Prince Rhaegar’s death upon the Trident. These tidings united his three eldest sons: the Targaryen were done, they told him, and House Greyjoy must needs join the rebellion at once or lose any hope of sharing in the spoils of victory. (emphasis mine)

Lord Quellon gave way. It was decided that the ironborn would demonstrate their allegiance by attacking the nearest Targaryen loyalists.“

(WOIAF)

The Iron Islands could not have simultaneously been independent prior to Robert’s Rebellion (Balon’s argument following his defeat at Pyke) and have joined the rebellion prior to the Battle of the Mander (Balon’s argument in 283 AC) – because that battle post-dated the news of the Battle of the Trident, and Robert’s acclamation would have been part of that news.

And this, along with so many other reasons, is why Balon Greyjoy is utter bullshit.

If the Tyrell’s managed to get Sansa out of KL before she got married off to Tyrion – and was married off to Wilas in Highgarden – would their son have been lord paramount of both the North and The Reach? How come two great houses had never had an heir like thst in 300 years?

1. Yes, although more likely they would have split the titles between first and second sons.

2. Because there’s a cultural taboo against combining land holdings – “Holdings are seldom divided. Nor are they combined, as a rule, although one person could concievably hold more than one title.” – which makes sense from a geopolitical perspective. It’s hard to administer two far-flung holdings, and there would be a good deal of tension about favoritism, where the heir will be raised so they’re not considered a “foreigner,” etc.

Regarding Riverrun-2, would a Lord Paramount actually have the power to just take a chunk of land like that from an existing lord? And would he need permission (from the King?) to build a castle and start charging a toll?

Well, it’s not entirely clear who the land at the confluence of the RedFork and the Blue Fork belongs to. There aren’t a lot of noble houses listed in that area – there’s the Mallisters up on the coast, but Oldstones does not have a ruling house (hence the whole business with Jenny), there’s no known ruling house of Fairmarket, and the only other named house from that region are the Blackwoods, and they seem to be center more to the west (directly north of Riverrun). If the land is not currently occupied by a ruling house, than the law of escheat says it reverts back to the liege lord.

As to whether you need permission to build a castle and start charging a toll, there isn’t explicit text either way. However, if King Daeron II had the authority to give Daemon Blackfyre the right to build a castle in the Crownlands, my guess would be that the Lord Paramount of the Riverlands has the authority to grant a license to build a castle on its own lands. And the same logic would likely hold for tolls, given that it wouldn’t be interfering with a royal highway and if a lesser Houses like the Freys can charge tolls for bridges I would imagine the same would apply for their liege lords.

How long would it take to build a castle like Riverrun 2 and what would you call it?

Years if not decades, based on historical examples. As for a name, @goodqueenaly suggests “The Tines,” since the tine is the sharp point of the Trident and this castle would be a strongpoint on the Trident. Also, it’s a nice echoing of “The Twins,” another bridge-castle of the Riverlands.

Do we have a comprehensive list of the houses descended from the Gardener Kings? I’m trying to determine if House Manderly is anywhere in that tree.

That’s a tricky question. We know that virtually all the Houses of the Reach claim descent from Garth Greenhand, hence why the authority of House Gardener was so strong. (Interestingly, though, the Manderlys are not counted among the descendants of the leading children of the Greenhand, whereas the Peakes are.)

Descent from the Gardeners we have less comprehensive information about: we know the Gardeners and the Hightowers wed in both directions from the time of Garland the Bridegroom; we know Garth Goldenhand wed his daughters to the heirs of House Lannister and House Durrandon, so the Lannisters and Baratheons have some Gardener blood through the female line. And from the conflicts between the Tyrells and their bannermen, we know that the Oakhearts, the Florents, the Rowans, the Peakes, and the Redwynes have “closer blood ties to House Gardener” than the Tyrells do.

As far as the Manderlys go, we know that Garth X married one of his daughters to the Lord Manderly of his day (and another to the Lord Peake). But as to whether there were more connections between the Manderlys and the Gardeners, it’s not clear.

did feudal lords ever have to worry about farmers cheating their taxes by cutting grain with sawdust or padding sacks of oats with gravel to make it look like they paying more than they really were?

Yes! In fact, it was a major problem in estate management, and a lot of what the stewards, reeves, bailiffs, and other officials had to deal with was peasants cheating their taxes by misrepresenting the number and health of their livestock, or agricultural products like cheese. The problem was that, as they added more officials to oversee their peasants and prevent this kind of tax fraud, they opened themselves up to being embezzled by their household and estate staff, especially because there was something of a custom of staff taking various bribes, kickbacks, and small-scale theft as perks to make up for the relatively small fixed salaries that came with those positions.

In addition to direct management, lords had two other means for capturing value from their peasants. The first was local monoplies: lords would invest in some improvements on their land, like a mill to turn grain into flour or a weir to encourage river travel or a bridge to encourage road traffic, and then they would require people to use them and/or pay for their usage. To take the example of a mill, if you had peasants who were trying to cheat their taxes by stuffing all of the chaff from their weight into the sacks they owed the lord, you could require them to take their grain to your mill, where not only you could charge them a fee for the use of your mill, but you could also fine them for adulterating their product. And if you were crooked, you could also cheat them by cutting their grain yourself (thus keeping more wheat for yourself) or fixing the scales so that they’d have to give you more to make weight.

The other was the manorial courts: you use the law to extract every rent and privilege you can from your peasants, whether that’s extracting additional feudal labor that might have been allowed to lapse in the past but could now be enforced, or equally common, by turning up the enforcement on taxation, labor, and feudal privileges to eleven and extract additional income in fines where you can’t in rent.

So you can see something of a back-and-forth process, where the nobles try to squeeze every last drop of wealth from their peasants, while the peasants try to cheat their overlord at every turn, and the balance of power depended a lot on organization, force of personality, and broader legal and political circumstances (this is a big part of why royal courts were so important in the centralization of monarchy). If managed incorrectly, you got tyranny and oppression, peasant rebellions and bloody repression. If managed correctly, you got economic development and growth.

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.

When Robb presents his terms to Cleos, he declares all the Stark Lands as well as “all the lands watered by the River Trident from the Golden Tooth to the Mountains of the Moon” as part of his new kingdom. Why the weird description for the Riverlands? Why not just “all Tully lands”? Does the specific wording include or exclude any fiefs, such as Harrenhal?

Good question!

If I had to guess, Robb’s terminology is based on a historic formulation of the boundaries of the Riverlands, which tended to be somewhat more fluid than those of other kingdoms.

Prior to the advent of modern surveying techniques, natural features tended to be used quite a bit as boundary markers – hence part of the reason for the Mexican-American War was that Mexico and the U.S disagreed whether the U.S/Mexico border was at the Rio Grande River or the Nueces River, or why France historically tried to expand its borders to the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Rhine even though its linguistic borders are considerably to the west, and why the Germans tried to do the same for the territory between the Rhine and the Danube.

Moreover, the phrase that Robb uses is somewhat more complex: it’s the lands “watered by the River Trident and its vassal streams (emphasis mine).” To figure out what he means by this requires looking at a map:

Note that the Trident and its vassal streams snake up to that disputed territory between Greywater Watch and the Twins in the north, and significantly into the Westerlands territory up by Ashmark and Hornvale if you compare it to the political maps (hence why he’s also claiming the Golden Tooth), it might even include Wickenden in the Vale if you push if far enough.

The bigger issue is what about that territory between the Red Fork and the Narrow Sea south of the Trident? Well, arguably it’s “watered” by the eastern bank of the Red Fork from the Mummer’s Ford north to Riverrun along its western border and then again on the southern bank of the Red Fork from Riverrun to Darry, and then you have the Trident Proper which runs from Darry to Maidenpool all the way out to Cracklaw Point (which historically was something of a border territory). Harrenhal down to Stony Sept would be a bit tricky, since Harrenhal itself isn’t bordered by the Trident (although its lands probably are). Likewise, where does the waterline end: Antlers? Sow’s Horn? Duskendale? (It was once part of the Riverlands, after all.)