I’ve always liked the little detail (I think it’s Bran that recalls it) of Ned bringing lower members of his household — like the castle smith or the kennel-master — to dine with his family and talk. Within Winterfell it seems like that would be a great way to stay informed and win over your subjects (but I like to believe that Ned’s virtue is the only explanation). What do you think they talked about? Do you think other Northerners knew? When did he start doing this, and how did Cat react?

It’s Arya who remembers it.

Back at Winterfell, they had eaten in the Great Hall almost half the time. Her father used to say that a lord needed to eat with his men, if he hoped to keep them. “Know the men who follow you,” she heard him tell Robb once, “and let them know you. Don’t ask your men to die for a stranger.” At Winterfell, he always had an extra seat set at his own table, and every day a different man would be asked to join him. One night it would be Vayon Poole, and the talk would be coppers and bread stores and servants. The next time it would be Mikken, and her father would listen to him go on about armor and swords and how hot a forge should be and the best way to temper steel. Another day it might be Hullen with his endless horse talk, or Septon Chayle from the library, or Jory, or Ser Rodrik, or even Old Nan with her stories.

Arya had loved nothing better than to sit at her father’s table and listen to them talk. (Arya II, AGOT)

As you can see from the quote, Ned talked to them about their jobs and learned a bit about their work, as part of his philosophy of enlightened paternalism.

This is something of a classic move of noble/commoner interaction; before the term “condescension” became a pejorative, the ability of a nobleman (especially a king) to be polite to the lower orders without erasing the social distance between them (such “overfamiliar” behavior, it was believed, would give rise to either contempt and the loss of aristocratic mystery or overfamiliarity and social climbing) was seen as a necessity for elite behavior. Hence, it’s something of a cliche in the U.K to write about royals pressing the flesh with their subjects and saying things like “Hello, what’s your name? And what do you do? That’s so interesting! And how long have you been a(n) ______? Jolly good!”

Ned’s better at it than that caricature, but there’s still a political motive behind his custom: from later in the chapter, “Her father used to say that a lord needed to eat with his men, if he hoped to keep them. “Know the men who follow you…and let them know you. Don’t ask your men to die for a stranger.” As I’ve said elsewhere, Ned’s person-focused theory of politics is a disadvantage when it comes to being Hand of the King, but if you look at the long run, it inspired loyalty from beyond the grave.

In terms of where he learned it, I don’t think he learned it from Jon Arryn – the Vale is far too socially conservative for that to be Jon’s M.O. Rather, I think it’s something that Ned learned from his father, that it’s part of the Starks’ unique relationship with the people of the North. I think Cat was initially scandalized, but eventually accepted as part of the Northern way.

Joannalannister recommended that I ask you: How insulting would it be if someone broke off negotiations for a betrothal in order to have another one arranged? Like, it’s really obvious that Family X broke off negotiations with Family Y to immediately begin negotiating with Family Z.

Good question!

There’s a couple factors involved.

First, how far along were the negotiations? If they were still in the preliminary stages, I think there’s a common understanding that everyone’s out there in the marriage market trying to make the best deal for their kid, so no hard feelings. However, if they were about to read the bans and suddenly someone jumps ship, there would be a lot of harmed feelings.

Second, what are the relative power and prestige of the three houses? As we see with the (admittedly extreme) case of the Freys, the Starks, and the Westerlings, a big part of the Freys’ grievance was that they were ditched for a much poorer and weaker house, but one with a more prestigous bloodline, hitting the Freys right in the sore spot. But while the Freys would no doubt be angry regardless, if Robb had married Margaery Tyrell, it would be much harder to kick up a public fuss about that.

Third, what are the previous relations between the various houses? In cases like the Brackens and the Blackwoods where two houses have a notable feud, any spat where one house gains at the the others’ expense is going to be viewed as personal, not business. (Think about how the Brackens and Blackwoods felt about Aegon IV’s mistresses, and then instensify it because you’re talking about more formal unions).

Fourth, how public and/or harsh is the break? Tywin and the Unnamed Dornish Princess’ conflict over marriage proposals between the Lannisters, Martells, and Targaryens got very ugly, escalating into open blood feud, in no small part because there was very little diplomacy in the way that people were turned down, so that the loss of a marriage alliance was compounded by a loss of public face.

Hi maester steven! Do the nobles or, more likely, the maesters in asoiaf consider the Starks the highest ranking great house, since they’ve been ruling basically forever? Or since andal tradition is stronger in the south, are the arryns preferred? What about the Lannisters? They’re the richest and almost as old as the Arryns. Or are all the great houses equally lesser to the Targaryens and thats all that matters? Sorry for the amount of questions, but also thanks!

I think the heralds’ calculations would be a bit complicated:

The Starks are the oldest (although the Lannisters might dispute this), but they’re also First Men worshippers of the Old Gods who kept themselves apart from the South by force, so they’re a bit foreign. They’re also relatively poorer than their southron peers, which also counts against them a bit (remember Sansa thinking about Jory Cassel’s fashion during the Hand’s Tourney?).
The Lannisters are technically older than the Arryns, but only through the female line (although six thousand years in the male line isn’t anything to sneeze at), so I imagine that’s a point of dispute between those two houses. They’re also the richest, so to the extent that people care about magnificence, that would hold sway.
The Arryns are the most Andal of all the Great Houses – they are the rulers of the “promised land” that the Seven showed to the Andals, they even claim descent from Hugor of the Hill himself. So I would imagine that would hold more sway among the pious. (And it doesn’t hurt that they have close ties to the Targaryens as well.)
The Nymeros-Martells are relatively young, their royal claim only dating back to a thousand years (the Martell half goes back further, but like the Tyrells they didn’t claim kingship). Like the Starks, they are also a bit foreign because of their Rhoynish heritage, and because they held out against the Targaryens – although this is a relatively recent thing and wouldn’t have been an issue prior to 0 BC.
Prior to Robert, the Baratheons are a younger house whose claim to royalty comes either from the female line through Argella or through the various Targaryens who’ve married into the family (plus, there’s the whole thing about Orys being a bastard). On the other hand, the Targaryens somewhat reset the rules, discounting longevity in favor of proximity to the Old Blood of Valyria.
The Tyrells only have royal blood through the female line, and hold Highgarden due to the favor of Aegon the Conqueror when other houses have a better claim by blood. On the other hand, they rule the largest and most fertile kingdom in Westeros, and they put the most effort into putting on a chivalrous display, so that can’t be discounted.
The Tullys have no royal blood, and their kingdom is relatively weak although quite fertile and economically active, so those things balance out to put them somewhere in the middle.
The Greyjoys have a pretty ancient claim – the Grey King of the Age of Heroes and the most kingsmoot kings before the Greyirons took over. However, they haven’t been kings for six thousand years, and they rule over a small, poor kingdom of pirates.

Could House Tyrell create a Land Bank of Highgarden even without the proposed Mander-Blackwater Rush Canal? Would the Tyrell’s be able to do that on their own since it would just be within the Reach, or would they need the King’s permission?

Good question!

Yes, absolutely the Land Bank could be built without the canal, it’s just that the two are complementary, with the Bank providing credit for the canal and canal revenue providing a steady stream of capital for the bank.

Most likely, they’d need permission just as the Lannisters probably would.

Now, it’s possible that if the Land Bank stuck to just being a sub-treasury system which didn’t issue loans but only IOUs for crops that were only good in the Reach, they might be able to get away without needing royal permission unless some bright spark in the Master of Coin’s office realized that those IOUs were effectively money.

Would House Rowan of Goldengrove need the permission of House Tyrell to build a ring road like you suggested in your Economic Developments series? Or could they do it on their own while giving their liege lords a heads up about what’s happening?

I don’t know whether you need permission to build a road (as opposed to building a castle, where you definitely do), but my guess is that House Rowan would need the permission (or more likely, a license) from their liege lord to build on lands other than those of themselves and their own vassals.

So in the case of a ringroad meant to connect the Ocean Road to the Rose Road by way of Goldengrove, at the very least you’re going to need the permission of the Oakhearts of Old Oak, quite possibly the Cranes of Redlake (depending on how far south their lands go), and definitely the Caswells of Bitterbridge, and given how large those open plains are I would guess some more houses.

“If the Starks want gold, they can melt down Jaime’s armor” Would you care to speculate about the probable value of Jaime’s gilded sword & armor, and since he never gets them back, we can assume maybe something like this happened, so would liquidating it have made a dent in the expenses of the Kingdom of the North & the Trident? It’s made clear just what an asset armor is in the parts dealing with tourneys. Also, would a winning jouster get to charge higher ransom for nicer armor, or was it set?

Tyrion was making a joke – gilded armor does not contain a significant amount of gold, the no doubt master-crafted armor would be worth far more in its original state than melted down, and in either case would not have been worth enough to fund the Northern war effort.

And since you’re not the first person to ask me about jousts and ransoming armor:

Were tourney ransoms generally a form of collateral, to ensure prompt payment? In order to be of any use, armour needs to be a perfect fit, so another man’s armour would be of no use to the victor himself and would have very limited resale value.

As we see with the Mystery Knight, ransoming armor is not about being worried that someone else might sell it, although horses are a different matter, obviously, and the armor thing is not 100% (chainmail can be resized and human body shapes aren’t so wildly different that it’s always unusable). Rather, because a knight’s armor and horse are essential tools of their profession and prerequisites of their social class, no knight would willingly forfeit them and thus they are perfect collateral for a debt – the medieval equivalent of leaving your credit card for a deposit.

The other thing to keep in mind is the class expectations of the people involved – as noblemen, knights are supposed to be A. men of their word of honor (so being too pushy about repayment calls that into question), and B. not concerned about money (which means being too pushy about repayment is an issue, but so is not paying your ransoms). At the same time, noblemen also like cash to fund their magnificent lifestyles, so you need to make sure that you get paid.

Ransoming armor or horses, like handing over your sword when you surrender, is a way of resolving this tension: it allows both sides to pretend that this isn’t about money and that everyone trusts everyone else, while making sure that ransoms get paid on time.

Would powerful nobles have their own courts at their personal castles, like the hightowers or redwynes or reynes would probably, but what about rowans or royces or brackens and blackwoods? what would those be like?

Absolutely. Indeed, we’ve seen examples of much smaller lords with their own courts: think about Lady Rohanne Webber, who has Septon Sefton and three septas, Maester Cerrick, Ser Lucas Inchfield her castellan, Lady Hellicent Uffering her former goodsister, a dozen knights and squires, and various pages. That’s a pretty significant household for a minor noble house.

So for lords of the Rowans or Royces or Brackens or Blackwoods, imagine that but scaled up – add on the relatives of their vassals who might serve as pages, squires, castellans, masters-of-arms, stewards, ladies-in-waiting, add on the households of other noble families who’d married into the family (except much larger households than the occasional septon or unmarried sister, because one of the ways you demonstrate how awesome you are is to have a bigger retinue than anyone else), and so on and so forth.

How historically accurate are the prizes/penalties from the tournaments in GoT and Ko7K? They always seemed like they had a horrible Risk/Reward ratio to me to attract so many competitors. It would be like the NFL having several thousand teams, but only paid the one team that won the Superbowl, and any teams that lost in the first round of the playoffs would have to hand over their personal houses to the team that beat them.

Well, I’ve talked about the prizes recently.

But when it comes to the penalty, yes that’s accurate. Most tourney knights made their money off of ransoms and not prizes, since there were many more of the former than the latter in each tourney.

However, you have to keep in mind the class and class mentality of the participants involved. Tourneys were a pastime of the nobility, not that much different from hunts or feasts or dances, so it was expected that the combatants in a tourney were A. rich enough to be able to ransom themselves/their arms/horses and B. not supposed to be concerned about money.

To use your sports analogy, imagine if you had to be in the top 5% of incomes and wealth to play in the NFL at all.

Is Rickon bound for death in Winds of Winter? I can’t figure his involvement in the narrative other than to provide Davos with a certainly thrilling excursion to Skaagos. Rickon can’t be a true KITN contender if Robb’s will surfaces and that it is a pretty well smoking Chekov’s gun. Your thoughts on Rickon’s arc?

I think he’s there to set up internal conflict in the North.

If Wyman Manderly believes Rickon Stark to be the last living legitimate son of Ned Stark, you’d better believe he’s a true contender for the Northern throne. I imagine there’s going to be not a few people who’ll argue that Robb wrote his will believing Rickon to be dead, so that invalidates the will.

Likewise, I’m sure the forces of the Vale will argue that Sansa is the last legitimate child of Ned Stark, and that Rickon is an imposter pretending to be a dead prince. In rebuttal, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Manderlys argue that Sansa is an imposter put up by the treacherous Littlefinger and that sons come before daughters.

Similarly, in Jon Snow’s camp, there will no doubt be arguments from the Glovers, Mormonts, and Reeds that the will should trump all, that an adult male proven warrior is a better choice than a child or a woman. (On the other hand, when R+L=J comes out, that’s going to complicate the situation, because bastard-born or not, Jon Snow comes from the female and not male line of the Starks.)