CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
I really wonder at times, just how much actual history do even the "realistic" or simply put very edgy or "grimdark" fantasy writers actually know
ASOIAF/GOT The 'Realism' of the World of ASOIAF/GOT
- Thread starter CarlManvers2019
- Start date
I really wonder at times, just how much actual history do even the "realistic" or simply put very edgy or "grimdark" fantasy writers actually know
Guncannon
Pessimistic Pilot
Horses, dark hair.....and that's it.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
You know what, I think GRRM kinda made the in-universe cultures really simplified AF....realistic my ass
Guncannon
Pessimistic Pilot
I mean, death butterflies should have been a clear red flag lol
Shipmaster Sane
You have been weighed
The lack of armor and being bad at mass warfare.
I never read the books myself but the wiki entry seems fairly extensive.
Dothraki
The Dothraki people are a culture of nomadic warriors in Essos who range across the vast grasslands of the Dothraki sea in hordes known as khalasars. People of the Seven Kingdoms and the Free Cities also refer to the Dothraki as horselords.[1][2]
I can see certain i aspirations coming from certain groups but GRRM obviously changed things up... And added his own stuff as one should do... Being a fantasy author.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Martin's understanding of "realistic" history is extremely sparse. He fundamentally treats his universe as if it's modern day except that people use swords and bows instead of guns. But in structure? Planetos is basically post-modernist with a thin coat of medieval paint on it.
For starters their armies aren't medieval. It looks like it at a glance but doesn't act like it. Feudalism is fundamentally a system based on not having much in the way of infrastructure or bureaucracy. It's the king basically with his drinking buddies splitting up the map, and his buddies each have a dozen or so drinking buddies under them splitting up their share of the map, and so forth until you get to landless knights who probably have a few men-at-arms as their drinking buddies. Typically each person owes the guy above him in the chain a certain amount of service each year (the most common was 40 days per year) but needed the rest of their year to handle running their slice of the map. Armies were typically tiny and wars were actually surprisingly short lived because you only had 40 days before you had to start dishing out fat stacks of cash to your armies, and nobody really had that kind of money because there wasn't a bureaucracy to collect taxes and farmers didn't produce a lot of surplus to support armies anyway. In GoT we have something more akin to modern standing armies, in size and logistics since they're somehow able to field vast armies despite the fact that such numbers should choke them for food and they shouldn't be able to make armies march so long anyway since all those people are supposed to have duties at home to take care of.
The Westerosi have religion but they don't actually believe in it, much like post-modern people tend to. Actual Medieval kings were highly faithful and served a role in worship. They built edifices to the church and things like a King being infidel to his wife were really serious problems that could toppling a kingdom. If you were excommunicated, the people believed that working with you meant they would be going to hell with you later, and they believed it. People had Faith.
When Emperor Henry the IVth was accused of simony and got excommunicated, he came within a hair's breadth of losing his position because none of his people would obey him and he wound up kneeling in the snow for three days for a chance to beg Pope Gregory VII to lift his excommunication. That's what having an actual religion does. But in GoT, even though we're told that the church has power and people believe, nobody acts like it and the church never makes a move against anybody for violating their edicts. It's quite post-modern, the leaders act like modern rulers who might pay lip service to religion or ignore it entirely but the church certainly doesn't have a role in their decision making or duties.
Finally the Westerosi don't act like Feudalism is their government. They act very much like the modern US. A feudalistic system is, at it's core, a king as his drinking buddies the dukes who meet regularly and party. The duke has his earls as drinking buddies, the earl his barons, and so forth. Feudalism is a government that runs on direct trust between subordinates and also needs minimal bureaucracy and infrastructure, the reason for it's odd structure of basically a chain of drinking buddies is because the system can't actualyl administer itself due to lack of bureaucrats, and is outsourcing it to the drinking buddies who get to rule a piece of land in exchange for service and control of that land.
Typically feudal kingdoms are poor because nobody is there to collect taxes, it's just the landlord taking a cut of the produce and maybe passing a few bushels of grain up the chain to pay his taxes. Westeros runs on gold instead which was exceeding rare IRL. Similarly due to trust issues, even if the church had nothing to say about it, somebody like Cersei or Joffery would have zero chance of ruling any length of time because nobody would trust them and they'd get yeeted off a wall for losing the trust of their vassals in short order. Remember, there is no infrastructure to rule with except said vassals who are essentially drinking buddies who follow the guy above because they like him. We saw this deposing of bad rulers for this reason no few times IRL though usually the really crazy rulers were instead reduced to figureheads and a power behind the throne ruled competently. Cersei's army, however, acts like a distinctly American post-modern army where allegiance is to a constitution (that westeros doesn't have) and the military will generally follow any legal order, except Westerosi also follow illegal ones.
Fundamentally it's extremely clear that Westeros runs according to modern rules (most US based) with a light medieval aesthetic. Religion has similar power to churches in the modern US. Armies have numbers, obedience, and logistics similar to the modern US. Rulers are corrupt and pay only lip service to their own religion and morals like the modern US. And rulership stems from being seen as "legitimate" rather than having the trust of your vassals, just like the modern US.
Guncannon
Pessimistic Pilot
Agree with everything but this. When it came to the ruling class in medieval times, they understood that the Church (as in the Catholic Church and Rome) was very much a political power. Hell, that's how Bluetooth kept Denmark united, he got a "sponsor" of sorts. Accept "the Faith" and gain the support of Rome which came in political influence, priests, advisers, churches, etc. You were inviting a whole class of educated people into your domain when you accepted Catholicism. Excommunication was simply a big way to say you're not part of "the club" anymore, and it ruined your relationships with other Catholics. Though of course there were very devout rulers in history as well. But you're right in that the common folk would have been much more upfront and devoted to religion. The excommunication was a big deal to them on the spiritual side of things.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Honestly Imma say no, you're falling for a very common fallacy, that only the ignorant or superstitious would believe [Thing you don't believe in.] People are sadly prone to think their holy beliefs are sacred and everybody else's are nonsense and it's common to presume that the educated, elite, leader class don't really believe [nonsense] while of course the ignorant peasants do. Polybius said the same thing about the Romans but fortunately we have significant other historical sources than Polybius that prove that, in the specific case of religion, he was wrong and the Roman leaders did in fact believe their own religion and spent tremendous amounts of time and effort on following it. The same of the Egyptian Pharaohs, and a thousand other rulers throughout history. Just because you don't believe the same thing doesn't mean they didn't believe it themselves.
Of course there were more secular and less secular rulers, but here's the thing about Excommunication: It has zero teeth unless most of the population believes it. Excommunication doesn't cause physical harm, doesn't cost money, doesn't do anything except declare that you're going to hell and anybody who helps you is also going to hell. Unless the vast majority of the population is afraid of going to hell and believes what the Pope says is true, that does nothing. This is exactly the kind of thing that Cersei or Joffery would simply ignore and would have no effects in GoT.
Emperor Henry IV was excommunicated and, quite literally, his servants quit waiting on him, his dukes refused to speak to him, etc. to where begging on his knees in the snow for three days straight was more desirable to him than continuing to be excommunicated. He literally could not find enough people who didn't believe in the power of the Pope to find supporters at all. That wasn't just the peasants, it was his nobles, his knights, his army, everybody abandoned him. That's the power of faith, not just "you're not in our clubhouse."
Navarro
Well-known member
Westeros also has a significant lack of institutions that the RL Middle Ages had.
UltimatePaladin
Well-known member
I know that it has a pretty lackluster church and an out-of-place secular scholastic tradition in the form of the Maesters. Do you know what it is missing exactly?
As for the actual topic: I'm not sure that Mattias can sit atop the Iron Throne. Westeros is huge, and he still has a medieval army to try and take it all. Going the politics angle will be hampered by him being a foreigner, and an infidel on top of that (the upper ranks of Westerosi society may not care about religion, but historically movements such as the Faith Militant [and the Sparrows in the WofK] were widely supported by the smallfolk.) Even Aegon had to pay lip service, and if Mattias does decide to convert, he'd be alienating his Christian followers (who would be his bedrock here.)
He'd definitely be able to survive, though. Westeros and Essos tend to be consumed by internal affairs more than not.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
I agree, which is another strike against it being remotely "realistic." It's a medieval (specifically drawing it's trappings from the High Medieval era) setting that is missing the institutions that would make such a setting possible.
You have things like this:
Yet not the kind of faith that would inspire the people to build such a grand edifice. The trappings are there but not the substance. And that really sums up GoT to me.
Wasn't the High Sparrow and that whole Sparrow movement/ Faiths Militant thing that happened in Game of Thrones rather evident of the spread of the Faith, at least amongst the Smallfolk. It does seem like it wasn't as well received amongst the nobility and elites but still had a draw upon the peasantry and urban poor types, at least in certain types. The Institutions influence might be flagging (especially since they apparently had some very weak Septs after all) but the Faith could still be strong.
Navarro
Well-known member
IIRC Martin specified it as "15th century minus gunpowder". Because according to him the elements that make up gunpowder don't exist on Planetos ...
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
That makes even less sense. The 15th century is dead smack in the middle of the Renaissance. What's there that's Renaissance like?
Shipmaster Sane
You have been weighed
*ahem*
The Faith Militant in the show did literally not a single thing wrong and was well on it's way to transforming the setting into one more realistically medieval, which would have benefited everyone except the child eating lunatics.
The Faith Militant in the show did literally not a single thing wrong and was well on it's way to transforming the setting into one more realistically medieval, which would have benefited everyone except the child eating lunatics.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
I think they would have eventually toned things down and let their noble hostages go
That said, kinda surprising in that these religious fanatics were actually portrayed as sort of hating the extreme greed and vanity of the nobility
Usually, they're ONLY supposed to be mega prudes and constantly looking for nonbelievers and witches or something
Yeah. The Faiths Militant as portrayed in the series were an interesting story arc and faction though most of it I give credit to the High Sparrow character. Their rise was very strongly telegraphed in regards to Cersei equipping them with all of that power in the wake of their shaming of the prior High Septon but it is what it is. Talking about how Cersei should've obviously seen it coming would just derail the discussion into how poorly written Cersei may have been as a character and doesn't really detract from how interesting the Sparrows were as an organization.
Part of the reason it was nice was because the Faith of the Seven despite being the dominant faith in the Realms was always literally a background faith compared to the other more distinct religions like that of the Light, and the Many Faced God of the Assassins and even the faith they had in the North and on the Iron Islands. So having some errr light shed on the dominant faith was pretty nice even if through the Sparrow lens (though we got some other insight from Ian McShane's Sept character in the Season Five opener).
And Jonathan Pryce did a great job in his scenes with Olenna Tyrell and in his manipulative discussions with folks like Margaery Tyrell and Jaime Lannister and delivering the comeuppance to Cersei. I liked it even more when I realized other people actually had debates on him on things I wasn't expecting. For example lots of people had disputes on their opinions of the Sparrows and what they were doing and how they were going about it which is natural and why Game of Thrones was so great before the final seasons (when the factions were basically divided into Good and Evil sides). But apparently there were a significant number of people who wondered if the High Sparrow was the genuine article or actually truly faithful... or somewhere in between. I fell into thinking he was very sincere, but apparently others just thought he was being power hungry (which he was) for its own end as opposed to genuinely and earnestly wanting to promote the Faith.
And he was very good at his manipulations regardless of intent. He sold them well and I guess for others, he was able to sell that possibility that he wasn't as earnest and holy as he let off with that trademark Jonathan Pryce smug smile he delivered sometimes when he was engaging in his manipulations. Nice character with very good layers.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
I think the High Sparrow, even if probably coming from a VERY poor background, was enough of a Theologian and Philosopher to figure out how/why he should be disgusted with not just the nobility who used the Faith of The Seven, to gain "legitimate power"
But also be disgusted and realise that the Sept was horribly corrupt and people blindly following its priesthood were morons and in a way sinful as well
He even looked down on "Baelor The Blessed" for making "The Great Sept of Baelor" and sort of realised that the Faith was using the tax money for political games and hedonism more than anything else
The Sept was this way even during the earlier times of Targaryen reign
The Smallfolk focused more on the Targaryen's incest than the fact that their Most Divine was extremely hilariously overweight and probably constantly broke any and all vows of chastity and poverty
Shipmaster Sane
You have been weighed
Toned things down?
What exactly did they do? Think really hard about what we see them do. Not "implications of stuff they said" not "logical conclusions of threats they made to their enemies" think about what we actually see them do.
They werent beating gays in the street, they were beating baby eating nobles in the street and saying "this is because you're gay" while leaving the smallfolk completely untouched.
The image could not have been clearer when they attacked the whorehouse: The whores they just pushed out of the way, the nobles and pimps (who, remember, own the whores like slaves and routinely sell/buy them to be butchered) they kicked the shit out of and ransacked.