Alright. The idea. I think I'm going to leave out the maps after all since they don't add that much.
Tolling a straight is awesome. It gets you a whole lot of money for barely any work at all. You only need to go out and collect it. However, the Stepstones are not
one straight. They are, depending on where you intend to collect the toll, at least five straights. Two of them will border Bloodstone, under the control of Daemon (presumably), who does not get any money out of this and has no incentive to actually help in the collection. The other straights are either on both sides under Corlys control, or partially under Triarchy or Dornish control.
It's not like this can be done at sea either. Every ship needs to be forced into a harbor, of which the Stepstones don't really have any bigger than the odd pier for a pirate ship, let alone in good locations to do toll collection. That will take time, disrupt trade and be a major hassle for anyone who is used to just moving through these waters. At the same time, all of this needs to be coordinated and accounted for, which will likely cause no end of conflicts. And all of this even affects Dornish and Velaryon ships, since they still have to pay at least part of the toll.
However, the whole process could be expedited if ships could pay their tolls ahead of crossing. Just inspect the ship at port when it is loaded, pay toll on the cargo as seen, and get a slip of paper that permits you passage through the Stepstones. Once there, instead of going to port and having your cargo inspected there, you just rendezvous with one of the blocking ships and show your paperwork. The trader loses an hour or two instead of days while waiting for processing. But Corlys can hardly set this up in, say, Gulltown or King's Landing.
Enter the Royal Toll Authority. Set up by royal writ and under auspices of the crown princess, the RTA will set up offices in a number of major Westerosi ports to do toll inspections of vessels there. For a start, that would be the ports of Driftmark, Planky Town, Gulltown, King's Landing and, provided Otto plays ball, Oldtown. Fraud can be prevented well enough through the ship manifestos, cargo marking, simply comparing cargo at start and destination ports, and the occasional thorough check in the Stepstones if something is suspicious. All tolls collected in this way are tallied up, leaving Corlys and Qoren to simply collect their share of the revenue. A small handling fee is charged to the merchants for recouping operating costs.
The benefits:
- Corlys requires less men and infrastructure to enforce the toll, significantly lowering setup and operating costs for him
- Corlys doesn't have to deal nearly as much with Daemon
- participating ports become more attractive to merchants, increasing revenues, especially in Planky Town due to good geographic location
- money collected in this fashion is handled by a neutral party, reducing friction
- since payments are made centralized in Westerosi cities, the risk of fraud and corruption among the toll collectors is reduced
- since this only works for traffic between Westerosi ports, it means a notable trade advantage against Essosi merchants
- added royal scrutiny of ship cargo will aid local tax collection and law enforcement in the affected ports
Now, besides the prestige and recognition for being involved in this bit of statecraft, we can leverage this infrastructure later on for further business. Having offices handling large sums of money in many cities means we can start offering banking services through the RTA, generating a lot of income for the crown. It also means that we have an easy avenue to gather information in many locations, and we can leverage the influence from this to get better relations with affected lords. Further expansion of the setup would obviously also be a goal.
It's also an important step to getting Westeros some bits and pieces of bureaucracy. Later on, once we are queen, we have ready made network of offices and clerks to conduct business through.
@Teen Spirit, would this be something we can put in motion within the scope of an action?
