Vote tally - A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
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[X] Plan He Should Have Studied Politics
-[X] The idea that a sorcerer lords power is wholly unrestrained is laughable. A knight in heavy armor surrounded by his men at arms might be nothing compared to a powerful mage, but to the smallfolk, they are equally unassailable in their personal power. Yet evidence shows that the knight can't rule by fear alone, no matter how many have tried to do so. His power to compel others to act by force is limited by the reach of his blade. Likewise, the sorcerer is limited by what spells he can threaten his subjects with. To rule like this is to rule over slaves who will only obey as long as the whip is cracked at them and the state of Essos and Slavers Bay shows how well such systems work.
-[X] To rule means to act in accordance with an often unspoken consensus between those governing and those governed. The governed will obey the commands of the governing as long as those are seen as legitimate in the frame of a societal agreements. A Legionnaire obeys his officer, because the officer has been imbued with the royal authority to give his commands. A citizen will obey the lawmen because they have been imbued with the authority to enforce the laws. But this authority rests on the royal authority being seen as legitimate by the governed and the system can only work as long as that is given.
-[X] The Imperium works because both the absorbed governments and the population of these entities have been convinced that the actions of the Imperium at large are beneficial to them, the laws just and their application fair. If the people assumed that the lawmen were enforcing the laws unfairly, they would disobey them. If they thought the courts ruled unfairly, they would avoid the judgement of the courts. If they thought the orders of their leader were not in their own interest, they would see to subvert and twist them. Force can be used to force compliance anyway, but said force requires compliance in turn. A sorcerer lord can't stand behind every lawman, every court and every governor to back up their orders with violence. Those institution would be worthless if that had to be done. Even the sorcerer has to rely on regular people to buy into the idea of his authority and to enforce it for him.
-[X] The Empire of the Dawn broke because it was invaded by foreign powers seeking to sunder it. The Valyrian Freehold broke because a catastrophe destroyed the centralized leadership that kept it together in a single moment. If he thinks that Tywin Lannisters rule could survive to see Lannisport burned down by Daemons and Casterly Rock being turned to rubble by a cataclysmic explosion, indulge in some honest laughter. If you were to look for an empire that was not sundered by cataclysm, one has only to look at Yi-Ti, which still exists after millennia, even though it has a history of strife and civil war like any other realm.
-[X] Long story short, to assume that the Imperium rests on the direct power of it's ruler shows a stunning lack of understanding of the forces and rules of government. It would be impossible to forge a realm covering half a continent on the basis of fear and violence alone. You do however understand why self-important Westerosi Lords like Lanna would think otherwise, what with their love of reducing the history of the world to singular acts of "great people" and turning the population at large and the means of government into window dressings of their tales.
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