Canon's depiction of various cultures as uncultured, vicious, and simply unreasonable is direct repeating of colonialist rhetoric. Whole societies inexplicably depicted as pillagers or murderous cannibals, no clear answer to the question of how exactly the Dothraki, the "Wildlings," Skagosi, or the Ironborn are maintaining their populations. Just whole chunks of the map operating like the Pirate-Port of Tortuga, which wasn't exactly very large or long-lasting.
An Anarchist take on Game of Thrones can repudiate that, showing a more realistic depiction of the societies these fictional ones are defaming.
Show the careful, deliberate stockpiling of food foraged from carefully managed woodlands by the Wildlings in preparation for Winter. The appreciation for the preciousness of human life that is shared by all such cultures where life is so difficult. Their traditions of carefully managed group decision making that finds an acceptable way forwards for all the people in the group, so as not to risk the catastrophe of intra-group violence that could potentially condemn them all to starve.
Show the largely fishing-based lives of the Ironborn nautical culture in defiance of the delusions of their Reactionary overlords. Their seasonal and even permanent ports and settlements up and down the coast of a continent, where they are not-rarely set upon in the night by hateful, religiously-homogenistic mainlanders who deny their right to exist as they have since time eternal, and births the bitterness and desperation in the folk that the aforementioned reactionary overlords take advantage of for their own brutal agendas.
Show... uh, a completely reworked from the bottom up Dothraki. Like, either Dothraki reproduce by spores like Orks, or nearly everything about them is logistically infeasible. At least the Ironborn are mentioned to fish and run trade routs, what the f^%$ are the Dothraki
eating? Almost everything I can find reference to is some variation on horseflesh, which sure they
have but Horses are A) not an animal bred foremost for its meat, and B)
only breed so fast, and by all appearances the Dothraki have next to no goats, sheep, camels, cattle, or other major staples of
(for example) Mongol diet. Where's the dairy, the
yogurt?
Sorry, got distracted ranting about Martin's view of the humanity of other people, and namely how it matches that of an agoraphobic medieval monk. I'll get back on topic.
I like the idea of a Giant North of the Wall. Cheating a bit to make your words heard at first, cause you're real big and incumbent hierarchy structures beyond the Wall will have trouble just knocking you over the head. You can make a number of strong Anarchist arguments from an interpretation of the Old Gods faith as practiced in the True North.
The Old Gods abhor slavery, what do you call what the southern lords do to their smallfolk? What makes their smallfolk
"theirs," or for that matter, "small?" "We Do Not Kneel" is a pretty solid cultural-translation of "No Gods No Masters" for a culture which doesn't have a homogenizing religion. Slavery has not yet been defeated while there yet lives
one person who must kneel to another!
Further appealing to Freefolk democratic traditions as a jumping off point for a system to forever free the whole world from
Lords.
A good first target for exporting the Revolution after the True North stands together would be Skagos, in my mind, as its barely even in
contact with the mainland, nevermind
loyalty. Depending on the time of year, it may not even be necessary to construct transports: in past centuries, it was sometimes possible to walk to Greenland from Iceland across the ice over winter, and upper Skagos ain't
that far from hardholm.
I think an interesting "When" could be far-enough-back for a recently realized Anarchy Beyond The Wall to have been established a few years prior to Robert's Rebellion. With The North's attention firmly South, its an excellent time for moving into the many abandoned portions of The Wall, and launching from there to both seizing The Gift and, thus surrounded, eradicating the Crows.
If you're of a stations-of-canon mindset, this could lead to a settled peace with the Iron Throne, and resumed hostilities during the War of Five Kings. If you're
brave, pushing into the Gift creates a spiraling commitment against the Umbars which draws in closely allied lords into a fight against the Freefolk, whom are enthusiastically selling smallfolk on the benefits of Anarchy.
Stark's focus on the War in the South could create a rift in the Lords, as he seemingly neglects the advancing adversary closer to home. I can imagine a scene where Last Hearth is cracked open with the aid of outraged smallfolk within the Walls, leading to a visceral scene of the captured members of house Umbar being rounded up the godswood for a trial, which sees them each confronted with the options of renouncing their holdings, titles, dynastic-name, etc, or being fed to their own Weirwood. Reguardless of how many of them make the smart decision, that scene would light a terror in the hearts of many Lords.
Stark would have to either abandon the War in the South for now or face mass disertion or even rebellion by many of his Lords. Either option allows for fun, acanonical events in the Rebellion. If its early enough, an early Targaryen victory. But I'd make a great deal of effort to work out a way for this to happen while the Targaryens are still a viable faction but the Lannisters have already committed themselves against them before Tywin could learn how badly things were going in the North.
Double Bonus points for Aerys successfully destroying Kings Landing with Wildfyre, killing Tywin and wiping out the better part of the Westerlands' best men and equipment. With everyone involved dead, its possible that Tywin's intention to join Robert's side will be lost in the chaos, at least for a while, leading Tyrion to feel obligated to try to cement his shaky position by "re"affirming the Westerlands' commitment to the Targaryen cause.
Meanwhile, the Two Norths move into a new phase of the War.
The alternate post-rebellion political layout could be
fascinating. Do the Starks succeed in stopping the Anarchists, or do they advance right to the Neck? Can the discordant Targaryen loyalists get their shit together and win now that Aerys isn't mucking things up anymore, with Viserys as a puppet child-King? Or can Baratheon maintain his momentum and move strongly against the Reach occupation in the Stormlands, Arynn get some horse-trading done with lords in the Westerlands, and the War turns into an inexorable push for Highgarden?
What of the Capitol? The Targaryen Loyalists will want to re-establish Kingslanding, but in the short term they need an actual fortified base of operations. What about Robert? Is he just going to declare Storm's End his capitol, and risk being seen by less-committed lords not as a viable King of Westeros but rather as a Secessionist Storm King? The Iron Throne is
gone, how much long-term legitimacy is
anyone claiming a right to it going to have without the ancestral symbol of the united Westeros?
The Peace would
not be lasting, that's for sure.
