- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I'm sure we'll get cinematic moments later on.
The Heir of the Dragon: A Rhaenyra Targaryen Quest
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
It would have, from the description, been a dick move towards Alicent, who would have had to deal with a lot of people talking about how she had been "disgraced" after she went on a ride with the Silver Falcon, including, apparently, her own father and brother. Seems pretty inconsiderate to put her through that.
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- Location
- Europe
We just had a climatic boss fights against Criston Cole. Surely that's enough to satiate you for the moment? Or maybe...
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
Also something that stood out to me from Azel's blurb:
Alicent is the daughter of a second son, which might make her kind of a meh match, for a Lord Paramount that is. But Alicent is the daughter of the Hand of the King who is also the brother of one of the five wealthiest men in Westeros. Even from someone who approaches the matter purely on the basis of self interest if Ormund keeps even a remotely close relationship with his brother, which he almost assuredly does if only to have someone to represent Hightower interests in front of the king, then that opens up opportunities for being set for life be it in King's Landing or Oldtown. The idea that a mystery knight who's probably even commonborn and has only a single tourney win to his name would be expected to do "much better" is pretty
Maybe Cole thought the Falcon could find a match with the heiress of some small house? Given how rare women inheriting in Westeros is though marrying heiresses is probably the exception to the rule.
Alicent is the daughter of a second son, which might make her kind of a meh match, for a Lord Paramount that is. But Alicent is the daughter of the Hand of the King who is also the brother of one of the five wealthiest men in Westeros. Even from someone who approaches the matter purely on the basis of self interest if Ormund keeps even a remotely close relationship with his brother, which he almost assuredly does if only to have someone to represent Hightower interests in front of the king, then that opens up opportunities for being set for life be it in King's Landing or Oldtown. The idea that a mystery knight who's probably even commonborn and has only a single tourney win to his name would be expected to do "much better" is pretty
Maybe Cole thought the Falcon could find a match with the heiress of some small house? Given how rare women inheriting in Westeros is though marrying heiresses is probably the exception to the rule.
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- Location
- Germany
His reasoning there is that Otto was more likely to cut the Falcon's head off than to offer a good dowry, what with Hightown armsmen having been send to detain him earlier and only not doing so because Gwayne cornered the Falcon first, losing the resulting duel.Also something that stood out to me from Azel's blurb:
Alicent is the daughter of a second son, which might make her kind of a meh match, for a Lord Paramount that is. But Alicent is the daughter of the Hand of the King who is also the brother of one of the five wealthiest men in Westeros. Even from someone who approaches the matter purely on the basis of self interest if Ormund keeps even a remotely close relationship with his brother, which he almost assuredly does if only to have someone to represent Hightower interests in front of the king, then that opens up opportunities for being set for life be it in King's Landing or Oldtown. The idea that a mystery knight who's probably even commonborn and has only a single tourney event to his name would be expected to do "much better" is pretty
Maybe Cole thought the Falcon could find a match with the heiress of some small house? Given how rare women inheriting in Westeros is though marrying heiresses is probably the exception to the rule.
Meanwhile, there's a bunch of houses around who would have a spare daughter and enough land to offer a decent knightly estate. There's been some other stuff going on that had a bunch of houses recruit tourney attendants into their service, and the Falcon was doing well enough at that point (this happening towards the end of the tourney, provided Rhaenyra was still in) that they'd have gotten a better offer than most.
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
I'm pretty doubtful that this is a thing that happens in any substantial amount of cases. The whole reason why Otto being a second son matters so much is because Westeros practices a type of succession in which all the family lands are inherited by a single child so as to avoid the dissolution of the family demesne throughout the generations. The vast majority of sons can expect to get no land from their parents, and in somewhere like Westeros daughters probably fare no better.
Fair enough on Otto seeming more likely to lop off his head at the time then consent to their marriage though I suppose.
- Location
- Germany
That's mot a matter of inheritance, but a land grant. The dream of most hedge knights is to get into the good graces of a lord and getting a manor and a few village's granted to their name, starting a knightly house. Or to have some new settlement started on empty land granted by a lord.
It's by no means uncommon.
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
If lords are tight fisted enough when it comes to land so as to leave their second sons with nothing in the vast majority of cases, then I imagine they'd even be less inclined to grant land to some stranger hedge knights. I'd imagine that the vast majority of "successful" hedge knights settle down as household knights working as warriors for some lord in exchange for a wage. Those hedge knight who actually get a grant of land and become lords of a fief in their own right seem like they wouldn't be unheard of, but would still be incredibly rare.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Small fiefs seem to be handed out fairly often
Godwinson
"Well, I've got nothing."
Yeah the issue with high lords not providing lands for second sons isn't that they don't provide any, it's that they don't tend to provide sufficient lands for them to maintain the same lifestyle as their elder brother once they've inherited. This particular thing, not dividing up holdings between brothers, is part of why Westerosi realms are so remarkably stable in terms of lands claimed by a given lordship over the centuries.
Mind you, they pay for it in instabilities in other ways, but it avoids the tendency seen in Germanic inheritance derived aristocracies where lands tend to fragment drastically.
Mind you, they pay for it in instabilities in other ways, but it avoids the tendency seen in Germanic inheritance derived aristocracies where lands tend to fragment drastically.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
I mean, there is a quite natural and inherent cap: There is only so much land to go around. So you basically only have two options as a lord: You need to hold out for a vassal line to die out so you can re-dole out the land, which will happen rarely - or you need to carve out territory from the lands you personally and directly own. But do that again and again, and you're destroying your own power base.
It happens, of course. See the Cleganes, for example. But that was indeed quite a rare case of literally the life of the Lord Paramount being rescued. Lords will not do so as a matter of policy or habit. Which means, the amount of land holdings actually is, de facto, strictly limited, and you can't just "get" one.
And to circle to what @Imperious said - if it were common policy we probably would not see the land being doled out to hedge knights or whatever, but indeed to second sons and the like. After all, IRL, in Germany that was a big reason why you saw that infamous process of more and more splintering: To ensure that even second and third sons would have their fief, so they could have a standesgemäße marriage and family. But we are not seeing that. We're only seeing cadet lines very rarely, and when we do they often split off centuries ago.
So that is why Otto doesn't have any land. It does in fact come down to inheritance, because land grants aren't that common.
That is just evidence that it doesn't regularly happen, in fact.
Godwinson
"Well, I've got nothing."
Sure, as opposed to being the default presumption, which was the case for a lot of the span that pop culture references in Europe for this genre.
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
Which is why Cole saying a mystery knight could do much better then Alicent seemed weird. Like someone claiming that, say, a college athlete with a win in a major game or two could do "much better" than the niece of the time's Bill Gates equivalent whose dad is also something like the US VP. In Westeros with what are likely to be a bare handful of exceptions the vast majority of the times a bride isn't going to be coming with a lordship in tow either way, nor will most husbands for that matter, unless they happen to be their house's heir or are a second or third son whose older brother/s passed away early.
Heck chances are that Alicent would have a better chance of coming with a lordship than most brides anyway given how influential her uncle and father are. If some noble line in the crownlands dies without issue chances are the Hand of the King will get to have his say on who their lands should pass to, for example.
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- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
It's not that deep, Cole would have been reaching for a relatively common and definitely hurtful canard about Alicent, whether it's strictly true or not is somewhat beside the point.
- Location
- United States
This is true if a lord is giving out land over and over again within their own lifetime. But lords are not crusader kings players - they are not going to live to see any intergenerational decline in power that results from generation after generation occasionally doling out small parcels of land. By and large they would probably avoid doing anything that directly and obviously compromises their children's inheritance (either out of familial affection or desire to avoid being succeeded early), but people rarely stick to a principle for avoiding nebulous deleterious consequences for their great-grandchildren over some immediate direct concern.
I mean, there's quite a bit of wilderness in westeros, you could always give someone rights to a valley or patch of forest or something and leave it to them to swing through kings landing and pick up a gaggle of desperate smallfolk to make a new village for them to rule over. If it works out, cool, you have a new vassal using land you were getting nothing from. If not, you didn't really lose much. Even giving them a chunk of starting capital wouldn't be a huge issue for a lot of houses.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Generally speaking it's not that there's infinite land, but when we look at medieval and early Modern Germany (for instance) we don't see a land that's "all full" and with no areas to try to reclaim, or to divide up or exploit more effectively, etc, etc.
And the Seven Kingdoms are fucking BIG.
And the Seven Kingdoms are fucking BIG.
- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
To add to the above, inefficient exploitation of the land remained a going problem in Germany right through the 1950s.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
There's also a steady trickle of noble houses being outright destroyed, which leaves the surrounding lands pretty much open for the lords to give out to knights who particularly please them. Tywin Lannister giving the Spicers the title to Castamere is a good example.
All in all, Martin presents Westeros as having atypically, ahistorically stable land ownership and noble houses (the families that are prominent as of Robert's Rebellion were mostly prominent as of Aegon's Conquest three hundred years earlier, and mostly occupy the same holdings now that they did then). But there's still some room for "churn," due to a combination of factors.
For example... As the Laurent noted, the Seven Kingdoms are very large, so there is ample room for land to be reclaimed. But it's also subject to very strong "meta-seasons," where as I understand it there are years of 'Winter' in which harvests are chronically poor and of 'Summer' in which harvests are chronically rich. This alone would probably cause some significant changes and movements in settlement patterns. Any given Winter is likely to hit some villages particularly hard and force the population to evacuate with their livestock and mobile goods to some place with a better microclimate where the crops come in a little better, and every Spring will leave nobles thinking "is it worth trying to recolonize the upper reaches of this river valley and get some good crops in before next Winter, gambling that the stuff I set up over there will be able to survive that next Winter?"
There's definitely room for land reclamation and so on.
All in all, Martin presents Westeros as having atypically, ahistorically stable land ownership and noble houses (the families that are prominent as of Robert's Rebellion were mostly prominent as of Aegon's Conquest three hundred years earlier, and mostly occupy the same holdings now that they did then). But there's still some room for "churn," due to a combination of factors.
For example... As the Laurent noted, the Seven Kingdoms are very large, so there is ample room for land to be reclaimed. But it's also subject to very strong "meta-seasons," where as I understand it there are years of 'Winter' in which harvests are chronically poor and of 'Summer' in which harvests are chronically rich. This alone would probably cause some significant changes and movements in settlement patterns. Any given Winter is likely to hit some villages particularly hard and force the population to evacuate with their livestock and mobile goods to some place with a better microclimate where the crops come in a little better, and every Spring will leave nobles thinking "is it worth trying to recolonize the upper reaches of this river valley and get some good crops in before next Winter, gambling that the stuff I set up over there will be able to survive that next Winter?"
There's definitely room for land reclamation and so on.
On that note, when should we actually do stuff as Lady of Dragonstone? If the Progress isn't cut short (Which it's starting to look like it's unfortunately going to be) then a quick stop by Dragonstone after visiting Driftmark could be in the cards.
I don't think we should make Canon Rhaenyra's mistake of leaving King's Landing tho, at least not for a while, since that just gives all our opponents the chance to weaken our powerbase while we're away.
I don't think we should make Canon Rhaenyra's mistake of leaving King's Landing tho, at least not for a while, since that just gives all our opponents the chance to weaken our powerbase while we're away.
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Depends. If we end up marrying Gwayne I'd feel relatively secure leaving Kings Landing with Otto around to protect our standing as our ally while we take some time to practice rulership. Especially if we've maintained a stable relationship with the queen. On the other hand, if we *don't* marry Gwayne and/or the queen finds out about the thing with Alicent I would get more leery about leaving the capital. Of course, we have a sort of apprenticeship under Lord Strong when we get back, so we don't want to just ditch that either, and if/when we do succeed him we'll have small council responsibilities. Dragons make that easier though, since we could commute to some extent, but doing that too regularly would be a bit rough on our free time. So maybe spend a couple years learning under Strong, get married, then spend a couple years running dragonstone for practical experience before coming back to join the small council?
- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
When TeenSpirit feels up to introducing and developing a whole new cast of characters, to wit, the court and smallfolk (edit: and dragons!) of the isle.
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Ah nice a fellow Gwayne enthusiast, I'll admit Laenor is most likely the better choice, but being allied to Otto and House Hightower is nothing to sneeze at either, with one move we get the Hand of the King as our good father, a well respected knight with good morals as a husband who can eventually become Commander of the City Watch, Oldtown which is the home of the Citadel and the Starry Sept, and most importantly a very good way to keep Alicent unmarried.
Of course none of that matters if a dragon burns Oldtown, and the Velaryons currently have the most dragons, but still, overtime i've become fond of the idea of a marriage to Gwayne.
Harwin has unfortunately fallen to third place on the list of potential husbands, as much as the guy is a joyful soul.
Edit: Have I also mentioned that in season 2 of the show Gwayne is just a sassy bastard?
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- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Ironic, as he's purely a political match, not being on the romanceable characters list.
Eh, even if we did use the list as gospel and said that Gwayne would forever remain a static character and his perception of Rhaenyra could never change because it wasn't on the list, Gwayne's an honorable guy and takes oaths very seriously, so as the mother of his children and wife, there's no doubt he would at least treat us respectfully.