It is so much fun to write about Oberyn Martell…
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Work starts on Tyrion V
Race for the Iron Throne
You Win or You Die – Historical and Political Analysis of Game of Thrones by Steven Attewell
RFTIT Tumblr Weekly(ish) Roundup
With Jaime V in the can, the drive towards hitting the 50% mark in A Storm of Swords continues. In the mean-time, I’ve got some really good (mostly comics-related) stuff on the Tumblrs.
ASOIAF:
- How did medieval bankers make a profit if they couldn’t charge interest?
- The status of high-ranking servants vs. average commoners.
- What did medieval mines look like?
- Margaret d’Anjou’s historical reputation.
- How would Aegon the Conqueror get Westeros to shift to a single currency?
Non-ASOIAF:
Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Jaime V, ASOS
The water had grown cool. When Jaime opened his eyes, he found himself staring at the stump of his sword hand. The hand that made me Kingslayer. The goat had robbed him of his glory and his shame, both at once. Leaving what? Who am I now?
Synopsis: Jaime comes clean. Wocka wocka wocka!
SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.
Guest Appearance on Notacast Podcast
In what is almost a direct sequel to my last appearance on the Notacast, this time around we’re talking about Catelyn I of ACOK. Once the coronation is over and the debris from the celebrations has been swept away, how do you actually govern? Whether in making war or peace, how do you balance the interests of two distinct sets of subjects as well as your own personal interests? Which way should Stark armies march, and which kings are safe to ally with?
So join for us a truly exhaustive though never exhausting discussion.
RFTIT Tumblr Weeklyish Roundup
Hey folks! Now that I’ve summited Davos IV, the next step on our march to 50% through ASOS is Jaime V. I’ve got it outlined already, so the next steps are to put in the quotes and start writing…which I’ll be doing around the start of the new semester.
In the mean-time, we’ve got lots of stuff on the Tumblrs that piled up, so let’s get into it!
ASOIAF:
- GRRM-as-gardener vs. his “butler did it” position.
- Do noblemen learn music as part of their education?
- How would Tywin react to King’s Landing falling during Wo5K?
- How did Bittersteel et al. get from Redgrass Field to Essos?
- What was the Blackfyre court-in-exile like?
- How rigorous was the knightly exercise routine?
- House Tyrell’s long-term plan.
- How historically accurate was Fire & Blood as a medieval chronicle?
- Theda Skocpol’s theory of revolutions and Stannis vs. Dany.
- Housing for ladies/gentlemen-in-waiting.
- Under-age monarchs’ influence on regency govts.
Non-ASOIAF:
- Some thoughts on Garth Ennis’ The Boys:
- A question about the Amazon NYC HQ deal.
- Thoughts on House of X #1.
- Thoughts on Powers of X #1.
- Fascism as a modernist or anti-modernist ideology.
- French adoption vs. adaptation to the English longbow.
- Thoughts on “Outlaw Kings and Rebellion Chic.”
- Thoughts on the MCU Disney+ series.
Patron Asks:
- “Why does Qyburn use women in his experiments and for what?”
- GRRM is deliberately ambiguous about this; all we know from AFFC is that Qyburn describes these women as “puppeteers” who get “quite used up,” which is a chillingly banal phrasing. The use of the term “puppeteer” suggests that they’re somehow used in controlling Frankengregor; using the principle that the darkest guess is probably close to the truth, my guess is that they’re used as “rewards” in a horrific form of operant conditioning.
- “Was “lordly” speech…just an accent or would it be severe enough to prevent understanding?”
- There were historical periods and places where the aristocracy spoke a different language from the peasantry – the early years after the Norman Conquest, Walloon/Flemish conflicts in the Lowlands, or some of the linguistic complexities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – but usually it came down to the upper class having accents that were coded as high-status, and if they were well-educated as well perhaps a more sophisticated vocabulary and grammar than was customary.
- Generally, when it came down to nobles disguising themselves as peasants, the idea was to change your outward visual appearance so as to avoid identification from a distance, and then keeping that distance until you were in safe territory.
- “In an economy transforming from feudalism to markets, I have to imagine that the landholding nobility would have a very hard time obtaining cash…you’d said it was entirely common for monarchs of that period to run into bankruptcy — what about the nobility as a class? Did they have problems raising cash?”
- Nobles could indeed run into problems raising cash, especially if they were in periods where prices were rising faster than rents or if there were crop failures and the like, and often borrowed quite heavily from bankers (which was a major reason why noble attitudes to bankers tended to be hostile).
- On the other hand, nobles could also have very large incomes indeed which they could turn into strongboxes and treasure-houses bursting with coins that they could use to finance their own affairs or as surety for loans on better terms.
- Generally, what tended to make the difference between an inexorable slide into genteel poverty and becoming major investors in the commercial and industrial revolutions was how much land they held and how good they were at estate management (i.e, extracting cash from that land). If you had a good deal of land and were good at making it pay, you could use your income to make your estates more productive and/or invest in growing areas of the economy; if you had a small and economically marginal estate, it was much harder to react to economic transformations.
If you’d like to get your own questions answered on a monthly basis, you can do so by becoming a Patron at the $10 level!
Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Davos IV, ASOS
“I woke this morning in his dungeon.”
Synopsis: Davos Seaworth argues his way out of Stannis‘ dungeons and past Axell’s knife, with honesty and loyalty as his only weapons.
SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.
RFTIT Tumblr Weeklyish Roundup
Hey folks! With Catelyn IV, I ran out of banked chapter outlines to write up, so my priority at the moment is writing out outlines up through Jon V (which will officially put me over the 50% mark on ASOS, which is huge for me), and then start writing Davos IV.
But in the mean-time, we’ve got lots of stuff on the Tumblrs.
ASOIAF:
- Baelor and the Faith Militant.
- Does the title of Lord Paramount predate the Conquest? *
- GRRM remixing historical figures:
- The role of love in noble marriages:
- A long discussion of the Westerlands and Riverlands military geography:
- Swords as fashion and purchasing military commissions:
- A series of asks about Tywin and the Defiance:
- Some thoughts on patience in the ASOIAF fandom.
Non-ASOIAF:
Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Catelyn IV, ASOS
“No more, she thought. Mother have mercy, how many more blows can we bear?”
Synopsis: Hoster Tully is dead and the Freys are here to negotiate in good faith.
SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.
Guest Appearance on Notacast Podcast
Catelyn XI of AGOT is one of my all-time favorite chapters, so naturally when BryndenBFish and PoorQuentyn got up to that chapter in their chapter-by-chapter podcast I jumped at the opportunity to chat about the Battle of the Camps, the complex political and military position that House Stark finds itself in at the end of AGOT, the dilemmas of Catelyn’s plea for peace, and of course, Northern nationalism.
Guest Appearance on Ranking of Thrones
I’m hard at work on Catelyn IV of ASOS – currently up to 3200 words – but in the mean-time, I’ve got something fun for you. The folks at Ranking of Thrones invited me on to talk about Aegon V, what his reforms were, how his family crises undermined his efforts to change Westeros, and what happened at Summerhall. Enjoy!
