Baby eating nobles?
Easy way to refer to the Nobility of westeros, where doing things like torturing hookers to death is common enough practice that Littlefinger can reliably find a market for it. The Nobles from Westeros might as well be the Thing-esque monsters from the movie Society for how little they react to the hysterically insane abuses committed by their peers and lessors.Baby eating nobles?
Easy way to refer to the Nobility of westeros, where doing things like torturing hookers to death is common enough practice that Littlefinger can reliably find a market for it. The Nobles from Westeros might as well be the Thing-esque monsters from the movie Society for how little they react to the hysterically insane abuses committed by their peers and lessors.
Theres actually a scene that, strangely enough, perfectly sums up the difference between the reality of a medieval nobleman and the kind of thing we see more commonly in GOT.
See, this scene is trying to portray Ned as fantabulously honorable, a real one in a million Noble among Nobles, but... This is the baseline in Earth history. Everything he says and does is exactly what you'd expect, not some exception like it's treated as in the show. That scene is basically just "Average Earth Noble vs Westeros" in a nutshell.
Okay usually I don't do GOT/ASOIAF apologia but this isn't entirely fair.Martin's understanding of "realistic" history is extremely sparse. He fundamentally treats his universe as if it's modern day except that people use swords and bows instead of guns. But in structure? Planetos is basically post-modernist with a thin coat of medieval paint on it.
For starters their armies aren't medieval. It looks like it at a glance but doesn't act like it. Feudalism is fundamentally a system based on not having much in the way of infrastructure or bureaucracy. It's the king basically with his drinking buddies splitting up the map, and his buddies each have a dozen or so drinking buddies under them splitting up their share of the map, and so forth until you get to landless knights who probably have a few men-at-arms as their drinking buddies. Typically each person owes the guy above him in the chain a certain amount of service each year (the most common was 40 days per year) but needed the rest of their year to handle running their slice of the map. Armies were typically tiny and wars were actually surprisingly short lived because you only had 40 days before you had to start dishing out fat stacks of cash to your armies, and nobody really had that kind of money because there wasn't a bureaucracy to collect taxes and farmers didn't produce a lot of surplus to support armies anyway. In GoT we have something more akin to modern standing armies, in size and logistics since they're somehow able to field vast armies despite the fact that such numbers should choke them for food and they shouldn't be able to make armies march so long anyway since all those people are supposed to have duties at home to take care of.
The Westerosi have religion but they don't actually believe in it, much like post-modern people tend to. Actual Medieval kings were highly faithful and served a role in worship. They built edifices to the church and things like a King being infidel to his wife were really serious problems that could toppling a kingdom. If you were excommunicated, the people believed that working with you meant they would be going to hell with you later, and they believed it. People had Faith.
When Emperor Henry the IVth was accused of simony and got excommunicated, he came within a hair's breadth of losing his position because none of his people would obey him and he wound up kneeling in the snow for three days for a chance to beg Pope Gregory VII to lift his excommunication. That's what having an actual religion does. But in GoT, even though we're told that the church has power and people believe, nobody acts like it and the church never makes a move against anybody for violating their edicts. It's quite post-modern, the leaders act like modern rulers who might pay lip service to religion or ignore it entirely but the church certainly doesn't have a role in their decision making or duties.
Finally the Westerosi don't act like Feudalism is their government. They act very much like the modern US. A feudalistic system is, at it's core, a king as his drinking buddies the dukes who meet regularly and party. The duke has his earls as drinking buddies, the earl his barons, and so forth. Feudalism is a government that runs on direct trust between subordinates and also needs minimal bureaucracy and infrastructure, the reason for it's odd structure of basically a chain of drinking buddies is because the system can't actualyl administer itself due to lack of bureaucrats, and is outsourcing it to the drinking buddies who get to rule a piece of land in exchange for service and control of that land.
Typically feudal kingdoms are poor because nobody is there to collect taxes, it's just the landlord taking a cut of the produce and maybe passing a few bushels of grain up the chain to pay his taxes. Westeros runs on gold instead which was exceeding rare IRL. Similarly due to trust issues, even if the church had nothing to say about it, somebody like Cersei or Joffery would have zero chance of ruling any length of time because nobody would trust them and they'd get yeeted off a wall for losing the trust of their vassals in short order. Remember, there is no infrastructure to rule with except said vassals who are essentially drinking buddies who follow the guy above because they like him. We saw this deposing of bad rulers for this reason no few times IRL though usually the really crazy rulers were instead reduced to figureheads and a power behind the throne ruled competently. Cersei's army, however, acts like a distinctly American post-modern army where allegiance is to a constitution (that westeros doesn't have) and the military will generally follow any legal order, except Westerosi also follow illegal ones.
Fundamentally it's extremely clear that Westeros runs according to modern rules (most US based) with a light medieval aesthetic. Religion has similar power to churches in the modern US. Armies have numbers, obedience, and logistics similar to the modern US. Rulers are corrupt and pay only lip service to their own religion and morals like the modern US. And rulership stems from being seen as "legitimate" rather than having the trust of your vassals, just like the modern US.
Yes, I read the books though I didn't watch the show past the first episode, it's gore and nudity not being to my taste.Okay usually I don't do GOT/ASOIAF apologia but this isn't entirely fair.
Let's address your main points.
Religion: The Faith of the Seven was a conquering proselytizing religion and it conquered most of Southern Westeros, infusing it with Andal language and customs. The reason why in canon, its weaker than not is because the Targaryens thoroughly declawed it. Its basically a state church, in that its entirely subordinate to the secular authorities. Maegor crushed a rebellion led by the Faith against his incest. In the books, it does rise again-with the Faith militant reborn. Against the abuses of the war and depravity of the Lannister regime. Lancel has a religious vision and shows genuine piety. For centuries, its role was reduced but it was not always so. Not to mention-Sansa, Davos, and Cat all pray to the Seven, LF and the Lannisters are more...cynical about religion. Robb Stark and his father both take the old gods very seriously.
Armies: This is how the Wot5K works. Robb calls his banners, Tywin has already mobilized his, and Renly steals Stannis's assumed bannermen. These vassals are generally loyal(the Starks have insanely devoted vassals except for the Boltons and Ryswells) where Tywin's vassals stay with him despite almost certain Lannister defeat at one point in the war. They do however flip sides, the Frey turn against Robb because he breaks a marriage promise to them. Renly's bannermen go over to Stannis or the Tyrells(most of them's liege lords), and then after the Blackwater they go over to Joffrey.
Government: Feudal governance is how Westeros operates except in what appears to be King's Landing. In which there is a privy council and some measure of bureaucracy. There definitely is not any sort of modern apparatus. Witness the Antler men Tyrion has thrown off the trebuchets. Or that numerous city officials are in Varys and LF's pockets. Its byzantine politics-there is a bureaucracy but its loyalties vary with oaths, pay, and personal affiliation.
As for taxation-the royal authorities collect it? And local lords and lord paramounts collect it?
Now in the later seasons of the show-where the Lannister army remains insanely loyal you have a much greater point.
But have you read the books? It doesn't appear you have.
IIRC Martin specified it as "15th century minus gunpowder". Because according to him the elements that make up gunpowder don't exist on Planetos ...
ASOIAF is generally just bigger, more massive, fantastical than the RL medieval ages.
The Rock is Gibraltar but much more impressive. Winterfell is basically a self contained city.
Robert is basically Conan the Barbarian, albeit more jovial.
It’s medieval but intended to be larger than life. But still have a gritty tactile sense of the “Real” by the human heart in conflict with itself.
Theon, Jaimie, Tyrion, these aren’t stock fantasy cliches, but immensely human characters.
Thing is, people read ASOIAF not for the worldbuilding but the characters.
They read it for Tyrion's ACOK strategizing, Sansa's growth, Davos relationship with Stannis, and Cersei's self destruction.
Martin gets criticism for the logistics, the battles, and the scale. Few criticize his characters.
Eh? Could Sansa and Tyrion exist in a medieval world? Could Cersei? Stannis?
None of them are modern per se in their worldviews or behavior.
Tywin is based off Edward I. He’s the archetypical hard man. He wants to advance his family’s position through advantageous alliances and marriages. That doesn’t seem too modernist?Look at their behaviour in greater context: Tywin's realpolitik especially is a modernist/postmodernist element
This is a criticism where the response I find somewhat trite. But I’ll bring it up anyway. The religions aren’t the same as earth. The faith doesn’t not recognize other gods existing. It’s more tolerant than medieval Catholicism.Also, none of his characters pay nearly enough attention to religion as they should: there are no religious wars between North and South, North and Riverlands form a very strong alliance just due to marriage ties, Ned makes no effort to convert Catelyn, nor does Catelyn to convert Ned - and latter especially is extremely problematic, since Faith of the Seven is a pseudo-Christianity, meaning that she is willing to doom her husband's soul to eternal damnation simply for the sake of their worldly happiness.
Tywin is based off Edward I. He’s the archetypical hard man. He wants to advance his family’s position through advantageous alliances and marriages. That doesn’t seem too modernist?
Given Tywin’s plans for Tyrion and Sansa, and the fact the Lannister’s were getting Riverrun(through Genna) it seems to me Tywin planned on disavowing his allies at some point in the future.But in real Middle Ages it would have been a political suicide not just for Freys, but also for anyone supporting them (meaning Lannisters).