Shipmaster Sane
You have been weighed
Your fan theory that all the wizards are just pretending is interesting, but unsupported by canon.
ASOIAF/GOT The 'Realism' of the World of ASOIAF/GOT
- Thread starter CarlManvers2019
- Start date
It's not about the smallfolks or gold, it's about the disrespect shown towards the property of said lord. If Tywin pulled that shit with actual people, he would end up with no villages at his border real quick.
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Deleted member 88
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It should be noted that as much as Martin likes making thematic points about Tywin's supposedly failed style of leadership compared to Ned-his vassals remained loyal to House Lannister. The Westermen respect Jaimie and Cersei. Robb was shanked by one of his vassals.
It irritates me to no end when people say "Tywin is a dumb thug who failed as a ruler-look at ned's legacy". House Lannister never got usurped, the Boltons are in Winterfell as of the end of ADWD.
Like.. yes Tywin was an evil man. Yes he taught his children some spectacularly bad lessons, yes they are all screwed up. Yes House Baratheon of King's Landing is going to fall.
No one seems to point out that Tywin through hook or crook did win the war, he ruled Aerys' Westeros for twenty years and restored peace and order to the West.
Tywin hate is a ridiculous over reaction to the Machiavellian Tywin hard man who is God fandom.
Is Tywin realistic? I would say mostly yes. He's Edward I taken to a higher degree, an ambitious yet also deeply emotional man who wants to see his family rule.
(that is one thing people misunderstand-Tywin is a hardass, but he isn't stone cold, he is extremely passionate, really I can't think of a character in ASOIAF besides...Mandon Moore I guess that isn't driven by emotions and intensely passionate).
It irritates me to no end when people say "Tywin is a dumb thug who failed as a ruler-look at ned's legacy". House Lannister never got usurped, the Boltons are in Winterfell as of the end of ADWD.
Like.. yes Tywin was an evil man. Yes he taught his children some spectacularly bad lessons, yes they are all screwed up. Yes House Baratheon of King's Landing is going to fall.
No one seems to point out that Tywin through hook or crook did win the war, he ruled Aerys' Westeros for twenty years and restored peace and order to the West.
Tywin hate is a ridiculous over reaction to the Machiavellian Tywin hard man who is God fandom.
Is Tywin realistic? I would say mostly yes. He's Edward I taken to a higher degree, an ambitious yet also deeply emotional man who wants to see his family rule.
(that is one thing people misunderstand-Tywin is a hardass, but he isn't stone cold, he is extremely passionate, really I can't think of a character in ASOIAF besides...Mandon Moore I guess that isn't driven by emotions and intensely passionate).
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
I think whatever illogical or unnecessarily brutal stuff Tywin would do, would in part be due to his emotional hangups getting the better of him
So long as he doesn't consider it anywhere near personal, you're less likely to be brutalized
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Tywin takes every slight as someone pretty much urinating on his shoes, and boasting they bedded his wife. So in his mind-a slight must be retaliated against with extra levels of violence.
Mostly because Tywin is deeply insecure and is far more vulnerable than he lets on.
Mostly because Tywin is deeply insecure and is far more vulnerable than he lets on.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
I guess it would also be kinda hard for even local Lords to be able to get away with it longterm
Gargon Qoherys was known for publicly indulging in the "Right of The First Night" for many years and eventually got his castle taken over due to some angry smallfolk
I think Gregor could mostly get away with it in his own area because people are too scared of him specifically and he can fight and kill lots of knights, let alone smallfolk
That said, I can't help but think that most surrounding nobility and even the Sept would go "You go about shishkababing babies and eating them and burning your own smallfolk alive along with their fields and constantly rape corpses....you're a pretty swell dude and I would love to marry off my youngest daughter to you and thanks for the dowry!!!"
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
Kind of an overcompensation to his father to "save face"
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Shipmaster Sane
You have been weighed
Great that gives us a time frame of anywhere from a year ago to... ten years ago.
Thats a pretty wide margin.
Well theres a lot of assumptions implied there,
First that it's nearby and not out in the boonies,
Second that anyone would hear about what was going on there if it had only just started
Third that you'd immediately believe that a well regarded noble had spontaneously become a people eating lunatic overnight
Fourth that any information about the deaths would even be available across the country.
See, in Game of thrones, Nobles barely try to even conceal their misdeeds, hell most of the time they broadcast them. And why wouldn't they? It's not like they suddenly went crazy after years of reliability, we've got generations of ridiculous atrocities being committed right out in the open and 99% of the time people just shrug at them.
Remember that the Slug Count, as transparently insane as he was in person, was publicly framing his massacre as putting down a rebellion. To anyone in his city that would sound like bullshit, but it would take a good long while for anyone outside to suspect that it wasnt exactly what he said considering that Midland (Though we dont actually know the Slug Count was even *in* midland its not like Guts or Apostles care about borders) was in a succession crisis with an unmarried princess and a dying senile king, the two most powerful nations on the continent had just come out of a disastrous war, Kushan was already well into it's push into Europe, and according to one of the Nobles we do get to see, there'd been a rampant outbreak of plague.
News travels slowly in a wartorn plague infested wasteland. Westeros doesnt have the excuse that the Apostle-Nobles were not apostles for a long period, and were generally concealing themselves besides.
In Westeros The King's unpopular mother can drop a small nuclear bomb on her own city with no fire mitigation infrastructure and expect to wake up alive the next day.
Its a matter of degrees. In Westeros Vlad the Impaler is average, in Berserk's Europe Vlad the impaler is unusual but present.
Navarro
Well-known member
The majority of which are one-line mentions in the books for worldbuilding flavour purposes.
Red Priests resurrecting the dead and literally casting fireball spells isn't ambiguous, and neither are what the Faceless Men do.
In Westeros, you have:
It's heavily implied that there is something supernatural and very nasty about that religion, not the least with Patchface.
Debatable? They not only have magic, but it's all but stated that their afterlife about merging with nature is real.
- Seven (Catholic) - no supernatural powers
Ignoring the one-off cults, we have:
R'hllor: Resurrection, clairvoyance, foresight, pyromancy, possible control over weather and fate
Great Stallion: Foresight
Mother Rhoyne: Hydromancy,
Old Gods: Afterlife, clairvoyance, visions of past and future, skinchanging, possible geokinesis
Drowned God: Foresight, possible resurrection
Many-Faced God: Glamours, visions of dead people's lives
FoT7; Zilch, nada, zip.
Firebat
Well-known member
First, that's not my theory.
Second, your theory that ASOAIF gods provide magical powers is not supported by canon.
It is at best left ambiguous.
You said - "one major religion in the setting that lacks any supernatural power".
Since we are discussing the religions in the setting, the fact that followers of Essosi faiths are not in the middle of main narrative is immaterial. They exist, they are important in the setting and have no magical underpinning.
If Red Priests as a class could resurrect people and cast fireballs, they would rule the world by now.
If anything, Thoros (who grew up in the temple surrounded by Red Priests) is mighty surprised by his newly found ability to resurrect people. Which would not happen if Red Priests could just do these kind of things.
We have two Red Priests out of however many thousands out there who can do tricks like that, so there is no reason to presume that it's their status as Red Priests that is responsible for the magic. Granted, Mel is on a power trip and Thoros is on guilt trip, but their desire to have their every action justified by God a proof does not make.
Ditto for Faceless Men. Kindly man says so directly, for crying out loud: "...sorcerers use glamors, weaving light and shadow and desire to make illusions that trick the eye..."
Faceless Men learn magic that is available to skilled sorcerers, not just people following their god. Undying use glamors. It is no more divine than learning how to operate an assault rifle.
It is not "heavily implied" - the connection is barely existent and is primarily a fan theory with very little basis in canon.
Yes, debatable, because of millions of Old God's faithful only a small handful demonstrates an sort of magical ability. And most of those reside in a land beyond the Wall, where magic is stronger and evil fairies roam around.
So again, you attribute to the Old Gods what is by no means proven to be their doing.
To discuss the remaining ones:
Considering that that bit of foresight has failed like a wet fart, that's hardly in argument in your favor. The Stallion is not mounting the world by the virtue of being dead.
Horsemen are just as bereft of supernatural powers as the Faith.
The only mention of Hydromancy by MR's followers dates back hundreds if not thousands of years ago. By this metric, Faith of the Seven is magical because similarly distant reports tell of Gods roaming Andalos and pulling stars to crown Hugor. Ditto for Drowned Christ.
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Firebat
Well-known member
Of course.
Off the top of my Head, the Undying Ones, wood witch that started the whole "special Targaryen bloodline bears a savior" party, Cercei's Maggy, ancient Valyrian architects that built magical roads and citadels that stand to this day, fire staircase dude that marched into heaven...
All sorts of people, really.
Naturally, if you have a relatively established phenomena of magic users, some of them a bound to become priests or attribute their gifts to divine favor. Some - genuinely, fully believing in their press like Thoros. Others - quite shamelessly using it like parlor tricks to fool people. "Men see what they expect to see", as Mel puts it.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
Given that the series may in part have been inspired by Robert E Howard's Hyborian Age, I bet some of the Gods maybe Eldritch Abominations
Or Alien AI's in the case of the Bloodstone Emperor's aforementioned bloodstone, bet GRRM took inspiration from Karl Edward Wagner's Kane for that
Otherwise, many other gods are probably just human invention
As a general rule you don't piss in a man's pool then offer to toss cash at him.
Thats the whole reason the concept of weregild existed in the first place. Tywin would get bodied like no tomorrow if he wasn't protected by PIS for evena fraction of the crap he did in his own setting.
If he did that in another feudal setting? Pfftt his entire region would be under occupation the moment he drowned the Reynes.
Which was honestly one of the dumbest things in the story.
Hurr durr lemme drown a powerful vassal because a few of them rebelled, their closest allies and their entire bloodline and citizenry and then lemme also destroy their mines denying my region a vital edge over competition.
Pretty sure the destruction of Castamere itself is grounds to be attainted.
LifeisTiresome
Well-known member
Berserk never claimed to be realistic and is a world where God is evil and demons actually exist and can pretend to be humans. The Church is also utterly corrupt and may worship said evil god.
Admittedly I was thinking of characters being like this dude
The Count
Divine providence cannot be thwarted... by man's efforts.The Count The Count was an apostle nobleman presiding over a territory which Guts visited during the swordsman's two-year war against demonkind. He ultimately died in a bout with the Black Swordsman, dragged into the Vortex of Souls after...berserk.fandom.com
I don’t recall this dude being said to be remotely reviled by his fellow lords
Shipmaster Sane
You have been weighed
Berserk is far more realistic than Game of Thrones.
Further, Mozgus himself was not corrupt, he was just very, very incorrect in ways he had no way of foreseeing. The small town priest that Shierke won over wasn't corrupt either, and the Pope appears to be genuine, albeit very much in Griffith's thrall.
God isn't just evil, he was retroactively created by human depression or someshit.
Literal embodiment of edge lordism and emoness
Shipmaster Sane
You have been weighed
Kentaro Miura has since said that the Idea of Evil chapter is non canon, and that the ideas expressed there needed a bit more working over.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
While TvTropes seems to have thought Berserk was dumping on religion, as you said before, it seems the Holy See outside its fanatics and whatever corruption isn’t that bad
Also, it maybe in part the result of Syncretism as the Four Elemental Kings are acknowledged by Schiereke
And I’m guessing that village priest and those villagers and perhaps other villages are slowly gonna consider nearby spirits as “guardian angels” instead of outright Gods
LifeisTiresome
Well-known member
*Shrug* I don't really care either way. Just pointing out to Carl that baby eating nobles is far easier to understand in Berserk cause literal demons and evil gods. Cause it doesn't try and pretend to be realism ahoy compared to Tolkein or whatever. Berserk is Berserk.
Possible.
Entirely possible. I've always thought he removed it due to spoilers and would reveal it again later but a bit more polished.
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