ASOIAF/GOT The 'Realism' of the World of ASOIAF/GOT

[Aldarion]

Here is a question. How realistic is the money system in ASOIAF? Does the way the coinage work make sense? Because if memory serves me right... 200 silver for 1 gold dragon? WTF?

It is apparently better in later books (fact that I can't remember for certain supports that ), but in early books GRRM treated gold dragons as if they were essentially US dollars.

EDIT:

http://www.freelanceacademypress.com/pdf/EconomyArticle.pdf

 

[Typhonis]

Have they said how much metal is in each coin? Something still seems off to me. Most stuff, in medieval terms, would be paid in kind or work.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Have they said how much metal is in each coin? Something still seems off to me. Most stuff, in medieval terms, would be paid in kind or work.

In the modern day everything would be handled by cash and there would be little to no barter though.

Guess which model GoT follows, modern with medieval paintjob or realistic medieval?

 

[Aldarion]

In the modern day everything would be handled by cash and there would be little to no barter though.

Guess which model GoT follows, modern with medieval paintjob or realistic medieval?

Technically GoT is an early modern period, not medieval... now I don't know much about England etc., but going from Hungary, it seems that Roman/Byzantine style monetary economy got somewhat revived: while I focused mostly on military matters, it would appear that that taxation, at least from the state, was actually monetary. Nobility might have still received taxes in kind, but even they appear to have preferred monetary taxes.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Technically GoT is an early modern period, not medieval... now I don't know much about England etc., but going from Hungary, it seems that Roman/Byzantine style monetary economy got somewhat revived: while I focused mostly on military matters, it would appear that that taxation, at least from the state, was actually monetary. Nobility might have still received taxes in kind, but even they appear to have preferred monetary taxes.

I know that Martin said this is so, but it really isn't. GoT's trappings are high medieval. They wear high medieval style full-plate armor, f'rex, and have jousting tournaments as their sport of choice. The castles are high-medieval stone fortresses, not the polygon and star forts of the early modern period. The early modern period warfare was characterized by gunpowder becoming the pre-eminent weapon which clearly didn't happen in GoT.

Socially it also doesn't resemble the early modern period. To quote Wikipedia:

Historians in recent decades have argued that from a worldwide standpoint, the most important feature of the early modern period was its spreading globalizing character. New economies and institutions emerged, becoming more sophisticated and globally articulated over the course of the period.

Said age coincided with the age of discovery, and the early modern period is characterized by strong merchant princes, the rise of the Atlantic slave trade, the crusades, the colonization of the Americas, the development of the modern science, the rise of the newspaper, and a strong push towards global trade. None of this happens in GoT, nor do any remote analogues play a role.

EDIT: As an edit, what would GoT Look like if it was more realistic, taking the base assumptions of the setting (limited magic that requires sacrifice, periodic decades-long winters with ice zombie invasions, dragons, etc.)?

I'm thinking the most notable change off the top of my head would be granaries. They're going to have a Malthusian catastrophe every winter so the normal reaction would be the stockpile grain during the long summer in preparation for the winter. While our world had the great Lighthouse and Colossus as wonders of the world, theirs would be the "Grand Granary of King's Landing," larger than The Wall and capable of storing eight million tons of cereals over the winter.

 

[Aldarion]

I know that Martin said this is so, but it really isn't. GoT's trappings are high medieval. They wear high medieval style full-plate armor, f'rex, and have jousting tournaments as their sport of choice. The castles are high-medieval stone fortresses, not the polygon and star forts of the early modern period. The early modern period warfare was characterized by gunpowder becoming the pre-eminent weapon which clearly didn't happen in GoT.

Socially it also doesn't resemble the early modern period. To quote Wikipedia:

Historians in recent decades have argued that from a worldwide standpoint, the most important feature of the early modern period was its spreading globalizing character. New economies and institutions emerged, becoming more sophisticated and globally articulated over the course of the period.

Said age coincided with the age of discovery, and the early modern period is characterized by strong merchant princes, the rise of the Atlantic slave trade, the crusades, the colonization of the Americas, the development of the modern science, the rise of the newspaper, and a strong push towards global trade. None of this happens in GoT, nor do any remote analogues play a role.

Few corrections:
1) High Medieval period is from 1000 AD to 1250 AD. Armour during that period was mail ("full mail", that is mail armour that covers whole body, though that is a term I just coined). Pieces of plate armour only started appearing cca 1250 - 1300 AD, and full plate armour appeared only cca 1420. And it was used until 1580., when increased thickness required of armour started a move towards less coverage.
2) Jousting was popular all the way up to the 17th century, though it changed a lot through time.
3) Polygon and star forts only appeared cca 1500, which - you are correct - is the start of the early modern period. But it appeared because of gunpowder artillery, which is not used in Westeros.
4) World of ASoIaF is actually strongly globalized, which is part of what I was referring to with my "early modern" comment. Robert Baratheon is concerned about Daenerys Targaryen, who is half a world away, and merchant princes are important (though mostly in Western Essos). Banks play a massive international role (the Iron Bank, e.g.), entire bloody continent is a) united under a single empire which is b) comprised of nine massive kingdoms, guilds dominate international trade, most of the ruling elite are relatively atheistic while established religions are threatened by new ones... all of that is early modern period.

EDIT: Saw your edit:

EDIT: As an edit, what would GoT Look like if it was more realistic, taking the base assumptions of the setting (limited magic that requires sacrifice, periodic decades-long winters with ice zombie invasions, dragons, etc.)?

I'm thinking the most notable change off the top of my head would be granaries. They're going to have a Malthusian catastrophe every winter so the normal reaction would be the stockpile grain during the long summer in preparation for the winter. While our world had the great Lighthouse and Colossus as wonders of the world, theirs would be the "Grand Granary of King's Landing," larger than The Wall and capable of storing eight million tons of cereals over the winter.

For starters, the periodic multi-year winter would prevent development of feudalism to begin with. Rather, you would see something much more similar to Egyptian centralized state, where government maintains huge storage facilities and coordinates distribution of grain.

This of course is assuming that grain has adapted to said conditions. If it had not, then any people living in Westeros would be nomads, moving southwards as weather grows colder, and back northwards in spring.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Few corrections:
1) High Medieval period is from 1000 AD to 1250 AD. Armour during that period was mail ("full mail", that is mail armour that covers whole body, though that is a term I just coined). Pieces of plate armour only started appearing cca 1250 - 1300 AD, and full plate armour appeared only cca 1420. And it was used until 1580., when increased thickness required of armour started a move towards less coverage.
2) Jousting was popular all the way up to the 17th century, though it changed a lot through time.
3) Polygon and star forts only appeared cca 1500, which - you are correct - is the start of the early modern period. But it appeared because of gunpowder artillery, which is not used in Westeros.
4) World of ASoIaF is actually strongly globalized, which is part of what I was referring to with my "early modern" comment. Robert Baratheon is concerned about Daenerys Targaryen, who is half a world away, and merchant princes are important (though mostly in Western Essos). Banks play a massive international role (the Iron Bank, e.g.), entire bloody continent is a) united under a single empire which is b) comprised of nine massive kingdoms, guilds dominate international trade, most of the ruling elite are relatively atheistic while established religions are threatened by new ones... all of that is early modern period.

You're dramatically mistating most of those elements. I'll grant, full plate did continue to exist into the 15th century so that point goes to you.

For Star Forts and Polygons, indeed but how is Westeros in the 15th century if it lacks both 15th century weapons and fortresses and fights in the medieval style (albeit more in the true modern style with medieval paint on it) instead?

The world is certainly not globalized. Robert is concerned about Daenerys because she's an exiled Westerosi, it has nothing to do with where she is. His own council thinks he's being an idiot because she's outside their lands and thus unimportant, and Robert has no concerns about anybody who isn't an exiled Westerosi. He shows zero worry about (non-Dany controlled) Dothraki, Braavosi, Essosi, or other rulers causing him trouble. Further global trade is not a source of wealth, indeed the Westerosi look down on "merchant houses" and treat them as inferiors to houses that make their money in traditional ways.

"Banks" don't play a role, the Iron Bank singular does, and behaves in a bizarrely un-banklike way, in that it loans money to kings but doesn't seem to fund actual merchantile interests. But we certainly don't see widespread international commerce and ships carrying vast exotic cargoes playing a major role as they did in the early modern period.

As for established religions threatening new ones, that happened thousands of years ago in their history and has no analogue to Protestants vs. Catholics, it's not a schism in their church at all. The Faith of the Seven is six thousand years old and a Christianity analogue competing with a pagan old religion analogue. The pagan analogue was also almost completely gone and the singular Catholic analogue was accepted by the supermajority of the ruling class... which was the situation in the medieval period, not the early modern period.

A continent-sized empire isn't something from the early modern period, it's a more modern day thing that's been given a coat of paint.

 

[Deleted member 88]

ASOIAF is roughly equivalent to the period of 1475 to around 1510 or so.

Excluding colonization. It’s late medieval. Not early modern.

Bravos is Renaissance Venice and Slaver’s Bay is still in an Iron Age, though Slaver’s Bay is atrocious worldbuilding in general.

The stark-Lannister conflict is the war of the roses. So it’s set at the tail end of the medieval age.

One thing martin does do somewhat well is get across this system is breaking down. Less due to in RL to the expanded merchant class and urban development and more because of apocalyptic strife and the breakdown of the social contract.

In Westeros anyway. In Essos, Dany is ripping the continental economy to pieces and likely will ravage it in Winds badly.

 

[Aldarion]

For Star Forts and Polygons, indeed but how is Westeros in the 15th century if it lacks both 15th century weapons and fortresses and fights in the medieval style (albeit more in the true modern style with medieval paint on it) instead?

Westeros only lacks gunpowder. Fighting style is actually very similar to 15th century. Look at Battle of the Green Fork: Tywin deploys his army with infantry in the center and cavalry on the wings. That is 15th century pattern, enabled by the appearance of the professional infantry. Previously, when infantry was levied, cavalry would be deployed ahead of infantry and would engage first, with infantry only "mopping up" what is left. Only the Crusaders and Byzantines did things differently, as both deployed actual professional infantry.

EDIT:

The world is certainly not globalized. Robert is concerned about Daenerys because she's an exiled Westerosi, it has nothing to do with where she is. His own council thinks he's being an idiot because she's outside their lands and thus unimportant, and Robert has no concerns about anybody who isn't an exiled Westerosi. He shows zero worry about (non-Dany controlled) Dothraki, Braavosi, Essosi, or other rulers causing him trouble. Further global trade is not a source of wealth, indeed the Westerosi look down on "merchant houses" and treat them as inferiors to houses that make their money in traditional ways.

If world weren't globalized, how do you explain Salad Saan, existence of major merchant cities, and mercenaries randomly jumping between Westeros and Essos? Also, Daenerys is in SLaver's Bay which is half a world away - that is the equivalent of a Holy Roman Emperor being concerned about a pretender lazing around in Singapore.

"Banks" don't play a role, the Iron Bank singular does, and behaves in a bizarrely un-banklike way, in that it loans money to kings but doesn't seem to fund actual merchantile interests. But we certainly don't see widespread international commerce and ships carrying vast exotic cargoes playing a major role as they did in the early modern period.

Actually banks do play a role in the backstory at least, and Iron Bank was shown to be in the conflict with at least one such.

As for established religions threatening new ones, that happened thousands of years ago in their history and has no analogue to Protestants vs. Catholics, it's not a schism in their church at all. The Faith of the Seven is six thousand years old and a Christianity analogue competing with a pagan old religion analogue. The pagan analogue was also almost completely gone and the singular Catholic analogue was accepted by the supermajority of the ruling class... which was the situation in the medieval period, not the early modern period.

Except there is Cult of R'hllor spreading into Westeros.

ASOIAF is roughly equivalent to the period of 1475 to around 1510 or so.

Excluding colonization. It’s late medieval. Not early modern.

Bravos is Renaissance Venice and Slaver’s Bay is still in an Iron Age, though Slaver’s Bay is atrocious worldbuilding in general.

The stark-Lannister conflict is the war of the roses. So it’s set at the tail end of the medieval age.

One thing martin does do somewhat well is get across this system is breaking down. Less due to in RL to the expanded merchant class and urban development and more because of apocalyptic strife and the breakdown of the social contract.

In Westeros anyway. In Essos, Dany is ripping the continental economy to pieces and likely will ravage it in Winds badly.

I consider period of 1475 to 1510 to be "early modern" as it is the time of significant changes in society. So we are not actually in disagreement.

Westeros is late medieval in aesthetics, for sure, but look at size of the armies involved: no field army goes much below 20 000 (with exceptions you can count on one hand), and some go up to 100 000 in the field, as a coherent force. Those numbers were only achieved in late 15th and throughout 16th century, with armies in 17th century balooning even further - and even late 15th century field armies only got into upper spectrum of this range only rarely. Which is the reason why I lump anything past 1450. into "early modern" period.

Next time we disagree, it might do to check whether we are really in disagreement.

 

[Deleted member 88]

I’m not referring to army sizes as much as social structure.

Westeros has no appreciable merchant or burgher class. There is no peasant revolt or plague-at least not yet to finally weaken the feudal order beyond repair.

One other difference is lack of gunpowder. Which means that feudal magnates in Westeros are still very much independent of the crown, and that naval powers like Braavos aren’t demanding concessions at cannon point in Westeros or Yi Ti.

If our world had no gunpowder, I think it’s late 14th through 16th centuries would have resembled Westeros more.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Westeros only lacks gunpowder. Fighting style is actually very similar to 15th century. Look at Battle of the Green Fork: Tywin deploys his army with infantry in the center and cavalry on the wings. That is 15th century pattern, enabled by the appearance of the professional infantry. Previously, when infantry was levied, cavalry would be deployed ahead of infantry and would engage first, with infantry only "mopping up" what is left. Only the Crusaders and Byzantines did things differently, as both deployed actual professional infantry.

To a degree this is true, although most analysis put Archers on the front lines and cavalry in reserve, as at the battle of Battle of Hastings.

The front lines were archers with a line of foot soldiers armed with spears behind. There were probably a few crossbowmen and slingers in with the archers. The cavalry was held in reserve, and a small group of clergymen and servants situated at the base of Telham Hill was not expected to take part in the fighting.

The thing is, why the heck are they using pike and shot formations when they don't have any gunpowder to supply the shot part?

If world weren't globalized, how do you explain Salad Saan, existence of major merchant cities, and mercenaries randomly jumping between Westeros and Essos? Also, Daenerys is in SLaver's Bay which is half a world away - that is the equivalent of a Holy Roman Emperor being concerned about a pretender lazing around in Singapore.

The same way I explain armies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers surviving with no baggage train and supply, or people sometimes travelling hundreds of miles in a few days: The world is very unrealistic and poorly designed, so elements like a massive 30-ship pirate fleet get thrown in even though there's no reason for such to exist.

The trade cities are similarly bizarre. Qarth is in the middle of a desert wasteland with no farms nearby to supply it with food. It's a port city with no actual reason for ships to stop there, there's no trade routes leading to it (due to being in the middle of the Red Desert) and no rivers to ship grain in barges to it. More importantly, trade doesn't have any influence or effect. The leaders of Westeros sneer at "merchant houses" indicating that they're not using mercantile interests to make money. We also see no mercantile interests in the councils indicating that there's no important non-noble guilds or merchants to influence politics. Consequently it's difficult to say merchants exist in any real form since they have no influence. You can make a reasonable argument that said merchants exist in areas like Braavos but they have no influence in the plot. Saying that Game of Thrones is early modern because an area that the plot doesn't happen in is nearly there is like saying that you've written a sci-fi thriller where the sci-fi and thriller parts all happen offscreen and 90% of the book is set in an Amish farm and looks at the family's cheesemaking process.

Except there is Cult of R'hllor spreading into Westeros.

Are you seriously equating the Cult of R'hllor... to Protestantism in the early modern period?

Westeros is late medieval in aesthetics, for sure, but look at size of the armies involved: no field army goes much below 20 000 (with exceptions you can count on one hand), and some go up to 100 000 in the field, as a coherent force. Those numbers were only achieved in late 15th and throughout 16th century, with armies in 17th century balooning even further - and even late 15th century field armies only got into upper spectrum of this range only rarely. Which is the reason why I lump anything past 1450. into "early modern" period.

Yeah, we've already gone over how hideously unrealistic their armies are. You have these extremely professional style armies using pike-and-shot formations when there's no shot and the armies are explicitly spelled out as being peasant conscripts, and massive armies with no apparent chain of supply that take unbelievable losses and rebound over and over again (I recall Daenerys losing "half" her troops in a single battle once) to the point that Westeros should probably actually be suffering from a level of depopulation towards the end.

 

[Aldarion]

To a degree this is true, although most analysis put Archers on the front lines and cavalry in reserve, as at the battle of Battle of Hastings.

The front lines were archers with a line of foot soldiers armed with spears behind. There were probably a few crossbowmen and slingers in with the archers. The cavalry was held in reserve, and a small group of clergymen and servants situated at the base of Telham Hill was not expected to take part in the fighting.

The thing is, why the heck are they using pike and shot formations when they don't have any gunpowder to supply the shot part?

Crossbows (or longbows) played the part of the "shot". Soldiers in 15th century typically had relatively good armour, which means that direct fire was the only way arrows or bolts were going to have any effect. Because of this, "shower" shooting over the heads of friendly melee infantry was no longer an effective way of employing archers - though it was still used as a harrassment tactic - meaning that missile troops had to have a clear line of sight. And this led to the "sleeves of shot" deployment pattern, as seen at Crecy and Agincourt:

As well as deployment used by Matthias Corvinus:

Compare this to 10th century Byzantine infantry square:

Now, you could still deploy both melee infantry and archers in the same line... but that meant rotating the ranks, so that archers are deployed in front of the heavy infantry in opening phases of the battle, and retreat behind it as the enemy nears the melee range. This was not used very often, presumably for the same reason that pike-and-shot formations didn't do such rotation very often either: it was difficult to pull off. Note that at Hastings Normans were attacking, so they had the luxury of choosing how to fight. In any case, it will have looked something like this:

Last possibility of course was to deploy archers ahead of the melee troops in a completely separate body - but that risked running into difficulties which French experienced, where retreating crossbowmen impeded the advance of French men-at-arms.

The same way I explain armies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers surviving with no baggage train and supply, or people sometimes travelling hundreds of miles in a few days: The world is very unrealistic and poorly designed, so elements like a massive 30-ship pirate fleet get thrown in even though there's no reason for such to exist.

That is very definitely true. Still, fact that Martin didn't think things through doesn't mean those things don't have implications.

The trade cities are similarly bizarre. Qarth is in the middle of a desert wasteland with no farms nearby to supply it with food. It's a port city with no actual reason for ships to stop there, there's no trade routes leading to it (due to being in the middle of the Red Desert) and no rivers to ship grain in barges to it. More importantly, trade doesn't have any influence or effect. The leaders of Westeros sneer at "merchant houses" indicating that they're not using mercantile interests to make money. We also see no mercantile interests in the councils indicating that there's no important non-noble guilds or merchants to influence politics. Consequently it's difficult to say merchants exist in any real form since they have no influence. You can make a reasonable argument that said merchants exist in areas like Braavos but they have no influence in the plot. Saying that Game of Thrones is early modern because an area that the plot doesn't happen in is nearly there is like saying that you've written a sci-fi thriller where the sci-fi and thriller parts all happen offscreen and 90% of the book is set in an Amish farm and looks at the family's cheesemaking process.

Qarth sits at the mouth of a strait, so that would be enough to explain city forming in normal conditions - look at the case of Singapore. Still, the fact that it is in the middle of the Red Desert means that it wouldn't be able to survive, and as you note, Martin has essentially eliminated everything except nobility from Westerosi social structure (where are merchants? Free royal cities? Cities as political entities?).

Essentially, what we are dealing with here is a political entity the size of Roman Empire, with cities the size of Ancient Roman cities, fielding armies the size of Imperial Roman or Early Modern armies, showing Roman logistical capabilities, yet doing all of that on socioeconomic and political structures / foundations that will have looked primitive in the Dark Ages.

Personally, in order to avoid aneurysm, I usually choose to go with what Martin has shown us, and simply assume that things not-shown-but-absolutely crucial are there, but Martin didn't bother noting them.

Are you seriously equating the Cult of R'hllor... to Protestantism in the early modern period?

It might end up playing the same role sometime in the future, at least as far as "causing religious wars" goes.

Yeah, we've already gone over how hideously unrealistic their armies are. You have these extremely professional style armies using pike-and-shot formations when there's no shot and the armies are explicitly spelled out as being peasant conscripts, and massive armies with no apparent chain of supply that take unbelievable losses and rebound over and over again (I recall Daenerys losing "half" her troops in a single battle once) to the point that Westeros should probably actually be suffering from a level of depopulation towards the end.

As I have noted, pike-and-shot formations were actually used with longbows and crossbows as well. And peasant conscripts need not necessarily be untrained and unequipped: look at Hungarian Militia Portalis, which is essentially a peasant levy but formed in such a way to be able to provide part-time professional soldiers. That of course depends on whether same peasants were called up every time, or a different peasant was sent for every callup - but latter does not make much sense, since if you have already equipped and trained a peasant for Militia Portalis duty, why go through same trouble the next year?

But yeah, with the exception of that detail, I don't have any disagreement with what you have written.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Technically GoT is an early modern period, not medieval... now I don't know much about England etc., but going from Hungary, it seems that Roman/Byzantine style monetary economy got somewhat revived: while I focused mostly on military matters, it would appear that that taxation, at least from the state, was actually monetary. Nobility might have still received taxes in kind, but even they appear to have preferred monetary taxes.

It seems to me that relations are mostly between the "Free Cities" and Westeros, with also the Meereneese and the Ghiscari's pseudo-successor states

Other than that, I think places like Yi-Ti are really really really far off for relations' sake.

Not sure about the Free Cities' relations with Yi-Ti and the other mentioned Essosi civilisations

 

[ShadowLord]

It is apparently better in later books (fact that I can't remember for certain supports that ), but in early books GRRM treated gold dragons as if they were essentially US dollars.

EDIT:

http://www.freelanceacademypress.com/pdf/EconomyArticle.pdf

Reminds me of a scene in the Babylon 5 spin-off Crusade, where a character goes into a bar on a low-tech planet, pulls out a gold coin and asks 'how much will this buy?'

With the bar tender then responding 'This bar...and everything in it.'

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Reminds me of a scene in the Babylon 5 spin-off Crusade, where a character goes into a bar on a low-tech planet, pulls out a gold coin and asks 'how much will this buy?'

With the bar tender then responding 'This bar...and everything in it.'

Honestly, I can’t help but think most of the time that the money the nobility have can’t possibly have come from taxing the Smallfolk or enterprising traders

 

[Bear Ribs]

Reminds me of a scene in the Babylon 5 spin-off Crusade, where a character goes into a bar on a low-tech planet, pulls out a gold coin and asks 'how much will this buy?'

With the bar tender then responding 'This bar...and everything in it.'

It's not really possible to just directly translate one currency to another across tech levels though. Goods won't all be of similar value due to how labor works. For us purple dye and yellow dye are about equally expensive (both mass produced in chemical factories) but for them the yellow would be dirt cheap (made from common flowers), and the purple the stuff of emperors (made from a sea snail that had to be dived for). Aluminum was far more valuable than gold in Napoleon's time... for us not so much.

Cloth, f'rex, is extremely labor-intensive and thus expensive before industrial looms become a thing. However they become relatively cheap once it's possible to produce fabric in a powered loom on a massive scale. A look through the Bible can show constant references to ripping ones garments as an expression of extreme grief because that was so costly, and things like the Roman soldiers gambling for Jesus' garments because, again, super-expensive stuff.

The difficulties of labor make some thing interact weirdly as well. Chairs are another good example, with tons of parts a chair is super expensive compared to a bench or stool that basically have only about five-six pieces in them. This was so much the case that usually only the most important person in the room could afford a chair, and even today we call the head of the committee the "Chair Man" because of that ancient tendency for chairs to be hard to come by.

On the other hand food would be a bit cheaper to us but not nearly as dramatically so, although harder to obtain, more of the population is involved in farming in the first place. Food would be seasonal (however that works in Westeros) with fruit only be available right after harvest, and out-of-season available only as jams and preserves. Things that can be kept in a root cellar or granary would be available year-round.

Thus overall it's not going to be easy to just say "A copper star is worth so many dollars." It will buy maybe the same amount of bread and more land but far less purple cloth than a dollar would.

 

[Firebat]

Said age coincided with the age of discovery, and the early modern period is characterized by strong merchant princes, the rise of the Atlantic slave trade, the crusades, the colonization of the Americas, the development of the modern science, the rise of the newspaper, and a strong push towards global trade. None of this happens in GoT, nor do any remote analogues play a role.

Basically all of it happens (save perhaps for colonization) in various forms, just not in Westeros. Because superficial appearances aside, Westeros is not Europe of ASOIAF world.
Westeros is basically the equivalent of Imperial China/Mughal Empire. It is a region that's falling behind. "For now" it does not lag behind bad enough to suffer imperial China's fate, but the trend is there.

A continent-sized empire isn't something from the early modern period

Said empire is crumbling precisely for that reason. It was born through out-of-context factor, carried on by inertia and a bit of luck after said factor evaporated.
And now it's coming apart, as it should.

The Faith of the Seven is six thousand years old

There is no reason to assume that. Even in-universe these gargantuan timelines are put into question.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Said empire is crumbling precisely for that reason. It was born through out-of-context factor, carried on by inertia and a bit of luck after said factor evaporated.
And now it's coming apart, as it should.

Honestly, by the end of the day, I don’t think the Targaryens did much

If it’s only the rulers who’ve changed and not their policies, then I don’t think they really do much except keep people from doing wars against one another with the threat of a bigger army or dragon coming in

A King is a peer in his court, dependent on those immediately “one step lower” than him for support

As much as I dislike overly-centralizing things, I wouldn’t trust the Lords to be smart or even nice on average

Doubt the way of life of the Smallfolk changed much for one, hell they’re all probably just as uneducated and illiterate as many millenia before

Tywin Lannister should have say done something like try making a Metallurgy/Smithing/Crafting/Engineering Institute to figure out ways to extract more and more gold and other metals and smith them faster and better

But no, all that changes is who’s in charge and who’s in charge probably doesn’t really have much thoughts on how embarassing it is for their roads to be made of soil

 

[Typhonis]

Well in the books they aren't running out of gold in the mines. Which makes no sense unless Tywin is artificially cutting back on gold mining. Or we can cut the age of everything by ten . So the war of the dawn was 800 years earlier. Put the Targaryan invasion as 300 years ago and well. Then make Westeros smaller.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Well in the books they aren't running out of gold in the mines.

Supposedly they’ve been mining Casterly Rock for multiple millenia and House Casterly might have already been pretty old by the time it became House Lannister

So odds are the idea of it “running out” is pretty unlikely

Though, I question just how far deep within it they’ve already ventured

I’d think they’d have gone and accidentally discover some Balrogs or Eldritch Horrors or remnants of an Elder Race by now

Or have even made ancient caches or tombs within