GoT[Spoilers] - The government of westeros after the end

[Naldiin]

Having lurked these forums for the better part of an age, I thought, since I've written something, I might as well post it and see what people thought: https://acoup.blog/2019/05/20/new-acqui ... -westeros/

It's a historian's take (I am a professional historian, fwiw) on how stable the government of Westeros would be after the ending of Game of Thrones (needless to say, massive spoilers): hint - not very stable.

I know we're more Sci-fi than fantasy here, but both speculative fiction genres are very much about how we organize societies, and what that means for us. So I thought you all might be interested in this kind of take on how structures like the one Game of Thrones ends up on have fared in the past.

[Madner Kami]

The article fails to account for some Westeros-specific details. Bran legitimizes himself by virtue of having the support of all the current major players and time. As long as the current lords of the houses live, they will presumably support him and it stands to reason that this amount of time equals their remaining life-times. That alone is enough to create legitimacy, as proven by history. Just look at Augustus/Octavian, who managed to do exactly that. Everyone being in power at the time of his death, simply couldn't remember a time when Augustus was not the Princeps and thus, his children had the same legitimacy.

Also, as far as we can tell, Bran is functionally immortal. The "original" Three-Eyed Raven is way over a houndred years old and if that is not enough, it is implied that this man, presumably Brynden Rivers, "imprinted" himself onto Bran Stark, likely creating a conglomerate personality that is neither Brynden Rivers nor Bran Stark or, at worst, taking him over completely given time. It stands to reason that King Bran will subtley take influence on future happenings and guide the election in a way that results with the next greenseer on the throne, again being a Three-Eyed Raven.

[Naldiin]

The article fails to account for some Westeros-specific details. Bran legitimizes himself by virtue of having the support of all the current major players and time. As long as the current lords of the houses live, they will presumably support him and it stands to reason that this amount of time equals their remaining life-times. That alone is enough to create legitimacy, as proven by history. Just look at Augustus/Octavian, who managed to do exactly that. Everyone being in power at the time of his death, simply couldn't remember a time when Augustus was not the Princeps and thus, his children had the same legitimacy.

That focus works for Augustus at the end of his tenure, but not at the beginning. The process of creating the principate was rocky. You want to consider the Marcus Primus affair, the failure of Augustus to setup Marcellus as his heir over the objections of the stakeholders, along with riots in 22 and years following. Finally, there's Caepio's conspiracy, also in 22. We shouldn't view his reign with rose-tinted glasses - Augustus succeeded because he maintained a monopoly on military force, having assigned - essentially at gladius-point - all of the provinces with armies to himself.

Bran does not have that advantage. He has, in fact, no military of his own (Sansa is taking hers back to the North). None of his close allies do either - Bronn has himself only, and Tyrion's hereditary army (the Lannister one) has been obliterated. What happens when he tries to raise taxes? Or restrain Dorne from taking advantage of the vulnerability of the Reach (with which the Dornish banners have been in small-scale war for decades)? Or when the Ironborn almost inevitably attempt to leave?

The comparison to Augustus struggles on another account: Augustus was very careful to perform the role of a (Republican) Roman leader. From what we've seen, Bran needs to build personal relationships among the nobility, he needs to make speeches and public appearances to build legitimacy among the smallfolk and he needs to establish military ability - these are all core roles of Westerosi kings...and all things Bran is temperamentally incapable of doing.

Indeed, I think the Augustus example cuts the other way: Augustus' control was, at the beginning, very fragile, despite the fact that he had massive military superiority, canny political insight, tremendous personal charisma, and a famous and politically popular name. Bran has essentially none of these things save his name, which is a liability, since no one in the South likes the Starks (remember the play Arya watched?).

Also, as far as we can tell, Bran is functionally immortal. The "original" Three-Eyed Raven is way over a houndred years old and if that is not enough, it is implied that this man, presumably Brynden Rivers, "imprinted" himself onto Bran Stark, likely creating a conglomerate personality that is neither Brynden Rivers nor Bran Stark or, at worst, taking him over completely given time. It stands to reason that King Bran will subtley take influence on future happenings and guide the election in a way that results with the next greenseer on the throne, again being a Three-Eyed Raven.

This, I think, is potentially interesting, but not what the show implied (it dwelt quite significantly on Bran's inability to have heirs, for instance). I'm not sure we can take for granted that Bran's supernatural abilities will be major factor - they are heavily tied to the wierwood trees - none of which now grow in the South. Indeed, in the books, the original Three-Eyed Crow is grown through with those trees. Leaf puts it that "most of him has gone into the tree" as the cause of his immortality. Likewise, Bran's greenseer powers are explicitly phrases as 'looking through the eyes of the weirwoods.' It is possible Martin intends to give King Bran some trees, but the show has not - on that basis it seems perilous to assume that any of Bran's supernatural abilities will be the keystone of his rule.

In practice, were I Tyrion or Bran, I'd make sure anyone who actually knew that the original Three-Eyed Raven/Crow lived so long gets dead and fast - should the Lords Paramount find out, the result is almost certain to be violence. Tyrion's appeal to them was directly based on the temporary nature of Bran's rule. No one signed up to give King's Landing to Leto II.

Speaking of which - I find the idea of Bran as a sort of Leto II-esque God-king an interesting one - albeit something the show very much did not lean into (Tyrion repeatedly describes Bran as a repository of history, not an immortal-all-seeing-demi-god). I don't address that critique here - but Frank Herbert did, and essentially concluded that rule like that was a very, very bad thing, to be ended as soon as humanly possible, so long as it could be ended with permanence (thus the Golden Path to place humanity beyond the reach of any one omniscient ruler).

[clearspira]

Having lurked these forums for the better part of an age, I thought, since I've written something, I might as well post it and see what people thought: https://acoup.blog/2019/05/20/new-acqui ... -westeros/

It's a historian's take (I am a professional historian, fwiw) on how stable the government of Westeros would be after the ending of Game of Thrones (needless to say, massive spoilers): hint - not very stable.

I know we're more Sci-fi than fantasy here, but both speculative fiction genres are very much about how we organize societies, and what that means for us. So I thought you all might be interested in this kind of take on how structures like the one Game of Thrones ends up on have fared in the past.

Out of interest, how does a professional historian make money? The word professional implies a sustainable career after all.

[Robovski]

Having lurked these forums for the better part of an age, I thought, since I've written something, I might as well post it and see what people thought: https://acoup.blog/2019/05/20/new-acqui ... -westeros/

It's a historian's take (I am a professional historian, fwiw) on how stable the government of Westeros would be after the ending of Game of Thrones (needless to say, massive spoilers): hint - not very stable.

I know we're more Sci-fi than fantasy here, but both speculative fiction genres are very much about how we organize societies, and what that means for us. So I thought you all might be interested in this kind of take on how structures like the one Game of Thrones ends up on have fared in the past.

Out of interest, how does a professional historian make money? The word professional implies a sustainable career after all.

I'd speculate writing, lecturing/teaching, and grants? Perhaps consultation and/or presenting this information on video?

[Naldiin]

Out of interest, how does a professional historian make money? The word professional implies a sustainable career after all.

So - this is a great question. I find a lot of folks - including my students - don't have a strong sense of how the field works. I have a Ph.D. in history and teach at a university (google can tell you which one - like Bran, I appear to be First Of My Name). My current teaching gig is temporary ('adjunct'), as I'm in the hunt for a permanent position. The academic job market is national (there's basically one job market for the US and Canada combined), and for my specialty (Ancient History / Military History - my core research specialty is the ancient Roman army and economy), the number of openings in a year is quite small - perhaps a dozen in a good year. As you might imagine, it can take some time to find a good fit.

I tend to lean on the phrase 'professional historian' rather than 'history Ph.D' or 'college instructor' because I think there is increasingly some good historical discussion and research (but also a lot of really shoddy work as well) happening in the internet space that doesn't involve traditional historians who nevertheless make a career out of it.

That said: most historians - and here I am defining historian to require doing historical research as well as teaching (God bless history teachers, but they and I do not have the same job, for the most part) - are paid to teach in some capacity while doing research. For academics, our jobs include some expectation of both research and teaching undergraduates. You also have public historians - like the guides and curators in historical parks (battlefield parks, etc) - they often do real research, but are also expected to set up exhibits, and teach guests about the site, etc.

Very few historians are supported primarily by their writing - there are some, but only a handful. The structure of royalties for books is awful - if you want to be a professional writer, you need to sell hundreds of thousands or millions of copies. Truly groundbreaking historical research does not sell on this scale - usually.

The internet may be changing that. There are full-time youtubers who primarily make videos about historical topics, supported by ad-revenue or patreon or both. They do not, mostly, engage in original research - but some of them do (especially what's called 'experimental archaeology' - for instance trying to reconstruct a lost martial art based on the weapons it used). They also mostly do not have the fancy degrees. This causes a lot of traditional historians (read: university professors) to get all snobby and look down on them, which I think is stuck up and short-sighted.

Although I am very much a traditional historian by training and career path, I am very much excited by the prospect of the internet helping to disintermediate traditional publishers and allow more people to make a living bringing history to the people.

[clearspira]

Out of interest, how does a professional historian make money? The word professional implies a sustainable career after all.

So - this is a great question. I find a lot of folks - including my students - don't have a strong sense of how the field works. I have a Ph.D. in history and teach at a university (google can tell you which one - like Bran, I appear to be First Of My Name). My current teaching gig is temporary ('adjunct'), as I'm in the hunt for a permanent position. The academic job market is national (there's basically one job market for the US and Canada combined), and for my specialty (Ancient History / Military History - my core research specialty is the ancient Roman army and economy), the number of openings in a year is quite small - perhaps a dozen in a good year. As you might imagine, it can take some time to find a good fit.

I tend to lean on the phrase 'professional historian' rather than 'history Ph.D' or 'college instructor' because I think there is increasingly some good historical discussion and research (but also a lot of really shoddy work as well) happening in the internet space that doesn't involve traditional historians who nevertheless make a career out of it.

That said: most historians - and here I am defining historian to require doing historical research as well as teaching (God bless history teachers, but they and I do not have the same job, for the most part) - are paid to teach in some capacity while doing research. For academics, our jobs include some expectation of both research and teaching undergraduates. You also have public historians - like the guides and curators in historical parks (battlefield parks, etc) - they often do real research, but are also expected to set up exhibits, and teach guests about the site, etc.

Very few historians are supported primarily by their writing - there are some, but only a handful. The structure of royalties for books is awful - if you want to be a professional writer, you need to sell hundreds of thousands or millions of copies. Truly groundbreaking historical research does not sell on this scale - usually.

The internet may be changing that. There are full-time youtubers who primarily make videos about historical topics, supported by ad-revenue or patreon or both. They do not, mostly, engage in original research - but some of them do (especially what's called 'experimental archaeology' - for instance trying to reconstruct a lost martial art based on the weapons it used). They also mostly do not have the fancy degrees. This causes a lot of traditional historians (read: university professors) to get all snobby and look down on them, which I think is stuck up and short-sighted.

Although I am very much a traditional historian by training and career path, I am very much excited by the prospect of the internet helping to disintermediate traditional publishers and allow more people to make a living bringing history to the people.

Thanks for the reply, I found that to be an interesting and informative read.

[Naldiin]

Thanks for the reply, I found that to be an interesting and informative read.

Glad to. I think part of the reason academics and universities right now get a 'bad rap,' as it were, is that most people don't know what any of us do or why it is important or useful or enriches the human experience in any way. Academics have long thought themselves above such public appeals - and I think that was clearly a mistake.

[LittleRaven]

Holy cow Naldiin, I just read your analysis and I thought it was fantastic. I walked away from the last episode thinking... "Holy cow, I think this arrangement is a disaster." and it was a pleasure to read a confirming opinion from someone who has a far greater command of history than I do.

10/10, will recommend to friends. Thank you!

[Naldiin]

Holy cow Naldiin, I just read your analysis and I thought it was fantastic. I walked away from the last episode thinking... "Holy cow, I think this arrangement is a disaster." and it was a pleasure to read a confirming opinion from someone who has a far greater command of history than I do.

10/10, will recommend to friends. Thank you!

Glad you liked it!

If you want to be updated when I post new stuff, I put announcements on twitter (@BretDevereaux).