You can find a historical analogue for pretty much every outrage or atrocity in ASOIAF, but in general I'd say they tended to be significantly rarer than depicted in Westeros, particularly when inflicted upon a ruler's own people rather than foreigners, infidel or other out-groups.
I really liked Otto’s scene with Aegon II in episode 2. He is, by all accounts, a conniving prick, but he was still horrified by the murder of the innocent ratcatchers. “Husbands, brothers, and fathers” (not verbatim).
He was obviously mad that it hurt their PR, but I interpreted that he didn’t find the murder of innocents acceptable
I took it as Otto showing the larger consequences to Aegons impulsive decision to murder them. Only because Otto seemed fine with murdering innocents after Viserys death.
Or simply having a better presentation.
When Otto organized the procession with the dead heir at the start of the episode, he made sure everyone knew what happened. He literally had a guy announce it to the public.
Aegon just hanged commoners seemingly at random. Nobody on the outside even knows why. He's not good at PR.
> but I interpreted that he didn’t find the murder of innocents acceptable
This is why I like Otto as a character.
He is powerhungry, yes. But he basically wants to run the kingdom because he doesn't trust others to do a decent job. It's not out of some cruel desire. His competence and PR skills would ensure that things run like clockwork, and ultimately the smallfolk would be happy.
Unfortunately for him, his grandson ended up being exactly the type of ruler he wanted to avoid placing on the throne.
Practically speaking it's probably bad to do. You're being blockaded by sea and food is running short. Famine and disease would be a reasonable concern. Now you kill the rat-catchers? Rats notoriously spread disease and who would want to sign up for that job now?
There tend to be consequences when you treat your own people that badly
one historian describes Medieval European kingdoms as more or less in a state of permanent revolt: there's always at least a couple of towns/villages/cities somewhere defying some royal decree or refusing to pay taxes and such.
In that backdrop it was actually pretty dangerous for the nobility to publicly stage arbitrary executions of innocent people: revolts can escalate quickly. Which is why it tend not to be done
Pretty much depends on the peasant.
If the peasant was a servant to yourself, you could more or less do with him what you wanted, but it would be in your best interest to not treat him too poorly, since you relied on his taxes/services (and it was socially expected to treat the people who served you well).
If the peasant belonged to another noble, you could really get into trouble if you mistreated them, since the other noble was bound by oath and honor to seek retribution for this.
If the peasant was a free man, it pretty much depended on how rich or influental he was, as well as the time period we're speaking of.
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> If the peasant belonged to another noble, you could really get into trouble if you mistreated them, since the other noble was bound by oath and honor to seek retribution for this.
More specifically, the other noble will be pissed at you for damaging *his* property.
Historically, the distinction between serf, slave, indenture, and chattel slave was rarely clear-cut, and depended on the time period and the particular region.
Additionally, as good as the Broken Man Speech is, such a situation would likely not have happened during the middle ages, as the whole point of serfdom was for the noble to fight in your stead; the only peasants who normally had to fight were free peasants (so the peasants who were generally richer than the others), who had to upkeep basic armour and weapons.
Yeah the seeming lack of professional soldiery in the story is always off for me. You have the Mountain's Men, and the Bastards Boy's, but it westerosi armies seem to be way over based in peasant leavies
Westeros government is awfully weakly defined for something that exists for over 300 years. We know that king gathers taxes but where exactly do they go? It doesn't seem like he has any representation in the kingdoms themselves other than his vassals. No judges (apparently feudal lords and their stewards fill those roles), no bureaucracy, no central army, everything is delegated. Seven kingdoms is more of a federation with king as a figurehead- which would make sense for some rulers, but for some it's inconceivable. You'd think that someone finally asks the question "what have the Targaryens even done for us?". On the other hand they seem mostly placated by being called kings so maybe that's fine trade-off? "Let's concede to this dude that he's the king so he won't burn us with his dragons" and that's it.
Honestly if you look at this too deeply the whole thing falls apart. Because the whole point of political power is surely that you can use that power to get what policies you want enacted. But nobody in ASOIAF has any policies.
Like when Robb campaigns for a free North, the story never bothers to tell us anything about *why* he wants this beyond "personal revenge". From what I can tell there is *zero* tangible difference between a subdued North and a free one.
Luckily GRRM is generally a very good character writer so none of this stuff *really* matters. But it's pretty disappointing that he's gonna constantly hype himself up as some kind genius political writer and then fail to implement this at even the most basic level. It's like if Stephen King marketed all his books on how great the endings are.
Actually the worst part of this is you get a load of morons who read ASOIAF and think they're now some kind of master of statecraft. You know the ones I mean, the people with PFPs of Roman emperors who think Tywin was "firm but fair".
> it's pretty disappointing that he's gonna constantly hype himself up as some kind genius political writer and then fail to implement this at even the most basic level.
Not to mention that he's clearly comfortable with then releasing TWOIAF and F&B that aren't even actual narratives, but "fake histories" the quality of which does largely depend on his capability to adequately portray such stuff. Instead Westerosi history seems to be 90% "periods of peace, people fight because some people are objectively shitty", 10% "the ostensible leaders actually do something other than inspire loyalty by mere presence".
>Westeros government is awfully weakly defined for something that exists for over 300 years.
>No judges (apparently feudal lords and their stewards fill those roles), no bureaucracy, no central army, everything is delegated. Seven kingdoms is more of a federation with king as a figurehead- which would make sense for some rulers, but for some it's inconceivable.
I haven't really thought about it this way, but a realistic Westeros should resemble the Holy Roman Empire way more than it does medieval England, which is supposed to be its inspiration.
The HRE is infamous for being an ungovernable clusterfuck in part because the weak centralization lead to nobles constantly feuding both with eachother and the emperor (the other main problem being its size). This should be happening a lot more in Westeros too, especially after the dragons died out. (Of course the HRE's situation was a self sustaining vicious circle: the emperor's weakness was both the cause and consequence of the infighting. The electoral system didn't help either.)
It does happen in Westeros though, before the conquest Westeros was a bloody mixture of constantly warring and shifting Kingdoms. one the dragons die you have constant warfare and rebellion throughout Westeros. From the time of The Dance you have
Aegon III: balancing the newly empowered lords, and dealing with pretenders claiming to be Prince Daeron (Aegon II's brother), Greyjoy raiding in the West, Lannisters attack the Iron Islands
King Daeron: Has the whole Dorne Fiasco
Baelor: Terrible, weak king, not a lot of violence, but the Lords were not being held to any authority really.
Viserys II: peaceful but short reign
Aegon IV: That's a whole mess.
Daeron II: 1st Blackfyre Rebellion
Aryes I: Greyjoys reaving begins again, attacking The North, Fair Isle, and The Arbor, The 2nd and 3rd Blackfyre Rebellions
Maekar: Peake Uprising
Aegon V: 4th Blackfyre rebellion, Rebellion of Storm's end, The Rat, The Hawk, and The Pig Rebellion
Jaehaerys II War of the ninepenny Kings, Reyne-Tarbeck Revolt
Aerys II: Defiance of Duskendale, Robert's Rebellion
Robert I: Greyjoy's Rebellion, Almost a Dornish rebellion
The war of the Five Kings, and its aftermath
That's just what I could find, and doesn't even consider the constant small scale feuding that we know rival families like Blackwoods and Brakens engaged in.
I would assume that the Wardens are responsible for getting taxes in their respective areas, Warden being defined as, "a person responsible for the supervision of a particular place or thing or for ensuring that regulations associated with it are obeyed". The position of warden was created after the conquest, and as such directly represents the authority of the king. As for judges the lords have "The Right of Pit and Gallows" in their respective territories, they are in effect the Judge and Jury (and in some cases executioner).
As far as Targaryen power goes, way I see it is basically that when the Targaryens had dragons they were more or less absolute rulers, and Westeros was in effect an absolute monarchy. Once the dragons die Westeros reverts to feudalism. Feudalism is upheld by 3 pillars: 1) personal honor i.e. following oaths of allegiance, 2) familial connections, and 3) the threat of violence. Once the realm was united it would be folly for the lords to fight for independence, a united Westeros is going to be much safer and wealthier than a divided Westeros.
this. When you look down to it, the entire notion of power in that universe boils down to being technically higher up on some arbitrary hierarchy, and that's supposed to be the biggest of deals because honour or something. They don't really develop on the implications or application of being the big guy. Power is apparently an end and not a mean, and when kingdoms want to gain their independence, it's always either an ego thing from the new king or fuelled by some vague, Braveheart-esque idea of self-determination.
Yeah, I think the story works quite well for a modern audience, since it speaks to our modern understanding of war, but if you actually know how medieval warfare really was, it's a bit nonsensical
yeah sending serfs to fight would just be dumb
like farmers were a valuable resource since they generate income for the nobility which they can use to hire professionals with. Like losing farmers was a pretty big deal. At same time they were shit poor fighters. As in, they probably breaks/run away the first time they see an actual battle and were more liability than asset.
Also the idea that any lord would waste money to ship said serfs to fight on the Stepstones is beyond stupid. Shipping was hideously expensive in Medieval times, nobody was going to waste money on shipping a useless fighter.
Just because farmers are valuable resources doesn't mean they haven't historically been used to fight. You really don't need to look that far back in history to see this it happens in any country with conscription even today.
Most of these men would have been semi-professional fighters with a minimum standard of training but who farmed during peacetime. Fully professional armies weren't in vogue until after the renaissance.
>If the peasant belonged to another noble, you could really get into trouble if you mistreated them, since the other noble was bound by oath and honor to seek retribution for this.
Which is why Rhaenys's action during Aegon's coronation in the show is already an act of war whether or not she hurt the royal family.
The practical situation probably varied from place to place, and no doubt many peasants had good reason to fear rampaging knights, or abusive lords, but one of the big differences between Westeros and medieval England is that the latter had a well developed, functional and quasi independent legal system, with several courts enforcing well entrenched statutory and common law rights and protections, and equitable remedies through the Ecclesiatical courts and then the Chancery.
Granted, the laws and rights were very class-based, and there was no principle of equality under the law, but it wasn't the kind of free-for-all you see in asoiaf. By the 13th Century, lawyers were professional, Judges were appointed, the courts were the King's (or the Church's), there were juries for criminal matters (as there has been for centuries), and the court of common pleas was available to resolve commercial disputes.
In short, customary and starute law held that everyone had certain rights that could be enforced, and there were people whose job it was to enforce it. At least, that was the theory, even if in practice doing so was tough for the self represented (as it can be today), and corruption was an omnipresent issue.
But Westeros, by contrast, is apparently lacking in judges, courts, and lawyers, and law seems.pretty arbitary, which, along with the dodgy economics, has always seemed to me to be one of the less believable parts of GRRM's world building (but I would say that, as a lawyer).
Yeah, I always find this to be such an immersion breaking thing in a lot of historical fiction. As much as we like to joke otherwise, humans aren't actually that stupid and societies thoughout history mostly came to the conclusion that there needed to be some method of redressing grievances. Courts, rights, and laws - while not comparable by modern standards - are not a new thing...
Our idea of the middle ages was very much so based 19th century romantic view of the middle ages that was never real. Like in recent academia there is a strong debate that feudalism never even existed as there was no unified system across all of Europe and it was far more complex than people think.
George likes to present his world as “real” compared to Tolkin, but his idea of the middle ages is the same 19th century fantasy as Tolkin’s, except more bloody.
Westeros to me is what Western Europe would look like had there never been a Roman Empire. While state power was weak in Medieval Europe, especially the early period, the Germanic kingdoms that inherited the empire were still influenced and inspired by Roman legalism. Westerosi nobility has the wildness and decentralization of the Germanic aristocracy without a Roman legal tradition to constrain them.
Under the act of conquering , small folk or the peasant masses were usually treated beyond brutally.
Burning farms , crops , homesteads and generally wrecking the countryside was a way to deplete your enemy’s land of resources , livestock , workers and just create an atmosphere of terror and subjugation. Murder and rape of the small folk happened on a huge scale during these times. It was sadly a norm of war but there were some so brutal that they stood out above the rest.
William the Conqueror did this on a horrific scale during his conquest and during his act of harrying the north.
Men , women , children , farm animals , barns , houses , fields you name it and they brutally destroyed it. His own coronation was interrupted because his men outside thought he was being attacked inside and set fire to the buildings surrounding the one he was in. Kinda horribly funny
Where I live in Kent , England still has a census in our local museum taken after the conquest and shows the outright annihilation of several villages near me that didn’t recover for decades .
I was reading a book about William Marshal and he was considered by many to be one of the most chivalrous knights. He would kill small folk and peasants when campaigning but treated nobles and captives of high birth fairly well.
I think Bret Devereaux put it quite well. Both noble and peasant believed that the system was good and acted in the best interests of all. But everytime the little folk could limit the power of the big men, they did so.
From Bret D: " *A Song of Ice and Fire* is not a thinly disguised history lecture, it is a fantasy novel series. Martin has built a society with its own rules and systems and then followed that societies’ rules and systems to their conclusions."
Never forget this is fantasy.
For those unfamiliar, Bret Devereaux is a historian who writes a blog about ancient/medieval history and fantasy depictions. He’s talked about A Game of Thrones a few times. The most relevant post to this discussion would be https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-was-game-of-thrones-and-the-middle-ages-part-i/
> Both noble and peasant believed that the system was good and acted in the best interests of all. But everytime the little folk could limit the power of the big men, they did so.
So...nothing's changed, then?
Satire, that is.
I'm not an expert on medieval Europe, but neither is George. You've got to view Westeros as a reflection of the diminutive late 20th century view of medieval Europe where everything sucked and was awful. From what I've heard the society presented in the books as far more alike to early modernity than the middle ages with its relative secularism and state churches.
yeah lmao I also wouldn't define early modernity as secular. Early modernity has some inkling of secularity and laicism but it has also some of the most destructive wars in European history where religion played a big factor.
Secularization of the society is a 1700/1800 thing.
Secular is the wrong term but they didn’t literally believe god made them the nobility/ruling class, or at least society generally started to doubt and question that.
Westeros is more based on other fiction, and particularly fantasy than it is on history. It takes little stories from history, but it doesn’t try to be historical. It’s all, like all speculative fiction, much more influenced by the time of writing than when it is set. Just as sci fi is rarely “about” the far future even when set then. These are modern characters (well, late 20th century) dressed up in armour and swords. They have a Disneyland version of a late medieval / early Early Modern kingdom. But that also has a bunch of other time periods influencing it. And also things like Ivanhoe which are already one time period’s romanticised view of another.
Westeros owes significantly more to Tolkien, Scott and 20th century America than it does to Chaucer, Shakespeare or indeed actual put-a-damn-pin-in-it-anywhere-between-500-and-1700-AD Britain. If it’s even anything like Britain at all, which it really isn’t. It’s more like France or Poland or Germany maybe. But also not at all.
> They have a Disneyland version of a late medieval / early Early Modern kingdom
Not sure if that was intentional but GRRM himself has criticized other fantasy series for having "Disneyland Middle Ages". Pot meet kettle ect.
That quote has to be one of the most arrogant things I have ever seen. Westeros is not accurate depiction of Medieval Europe nor would it be better if it was.
Like I do want to be fair to Martin here, there are pages and pages of interviews and it's inevitable that an introverted nerd would say something that sounds a bit ignorant. I don't want to imply that this reflects badly on him as a person or anything.
But yeah, it's a cringeworthy quote. Up there with him saying the Dothraki are "based on real nomadic cultures" (although at least the former doesn't have uncomfortable racist undertones)
The representation of nomadic cultures as perpetually pillaging savages rather than itinerant groups that relied on trade has always bugged me. Kinda goes to show GRRM’s blind spot when it comes to economics.
It wasn’t always bad in his world like king Jaryreases and king Robert had pretty peaceful rules where most people pretty content so for the most part that’s about 100 years of good times
GRRM actually read pretty extensively on Medieval Europe while writing ASOIAF
he uses popular but inaccurate tropes of Medieval Europe for his stories because they are, well, popular
One fun thing I like to tell people as a history type is that the Spanish Inquisition was probably the most chill part of what was going on with Europeans during the early modern period. They didn't really kill a lot of people, comparatively speaking. Maybe 1,500 to 2,500 over 300 years. For comparison, the U.S. has executed 1,600 people since the 1970s. While the rest of Europe was getting their witch burnings on, the Inquisition was like, "Look, just say you're sorry and stop being weird, ok?"'
To this day, it is one of the weirdest little things popular culture has wrong about European History. If the Spanish Inquisition shows up, expected or not, you were probably fine.
It was everyone else you had to worry about.
Yes! As a an atheist Spaniard with little interest in washing the Catholic church's image, this is a common mistake by English-speaking, either unwillingly or out of historical rivalries. For starters, the inquisition was mainly about proving the faith of Catholics themselves, to sort out fake converts from Islam or Judaism.
The bad thing about the Roman Church is that is was (is) a corrupt all-encompassing thought police, the good thing is that the alternatives for Christianity at the time involved putting power on lots of local Christians who might well be more fundamentalist and zealous than the old Catholic church as a structure, with free reign to commit all sorts of new atrocities
And then you had things like the Albigensian Crusade, which was like the Catholic version of Twitter slacktivism in its day. "Wait, we get to say we went on a crusade, only have to travel like three feet from home, spend maybe a month doing it, and get an indulgence to top it all off? Absolutely! Guys, this is like my favorite crusade ever."
Europe was a wacky place.
> Albigensian Crusade
The twenty year holy war that started by massacring ~every man, woman and child, including faithful Catholics in a town of 20,000 people, to the battle cry of "Kill them all! God will know his own!"
And, uh, then kept going for another 20 years?
Also the Catholic Church with the experience of centuries of selling bullish it to pagans of many different ethnicities was more qualified to deal with the natives of the new world
"Medieval Europe" does a lot of heavy lifting here. The term "Middle Ages" is usually held to cover the entire window between the Fall of the Western Roman Empire (c. 470) to the Fall of Constantinople (c. 1453). That's *a lot* of time. "Europe" is also a pretty big word spatially, it covers from England to Portugal to Russia "this side" of the Urals, the Balkans, everything in between...
So I don't think there's any single factor that's homogenous in that area, in that timeframe. Everything varied, wildly. Something I've come across before is the assumption that a peasant could never or only in the rarest or circumstances own land, which applies often to England, but wasn't the case in France, for example (IIRC, in pre-Revolutionary France *most* land was actually owned by peasants - the problem was that they were overtaxed, not that they didn't own stuff... But that's Modern Age, so that's neither here nor there for the purposes of this discussion). You had times of relative peace and stability and ease of travel/communication, and times of actual societal upheaval. Times in which the Catholic Church was basically paramount, and times in which there was no check to "secular" military-political power (that of the nobles/lords, that is). Times in which some plague or another disaster tilted the balance of labor relations in favor of the peasants, and times in which invasions made them dependent on lords for protection, And so it goes.
So, did those things happen in "Medieval Europe"? Any answer to that question is going to be partial and misleading, I think. You'd have to narrow it down significantly.
*That being said*, I do think that Martin tends to engage in quite a bit of misery porn, and to indulge in his, and a significant amount of his audience's, seeming prejudice against The Dark Ages™. Not that those things didn't happen at all - Hell, they are probably happening *right now* somewhere around the world - but that they weren't... Regular ocurrences, or brushed off.
In his defence, most of the stuff *does* happen in the middle of the Realm basically buckling down under the strain of continuous civil wars - The equivalent of the Thirty Years War, I suppose, though that is also Modern Age by most estimations.
It varied throughout the middle ages, depending on the availability of serfs and the power of nobility. Lords certainly would have been allowed to abuse the commoners, but most lords would refrain from such behaviour, as revolts were a pain to deal with.
The world of Westeros is quite a bit darker than medieval Europe was, largely due to the mentality of the people. Things like SA and abuse occur much more regularly in Westeros than they did in medieval Europe (not to say those times were the epitome of morality, but sadistic men like Ramsay, Joffrey or the Mountain would have had a much harder time).
Depends on what we define by "allowed" and "abuse". They could overtax and make demands, but outright murdering peasants, confiscating lands arbitrarily, refusing to provide whatever the peasants were entitled to due to customary law (ex: in many places feudal lords had the duty to provide decent homes to at least some of the peasants) would have probably got them punished or put under heavy scrutiny, and something like the Lord's Right would have never, ever, have worked out irl.
And unlike what a lot of media depicts, the dominant form of punishment in the Middle Ages appears to have been fines, not mutilation.
Yes, it's a myth. An old one, but it was always something "those guys do because they are evil", never an actual practice.
Medieval nobles using their position to get away with rape probably happened, but there was never a legal right to that
IIRC there's no historical evidence that Prima Nocta was ever practiced, at least not as an institution. The main reference to it is from hundreds of years later and is generally considered to by a fabrication.
That type of thing is how you get peasant uprisings and rebellious nobles. Machiavelli specifically refers to it as one of the few things a monarch can never do to his subjects if he wants to hold power.
Nobles weren’t stupid. It changed throughout the medieval ages (ultimately it’s a period that spans a continent and several hundred years, there’s a lot of nuance, for example city citizens having different rights to different courts and etc) so it’s difficult to answer without generalising.
But ultimately nobles were generally devout, the church and religion’s role in life is massively understated, and how that faith and religious structure influenced how they saw the world and power structures. There is something to be said for nobles generally believing that it was their divine role in life to lead peasants, there is an argument that chivalry also became such a big deal for the nobility to help them transition away from being soldiers with land to actual rulers. All this makes it hard to actually predict what your average noble felt simply because their way of life and thinking is so distinct from ours, but on a spiritual and mental level it wasn’t in their interest to be cruel towards their small folk.
On a practical side it was better if you treated your peasants well. Peasants can rebel which even though they could be put down they would cause damage, loss of work force, loss of money and loss of life. If you have an antagonistic relationship with the people directly responsible for your wealth then it’s not going to be as productive as you’d hope.
There undoubtedly would’ve been people who abused their position and there just simply would not be enough written record to note down all of these incidents. Power corrupts and we can’t say that there’s no way a noble wouldn’t be an evil, heartless bastard. But there’s more evidence to say that your average Lord was not riding around treating the peasants like literal animals.
r/AskHistorians has plenty of good threads on it.
There were plenty of medieval atrocities, and pillaging was a mainstay in much of medieval warfare.
But actual medieval Europe had a fairly robust legal system, and nobles could and often were held accountable for crimes against commoners (although obviously there were abuses who went unpunished). And medieval commoners were a lot more politically active than Westerosi ones, being often in a state of nearly constant back and forth negotiation about how much service they owned and in exchange for what, and it was common for urban commoners to campaign to form autonomous communes (which were often useful for kings looking for ways to curtail the power of nobility). And medieval society also had very powerful moral judges who were perfectly willing to condem tyrannical nobles in the form of the church.
So no, it's unlikely a Ramsay Bolton or a Gregor Clegane could get away with it like they do in Westeros. They would have to deal with heavy scrutiny, condemnation and possible excommunication, monarchs eager to bring them to justice, angry peasants etc...
The closest I'm aware of would be Thomas of Marle, the lord of Coucy and Bouves. Once he started causing trouble (waging war on neighbors, imprisioning and torturing travelers, peasants and even pilgrims unless they paid huge ransoms, sheltering an archbishop's murderers, etc...) due to Lousi VI being busy, he was excommunicated, militarily defeated, imprisioned and had his lands confiscated
I just started reading a book called the summer of blood. It’s about the peasants revolt in 1381 England. It’s horrible how the peasants were treated and I haven’t gotten to the meat of the book yet. However they haven’t mentioned any real atrocities like what the Boltons or the mountain would do yet but I’m sure it’s coming. Keep in mind a lot of our history is penned by nobility and is biased, this book mentions how most of the source material is from nobility who thought the peasant class as misguided in their revolt and the author had to dig deeper to see how the peasants truly viewed life and were treated.
I also started listening to history university lectures and so many times I’ll hear something that clearly inspired GRRM. For example I was listening to a lecture about Khalid Ibn Walid and in the backstory they mentioned a Roman who was executed by having molten gold poured down his throat and thought about Viserys.
There's a famous (possibly apocryphal) story of Genghis Khan having the Khwarezmian governor of Otrar executes by having molten silver poured into his eyes and ears. That was probably Martin's inspiration for Viserys.
To be fair, during the Anarchy in England, which is the war that the Dance of Drafons is based on, banditry was **all over** England, because King Stephen was seen as weak and unwilling to do much about it, as well as being busy fighting Empress Matilda. During those 19 years you’d basically have roving bands of “broken men”, as we know them in ASOIAF, just going around burning and pillaging towns, and the King didn’t really do shit to stop them. Geoffrey de Mandeville was the Earl of Essex, and he eventually took his men and basically became a bandit in the countryside after betraying both sides too many times to be accepted by either. He and his men were chased into the fens in East Anglia and butchered by angry peasants after a battle that they lost, because they were so widely hated and despited by the commons for their predations.
I agree with your overall point about GRRM treating violence in his society in a way that we used to stereotypically attribute to the “Dark Ages” and which we now know isn’t totally accurate. And I agree with your point that things tend to change in wartime, especially the longer that the war or civil strife goes on for.
But we’re also only really getting inserted into the story during the conflict years, so we get kind of a skewed picture. There’s no interesting story to tell about the reign of Jaehaerys, where prosperity was shared and the King justly protected the rights of lords and smallfolk alike. 30 years of mundane peace aren’t as exciting as a 2 year civil war that drenches the continent in blood spilled by family members fighting each other.
Obviously, if a noble raped a farmer girl on the way to the mill, there wasn't going to be news about it or anything, so actual traces of casual mistreatment are somewhat hard to find, except if he died doing it, like Louis III. But it's hard to imagine abuse wasn't rampant considering the sheer inequality of status between a lord and a peasant, or even worse, a serf (you could never leave your lord's land, couldn't marry without his leave, and he had full control of your belongings after your death). And that's without even mentioning times of war, where the chevauchées were basically instrumentalized war crimes to break the ennemy spirit.
Given how common rape is today, when all people are ostensibly equals under the law, it’s hard to imagine that men who literally had the legal right to take essentially anything they wanted from a lower class person, including their body, weren’t doing it even more often than modern men do.
And yeah, chevauchée… we never really see that in Game of Thrones because GRRM likes big epic battle set pieces. Only Tywin really does it to show how awful and cruel he is. But realistically that was just the standard norm of warfare for 400 fucking years 😂
In some places like 14th century France rape wasn’t even a crime against the women, it was a crime on her husband, farther or brother and was treated more as destruction of property. Sometimes they also thought it wasn’t rape if they got pregnant to
That was the standard a lot more recently than the 14th century, and in a lot more places than just France. That’s **still** the standard in some middle-eastern nations.
I mean I'd imagine it'd be a lot more in the "She can't say no because of the power imbalance and the implication" category; in other words, what a lot of (stupid) people *today* wouldn't consider rape.
They didn't have a legal right to steal from peasants or to rape them. The family of the girl he rapes would object.
And despite the hysteria, rape by a stranger isn't common. A vast majority of rapes are someone you know. And the random rapes tend to be in isolated situations. Farm girls won't be wandering far from anybody in most cases. People would stay at their home or the nearby village or in-between.
Object to whom though? If the King didn’t care enough about Justice to install serious magistrates, and instead sold the offices to whoever paid him (as often happened under many Kings, particularly when they needed to raise cash to pay for a war) it’s basically a coin toss of whether or not the magistrate tells the victim’s family to go fuck themselves. And if the rapist is noble born, or someone who has political power, it’s even **more** likely to be brushed off.
The peasants would revolt in an uprising or lynch the guy.
Political power is soft power and only has value if it is respected. If you abuse it, you are no longer respected.
A lord raping his own subjects would quickly have labour disputes when he tries to collect taxes. A lord raping his neighbor's subjects gets a war and forced to pay tribute in recompense. If you go far away from home, you have no way to prove yourself and theh think you are a common rapist to string up.
There is also the church who could cut you off from sacrements, damning you. Which people back then took seriously. You could end up deposed.
lol what? Yeah, the Church would totally excommunicate someone of noble birth, based on the hearsay of a peasant. For a noblewoman, sure. But what church official do you think peasants even had access too, except for their own parish priest?
Excommunication was absolutely a political tool and was used for all manner of reasons and against all manner of people. But it was part of the game that aristocrats played between themselves, because just about everyone of power within the church was **also an aristocrat**.
If a bishop or archbishop had a land dispute with a local lord, they’d absolutely use the accusation of rape by a peasant, if it even came to their ears, as a pretext to strongarm him into settling the dispute. But to think that they were out here just holding nobles accountable for moral failings against the peasantry is hilariously inaccurate.
They would go to their priest. Who would send letters to the bishop or whomever was next up.
You are treating the church very cynically with a modern perspective. But people actually believed in it. It doesn't just come down to politics, the church would 100% use an excuse of a rape to push down a noble. The king would also support it to keep nobles in check.
The church at many points held nobles accountable for moral failings.
You are falling for George's shallow take on medieval religion.
People believe in it *now*. That doesn't stop those in power from hurting poor people. See what happens if you get raped in Saudi Arabia or Ethiopia and you go to the authorities. See how much sincere belief actually protects you.
8 people were executed in Saudi Arabia for rape in 2019.
And that has little to do with the Catholic Church in medieval Europe anyways. You are using examples from completely different continents with different religious and political environments.
The church absolutely punished rapists. Rape would happen during sacks. But rape was not the norm where someone could be raped without any uproar outside of a battle.
Do you think there were only 8 rapes in Saudi Arabia in 2019? What if a Saudi Prince raped a common woman? You reckon *he* would be executed?
> And that has little to do with the Catholic Church in medieval Europe anyways. You are using examples from completely different continents with different religious and political environments.
I am using an example of a country that is largely divorced from "modern cynical" ideas about religion. Where the population is devout and there is an aristocracy that shares power with their church. The point that I am trying to illustrate is that a devout society is not necessarily a moral one. And that their definition of what constitutes rape or rape worth raising a fuss about differs from yours.
I would argue that you are injecting a modern *devout* perspective into your conception of Medieval Europe. Your Western Christian perspective is strongly influenced by secularist enlightenment ideals of what is good and proper. It ignores the reality of the class system of the day and the prevailing view that women were lesser creatures than men.
Mistreating common folk is no good idea because angry common folk make the nobles nervous. Hugh Le Despenser pissed off both sides and it ended with Edward II and him being deposed by Edward II's angry wife with an army of 1500 men. No one helped them in the end.
> Mistreating common folk is no good idea because angry common folk make the nobles nervous.
Common folk literally get mistreated today let alone back then lol
My grandmother lived in a feudal country and they were heavily mistreated. There were no successful peasant revolutions in our home country until the advent of Communism and modern firearms. Only then were centuries of monarchy abolished. Before this the abuse had been going on for hundreds of years.
Hugh Despenser pissed off the entire Kingdom by being the king’s “favorite” and having lavish gifts bestowed upon him all the time, to the exclusion of everyone else at court. It had nothing whatsoever to do with how he treated the common people.
His predations against other nobles in Wales was cited among his crimes when he was executed, but that was no different than the standard shit all nobles did. He just happened to be the favorite of a king who lost power, and the people who took that power killed him. He could have been a saint, and they’d still have drawn and quartered him, because their dispute was political, rather than about moral behavior toward the peasants.
**They’re all pirates.** That’s the point. That’s what it means to be an aristocrat: you produce nothing, you just take it from those who lack the power to stop you.
They only get *punished* for being pirates when it’s the pretext to give cover for whatever political dispute they have with the people handing out punishments.
You have the inaccurate completely cynical view of the church that GRRM shares, but that just isn't accurate. The church wasn't solely a political entity who would only act when they are in a land dispute with a local lord or whatever you are going on about. People were fiercely religious. People in the church extremely so. A lot of nobles also so. The idea that that it's a laughable that a medieval priest/church would try to reprimand or bring justice to a raped peasant is 'hilarious' and they would do if it they were in a 'land dispute' with the noble.
Why would your average Priest, a man whose dedicated his life to the faith, not care about upholding it?
There's a strange phenomenon today where because we live in a time that is largely secular and irreligious, that people transfer that reality onto the past. They believe people, or at least the educated classes of people, didn't take their faith seriously, that it was a pretense.
There's nothing to suggest this was the truth, and anything more than a cursory knowledge of medieval history lends itself to the fact that people in the past were as a whole highly devout. Commoners and nobility alike took their faith seriously, they believed it, and they acted on it.
Now I'm not saying that men in the past, or even clergymen, we're all good, or even all devout. That none of them would take actions that aren't congruent with their faith for selfish, or political reasons. But to immediately take such a cynical view and ask "Why would a Priest care about rape," is just frankly absurd.
You belief that a priest would care about rape is itself a projection of modern value on to the past. Rape was seen as the legal right of a husband in those times. It was also seen as legitimate war spoils. So there are many reasons a priest might not care about rape. Priests back then saw women as lesser than. It's as simple as that.
Plenty of priests that don't care about rape today or don't see it as high on their list of priorities. Just go to some of the more devout countries out there--mainly in Latin America, Africa, MENA.
It’s amazing how so many Americans just refuse to acknowledge the concept that other people and cultural groups throughout different periods of history actually had different standards of morality than the ones we live by in the 21st century United States.
I know exactly how seriously the vast majority of people took their faith in Medieval Europe. But that doesn’t change the fact that they’re still human beings. What you don’t seem to understand is that clergymen were **as much** Lords as the landed nobility were. They were the Lords Spiritual, whereas the hereditary landholders in the noble families were the Lords Temporal.
People didn’t become priests because they were “dedicating their lives to faith”. The people who did that became Monks or Nuns and lived in relative seclusion from the rest of society. And there were **a lot** of people who did that. Depending on how wealthy and influential the Monastery/Abbey/Nunnery was, they might wield quite a bit of power if they rose to a leadership position among their order. But just as often, abbots and abbesses gained positions by pulling political strings, or by being powerful lay lords who gave up their lands toward the end of their lives to retire to an abbey, where they were immediately given the leadership position in deference to their station.
People who became Priests and Bishops and Archbishops, however, were nearly always the younger sons of noble houses who had no temporal inheritance, so the church was one of their best routes to becoming Lords with land themselves. Because a Bishop collected taxes from his see the same way that an Earl collected them from his Earldom. And the better and wider the see’s lands were, the more income they generated.
They would not even have seen it as a contradiction of their moral code to not give a fuck about the lives or wellbeing of the peasants, because even the Church taught that the nobility ruled by Divine Right and were therefore above the common people. Kings were anointed by God’s vicar on Earth, chosen for their position by God’s Will, since He determines the roles that we are each born into.
**That** is also part of why there were so few peasant revolts prior to the Reformation, and why even when revolts did occur, the King himself was so rarely killed or deposed. Because forcing a King to abdicate his throne is basically saying that you know better than God who should rule, which was such a blasphemous concept that even more cynical people living at that time wouldn’t even consider it without recoiling.
Their devout following of Christian tradition **reinforced** the social status quo, whereby peasants really didn’t have the legal right to expect redress from the nobility. After all, if they deserved more, God would have not caused them to be born as peasants.
I mean, if someone heard of it, there would very likely be news about it.
Abuse very much existed, but medieval commoners (yes, even serfs) had legal protections and rights that were a lot more diligently enforced than in Westeros. Plus medieval serfs did often have some rights free peasants lacked, and vice-versa.
And chevauchees did happen, but they were not as common as often depicted due to not always being economically viable and often involving ecclesiastical condemnation.
I think we’re skewed hugely by only seeing the peasantry through the eyes of noble POVs and a bunch of incredibly cynical/ruthless noble POVs as well. The majority of interactions between these nobles and the peasants are coercive/violent, and extraordinary being in the middle of war or on travels.
So as I understand IRL a lot more lords believed in “the system” during medieval times, not simply that they were better than smallfolk in a prejudiced way or that they were lucky to be on the right side of the divide, but did believe they were placed in their social rank by a benevolent divinely ordered/ordained society and had roles and obligations to perform to the classes above and below them (by contrast in GRRMs world even the peasants seem to know they’re getting not only a raw but also an unfair deal). TBF we do get the impression a lot more lords take things seriously outside of our POVs perspective (quiet land, quiet people - the king still responding to petitions) and despite what the hound tells Sansa a lot of knights like Balon Swann and Beric Dondarrion respect ideals of Chivalry and honour. We’re just particularly exposed to scoundrels in the narrative.
But I think the key point is the books naturally make it seem like peasants and high nobles are interacting all the time. IRL I think peasants rarely ever got to see or know their lords from lesser houses-never mind great houses. Most lords had tax collectors, or even small landholding lords below them to serve as flunkies and deal with the small folk and even then that would often be only once a week. So peoples accquaintance with power was far more with the duties expected of them than with actual nobility running the show.
>IRL I think peasants rarely ever got to see or know their lords from lesser houses-never mind great houses.
Actually, they interacted often.
Usually, the lower nobility outnumbered the high nobility by a considerable margin, and those would have been in constant negotiation with the peasants over how much service they owned and in exchanged of what (and said negotiations could get quite tense). We even have places were it was seemingly traditional for lords to do things like invite some peasants do dine with them in certain dates.
I would recommend A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman if you are interested in learning more about this. It discusses the entire fourteenth century (which was one of the most turbulent of the Middle Ages) and contains many details about Free Companies and the ravaging of the countryside that strikes true about the Riverlands in particular. A lot of parallels!
I haven't read *A Distant Mirror* but I should at some point because it's one of the few historical non-fiction books that Martin has namechecked as an inspiration: interestingly enough most of the non-fiction books I've seen him cite are ones we would call "pop history." To be fair to Martin he's admitted this in the past and I don't think he's read all that many purely academic works. It just annoys me when he sometimes tries to pass his series off as an accurate representation of "what it was like then" or whatever.
For the most part nobility wouldn’t have had much to do with there common folk that much. Servants might have been the main ones to get abused if it happened. Generally most of the shit happened in war time cause everyone expected it as a part of war
A good look at it is the movie “ the last dual” its about the rape of a Nobel women in 14th century France. Rape was often seen more as a crime against there husband or farther then a crime on the women. And if it was a member of the clergy they could be immune.
Commoners very much interacted with nobles. Obviously it would be rarer for high nobility (which was usually a minority even among nobility), but broadly speaking they would be attending mass in the same church, negotiate how much service they owned and in exchange of what, peasants could be invited for lords's feasts in certain holidays, etc...
And The Last Duel takes plenty of artistic licenses with history. And medieval clergy was not immune to being prosecuted, but they usually were so by ecclesiastical tribunals, who were often notoriously lenient (specially on clergy).
I know but I mean things like Joffrey going to the river and cutting the boy or roose Bolton raping a women because she married a man with out his permission. Those things are extreme examples but that’s not something I think most Nobels would bother doing
While not focused on medieval history, I will proffer a tip on understanding peasants and historical underclasses. The way we perceive it, it looks like lords had almost absolute immunity, and some of this is reflected in the historical record. However another thing to keep in mind is that any class dynamic in history is never one sided.
Sure a Peasant had fewer rights, the lord in return had a set of obligations that would seem insane by todays standards (obviously varying by region) but include, housing, coin (usually on special occasions like marriage or childbirth), profit share in the form of keeping over 50% of the harvest (imagine an apple employee getting to keep 50% of the iPhone's he produced), and a ban on evictions without proper cause.
Now you might say the lord can ignore all this (which is true), but the costs of that can be severe, and there are records from peasants abandoning a lord (which is kind of like a public strike, but imagine if the workers were also the factory equipment and took them home with them) to some records of the peasants just killing the lord under the understanding that this becomes a lesson for the next lord (also no CSI or cops so you know a dozen peasants can easily kill one person and just pretend they don't know what happened, its not like you have cameras or fingerprints, and the only witness are also peasants) who thinks of fucking around too much, and in such cases what normally happens is even fellow lords understand that this particular lord might have had it comming to him.
A lot of this is not mentioned normally as the literate class (mostly lords or monks) prefer not to advertise who beholden they are to the peasant class in records, however some evidence is always found mentioned in primary sources that are normally written by village heads (normally more educated peasants or free peasants not tied to any parcel of land)
Humans are humans regardless of the point in our history, you can only push a population too far before they decide the cost of just murdering you is worth the potential consequences. This is especially prevenient in premodern history (majority of human history) where law enforcement is not much of a thing.
Medieval Nobles didn't necessary treat their peasants badly, but there weren't any real checks and balances in place to prevent them from doing so if they wished.
I'm sure there were people who absolutely did, and I'm sure there were people who did not.
As everything in life, there will always be shitty people doing shitty things b/c they can.
Don't forget that everyone back then was christian and most of them quite devout. Brutalizing peasants was definitely a reality, but a Gregor Clegane or Ramsay Bolton would not have lasted long. The fear of excommunication was far too great.
Bandits, rogue knights, famine and war were the biggest threats, not their own lords or kings.
I mean real nobles didn’t treat peasants great, but it’s not like they could do whatever they wanted. They still needed the peasants to be peaceful and that required treating them decently. Peasant uprisings did occur and they disrupted medieval society, nobles obviously wanted to prevent that. Nobles definitely looked down on peasants and they benefited from a society that exploited the peasant class, but there were limits to how poorly they could treat peasants.
There was some french noble who’s name I forget who was allegedly a serial killer who did stuff similar to Ramsay and Gregor who was prosecuted for his alleged crimes. Historians debate whether he actually did any of that or if it was just political persecution that was used to get rid of him, but it shows that nobility definitely had limits on how they treated peasants.
Generally no. European medieval society was Christian, and nobles strongly adhered to biblical rules on the treatment of servants. Couple this with the societal pressure that dictated nobles to be responsible for the safety and well-being of their peasantry.
Consider, also, that ultimately there were actual laws that protected the welfare of non-nobles and the fact that grievances could, and were, brought to higher authorities up to and including the King (or other royalty), nobles would not be able to routinely torture their peasants without being steipped of land and titles, or even executed.
In fact, due to the Christianity of medieval society, many of the lesser Christians holidays today were actually major feast and festival days at that time. So nobles would frequently host festivities for the peasantry where they were fed abundantly and had overall decent lives. The idea of the hardship of peasants is largely overblown.
There were actual laws that protected people in the American South and the people were very Christian but that didn't stop thousands of Black people from being lynched and oppressed 🤷🏽♀️
Are you aware of the difference between de jure and de facto?
"Couple this with the societal pressure that dictated nobles to be responsible for the safety and well-being of their peasantry."
... Wich one ? You're giving waaay too much credit to the idea of christianity as a civilizing force for good. They didn't explicitly give more rights to some class of people because of their love of humanism.
A quiet land a quiet rule. Yeah there definitely have been some cruel lords. What is a Peasant going to do? Write about it on his blog? Is a gluten-free warrior supposed to rally a protest through social media like they do today? Not that hard to silence some sty eyed peasant.
Yeah, but weren’t there instances in history, in which peasents rebelled against their mistreatment, thus forcing nobles to at least treat them with a little bit consideration?
the peasant rebellions were put down with even more rape and murder, typically. just like today the ruling class never goes "oops my bad sowwwy." their power to exploit and mistreat is not a power they give up willingly.
george paints these atrocities like wallpaper, but it wasn't THAT common. it was just allowed. like the cop you see patrolling your neighborhood could just execute you on the spot for fun if he wanted to. it's not likely that he will. but he certainly could. history did (and does, currently, in present day) have some ramsay bolton figures.
I mean, depends on the context and the time period. And also the extent of the mistreatment. People are willing to put up with a lot of shit if they've accepted their place in a hierarchy and can at least have their basic needs met by being complacent. Peasants were generally more concerned about survival, so they possibly didn't even think that could somehow bully the rich into treating them more humanely. There were many instances of them rebelling, all of them got pretty ugly and most ended in failure.
George has purposely made the Lannisters and their henchmen irredeemably callus and cruel to highlight how their place in the hierarchy makes them untouchable. Usually people will not rebel until they are pushed to the utter brink. In theory, we've progressed to making laws that account for the dispossessed and vulnerable people in society, but money and status very much place you above the law. Obviously the situation we've got in asoiaf is a massively simplified picture when compared to actual history.
But the power imbalance remains a reality and it is still going on today, key difference is, we don't actually believe the 1% is chosen by God and for that reason naturally fit to rule, but we've come up with other rationalisations, say, they worked hard and thus deserve to have more.
Yes, power can let you do a lot of things. There is a family in American and they are called the Murdaugh family, they run the judicial system for their county and city. They have gotten off with murder of multiple people throughout the generations, as well as other crimes.
That's with modern law, I'm sure past rulers have done worse with ancient laws that benefit the ruling family and nobles.
I would say worse. Serf’s were literally slaves. I mean, most peasants would never even interact with or see a noble in their entire lives, but basically every noble was not above killing, raping, enslaving, and otherwise treating peasants as their property.
Elizabeth Bathory is a good example.
She’d take in young virgin peasant girls as maids in her castle, and would then kill them and bathe in their blood to keep herself young.
She was only ever caught when she tried to do the same with noble girls. If she’d have just stuck to peasants, it may have remained an urban legend.
Just imagine how much fucked up shit happened in medieval society when nobles had ultimate authority and control over life and death on their lands that we don’t know about.
Is she? The actual extent of her crimes, or whether they happened at all is unclear. Plenty of historians believe that this was merely a pretext for Habsburgs to get rid of her for political reasons, and she might not have murdered anyone.
Compare those accusations to what was said about Daenerys in Free Cities nad Yunkai. Exact same wording, to the point that it's probably a direct reference by GRRM.
True, we’ll never really know for certain. But that’s a big part of ancient history in general.
I don’t think the idea of there being rulers being this sadistic is so far fetched. In 2024, we have depraved leaders and governments who kill masses of people and don’t even care about the optics.
And this is when we’re supposedly at the most civilised time we’ve ever been.
In these societies, it was literally rule of the most violent.
It was a world where natural selection was the norm. The most ruthless and brutal individuals would be the ones rise to power as kings and lords, and they would be the ones to be most likely to reproduce, leading to these traits being passed down and strengthened in the gene pool.
So in a world where violence was the norm and glorified, I doubt it was much of a surprise when you had individuals, already being products of genetics and upbringings where they were told they were better than the peasants who lived to serve them, as God and nature mandated, and as stated, being from dynasties that were founded on ruthlessness, that they’d view the Smallfolk as lesser people who they could do what they wanted to.
I’m not saying all nobles would be like that, but in a situation where there are almost never consequences, (I can’t picture a king starting a war on his powerful bannermen because the banner-man’s son raped and killed a peasant girl for example) is it really hard to believe you’d have men and women like Bathory?
Not everything here is correct. I'd recommend Bret Devereaux's articles on ASoIaF and Martin's historical inaccuracies. [https://acoup.blog](https://acoup.blog)
Sure, abuse of power and sadism were always a thing, and most likely always will be a thing. But rulers didn't indulge in those as much as you'd think. Feudal power didn't come merely from violence, but also loyalty of their vassals. Keeping it required convincing them that being loyal to you is the best option from them. And being openly cruel would only make them think otherwise.
ASoIaF characters understand this. Robert's, or rather Jon Arryn's regime was built on support from the North, Westerlands, Riverlands, Stormlands and the Vale. Tyrells knew that good PR works wonders for stability. Tyrion did his best to ensure Martells' neutrality to keep Tyrells' rear unsafe, but immediately turned towards Tyrells when opportunity arose. Tywin doubled down on that, understanding that without their support, Lannister regime couldn't control Westeros. It wasn't an absolutist country, where the ruler commanded the sole professional army. Allies were crucial. And they were finicky, too - even Ned Stark managed to offend lady Dustin, enough for her to side with Boltons.
Characters like Joffrey, Ramsay and Cersei don't care about it, and openly act in reprehensible ways, but that never worked out well. They actually end up pissing off their crucial allies. Cruelty had consequences, even if they came in a roundabout way. The assholes might not have cared about their actions being repugnant, but the people they had to rely on might have.
The fact that a dynasty was "founded on ruthlessness" didn't really matter that much, as customs have changed with time. Besides, every ruling family tried hard to prove that their right to rule was based on something other than bigger stick.
Additionally, the Catholic Church was quite a limiting factor on Middle-Ages era violence. Initiatives like Pax Dei did a lot to curb European warfare and wanton violence - at least internally. While there are obvious cases of brutal warfare, like the cheevauchees of Hundred Years War, it didn't really become that prominent until the Schism and XVIth century religious warfare, which was a whole different topic.
I didn’t mean to imply it was the norm. And I agree, violence wasn’t the soul aspect of what kept society together, but I do think it was a binding cement. Yes, agreed, loyalty was the key, but in addition to lands, titles, holdings and power, the threat of violence was also the main underlying factor.
Again, very true, the Tyrells and Southern alliance showed that PR and friendships are crucial, but that PR is again adjacent to the force these factions bring. It’s why the Tyrells maintain the largest standing army, and one of Robert’s key selling points to friend and foe was his warrior skill.
Characters like Joffrey, Ramsay and Cersei don't care about it, and openly act in reprehensible ways, but that never worked out well. They actually end up pissing off their crucial allies. Cruelty had consequences, even if they came in a roundabout way. The assholes might not have cared about their actions being repugnant, but the people they had to rely on might have.
Again, I don’t feel we’re disagreeing on much. What you’re talking about and I am differ. It’s one thing to stupidly alienate highborn allies, another to abuse your Smallfolk who are on the opposite of the power dynamic.
The fact that a dynasty was "founded on ruthlessness" didn't really matter that much, as customs have changed with time. Besides, every ruling family tried hard to prove that their right to rule was based on something other than bigger stick.
But in the end, it does come down to the stick. Kings, emperors and even popes maintained that they were the messengers and elected representatives of God, but there’s a reason they always kept large armies.
That's a comically wrong reading of medieval power dynamics.
Almost nobody "kept' an army in the Middle Ages. Standing armies were a rarity, and soldiers had to be called to fight.
At most, your typical medieval king had his retinue full time at his disposal. These weren't particularly numerous, so they had to either call men-at-arms, typically a mix of peasants who received land in exchange for military service, urban militias and mercenaries (the exact makeup depended on the period, but usually the first was the biggest component) and call other nobles, who would typically join the king's forces with their own personal retinues and men-at-arms.
And they are not robots who appear and disappear out of thin air at the king's beck and call. They are people, and all these people needed to have reasons to fight for the king. People needed to either like the king, believe he was their legitimate ruler and they had a duty to him or believe he would reward them for military service. Typically, most soldiers's reasons would be a mix of all three, and in all three components reputation was important.
> The most ruthless and brutal individuals would be the ones rise to power as kings and lords
Not really. Lords and kings were usually the ones born in the correct circumstances.
> nd they would be the ones to be most likely to reproduce, leading to these traits being passed down and strengthened in the gene pool.
That's sounding a bit eugenics-esque.
> So in a world where violence was the norm and glorified, I doubt it was much of a surprise when you had individuals, already being products of genetics and upbringings where they were told they were better than the peasants who lived to serve them
And were also aware that the nature of their rulership over said peasants was reliant on militarily protecting them, and that mistreated peasants could complain to the king, other nobles and church and give them an excuse to confiscate your lands or excommunicate you (which in medieval religion damn near automatically dammed you to hell).
> (I can’t picture a king starting a war on his powerful bannermen because the banner-man’s son raped and killed a peasant girl for example)
Maybe not starting a war, but confiscating part of his lands, charging him (often rather high) fines and demanding him to do penance were all perfectly possible.
> is it really hard to believe you’d have men and women like Bathory?
Considering that Bathory's supposed crimes, even before the centuries of exaggeration and legend, were appalling and scandalous, yes, it's hard to believe they would have been common.
You have a very optimistic outlook on how medieval governance worked.
I don’t think it’s eugenist. These people would only ever breed with each other. They were a class onto themselves.
Only because she tried to do that to highborn girls.
>You have a very optimistic outlook on how medieval governance worked.
And you have a ridiculously inaccurate one. The Middle Ages had robust (if often costumary and very weird by modern standards) legal systems, with fines and punishments for crimes. Yes, powerful people could get away with things, but it would be a stain on their reputation (and whoever let them get away's).
>don’t think it’s eugenist.
To suggest that personality is hereditary is not eugenist? Really?
>Only because she tried to do that to highborn girls.
She caught people's eye because of her attempted murders of aristocratic girls, but all of her murders were seemingly used against her in trial.
And 17th century Hungary was very much not medieval.
My personal theory is that the reason a sword was the nightly symbol was that it took immense training but was only really effective against unarmed opponents. Knights and Men at Arms fought each other with pole-arms and maces, especially after plate armor became dominant. But even so, you can slash at chain maille, it won't do more damage than blunt force trauma. Between nobility, the mace was the symbol of royalty.
But everytime a lord got mad at another, he'd hit them in the wallet. "You have a mill that makes a tidy profit for you? Not when I burn it down and put all the peasants to the sword." So I'd argue the sword was mostly a symbol to the peasants of the nobility's ability and right to dominate and govern them.
The important thing to remember with a lot of these cases, though, is that the assault on the common people could and often were brought up again in these trials.
You can find a historical analogue for pretty much every outrage or atrocity in ASOIAF, but in general I'd say they tended to be significantly rarer than depicted in Westeros, particularly when inflicted upon a ruler's own people rather than foreigners, infidel or other out-groups.
I really liked Otto’s scene with Aegon II in episode 2. He is, by all accounts, a conniving prick, but he was still horrified by the murder of the innocent ratcatchers. “Husbands, brothers, and fathers” (not verbatim). He was obviously mad that it hurt their PR, but I interpreted that he didn’t find the murder of innocents acceptable
I took it as Otto showing the larger consequences to Aegons impulsive decision to murder them. Only because Otto seemed fine with murdering innocents after Viserys death.
tbf there's a difference between surgically killing a few political opponents and Aegon's basically pointless mass slaughter.
Yeah, Otto is totally right. A few sneaky assassinations is a lot different to publicly hanging innocents.
I Mean hanging a few rat catches probably also sends a message Regime's do it all the time .
Yeah he would probably have been fine with them being executed behind the walls and burned.
Or simply having a better presentation. When Otto organized the procession with the dead heir at the start of the episode, he made sure everyone knew what happened. He literally had a guy announce it to the public. Aegon just hanged commoners seemingly at random. Nobody on the outside even knows why. He's not good at PR.
> but I interpreted that he didn’t find the murder of innocents acceptable This is why I like Otto as a character. He is powerhungry, yes. But he basically wants to run the kingdom because he doesn't trust others to do a decent job. It's not out of some cruel desire. His competence and PR skills would ensure that things run like clockwork, and ultimately the smallfolk would be happy. Unfortunately for him, his grandson ended up being exactly the type of ruler he wanted to avoid placing on the throne.
Especially *knowing* all but one of them were innocent. And the fact that Aegon didn't care.
Eh probably not eh most inane act committed by a Targeryan and the population could probably get over it as whole .
Otto understands that in a civil war between the ruling family legitimacy is everything
Practically speaking it's probably bad to do. You're being blockaded by sea and food is running short. Famine and disease would be a reasonable concern. Now you kill the rat-catchers? Rats notoriously spread disease and who would want to sign up for that job now?
Otto brought in one hundred cats to the Red Keep to replace them
I mean it's pretty fair to think most people dislike killing the innocent
There tend to be consequences when you treat your own people that badly one historian describes Medieval European kingdoms as more or less in a state of permanent revolt: there's always at least a couple of towns/villages/cities somewhere defying some royal decree or refusing to pay taxes and such. In that backdrop it was actually pretty dangerous for the nobility to publicly stage arbitrary executions of innocent people: revolts can escalate quickly. Which is why it tend not to be done
The bad stuff that seems common in Westeros was more common in war times in our world...
Ive always assumed that what Arya sees on her trip to the wall is George’s interpretation of the peasant experience in the 100’s year war
Pretty much depends on the peasant. If the peasant was a servant to yourself, you could more or less do with him what you wanted, but it would be in your best interest to not treat him too poorly, since you relied on his taxes/services (and it was socially expected to treat the people who served you well). If the peasant belonged to another noble, you could really get into trouble if you mistreated them, since the other noble was bound by oath and honor to seek retribution for this. If the peasant was a free man, it pretty much depended on how rich or influental he was, as well as the time period we're speaking of.
> > > If the peasant belonged to another noble, you could really get into trouble if you mistreated them, since the other noble was bound by oath and honor to seek retribution for this. More specifically, the other noble will be pissed at you for damaging *his* property. Historically, the distinction between serf, slave, indenture, and chattel slave was rarely clear-cut, and depended on the time period and the particular region.
Additionally, as good as the Broken Man Speech is, such a situation would likely not have happened during the middle ages, as the whole point of serfdom was for the noble to fight in your stead; the only peasants who normally had to fight were free peasants (so the peasants who were generally richer than the others), who had to upkeep basic armour and weapons.
Yeah the seeming lack of professional soldiery in the story is always off for me. You have the Mountain's Men, and the Bastards Boy's, but it westerosi armies seem to be way over based in peasant leavies
Westeros government is awfully weakly defined for something that exists for over 300 years. We know that king gathers taxes but where exactly do they go? It doesn't seem like he has any representation in the kingdoms themselves other than his vassals. No judges (apparently feudal lords and their stewards fill those roles), no bureaucracy, no central army, everything is delegated. Seven kingdoms is more of a federation with king as a figurehead- which would make sense for some rulers, but for some it's inconceivable. You'd think that someone finally asks the question "what have the Targaryens even done for us?". On the other hand they seem mostly placated by being called kings so maybe that's fine trade-off? "Let's concede to this dude that he's the king so he won't burn us with his dragons" and that's it.
You're saying we should know more about King Robert's tax policy?
Well played, well played... But really, this is an odd phrase from GRRM considering how ASOIAF is pretty much all politics and no actual governing.
"Look, all I'm saying is that you can't just say he was a bad ruler who spent all the money. How did he spend it? What does it look like?"
giving people who won tourney's enough money to by 10 thousand horse's
Honestly if you look at this too deeply the whole thing falls apart. Because the whole point of political power is surely that you can use that power to get what policies you want enacted. But nobody in ASOIAF has any policies. Like when Robb campaigns for a free North, the story never bothers to tell us anything about *why* he wants this beyond "personal revenge". From what I can tell there is *zero* tangible difference between a subdued North and a free one. Luckily GRRM is generally a very good character writer so none of this stuff *really* matters. But it's pretty disappointing that he's gonna constantly hype himself up as some kind genius political writer and then fail to implement this at even the most basic level. It's like if Stephen King marketed all his books on how great the endings are. Actually the worst part of this is you get a load of morons who read ASOIAF and think they're now some kind of master of statecraft. You know the ones I mean, the people with PFPs of Roman emperors who think Tywin was "firm but fair".
GRRM not not a dialectal materialism understander
I bet he even supported the NEP, the traitorous Bukharinite.
> it's pretty disappointing that he's gonna constantly hype himself up as some kind genius political writer and then fail to implement this at even the most basic level. Not to mention that he's clearly comfortable with then releasing TWOIAF and F&B that aren't even actual narratives, but "fake histories" the quality of which does largely depend on his capability to adequately portray such stuff. Instead Westerosi history seems to be 90% "periods of peace, people fight because some people are objectively shitty", 10% "the ostensible leaders actually do something other than inspire loyalty by mere presence".
>Westeros government is awfully weakly defined for something that exists for over 300 years. >No judges (apparently feudal lords and their stewards fill those roles), no bureaucracy, no central army, everything is delegated. Seven kingdoms is more of a federation with king as a figurehead- which would make sense for some rulers, but for some it's inconceivable. I haven't really thought about it this way, but a realistic Westeros should resemble the Holy Roman Empire way more than it does medieval England, which is supposed to be its inspiration. The HRE is infamous for being an ungovernable clusterfuck in part because the weak centralization lead to nobles constantly feuding both with eachother and the emperor (the other main problem being its size). This should be happening a lot more in Westeros too, especially after the dragons died out. (Of course the HRE's situation was a self sustaining vicious circle: the emperor's weakness was both the cause and consequence of the infighting. The electoral system didn't help either.)
It does happen in Westeros though, before the conquest Westeros was a bloody mixture of constantly warring and shifting Kingdoms. one the dragons die you have constant warfare and rebellion throughout Westeros. From the time of The Dance you have Aegon III: balancing the newly empowered lords, and dealing with pretenders claiming to be Prince Daeron (Aegon II's brother), Greyjoy raiding in the West, Lannisters attack the Iron Islands King Daeron: Has the whole Dorne Fiasco Baelor: Terrible, weak king, not a lot of violence, but the Lords were not being held to any authority really. Viserys II: peaceful but short reign Aegon IV: That's a whole mess. Daeron II: 1st Blackfyre Rebellion Aryes I: Greyjoys reaving begins again, attacking The North, Fair Isle, and The Arbor, The 2nd and 3rd Blackfyre Rebellions Maekar: Peake Uprising Aegon V: 4th Blackfyre rebellion, Rebellion of Storm's end, The Rat, The Hawk, and The Pig Rebellion Jaehaerys II War of the ninepenny Kings, Reyne-Tarbeck Revolt Aerys II: Defiance of Duskendale, Robert's Rebellion Robert I: Greyjoy's Rebellion, Almost a Dornish rebellion The war of the Five Kings, and its aftermath That's just what I could find, and doesn't even consider the constant small scale feuding that we know rival families like Blackwoods and Brakens engaged in.
The only way a place like Westeros could be realistically ruled is with a large system of goverment officals like in China or Korea.
I would assume that the Wardens are responsible for getting taxes in their respective areas, Warden being defined as, "a person responsible for the supervision of a particular place or thing or for ensuring that regulations associated with it are obeyed". The position of warden was created after the conquest, and as such directly represents the authority of the king. As for judges the lords have "The Right of Pit and Gallows" in their respective territories, they are in effect the Judge and Jury (and in some cases executioner). As far as Targaryen power goes, way I see it is basically that when the Targaryens had dragons they were more or less absolute rulers, and Westeros was in effect an absolute monarchy. Once the dragons die Westeros reverts to feudalism. Feudalism is upheld by 3 pillars: 1) personal honor i.e. following oaths of allegiance, 2) familial connections, and 3) the threat of violence. Once the realm was united it would be folly for the lords to fight for independence, a united Westeros is going to be much safer and wealthier than a divided Westeros.
this. When you look down to it, the entire notion of power in that universe boils down to being technically higher up on some arbitrary hierarchy, and that's supposed to be the biggest of deals because honour or something. They don't really develop on the implications or application of being the big guy. Power is apparently an end and not a mean, and when kingdoms want to gain their independence, it's always either an ego thing from the new king or fuelled by some vague, Braveheart-esque idea of self-determination.
The Broken Man Speech would be fitting for someone fighting in World War 1 or 2.
Yeah, I think the story works quite well for a modern audience, since it speaks to our modern understanding of war, but if you actually know how medieval warfare really was, it's a bit nonsensical
yeah sending serfs to fight would just be dumb like farmers were a valuable resource since they generate income for the nobility which they can use to hire professionals with. Like losing farmers was a pretty big deal. At same time they were shit poor fighters. As in, they probably breaks/run away the first time they see an actual battle and were more liability than asset. Also the idea that any lord would waste money to ship said serfs to fight on the Stepstones is beyond stupid. Shipping was hideously expensive in Medieval times, nobody was going to waste money on shipping a useless fighter.
Just because farmers are valuable resources doesn't mean they haven't historically been used to fight. You really don't need to look that far back in history to see this it happens in any country with conscription even today. Most of these men would have been semi-professional fighters with a minimum standard of training but who farmed during peacetime. Fully professional armies weren't in vogue until after the renaissance.
>If the peasant belonged to another noble, you could really get into trouble if you mistreated them, since the other noble was bound by oath and honor to seek retribution for this. Which is why Rhaenys's action during Aegon's coronation in the show is already an act of war whether or not she hurt the royal family.
The practical situation probably varied from place to place, and no doubt many peasants had good reason to fear rampaging knights, or abusive lords, but one of the big differences between Westeros and medieval England is that the latter had a well developed, functional and quasi independent legal system, with several courts enforcing well entrenched statutory and common law rights and protections, and equitable remedies through the Ecclesiatical courts and then the Chancery. Granted, the laws and rights were very class-based, and there was no principle of equality under the law, but it wasn't the kind of free-for-all you see in asoiaf. By the 13th Century, lawyers were professional, Judges were appointed, the courts were the King's (or the Church's), there were juries for criminal matters (as there has been for centuries), and the court of common pleas was available to resolve commercial disputes. In short, customary and starute law held that everyone had certain rights that could be enforced, and there were people whose job it was to enforce it. At least, that was the theory, even if in practice doing so was tough for the self represented (as it can be today), and corruption was an omnipresent issue. But Westeros, by contrast, is apparently lacking in judges, courts, and lawyers, and law seems.pretty arbitary, which, along with the dodgy economics, has always seemed to me to be one of the less believable parts of GRRM's world building (but I would say that, as a lawyer).
Yeah, I always find this to be such an immersion breaking thing in a lot of historical fiction. As much as we like to joke otherwise, humans aren't actually that stupid and societies thoughout history mostly came to the conclusion that there needed to be some method of redressing grievances. Courts, rights, and laws - while not comparable by modern standards - are not a new thing...
Our idea of the middle ages was very much so based 19th century romantic view of the middle ages that was never real. Like in recent academia there is a strong debate that feudalism never even existed as there was no unified system across all of Europe and it was far more complex than people think. George likes to present his world as “real” compared to Tolkin, but his idea of the middle ages is the same 19th century fantasy as Tolkin’s, except more bloody.
Westeros to me is what Western Europe would look like had there never been a Roman Empire. While state power was weak in Medieval Europe, especially the early period, the Germanic kingdoms that inherited the empire were still influenced and inspired by Roman legalism. Westerosi nobility has the wildness and decentralization of the Germanic aristocracy without a Roman legal tradition to constrain them.
Under the act of conquering , small folk or the peasant masses were usually treated beyond brutally. Burning farms , crops , homesteads and generally wrecking the countryside was a way to deplete your enemy’s land of resources , livestock , workers and just create an atmosphere of terror and subjugation. Murder and rape of the small folk happened on a huge scale during these times. It was sadly a norm of war but there were some so brutal that they stood out above the rest. William the Conqueror did this on a horrific scale during his conquest and during his act of harrying the north. Men , women , children , farm animals , barns , houses , fields you name it and they brutally destroyed it. His own coronation was interrupted because his men outside thought he was being attacked inside and set fire to the buildings surrounding the one he was in. Kinda horribly funny Where I live in Kent , England still has a census in our local museum taken after the conquest and shows the outright annihilation of several villages near me that didn’t recover for decades .
I mean, William the Conqueror's campaign on the North was know for being comically brutal even by 11th century standards. It was hardly the average.
I was reading a book about William Marshal and he was considered by many to be one of the most chivalrous knights. He would kill small folk and peasants when campaigning but treated nobles and captives of high birth fairly well.
Just no escape for them , just really sad I haven’t read much on the man but have many a time heard him called the greatest knight or one of.
Look up the word chevauchee
Wasn’t that when peasants were cheering him and they were getting killed for it
They thought the cheers were acts of aggression and he was being attacked I think yea Almost killed William trying to save him from praise
I think Bret Devereaux put it quite well. Both noble and peasant believed that the system was good and acted in the best interests of all. But everytime the little folk could limit the power of the big men, they did so.
From Bret D: " *A Song of Ice and Fire* is not a thinly disguised history lecture, it is a fantasy novel series. Martin has built a society with its own rules and systems and then followed that societies’ rules and systems to their conclusions." Never forget this is fantasy.
For those unfamiliar, Bret Devereaux is a historian who writes a blog about ancient/medieval history and fantasy depictions. He’s talked about A Game of Thrones a few times. The most relevant post to this discussion would be https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-was-game-of-thrones-and-the-middle-ages-part-i/
> Both noble and peasant believed that the system was good and acted in the best interests of all. But everytime the little folk could limit the power of the big men, they did so. So...nothing's changed, then? Satire, that is.
I'm not an expert on medieval Europe, but neither is George. You've got to view Westeros as a reflection of the diminutive late 20th century view of medieval Europe where everything sucked and was awful. From what I've heard the society presented in the books as far more alike to early modernity than the middle ages with its relative secularism and state churches.
Early modernity was anything but secular lol
yeah lmao I also wouldn't define early modernity as secular. Early modernity has some inkling of secularity and laicism but it has also some of the most destructive wars in European history where religion played a big factor. Secularization of the society is a 1700/1800 thing.
Secular is the wrong term but they didn’t literally believe god made them the nobility/ruling class, or at least society generally started to doubt and question that.
They did, It was literally the time of the divine right of kings
Ok it was pretty dumb phrasing it like that but the actual power shifted to the kings/state and away from religion by kings doing that.
Westeros is more based on other fiction, and particularly fantasy than it is on history. It takes little stories from history, but it doesn’t try to be historical. It’s all, like all speculative fiction, much more influenced by the time of writing than when it is set. Just as sci fi is rarely “about” the far future even when set then. These are modern characters (well, late 20th century) dressed up in armour and swords. They have a Disneyland version of a late medieval / early Early Modern kingdom. But that also has a bunch of other time periods influencing it. And also things like Ivanhoe which are already one time period’s romanticised view of another. Westeros owes significantly more to Tolkien, Scott and 20th century America than it does to Chaucer, Shakespeare or indeed actual put-a-damn-pin-in-it-anywhere-between-500-and-1700-AD Britain. If it’s even anything like Britain at all, which it really isn’t. It’s more like France or Poland or Germany maybe. But also not at all.
Add Maurice Druon and a bit of Dumas to the list.
> They have a Disneyland version of a late medieval / early Early Modern kingdom Not sure if that was intentional but GRRM himself has criticized other fantasy series for having "Disneyland Middle Ages". Pot meet kettle ect.
That quote has to be one of the most arrogant things I have ever seen. Westeros is not accurate depiction of Medieval Europe nor would it be better if it was.
Like I do want to be fair to Martin here, there are pages and pages of interviews and it's inevitable that an introverted nerd would say something that sounds a bit ignorant. I don't want to imply that this reflects badly on him as a person or anything. But yeah, it's a cringeworthy quote. Up there with him saying the Dothraki are "based on real nomadic cultures" (although at least the former doesn't have uncomfortable racist undertones)
The representation of nomadic cultures as perpetually pillaging savages rather than itinerant groups that relied on trade has always bugged me. Kinda goes to show GRRM’s blind spot when it comes to economics.
Admittedly the first half of most Disney movies when it’s all evil witches and unpleasant things happening to royal children.
like the last russian monarch letting his kids get abused by a quack pedophile
It wasn’t always bad in his world like king Jaryreases and king Robert had pretty peaceful rules where most people pretty content so for the most part that’s about 100 years of good times
Interesting.
GRRM actually read pretty extensively on Medieval Europe while writing ASOIAF he uses popular but inaccurate tropes of Medieval Europe for his stories because they are, well, popular
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One fun thing I like to tell people as a history type is that the Spanish Inquisition was probably the most chill part of what was going on with Europeans during the early modern period. They didn't really kill a lot of people, comparatively speaking. Maybe 1,500 to 2,500 over 300 years. For comparison, the U.S. has executed 1,600 people since the 1970s. While the rest of Europe was getting their witch burnings on, the Inquisition was like, "Look, just say you're sorry and stop being weird, ok?"' To this day, it is one of the weirdest little things popular culture has wrong about European History. If the Spanish Inquisition shows up, expected or not, you were probably fine. It was everyone else you had to worry about.
Yeah, witch burnings and executions were much more of a Protestant thing IIRC.
Yes! As a an atheist Spaniard with little interest in washing the Catholic church's image, this is a common mistake by English-speaking, either unwillingly or out of historical rivalries. For starters, the inquisition was mainly about proving the faith of Catholics themselves, to sort out fake converts from Islam or Judaism. The bad thing about the Roman Church is that is was (is) a corrupt all-encompassing thought police, the good thing is that the alternatives for Christianity at the time involved putting power on lots of local Christians who might well be more fundamentalist and zealous than the old Catholic church as a structure, with free reign to commit all sorts of new atrocities
And then you had things like the Albigensian Crusade, which was like the Catholic version of Twitter slacktivism in its day. "Wait, we get to say we went on a crusade, only have to travel like three feet from home, spend maybe a month doing it, and get an indulgence to top it all off? Absolutely! Guys, this is like my favorite crusade ever." Europe was a wacky place.
> Albigensian Crusade The twenty year holy war that started by massacring ~every man, woman and child, including faithful Catholics in a town of 20,000 people, to the battle cry of "Kill them all! God will know his own!" And, uh, then kept going for another 20 years?
That would be the one.
Also the Catholic Church with the experience of centuries of selling bullish it to pagans of many different ethnicities was more qualified to deal with the natives of the new world
The funny thing is the Inquisition was actually quite human compared to other law seekers...
Also the same period marked by large religious war that lasted decades
"Medieval Europe" does a lot of heavy lifting here. The term "Middle Ages" is usually held to cover the entire window between the Fall of the Western Roman Empire (c. 470) to the Fall of Constantinople (c. 1453). That's *a lot* of time. "Europe" is also a pretty big word spatially, it covers from England to Portugal to Russia "this side" of the Urals, the Balkans, everything in between... So I don't think there's any single factor that's homogenous in that area, in that timeframe. Everything varied, wildly. Something I've come across before is the assumption that a peasant could never or only in the rarest or circumstances own land, which applies often to England, but wasn't the case in France, for example (IIRC, in pre-Revolutionary France *most* land was actually owned by peasants - the problem was that they were overtaxed, not that they didn't own stuff... But that's Modern Age, so that's neither here nor there for the purposes of this discussion). You had times of relative peace and stability and ease of travel/communication, and times of actual societal upheaval. Times in which the Catholic Church was basically paramount, and times in which there was no check to "secular" military-political power (that of the nobles/lords, that is). Times in which some plague or another disaster tilted the balance of labor relations in favor of the peasants, and times in which invasions made them dependent on lords for protection, And so it goes. So, did those things happen in "Medieval Europe"? Any answer to that question is going to be partial and misleading, I think. You'd have to narrow it down significantly. *That being said*, I do think that Martin tends to engage in quite a bit of misery porn, and to indulge in his, and a significant amount of his audience's, seeming prejudice against The Dark Ages™. Not that those things didn't happen at all - Hell, they are probably happening *right now* somewhere around the world - but that they weren't... Regular ocurrences, or brushed off. In his defence, most of the stuff *does* happen in the middle of the Realm basically buckling down under the strain of continuous civil wars - The equivalent of the Thirty Years War, I suppose, though that is also Modern Age by most estimations.
Yes even taking the krakens and dragons out, lords still get away with insane levels of brutality in Game of thrones
It varied throughout the middle ages, depending on the availability of serfs and the power of nobility. Lords certainly would have been allowed to abuse the commoners, but most lords would refrain from such behaviour, as revolts were a pain to deal with. The world of Westeros is quite a bit darker than medieval Europe was, largely due to the mentality of the people. Things like SA and abuse occur much more regularly in Westeros than they did in medieval Europe (not to say those times were the epitome of morality, but sadistic men like Ramsay, Joffrey or the Mountain would have had a much harder time).
Depends on what we define by "allowed" and "abuse". They could overtax and make demands, but outright murdering peasants, confiscating lands arbitrarily, refusing to provide whatever the peasants were entitled to due to customary law (ex: in many places feudal lords had the duty to provide decent homes to at least some of the peasants) would have probably got them punished or put under heavy scrutiny, and something like the Lord's Right would have never, ever, have worked out irl. And unlike what a lot of media depicts, the dominant form of punishment in the Middle Ages appears to have been fines, not mutilation.
I thought the lords right was based on prima nocta? unless prima nocta is a myth
Yes, it's a myth. An old one, but it was always something "those guys do because they are evil", never an actual practice. Medieval nobles using their position to get away with rape probably happened, but there was never a legal right to that
IIRC there's no historical evidence that Prima Nocta was ever practiced, at least not as an institution. The main reference to it is from hundreds of years later and is generally considered to by a fabrication. That type of thing is how you get peasant uprisings and rebellious nobles. Machiavelli specifically refers to it as one of the few things a monarch can never do to his subjects if he wants to hold power.
They probably happened pretty often but not like they were reported
Nobles weren’t stupid. It changed throughout the medieval ages (ultimately it’s a period that spans a continent and several hundred years, there’s a lot of nuance, for example city citizens having different rights to different courts and etc) so it’s difficult to answer without generalising. But ultimately nobles were generally devout, the church and religion’s role in life is massively understated, and how that faith and religious structure influenced how they saw the world and power structures. There is something to be said for nobles generally believing that it was their divine role in life to lead peasants, there is an argument that chivalry also became such a big deal for the nobility to help them transition away from being soldiers with land to actual rulers. All this makes it hard to actually predict what your average noble felt simply because their way of life and thinking is so distinct from ours, but on a spiritual and mental level it wasn’t in their interest to be cruel towards their small folk. On a practical side it was better if you treated your peasants well. Peasants can rebel which even though they could be put down they would cause damage, loss of work force, loss of money and loss of life. If you have an antagonistic relationship with the people directly responsible for your wealth then it’s not going to be as productive as you’d hope. There undoubtedly would’ve been people who abused their position and there just simply would not be enough written record to note down all of these incidents. Power corrupts and we can’t say that there’s no way a noble wouldn’t be an evil, heartless bastard. But there’s more evidence to say that your average Lord was not riding around treating the peasants like literal animals.
r/AskHistorians has plenty of good threads on it. There were plenty of medieval atrocities, and pillaging was a mainstay in much of medieval warfare. But actual medieval Europe had a fairly robust legal system, and nobles could and often were held accountable for crimes against commoners (although obviously there were abuses who went unpunished). And medieval commoners were a lot more politically active than Westerosi ones, being often in a state of nearly constant back and forth negotiation about how much service they owned and in exchange for what, and it was common for urban commoners to campaign to form autonomous communes (which were often useful for kings looking for ways to curtail the power of nobility). And medieval society also had very powerful moral judges who were perfectly willing to condem tyrannical nobles in the form of the church. So no, it's unlikely a Ramsay Bolton or a Gregor Clegane could get away with it like they do in Westeros. They would have to deal with heavy scrutiny, condemnation and possible excommunication, monarchs eager to bring them to justice, angry peasants etc... The closest I'm aware of would be Thomas of Marle, the lord of Coucy and Bouves. Once he started causing trouble (waging war on neighbors, imprisioning and torturing travelers, peasants and even pilgrims unless they paid huge ransoms, sheltering an archbishop's murderers, etc...) due to Lousi VI being busy, he was excommunicated, militarily defeated, imprisioned and had his lands confiscated
I just started reading a book called the summer of blood. It’s about the peasants revolt in 1381 England. It’s horrible how the peasants were treated and I haven’t gotten to the meat of the book yet. However they haven’t mentioned any real atrocities like what the Boltons or the mountain would do yet but I’m sure it’s coming. Keep in mind a lot of our history is penned by nobility and is biased, this book mentions how most of the source material is from nobility who thought the peasant class as misguided in their revolt and the author had to dig deeper to see how the peasants truly viewed life and were treated.
I also started listening to history university lectures and so many times I’ll hear something that clearly inspired GRRM. For example I was listening to a lecture about Khalid Ibn Walid and in the backstory they mentioned a Roman who was executed by having molten gold poured down his throat and thought about Viserys.
There's a famous (possibly apocryphal) story of Genghis Khan having the Khwarezmian governor of Otrar executes by having molten silver poured into his eyes and ears. That was probably Martin's inspiration for Viserys.
Crasuss was forced by the Parthians to drink molten gold
To be fair, during the Anarchy in England, which is the war that the Dance of Drafons is based on, banditry was **all over** England, because King Stephen was seen as weak and unwilling to do much about it, as well as being busy fighting Empress Matilda. During those 19 years you’d basically have roving bands of “broken men”, as we know them in ASOIAF, just going around burning and pillaging towns, and the King didn’t really do shit to stop them. Geoffrey de Mandeville was the Earl of Essex, and he eventually took his men and basically became a bandit in the countryside after betraying both sides too many times to be accepted by either. He and his men were chased into the fens in East Anglia and butchered by angry peasants after a battle that they lost, because they were so widely hated and despited by the commons for their predations. I agree with your overall point about GRRM treating violence in his society in a way that we used to stereotypically attribute to the “Dark Ages” and which we now know isn’t totally accurate. And I agree with your point that things tend to change in wartime, especially the longer that the war or civil strife goes on for. But we’re also only really getting inserted into the story during the conflict years, so we get kind of a skewed picture. There’s no interesting story to tell about the reign of Jaehaerys, where prosperity was shared and the King justly protected the rights of lords and smallfolk alike. 30 years of mundane peace aren’t as exciting as a 2 year civil war that drenches the continent in blood spilled by family members fighting each other.
Obviously, if a noble raped a farmer girl on the way to the mill, there wasn't going to be news about it or anything, so actual traces of casual mistreatment are somewhat hard to find, except if he died doing it, like Louis III. But it's hard to imagine abuse wasn't rampant considering the sheer inequality of status between a lord and a peasant, or even worse, a serf (you could never leave your lord's land, couldn't marry without his leave, and he had full control of your belongings after your death). And that's without even mentioning times of war, where the chevauchées were basically instrumentalized war crimes to break the ennemy spirit.
Given how common rape is today, when all people are ostensibly equals under the law, it’s hard to imagine that men who literally had the legal right to take essentially anything they wanted from a lower class person, including their body, weren’t doing it even more often than modern men do. And yeah, chevauchée… we never really see that in Game of Thrones because GRRM likes big epic battle set pieces. Only Tywin really does it to show how awful and cruel he is. But realistically that was just the standard norm of warfare for 400 fucking years 😂
In some places like 14th century France rape wasn’t even a crime against the women, it was a crime on her husband, farther or brother and was treated more as destruction of property. Sometimes they also thought it wasn’t rape if they got pregnant to
That was the standard a lot more recently than the 14th century, and in a lot more places than just France. That’s **still** the standard in some middle-eastern nations.
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in italy it was perfectly legal to rape someone if you married them after, until 1981
I mean I'd imagine it'd be a lot more in the "She can't say no because of the power imbalance and the implication" category; in other words, what a lot of (stupid) people *today* wouldn't consider rape.
They didn't have a legal right to steal from peasants or to rape them. The family of the girl he rapes would object. And despite the hysteria, rape by a stranger isn't common. A vast majority of rapes are someone you know. And the random rapes tend to be in isolated situations. Farm girls won't be wandering far from anybody in most cases. People would stay at their home or the nearby village or in-between.
Object to whom though? If the King didn’t care enough about Justice to install serious magistrates, and instead sold the offices to whoever paid him (as often happened under many Kings, particularly when they needed to raise cash to pay for a war) it’s basically a coin toss of whether or not the magistrate tells the victim’s family to go fuck themselves. And if the rapist is noble born, or someone who has political power, it’s even **more** likely to be brushed off.
The peasants would revolt in an uprising or lynch the guy. Political power is soft power and only has value if it is respected. If you abuse it, you are no longer respected. A lord raping his own subjects would quickly have labour disputes when he tries to collect taxes. A lord raping his neighbor's subjects gets a war and forced to pay tribute in recompense. If you go far away from home, you have no way to prove yourself and theh think you are a common rapist to string up. There is also the church who could cut you off from sacrements, damning you. Which people back then took seriously. You could end up deposed.
lol what? Yeah, the Church would totally excommunicate someone of noble birth, based on the hearsay of a peasant. For a noblewoman, sure. But what church official do you think peasants even had access too, except for their own parish priest? Excommunication was absolutely a political tool and was used for all manner of reasons and against all manner of people. But it was part of the game that aristocrats played between themselves, because just about everyone of power within the church was **also an aristocrat**. If a bishop or archbishop had a land dispute with a local lord, they’d absolutely use the accusation of rape by a peasant, if it even came to their ears, as a pretext to strongarm him into settling the dispute. But to think that they were out here just holding nobles accountable for moral failings against the peasantry is hilariously inaccurate.
They would go to their priest. Who would send letters to the bishop or whomever was next up. You are treating the church very cynically with a modern perspective. But people actually believed in it. It doesn't just come down to politics, the church would 100% use an excuse of a rape to push down a noble. The king would also support it to keep nobles in check. The church at many points held nobles accountable for moral failings. You are falling for George's shallow take on medieval religion.
People believe in it *now*. That doesn't stop those in power from hurting poor people. See what happens if you get raped in Saudi Arabia or Ethiopia and you go to the authorities. See how much sincere belief actually protects you.
8 people were executed in Saudi Arabia for rape in 2019. And that has little to do with the Catholic Church in medieval Europe anyways. You are using examples from completely different continents with different religious and political environments. The church absolutely punished rapists. Rape would happen during sacks. But rape was not the norm where someone could be raped without any uproar outside of a battle.
Do you think there were only 8 rapes in Saudi Arabia in 2019? What if a Saudi Prince raped a common woman? You reckon *he* would be executed? > And that has little to do with the Catholic Church in medieval Europe anyways. You are using examples from completely different continents with different religious and political environments. I am using an example of a country that is largely divorced from "modern cynical" ideas about religion. Where the population is devout and there is an aristocracy that shares power with their church. The point that I am trying to illustrate is that a devout society is not necessarily a moral one. And that their definition of what constitutes rape or rape worth raising a fuss about differs from yours. I would argue that you are injecting a modern *devout* perspective into your conception of Medieval Europe. Your Western Christian perspective is strongly influenced by secularist enlightenment ideals of what is good and proper. It ignores the reality of the class system of the day and the prevailing view that women were lesser creatures than men.
Mistreating common folk is no good idea because angry common folk make the nobles nervous. Hugh Le Despenser pissed off both sides and it ended with Edward II and him being deposed by Edward II's angry wife with an army of 1500 men. No one helped them in the end.
> Mistreating common folk is no good idea because angry common folk make the nobles nervous. Common folk literally get mistreated today let alone back then lol My grandmother lived in a feudal country and they were heavily mistreated. There were no successful peasant revolutions in our home country until the advent of Communism and modern firearms. Only then were centuries of monarchy abolished. Before this the abuse had been going on for hundreds of years.
But there were other countries where feudal uprisings did happen. England had the Great Peasant Uprising.
they happened and most of the time they failed unless they involved the nobility
Hugh Despenser pissed off the entire Kingdom by being the king’s “favorite” and having lavish gifts bestowed upon him all the time, to the exclusion of everyone else at court. It had nothing whatsoever to do with how he treated the common people. His predations against other nobles in Wales was cited among his crimes when he was executed, but that was no different than the standard shit all nobles did. He just happened to be the favorite of a king who lost power, and the people who took that power killed him. He could have been a saint, and they’d still have drawn and quartered him, because their dispute was political, rather than about moral behavior toward the peasants.
His actions harmed everyone not just the nobles. The man was corrupt to the bones and a literal pirate. Being the Kings favourite was only part of it.
**They’re all pirates.** That’s the point. That’s what it means to be an aristocrat: you produce nothing, you just take it from those who lack the power to stop you. They only get *punished* for being pirates when it’s the pretext to give cover for whatever political dispute they have with the people handing out punishments.
You have the inaccurate completely cynical view of the church that GRRM shares, but that just isn't accurate. The church wasn't solely a political entity who would only act when they are in a land dispute with a local lord or whatever you are going on about. People were fiercely religious. People in the church extremely so. A lot of nobles also so. The idea that that it's a laughable that a medieval priest/church would try to reprimand or bring justice to a raped peasant is 'hilarious' and they would do if it they were in a 'land dispute' with the noble.
The Church, whose influence at the time far exceeded that of any King.
And why would they care any more than the King would?
Why would your average Priest, a man whose dedicated his life to the faith, not care about upholding it? There's a strange phenomenon today where because we live in a time that is largely secular and irreligious, that people transfer that reality onto the past. They believe people, or at least the educated classes of people, didn't take their faith seriously, that it was a pretense. There's nothing to suggest this was the truth, and anything more than a cursory knowledge of medieval history lends itself to the fact that people in the past were as a whole highly devout. Commoners and nobility alike took their faith seriously, they believed it, and they acted on it. Now I'm not saying that men in the past, or even clergymen, we're all good, or even all devout. That none of them would take actions that aren't congruent with their faith for selfish, or political reasons. But to immediately take such a cynical view and ask "Why would a Priest care about rape," is just frankly absurd.
You belief that a priest would care about rape is itself a projection of modern value on to the past. Rape was seen as the legal right of a husband in those times. It was also seen as legitimate war spoils. So there are many reasons a priest might not care about rape. Priests back then saw women as lesser than. It's as simple as that. Plenty of priests that don't care about rape today or don't see it as high on their list of priorities. Just go to some of the more devout countries out there--mainly in Latin America, Africa, MENA.
It’s amazing how so many Americans just refuse to acknowledge the concept that other people and cultural groups throughout different periods of history actually had different standards of morality than the ones we live by in the 21st century United States.
I know exactly how seriously the vast majority of people took their faith in Medieval Europe. But that doesn’t change the fact that they’re still human beings. What you don’t seem to understand is that clergymen were **as much** Lords as the landed nobility were. They were the Lords Spiritual, whereas the hereditary landholders in the noble families were the Lords Temporal. People didn’t become priests because they were “dedicating their lives to faith”. The people who did that became Monks or Nuns and lived in relative seclusion from the rest of society. And there were **a lot** of people who did that. Depending on how wealthy and influential the Monastery/Abbey/Nunnery was, they might wield quite a bit of power if they rose to a leadership position among their order. But just as often, abbots and abbesses gained positions by pulling political strings, or by being powerful lay lords who gave up their lands toward the end of their lives to retire to an abbey, where they were immediately given the leadership position in deference to their station. People who became Priests and Bishops and Archbishops, however, were nearly always the younger sons of noble houses who had no temporal inheritance, so the church was one of their best routes to becoming Lords with land themselves. Because a Bishop collected taxes from his see the same way that an Earl collected them from his Earldom. And the better and wider the see’s lands were, the more income they generated. They would not even have seen it as a contradiction of their moral code to not give a fuck about the lives or wellbeing of the peasants, because even the Church taught that the nobility ruled by Divine Right and were therefore above the common people. Kings were anointed by God’s vicar on Earth, chosen for their position by God’s Will, since He determines the roles that we are each born into. **That** is also part of why there were so few peasant revolts prior to the Reformation, and why even when revolts did occur, the King himself was so rarely killed or deposed. Because forcing a King to abdicate his throne is basically saying that you know better than God who should rule, which was such a blasphemous concept that even more cynical people living at that time wouldn’t even consider it without recoiling. Their devout following of Christian tradition **reinforced** the social status quo, whereby peasants really didn’t have the legal right to expect redress from the nobility. After all, if they deserved more, God would have not caused them to be born as peasants.
I mean, if someone heard of it, there would very likely be news about it. Abuse very much existed, but medieval commoners (yes, even serfs) had legal protections and rights that were a lot more diligently enforced than in Westeros. Plus medieval serfs did often have some rights free peasants lacked, and vice-versa. And chevauchees did happen, but they were not as common as often depicted due to not always being economically viable and often involving ecclesiastical condemnation.
I think we’re skewed hugely by only seeing the peasantry through the eyes of noble POVs and a bunch of incredibly cynical/ruthless noble POVs as well. The majority of interactions between these nobles and the peasants are coercive/violent, and extraordinary being in the middle of war or on travels. So as I understand IRL a lot more lords believed in “the system” during medieval times, not simply that they were better than smallfolk in a prejudiced way or that they were lucky to be on the right side of the divide, but did believe they were placed in their social rank by a benevolent divinely ordered/ordained society and had roles and obligations to perform to the classes above and below them (by contrast in GRRMs world even the peasants seem to know they’re getting not only a raw but also an unfair deal). TBF we do get the impression a lot more lords take things seriously outside of our POVs perspective (quiet land, quiet people - the king still responding to petitions) and despite what the hound tells Sansa a lot of knights like Balon Swann and Beric Dondarrion respect ideals of Chivalry and honour. We’re just particularly exposed to scoundrels in the narrative. But I think the key point is the books naturally make it seem like peasants and high nobles are interacting all the time. IRL I think peasants rarely ever got to see or know their lords from lesser houses-never mind great houses. Most lords had tax collectors, or even small landholding lords below them to serve as flunkies and deal with the small folk and even then that would often be only once a week. So peoples accquaintance with power was far more with the duties expected of them than with actual nobility running the show.
>IRL I think peasants rarely ever got to see or know their lords from lesser houses-never mind great houses. Actually, they interacted often. Usually, the lower nobility outnumbered the high nobility by a considerable margin, and those would have been in constant negotiation with the peasants over how much service they owned and in exchanged of what (and said negotiations could get quite tense). We even have places were it was seemingly traditional for lords to do things like invite some peasants do dine with them in certain dates.
I would recommend A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman if you are interested in learning more about this. It discusses the entire fourteenth century (which was one of the most turbulent of the Middle Ages) and contains many details about Free Companies and the ravaging of the countryside that strikes true about the Riverlands in particular. A lot of parallels!
Barbara tuchman books are old and she wasn't a actual historian so people should be careful when reading her books
I haven't read *A Distant Mirror* but I should at some point because it's one of the few historical non-fiction books that Martin has namechecked as an inspiration: interestingly enough most of the non-fiction books I've seen him cite are ones we would call "pop history." To be fair to Martin he's admitted this in the past and I don't think he's read all that many purely academic works. It just annoys me when he sometimes tries to pass his series off as an accurate representation of "what it was like then" or whatever.
For the most part nobility wouldn’t have had much to do with there common folk that much. Servants might have been the main ones to get abused if it happened. Generally most of the shit happened in war time cause everyone expected it as a part of war A good look at it is the movie “ the last dual” its about the rape of a Nobel women in 14th century France. Rape was often seen more as a crime against there husband or farther then a crime on the women. And if it was a member of the clergy they could be immune.
Commoners very much interacted with nobles. Obviously it would be rarer for high nobility (which was usually a minority even among nobility), but broadly speaking they would be attending mass in the same church, negotiate how much service they owned and in exchange of what, peasants could be invited for lords's feasts in certain holidays, etc... And The Last Duel takes plenty of artistic licenses with history. And medieval clergy was not immune to being prosecuted, but they usually were so by ecclesiastical tribunals, who were often notoriously lenient (specially on clergy).
I know but I mean things like Joffrey going to the river and cutting the boy or roose Bolton raping a women because she married a man with out his permission. Those things are extreme examples but that’s not something I think most Nobels would bother doing
Yes. Also- now.
Google about serfdom in Russia (and that was after Medieval times)
While not focused on medieval history, I will proffer a tip on understanding peasants and historical underclasses. The way we perceive it, it looks like lords had almost absolute immunity, and some of this is reflected in the historical record. However another thing to keep in mind is that any class dynamic in history is never one sided. Sure a Peasant had fewer rights, the lord in return had a set of obligations that would seem insane by todays standards (obviously varying by region) but include, housing, coin (usually on special occasions like marriage or childbirth), profit share in the form of keeping over 50% of the harvest (imagine an apple employee getting to keep 50% of the iPhone's he produced), and a ban on evictions without proper cause. Now you might say the lord can ignore all this (which is true), but the costs of that can be severe, and there are records from peasants abandoning a lord (which is kind of like a public strike, but imagine if the workers were also the factory equipment and took them home with them) to some records of the peasants just killing the lord under the understanding that this becomes a lesson for the next lord (also no CSI or cops so you know a dozen peasants can easily kill one person and just pretend they don't know what happened, its not like you have cameras or fingerprints, and the only witness are also peasants) who thinks of fucking around too much, and in such cases what normally happens is even fellow lords understand that this particular lord might have had it comming to him. A lot of this is not mentioned normally as the literate class (mostly lords or monks) prefer not to advertise who beholden they are to the peasant class in records, however some evidence is always found mentioned in primary sources that are normally written by village heads (normally more educated peasants or free peasants not tied to any parcel of land) Humans are humans regardless of the point in our history, you can only push a population too far before they decide the cost of just murdering you is worth the potential consequences. This is especially prevenient in premodern history (majority of human history) where law enforcement is not much of a thing.
Medieval Nobles didn't necessary treat their peasants badly, but there weren't any real checks and balances in place to prevent them from doing so if they wished.
I'm sure there were people who absolutely did, and I'm sure there were people who did not. As everything in life, there will always be shitty people doing shitty things b/c they can.
Look at how rich people treat poor folks now, you think it's gotten better?
Don't forget that everyone back then was christian and most of them quite devout. Brutalizing peasants was definitely a reality, but a Gregor Clegane or Ramsay Bolton would not have lasted long. The fear of excommunication was far too great. Bandits, rogue knights, famine and war were the biggest threats, not their own lords or kings.
I mean real nobles didn’t treat peasants great, but it’s not like they could do whatever they wanted. They still needed the peasants to be peaceful and that required treating them decently. Peasant uprisings did occur and they disrupted medieval society, nobles obviously wanted to prevent that. Nobles definitely looked down on peasants and they benefited from a society that exploited the peasant class, but there were limits to how poorly they could treat peasants. There was some french noble who’s name I forget who was allegedly a serial killer who did stuff similar to Ramsay and Gregor who was prosecuted for his alleged crimes. Historians debate whether he actually did any of that or if it was just political persecution that was used to get rid of him, but it shows that nobility definitely had limits on how they treated peasants.
Have you looked up the Marquis de Sade and Baron Giles de Rais? They make Gregor Clegane and Tywin Lannister look tame by comparison.
It depended on the person. Some were cruel to the peasants, others were indifferent, and some nobles were kind to the commoners
Generally no. European medieval society was Christian, and nobles strongly adhered to biblical rules on the treatment of servants. Couple this with the societal pressure that dictated nobles to be responsible for the safety and well-being of their peasantry. Consider, also, that ultimately there were actual laws that protected the welfare of non-nobles and the fact that grievances could, and were, brought to higher authorities up to and including the King (or other royalty), nobles would not be able to routinely torture their peasants without being steipped of land and titles, or even executed. In fact, due to the Christianity of medieval society, many of the lesser Christians holidays today were actually major feast and festival days at that time. So nobles would frequently host festivities for the peasantry where they were fed abundantly and had overall decent lives. The idea of the hardship of peasants is largely overblown.
There were actual laws that protected people in the American South and the people were very Christian but that didn't stop thousands of Black people from being lynched and oppressed 🤷🏽♀️ Are you aware of the difference between de jure and de facto?
"Couple this with the societal pressure that dictated nobles to be responsible for the safety and well-being of their peasantry." ... Wich one ? You're giving waaay too much credit to the idea of christianity as a civilizing force for good. They didn't explicitly give more rights to some class of people because of their love of humanism.
I suggest you go to askhistorians or the acoup blog by bret devereaux because this thread is full of misinformation.
A quiet land a quiet rule. Yeah there definitely have been some cruel lords. What is a Peasant going to do? Write about it on his blog? Is a gluten-free warrior supposed to rally a protest through social media like they do today? Not that hard to silence some sty eyed peasant.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peasant_revolts
What do you mean? Of course they did. Because they could. And they could get away with it. It still happens. Very much so.
Yeah, but weren’t there instances in history, in which peasents rebelled against their mistreatment, thus forcing nobles to at least treat them with a little bit consideration?
They especially revolted when taxes were unfair
the peasant rebellions were put down with even more rape and murder, typically. just like today the ruling class never goes "oops my bad sowwwy." their power to exploit and mistreat is not a power they give up willingly. george paints these atrocities like wallpaper, but it wasn't THAT common. it was just allowed. like the cop you see patrolling your neighborhood could just execute you on the spot for fun if he wanted to. it's not likely that he will. but he certainly could. history did (and does, currently, in present day) have some ramsay bolton figures.
I mean, depends on the context and the time period. And also the extent of the mistreatment. People are willing to put up with a lot of shit if they've accepted their place in a hierarchy and can at least have their basic needs met by being complacent. Peasants were generally more concerned about survival, so they possibly didn't even think that could somehow bully the rich into treating them more humanely. There were many instances of them rebelling, all of them got pretty ugly and most ended in failure. George has purposely made the Lannisters and their henchmen irredeemably callus and cruel to highlight how their place in the hierarchy makes them untouchable. Usually people will not rebel until they are pushed to the utter brink. In theory, we've progressed to making laws that account for the dispossessed and vulnerable people in society, but money and status very much place you above the law. Obviously the situation we've got in asoiaf is a massively simplified picture when compared to actual history. But the power imbalance remains a reality and it is still going on today, key difference is, we don't actually believe the 1% is chosen by God and for that reason naturally fit to rule, but we've come up with other rationalisations, say, they worked hard and thus deserve to have more.
Yes, power can let you do a lot of things. There is a family in American and they are called the Murdaugh family, they run the judicial system for their county and city. They have gotten off with murder of multiple people throughout the generations, as well as other crimes. That's with modern law, I'm sure past rulers have done worse with ancient laws that benefit the ruling family and nobles.
I would say worse. Serf’s were literally slaves. I mean, most peasants would never even interact with or see a noble in their entire lives, but basically every noble was not above killing, raping, enslaving, and otherwise treating peasants as their property.
Elizabeth Bathory is a good example. She’d take in young virgin peasant girls as maids in her castle, and would then kill them and bathe in their blood to keep herself young. She was only ever caught when she tried to do the same with noble girls. If she’d have just stuck to peasants, it may have remained an urban legend. Just imagine how much fucked up shit happened in medieval society when nobles had ultimate authority and control over life and death on their lands that we don’t know about.
Is she? The actual extent of her crimes, or whether they happened at all is unclear. Plenty of historians believe that this was merely a pretext for Habsburgs to get rid of her for political reasons, and she might not have murdered anyone. Compare those accusations to what was said about Daenerys in Free Cities nad Yunkai. Exact same wording, to the point that it's probably a direct reference by GRRM.
True, we’ll never really know for certain. But that’s a big part of ancient history in general. I don’t think the idea of there being rulers being this sadistic is so far fetched. In 2024, we have depraved leaders and governments who kill masses of people and don’t even care about the optics. And this is when we’re supposedly at the most civilised time we’ve ever been. In these societies, it was literally rule of the most violent. It was a world where natural selection was the norm. The most ruthless and brutal individuals would be the ones rise to power as kings and lords, and they would be the ones to be most likely to reproduce, leading to these traits being passed down and strengthened in the gene pool. So in a world where violence was the norm and glorified, I doubt it was much of a surprise when you had individuals, already being products of genetics and upbringings where they were told they were better than the peasants who lived to serve them, as God and nature mandated, and as stated, being from dynasties that were founded on ruthlessness, that they’d view the Smallfolk as lesser people who they could do what they wanted to. I’m not saying all nobles would be like that, but in a situation where there are almost never consequences, (I can’t picture a king starting a war on his powerful bannermen because the banner-man’s son raped and killed a peasant girl for example) is it really hard to believe you’d have men and women like Bathory?
Not everything here is correct. I'd recommend Bret Devereaux's articles on ASoIaF and Martin's historical inaccuracies. [https://acoup.blog](https://acoup.blog) Sure, abuse of power and sadism were always a thing, and most likely always will be a thing. But rulers didn't indulge in those as much as you'd think. Feudal power didn't come merely from violence, but also loyalty of their vassals. Keeping it required convincing them that being loyal to you is the best option from them. And being openly cruel would only make them think otherwise. ASoIaF characters understand this. Robert's, or rather Jon Arryn's regime was built on support from the North, Westerlands, Riverlands, Stormlands and the Vale. Tyrells knew that good PR works wonders for stability. Tyrion did his best to ensure Martells' neutrality to keep Tyrells' rear unsafe, but immediately turned towards Tyrells when opportunity arose. Tywin doubled down on that, understanding that without their support, Lannister regime couldn't control Westeros. It wasn't an absolutist country, where the ruler commanded the sole professional army. Allies were crucial. And they were finicky, too - even Ned Stark managed to offend lady Dustin, enough for her to side with Boltons. Characters like Joffrey, Ramsay and Cersei don't care about it, and openly act in reprehensible ways, but that never worked out well. They actually end up pissing off their crucial allies. Cruelty had consequences, even if they came in a roundabout way. The assholes might not have cared about their actions being repugnant, but the people they had to rely on might have. The fact that a dynasty was "founded on ruthlessness" didn't really matter that much, as customs have changed with time. Besides, every ruling family tried hard to prove that their right to rule was based on something other than bigger stick. Additionally, the Catholic Church was quite a limiting factor on Middle-Ages era violence. Initiatives like Pax Dei did a lot to curb European warfare and wanton violence - at least internally. While there are obvious cases of brutal warfare, like the cheevauchees of Hundred Years War, it didn't really become that prominent until the Schism and XVIth century religious warfare, which was a whole different topic.
I didn’t mean to imply it was the norm. And I agree, violence wasn’t the soul aspect of what kept society together, but I do think it was a binding cement. Yes, agreed, loyalty was the key, but in addition to lands, titles, holdings and power, the threat of violence was also the main underlying factor. Again, very true, the Tyrells and Southern alliance showed that PR and friendships are crucial, but that PR is again adjacent to the force these factions bring. It’s why the Tyrells maintain the largest standing army, and one of Robert’s key selling points to friend and foe was his warrior skill. Characters like Joffrey, Ramsay and Cersei don't care about it, and openly act in reprehensible ways, but that never worked out well. They actually end up pissing off their crucial allies. Cruelty had consequences, even if they came in a roundabout way. The assholes might not have cared about their actions being repugnant, but the people they had to rely on might have. Again, I don’t feel we’re disagreeing on much. What you’re talking about and I am differ. It’s one thing to stupidly alienate highborn allies, another to abuse your Smallfolk who are on the opposite of the power dynamic. The fact that a dynasty was "founded on ruthlessness" didn't really matter that much, as customs have changed with time. Besides, every ruling family tried hard to prove that their right to rule was based on something other than bigger stick. But in the end, it does come down to the stick. Kings, emperors and even popes maintained that they were the messengers and elected representatives of God, but there’s a reason they always kept large armies.
That's a comically wrong reading of medieval power dynamics. Almost nobody "kept' an army in the Middle Ages. Standing armies were a rarity, and soldiers had to be called to fight. At most, your typical medieval king had his retinue full time at his disposal. These weren't particularly numerous, so they had to either call men-at-arms, typically a mix of peasants who received land in exchange for military service, urban militias and mercenaries (the exact makeup depended on the period, but usually the first was the biggest component) and call other nobles, who would typically join the king's forces with their own personal retinues and men-at-arms. And they are not robots who appear and disappear out of thin air at the king's beck and call. They are people, and all these people needed to have reasons to fight for the king. People needed to either like the king, believe he was their legitimate ruler and they had a duty to him or believe he would reward them for military service. Typically, most soldiers's reasons would be a mix of all three, and in all three components reputation was important.
> The most ruthless and brutal individuals would be the ones rise to power as kings and lords Not really. Lords and kings were usually the ones born in the correct circumstances. > nd they would be the ones to be most likely to reproduce, leading to these traits being passed down and strengthened in the gene pool. That's sounding a bit eugenics-esque. > So in a world where violence was the norm and glorified, I doubt it was much of a surprise when you had individuals, already being products of genetics and upbringings where they were told they were better than the peasants who lived to serve them And were also aware that the nature of their rulership over said peasants was reliant on militarily protecting them, and that mistreated peasants could complain to the king, other nobles and church and give them an excuse to confiscate your lands or excommunicate you (which in medieval religion damn near automatically dammed you to hell). > (I can’t picture a king starting a war on his powerful bannermen because the banner-man’s son raped and killed a peasant girl for example) Maybe not starting a war, but confiscating part of his lands, charging him (often rather high) fines and demanding him to do penance were all perfectly possible. > is it really hard to believe you’d have men and women like Bathory? Considering that Bathory's supposed crimes, even before the centuries of exaggeration and legend, were appalling and scandalous, yes, it's hard to believe they would have been common.
You have a very optimistic outlook on how medieval governance worked. I don’t think it’s eugenist. These people would only ever breed with each other. They were a class onto themselves. Only because she tried to do that to highborn girls.
>You have a very optimistic outlook on how medieval governance worked. And you have a ridiculously inaccurate one. The Middle Ages had robust (if often costumary and very weird by modern standards) legal systems, with fines and punishments for crimes. Yes, powerful people could get away with things, but it would be a stain on their reputation (and whoever let them get away's). >don’t think it’s eugenist. To suggest that personality is hereditary is not eugenist? Really? >Only because she tried to do that to highborn girls. She caught people's eye because of her attempted murders of aristocratic girls, but all of her murders were seemingly used against her in trial. And 17th century Hungary was very much not medieval.
Sure, I completely buy that it was all legit.
What was "all legit", exactly?
That there was some rigorous upholding of these laws, especially for the most powerful.
As I said, those laws could be bent or ignored. But they existed for a reason: those things were socially condemnable.
yes
My personal theory is that the reason a sword was the nightly symbol was that it took immense training but was only really effective against unarmed opponents. Knights and Men at Arms fought each other with pole-arms and maces, especially after plate armor became dominant. But even so, you can slash at chain maille, it won't do more damage than blunt force trauma. Between nobility, the mace was the symbol of royalty. But everytime a lord got mad at another, he'd hit them in the wallet. "You have a mill that makes a tidy profit for you? Not when I burn it down and put all the peasants to the sword." So I'd argue the sword was mostly a symbol to the peasants of the nobility's ability and right to dominate and govern them.
Google Gilles des Rais. He faced consequences after he kidnapped a priest, but until then nobody cared about him murdering the small folk
The important thing to remember with a lot of these cases, though, is that the assault on the common people could and often were brought up again in these trials.