Disregarding fantasy elements, what aspects of ASOIAF are unrealistic?

Thousands and thousands of years still living in the Middle Ages.

Standing armies
Shall we also talk about how there are no polish ship styles or winged hussars, it's set in England and when people think medieval they think British isles, France and Germany even though it's the HRE
And ships were traditionally taken from merchants so were mainly cogs

To be fair, Gunpowder was discovered by pure accident and it took hundreds of years to be properly utilized and manipulated by other peoples.

I'm somewhat of in agreement, but there was several rebellions during the later half of the Targaryens rule, where the Blackfyre's tried to push their claim of the throne. Their defeat meant greater legitimacy for the Targ's.

fucking this. The oldest Italian families at the time of the Renaissance were at most 1000 years old as they existed since the times of the Roman empire. Even then, the family name was undoubtedly different and changed a lot. No such thing as families that went on for 4000 years.

>How does this same region not have a large amount of ships at their disposal just because of muh traditions(which is retarded how it came about)?
You really don't want to know about the Stark autism against boats

>what aspects of ASOIAF are unrealistic
Most of them. One thing that bothers me is the military might of Westeros relative to its apparent population.
Somehow they can routinely raise feudal levies in the tens to hundreds of thousands yet the continent appears to have a ridiculously low population. There's like, what five cities worth the name? King's Landing, Oldtown, Lannisport, Gulltown, White Harbour.
Not to mention how these cities apparently have such a ridiculously large demographic weight yet they still are strongly under the heel of countryside feudal lords that couldn't possibly match their economic and military might?
Also top fucking kek at the concept of most lineages making it through centuries worth of feudalism with no change to their power or even seat.

>taking folk lore literally
You know that king George III was a descendant of the kings of Saxony, and ruled both Hanoverian saxony and the Anglo Saxon kingdom of England

>You really don't want to know about the Stark autism against boats
Do tell, I don't remember that from the books. How is it that a region with ample sea trade opportunities in the east and large risk of sea riders in the west doesn't have a large navy?

There's a lot of towns in the Riverlands and Reach, GRRM never really touches on a lot of shit in the novels (and even less in the show) that AWOIAF goes over

It's in a AWOIAF, basically one of their dynasty sailed wesat and died so his son in an autistic rage burnt all the boats; so boats are bad news. It's fucking stupid

That they didn't have standing armies?

>showfag
I really disliked Circei being able to take the throne at the end of season 6, what claim does she possibly have to it?

It seemed very unrealistic that an interregnum like that would be solved without a civil war, even a brief one. Look at what happened, for example, after Nero killed himself, or after the death of Henry III in France.

AWoIaF was the coolest setting expansionary book I've ever read. It turned GRRM's cooking saga into a setting I could actually sink my teeth into.

>I really disliked Circei being able to take the throne at the end of season 6, what claim does she possibly have to it?
this is show original
the books end with johnny getting stabbed

The show is running entirely on hype fumes at this point, any connection it's had to the source material is basically dead and buried. Dabid and DnD have been flying blind on the plot since the start of Season 6.

Cersei easily taking the throne could probably be explained as the realm's too bloody and broken to offer any resistance to the woman whose cruelty and spite is an open secret.

>There's a lot of towns
Small towns. The five I mentioned are said to be the biggest ones and "the only ones worth being called cities". Westeros is meant to be a whole damn continent, and the armies they field are certainly bigger than what renaissance kingdoms could manage individually. How can there possibly be just one city above 100k (King's Landing)? There were a dozen in renaissance Europe, and that's in spite of the fucking black death.

Admit it, there won't be a sixth and a seventh book.

IT HURTS

50,000 for an area the size of the Reach isn't that ridiculous, it's the North raising 45.000 that's fucking stupid

Reading through the 5th book is what hurt. Honestly, I wouldn't even be mad if GRRM dropped the series. Better that than jumping the shark.

I bet there will be a 6th one but a 7th one you may well be right

To be honest, I think the setting would make more sense if Westeros was the size of UK and rest of the world the size of Europe

Martin himself has said that he messed up the scaling

Far more than personal retainers, even if they have non existent gold mines but people think they exist

>50,000 for an area the size of the Reach isn't that ridiculous
You now realize that fucking France operated with army sizes around 20-30k throughout the renaissance. I also doubt the realism of such army scales being viable in a purely levied military. The closest I can think of is the Han, and even there levies were more like conscripts with a permanent logistic system behind them.

I agree, but then you'd have to take a zero off the army sizes to make any sense.

>I agree, but then you'd have to take a zero off the army sizes to make any sense.
just pretend it's propaganda. Real life chronicals also vastly overexaggerate the size of armies

Considering 90% of the last 400 years of Westerosi history was at best Dance of Dragons, levies don't seem as ridiculous as our own history. Wars are extremely rare and even when they do occur are pretty bloodless until muh War Of The 5 Kangs

>Wars are extremely rare and even when they do occur are pretty bloodless until muh War Of The 5 Kangs
I dunno user, there's plenty of civil wars mentioned in the books during the Targaryen period. Can't find numbers about them, but Westeros certainly wasn't at peace.

Depends on the location.

That really doesn't change the inflated numbers.

I don't remember ever getting the population of any of the kingdoms either.

>when historically that was only the case in Northern Europe
Arent viking ships galleys?

>Dance of Dragons
>First Blackfyre
>Second Blackfyre isn't even a war
>3rd Blackfyre
>4th Blackfyre and Band of Nine barely even requires anyone to turn up
Not really the same as Western Europe over those same 200 years
George has never really stated total force strength or population

I only read the first 2 books but I remember cringing at the implication that Tyrion, a dwarf, would be effective in combat against full-sized men.

He literally kills a few plebs he hit from behind, I'd hardly say it makes him a killing machine

>George has never really stated total force strength or population

Its kind of a moot argument if we don't know the populations, the size of the armies may not be reliable and we don't know much about the income of any of the kingdoms.

5000 years old or more dynastys.

>Thousands and thousands of years still living in the Middle [s]Ages[/s] East .
FIFY

I just remember there was a fight in either the first or second book where he fought off some bandits with an axe and was actually, you know, effective at it. It only happened like once but I'm glad it never happened again.

He totally messes up medieval attitudes towards religion. I feel like he doesn't really understand religion in general.

Maybe if he ever gets off his fat cunt arse and finishes the series, then writes his Targ history we'll finally know
The Vale banditos don't use shields and he did, he beats one that's already wounded to death with a shield, it's not like he back stabbed him after a roll or something

Even if it wasn't folk lore that would be a fantasy element.

>American doesn't understand feudalism and religions
The news at 5

agreed
most people in his books dont care much about religion
meanwhile, in real life, for medieval people christian theology was a fact and they had no reason to doubt it

peasants could easily make blue, yellow and red dyes and a woman devoting countless hours to spinning and weaving would, they would be a lot more colorful

some of the individual fight scenes make an effort to show how dirty tricks were used but minor characters supposed to be professional soldiers seem pretty incompetent

cavalry charging into a forest is risky

the bolton's shields were too high to see over

every army except the most incompetent would have scouts constantly moving out and reporting back, the boltons would see the vale cavalry on the march days from their location and react to that

not wearing a helmet was a risk

the politics is unrealistic, baelish and varys would not be considered edgy amongst actual medieval nobility

>for medieval people christian theology was a fact and they had no reason to doubt it
Top fucking kek. Is that why there were new heresies every week?
Not to mention that people rarely cared about religion IRL when it got in the way of personal gain. Pornocracy rings a bell? Conflicts upon nominations of bishops?

>Faith of The Seven is the same as Christianity because it has 7 instead of 3
>Even when there's a foreign religion devoted to muh one true god
Where do you people come from?
You'll notice, most of the main characters are nobles and the Faith of the Seven are so lax they allow the North to exist and worship their own gods

It's a fictional setting attitudes about religion don't necessarily have to be the same.

>Top fucking kek. Is that why there were new heresies every week?
yes, because people actually cared about that shit.

are you implying nobels were less religions than commoners in real life?

You are completely wrong.

>heresies
They still deeply believed in God.
>every week
Nonsense.

>pornocracy
A very short period in the history of papacy that has very little to do with religion itself.

>Investiture Controversy
They still believed in God.

If there were heresies, it follows there was doubt about mainstream theology.
Not to mention the fact that there being people who care doesn't mean everyone does, especially people of power. Most heresiarchs were educated poorfags leading peasant rebellions, not feudal nobles.

Are you implying they weren't? True Christian kings are a rarity

This is what gets me also
>every noble family seems to keep the 'same appearence' successively
>starks seem to have somehow managed to keep a direct line of descent despite being around for like 7,000 years
Every person in the world probably bares some fucking relation to Bran the Builder at this point.

Also GRRM seems to have no sense of scale whatsoever. He tries to spread the finicky politics of medieval England over a continent the size of North America.
I specifically remember Martin just casually having Sam and Gilly walk their way alone back to the Wall from the Fist of the First Men, through something like 175 miles of arctic tundra.

This as well, funny this is something the show actually dealt with alot better.

>theology = faith
The goalpost has just left the Local Group.

of course they weren't. They weren't better educated or smarter than common people. They had no reason to doubt the existance of god, heaven or hell

"true christian" and belief in Christianity can be two different things.

>kings weren't better educated than common people
wut

>175 miles of arctic tundra

Christ on a cross, prepared people died in such conditions.

heresies were important because people cared about it, and because if you pretended to be a prophet, people would follow you and you would get a lot of power.

>Not to mention the fact that there being people who care doesn't mean everyone does, especially people of power.
I know there is this common misconception that people of power are somehow smarter or see the bigger picture, but this is not true at all. People at the very top are still just people, they have the same character flaws and the same bullshit believes like the rest of us

They also had no reason to give a shit about it because they were afforded every luxury

Check em

>every luxury
compared to today, they lived shitty lives and suffered from curable diseases, and they had every reason to believe that those disease came from god as punishment

But they cared about it.

It's based on the enlightement propaganda about the middle ages, making it sound like a never ending edgy grimdark carousel of rape, murder and torture.

And also had the best physicians to cure it unlike the rest of their realm, are you really fucking arguing that nobles suffered like everyone else?
They gave lip service to it. look at the crusades, was sacking a fellow Christian city for money all for God you terminal retard? True Christians are a rarity in history, rulers and nobles even more so

>And also had the best physicians to cure it unlike the rest of their realm
physicians who didn't know shit

>are you really fucking arguing that nobles suffered like everyone else?
when it comes to diseases, absolutely
viruses and bacteria dont care about your social rank

because it takes place during a civil war, so "never ending edgy grimdark carousel of rape, murder and torture" is a pretty accurate description

America actually seems more religious than most European countries.

>physicians who didn't know shit
>when it comes to diseases, absolutely
Nice one, really good historical illiteracy, yes before 1600 everyone died of measles, food poisioning and smallpox, every single person. You're a fucking moron

>I know there is this common misconception that people of power are somehow smarter or see the bigger picture, but this is not true at all. People at the very top are still just people, they have the same character flaws and the same bullshit believes like the rest of us
You got it backwards. What I actually meant is that most people don't care, and it's just the few smart and educated ones who do. The average heresiarch leads pesant rebellions because peasants want improved life conditions, not because they care about christian theology. The average nobleman doesn't care about heresies because he's already at the top. When he does care, it's to further his political aims (reformation anyone?).

One incident doesn't change the fact that most people were deeply religious. Yes, including the aristocracy.

>le everyone was a Machiavelist amoral atheist
The nobles were the most religious of them all. This is extremely understated in modern portrayals that make it look like religion was a charade that people were apathetic towards and only tagged along with it to get by. The average medieval person viewed God the same way you view gravity, or the government. He was 100% real to them.

not only historically
millions of people still die today from completely curable diseases, and millions more would die if not organizations like doctors without borders or the clinton foundation

Strong rebellious women everywhere

There's no fucking way that graph is in any way accurate.

>clinton foundation
Stop with this /pol/ bait this second

What makes you think that?

This is the last article from famous Twelve Articles written during the German peasants' war.

>It is our decision and final opinion that if one or several of the articles mentioned herein were not in accordance with the word of God, those we shall refrain from if it is explained to us on the basis of the scripture. If several articles were already granted to us and it emerged afterwards that they were ill, they shall be dead and null. Likewise, we want to have reserved that if even more articles are found in the writ that were against God and a grievance to though neighbour.

It wasn't just one incident, the crusades fucked the Orthos over and over again
Most people in any time period live in a physical world, the escape for the down trodden has always been fantasy and just because a few percent really care about Jesus or Allah dosen't make them all wonderful paragons of virure, if that were true there would have been no schism, no reformation and no counter-reformation
>Comparing modern day life support nations with the most affluent nobles in the 12th century
Kill yourself, come back when the Kardashians or Bush family have consumption

>The average medieval person viewed God the same way you view the government.
So as real, but mostly irrelevant to your choices and behaviour as long as there isn't an official nearby? That actually sounds accurate.

Northern religion is not developed enough for the oldest in the continent.
Northeners know nothing about their gods. They believe in them because their ancestors carved faces on their holy trees

>The average heresiarch leads pesant rebellions because peasants want improved life conditions, not because they care about christian theology.
What peasant wanted was not to burn in hell for all eternity. For them, hell was not some metaphysical concept, it was a fact. Afterlife would come just as sure as the next winter, so they needed to prepare for that
Oh and by the way, heresiarch leaders believed in their own bullshit aswell, that's what made them so charismatic.

Spain with a higher GDP than Japan and Israel? Greece higher than Italy?

Noblemen were far more religious than peasants because a lot of them were literate and could read the Scriptures.

whoops, i meant bill gates foundation, sorry

>if that were true there would have been no schism, no reformation and no counter-reformation
These events prove that people were religious and believed in God.

Israel is a fucking shithole m8. Not sure if better than Spain, but it's trash.

>Comparing modern day life support nations with the most affluent nobles in the 12th century
a unfair comparison, since even the shittiest nation today could easily wreck the most powerful pre-gunpowder empire

So religious they flouted the laws of their own church in regards to divorce
No, it proves their rulers seized on opportunists to not pay tax, a true Christian following the church in Rome as they had for hundreds of years, would have burnt them as heretic like they did the fucking Albigensians. Supporting heresy actually disproves how much they cared about God

Their GDP per capita aren't that different.

>So religious they flouted the laws of their own church in regards to divorce
most of them didn't