Were Noble Houses during the Feudal system really that awful?

They were retribution from God unto christians. Were they maming people? Depends, but anything goes in war.

>were they bad
But was their tax policy like?

No. Furthermore GOT/ASOIAF exaggerates their power by basically making them absolute monarchs in their lands who can do whatever they want with no repercussions. Tywin's "Reynes of Castamere" massacre and subsequent seizure of all the Reynes and Tarbecks assets for his own bank account would have gotten him executed in a remotely realistic context. So would him randomly massacre the inhabitants of several towns down to the last child with no provocation at the beginning of AGOT.

They're literally Kings beneath an emperor so he had that right.

A very large part of the a clergyman's job in medieval europe was convincing the nobles not to murder each other, and also to not be too rough on the peasants either.

>So would him randomly massacre the inhabitants of several towns down to the last child with no provocation at the beginning of AGOT.

Not so sure about this one. Once war is formally declared, this tactic, chevauchée, was very common. The Black Prince of Wales was notorious for his murder and destruction of French peasants and towns during the Hundred Years' War.

That Pope is unfairly demonized. His contemporaries hated and slandered him because he protected the Jews (in accordance with church policy) and strengthened the Church's position at the expense of a few greedy monarchs.

War wasn't declared, that was the whole point and why he sent men without banners.

The Boltons are supposed to be villains. They are way ahead of the curve of awfulness.

Reminder that GoT
>never discusses tax policy
>has a big bad dark lord final boss
>a little girl with a dagger easily deflects a strong warrior's claymore
>people inexplicably end up at different crossing impossible distances within the time span
>20 good men can kill an entire army
>Women are now inherently and collectively strong, empowered, intelligent, egalitarian, hard to kill

Wow
realistic
historical
better than Lord of the Rings
very intelligent for me and my intelligent friends on our subreddit

You forget how all the evil men get done in eventually ;3

[spoiler]IT[/spoiler]
[spoiler]WAS[/spoiler]
[spoiler]GOOD[/spoiler]

Funny thing is Tolkien actually does mention Aragorn's tax policy

There were good nobles/royalty and bad nobles/royalty...

Let's think about House Capet.
You had Robert I, Duke of Burgundy. He was basically a bandit who plundered people on his realm.
But you also had Louis IX, who was literally a saint, a just man who cared about the poor and who lived an austere simple life. And then, the grandson of this saint ended up being Phillip IV, who killed and burned the Templars under false accusations because he wanted their wealth.

Dark Lord

You forgot

>no army has scouts

Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?

Their reputations were smeared after they fell out of favor politically. You can be a fucking saint in reality but if the powers that be decide they don't like you, everyone will as a baby eating dog rapist because you confessed under torture.

Will remember you as*

Doesn't this just prove that killing peasants was not an approved way to act? Why would people smear their reputation with something that is ok to do?

Thats assuming GOT is medieval Europe. Its a fantasy novel, the laws are not the same. There are instances of semi-autonomous rulers putting down revolts brutally or making regional power plays. I believe several Persian satraps were extremely autonomous and even openly fought one another on a small scale in an instance or two.

Reminder that there is no historical evidence of the Lord's Right and it was just GRRM projecting.

poor bait

> implying Martin has anything to do with how the Eternal Jew handled the story

It is funny how much the nobles liked to fight
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_of_the_Thirty

The Reynes and Tarbecks were literally rebels, the Iron Throne would have no problem with the Lannisters genociding them and the attacks on the Riverlands by Gregor Clegane were masked as "bandits" to hide the fact that they were carried out under Tywin Lannister's orders.

>he protected the Jews (in accordance with church policy)
Protecting the killers of Christ is church policy?

Turning the other cheek or forgiving is for fags.

I bet he's only seen the movies and slept during half of it

Dude. There are fucking dragons and zombies. And shadow babies popping out of pregnant witches.

GOT is not a goddamn historical novel on medieval culture and political systems.

is that a pic from the actual show?

Yes. Danny got implants. Also historical to 1200th century Europe.

>The show has fantastical elements so it doesn't need to be internally consistent
What did you mean by this?

Not really. The two powerful houses owed gold to the Lannisters. When they were asked to pay up or send their children as wards (collateral) they refused and even rose up in open rebellion.
I don't see a problem with the destruction of house Tarbeck from a legal point of view. As for the Reynes, there could be some trouble because they offered to surrender before Tywin drowned them all.

They are very exaggerated, nobles rose and fell within two at most generations. Nobles also rarely brought down kings through wars, as their authority also stemmed from the divine providence of God to kings. Also the land the nobles controlled was not that big, as they did not control church lands, cities, forests and anything that was part of the royal domain. The lesser nobility like barons in England were sometimes richer and more influential than counts or earls because they had a more direct lifeline to the king, and because they had better economic management of their domains. The higher nobility on the other hand could only rise to prominence by being related to the kind and inheriting vast amounts of lands that hey could receive tribute from.

What Asoiaf the books get right is the dynastic clusterfuck that happened in the middle-ages, intermarriage and control of how a dynasty evolves and who becomes head of the dynasty was extremely important. Many nobles like in the War of the Roses gambled their fortunes on the which side branch of the royal dynasty would rule. Powerful nobles did exist in the middle-ages but they rarely challenged royal authority directly instead they gambled on placing their own guy on the throne.

they didn't do a good job then

>But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs?

Tolkien addresses literally all these points

So what was Aragons tax policy?

Well, that's certainly true. The Church routinely found to its dismay that it was utterly incapable of preventing conflict between nobles in Europe. The "Peace and Truce of God" movement was a concerted effort by the Catholic Church to stop (or at least limit) the violence of nobles in Europe. There were 2 main goals, to restrict warfare between the nobles themselves, and also to stop the nobles from treating the peasants like complete shit. The Church essentially tried to create a rule book for nobles that contained restrictions like "no fighting on Sunday" and "don't steal from animals from peasant farmers." And it goes almost without saying that they failed. Attempts to shame nobles into following these rules had, at best, extremely temporary success. It is said that one of the biggest motivations for the Crusades was that the Church had given up hope on getting the nobles to stop fighting and instead decided to try redirecting their belligerence elsewhere.

What is aragorn`s tax policy thou?

Remember asoiaf=/=got

Elizabeth Bathory wasn't executed, she was put under castle arrest.

>Yes. Danny got implants. Also historical to 1200th century Europe.

George RR Martin's McMedieval world still ascribes to Amerimemes of edgy medieval Europe.
>DUDE PEOPLE TOTALLY ROUNDED UP PEASANTS WITH SHIT TOOLS FOR BATTLE!

>>The show has fantastical elements so it doesn't need to be internally consistent
>What did you mean by this?

The magical elements in GoT are pretty minor; Daenerys’ dragons for example are a device so she survives and can then push the almost exclusively human political oriented story and the Others get only a couple of pages, simply providing the background setting for the Wildings vs. Nights Watch storyline, while Melisandre’s shadow baby is a one-off, the magical equivalent of Renly being killed by a stray arrow in battle, the entire storyline before and after is wholly human and political.

Sure, GoT ain't "history" but it's probably the lest magical fantasy story.

>Frederick William I allowed one of his court scholars to be bullied into suicide
Tell me more

It IS internally consistent: It's been established that the Seven Kingdoms are mostly autonomous and the lords can do whatever they wanted as long as they don't rock the boat; and the king descends from a conqueror who wielded absolute power, most of the kings throughout the Iron Throne's history had absolute power, they're not gonna all of the sudden start playing nice just because someone told them to.

got is so absolutely retarded

there's NEVER any event in the entirety of the world that spurs cultural revolution? there's no plagues that decimate the population and do away with feudalism? there's no innovations in technology/architecture/etc? and the same families have ruled the same places for like 8000 years with little to no cultural shifts? dumb shit, would be a better series if they went with some sort of renaissance gimmick or some shit.

Wait until ADOS comes out, and you have straight up LotR dragons vs ice demons

>the same families have ruled the same places for like 8000 years
You haven't being paying attention.
It's explicitly said that this is a myth.

>Wait until ADOS comes out, and you have straight up LotR dragons vs ice demons

Sure but by that point, we'll have had 5000 pages of a mostly human politically orientated story.

Royal family mass executions have been a thing since the dawn of civilization and basically only stopped within the last 90 years

>nu-Veeky Forums

>very intelligent for me and my intelligent friends on our subreddit
Literally no one implies that the show is intelligent anymore, the biggest community is r/Freefolk, which is devoted to mocking it.

>DUDE PEOPLE TOTALLY ROUNDED UP PEASANTS WITH SHIT TOOLS FOR BATTLE!
When the fuck does this happen

Every major goddamn battle happens between trained armies with self-bought armor

The peasants exist to be slaughtered.

>The show has fantastical elements so it doesn't need to be internally consistent
Provide evidence that it isn't

>would be a better series if they went with some sort of renaissance gimmick or some shit.
It's almost like half of the series and the in-universe world is about Renaissance city counterparts or something

IS Stannis our guy?

I did my thesis on nobility in the county of Holland, and most powerfull families lived for a couple of hundred years. Two of the most famous families for instance, The Van Egmonds and the Van Brederodes, existed from 900 AD to 1600 ad and 1100 AD and 1700 AD respectively. Keep in mind these are not the oldest families, just the two I focused on.

>dumb shit, would be a better series if they went with some sort of renaissance gimmick or some shit.
...You mean the Free Cities?

Half of the entire narrative?

Really makes me think

You're damn right he is.

Are you getting asoiaf confused with something else? There's no peasant armies.

He's talking about how peasants were armed with things that are not Military weapons.

They would treat peasants as lesser folk but very few would go around murdering them.

I thought a few did

I'm pretty sure that one of the justifications for the crusades was that if bored, listless young knights were going to be roving around in gangs terrorizing the country folk, they might as well be doing it to somebody else's country folk.

The Romans killed Jesus, my dude

Coincidentally, Jews invented the term "scapegoat."

Revoking titles of rebels was still considered tyranical even when the rebels fucked the country for years on end. Executing the leaders is fine, but butchering their innocent families when they sued for peace is just ruthless behaviour. If you were Tywin's vassal you'd not rest easy knowing he could revoke your lands at any time. Sure he'd be feared but people would conspire to dethrone and sabotage him left and right. Feudal lords have armies loyal to them, not their liege, all westerlanders could've united and marched on casterly rock after he broke the feudal contract

>Daily Reminder that George Martin keeps insisting that Tywin Lannister the most realist Feudal lord

yes

No, thats a shitty photoshop

Fuck you, motherfucker. The introduction of magic, an unrealistic concept, doesn't mean that you can just ignore everything else.

Are they ever specifically called an Emperor or are the seven kingdoms called an Empire? Perhaps Overking might be a more appropriate title

>Once war is formally declared, this tactic, chevauchée, was very common.

It wasn't, since it was in ones interests to keep workforce alive.
Black Princes' autism contributed into the invention of "national liberation" war concept, and, subsequently, the shift to the nationalism.

...When? When the fuck does this ever happen?
We literally never see the peasants take up arms at any point in the entire history of the universe.

What the actual fuck are you retards talking about

>Feudal lords have armies loyal to them, not their liege, all westerlanders could've united and marched on casterly rock after he broke the feudal contract

Explicitly stated multiple times that Tywin's brutality is only respected by the Westerlanders because his father was a massive idiot and a pussy who let everyone slide, making the realm hate him in the process. The brutal attitude of the Westerlanders is abnormal within the universe as well.

It's in the novels.

"More less than more. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They've heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know.

Hello fellow stannisfag

youtube.com/watch?v=JfgUeXsykA4

And yes if the story were based any sense of reality Stannis would have won long ago

Why did they hate him

Because they're American

Source

They could though. people loved to litigate about every little issue all across the medieval period. If you were deemed to be falling short of your obligations you'd stand a good chance of getting fucked

In Spain, they were even worst.

Stop talking

Now did he really do all of that gruesome shit? I read somewhere that all of that was made up by his rivals to ruin his life and his reputation.

I also get the same feeling for the more degenerate Roman Emperors

Some during the Early Middle Ages were pretty bad, but the stable houses that emerged had a fairly symbiotic relationship with the peasants. The idea that aristocracies are always intrinsically like this is a Jew/Enlightenment lie.

WHERE? I've read the books but don't remember this. Would love to have it to throw at GURMfags.

Holy shit that's metal.

t. Gilles

Do you have more of these?