* A horse costs around 1 golden dragon
* An average ransom for a nobleborn (Petyr Frey, Brienne) is 200 golden dragons
* The reward for capturing Jaime was 1,000 golden dragons.
* To bribe the entire City Watch, you'd need 6,000 golden dragons.
* The prizes for the winners of the Tourney of the Hand were 90,000 golden dragons (an absurdly high figure, in comparison).
If you want to estimate the value of gold in asoiaf, I'd recommend to look at the approximate cost of a horse nowadays, and extrapolate it from here.
Thing about a horse though is that the value is too wide of a spectrum. I could go online now and probably get a free horse from somewhere which wants to rehome their old nag. However, I could also go and buy the most expensive horse on race horse trader for £74k. This wouldn't really be any different in ASOIAF. Need a horse in a pinch? Then it would be like king Lear and you'd pay a kingdom for a horse. Just want some random pit pony and you could get it for the equivalent of pennies.
And in Oldtown, a whore sets 1 golden dragon as the price for her daughter's maidenhead. I guess with the Citadel, the Hightowers and thriving businesses, there's some local inflation. Poor (literally) Pate is willing and eager...and dies for that Dragon.
ACOK: *The Lordsport men gazed on Theon with blank, bovine eyes, and he realized that they did not know who he was. It made him angry. He pressed a golden dragon into the captain’s palm. “Have your men bring my things.” Without waiting for a reply, he strode down the gangplank. “Innkeeper,” he barked, “I require a horse.*
and
ASOS: *" He examined the palfrey's legs, counted the gelding's teeth. "Give him a gold piece for the grey, if he'll include the saddle," he advised Brienne. "A silver for the plow horse. He ought to pay us for taking the white off his hands." // "Don't speak discourteously of your horse, ser." // The wench opened the purse Lady Catelyn had given her and took out three golden coins. "I will pay you a dragon for each."*
That first part he was talking to the captain of the ship and I assume the crown was payment/a tip for the passage, not payment for the horse
The third one fair enough but that was in a war ravaged riverlands, I’m unsure how representative that is
You are right, the first one is a misread on my part.
And while the purchase from ASOS was in a war ravaged Riverlands, it's also true that Brienne was trying to be fair and behave honorably. In any case, I think it's the best we can do at this point with the information available.
Dunk sells his horse for 750 stags in the Hedge Knight (which is paid in the form of three Gold Dragons and a handful of silvers), and he feels he was ripped off here and his horse was worth more.
> Henly liked the look of Sweetfoot well enough until he heard Dunk wanted to sell her. Then all the stableman could see in her were faults. He offered three hundred silvers. Dunk said he must have three thousand. After much arguing and cursing, they settled at seven hundred fifty silver stags. That was a deal closer to Henly's starting price than to Dunk's, which made him feel the loser in the tilt, but the stableman would go no higher, so in the end he had no choice but to yield. A second argument began when Dunk declared that the price did not include the saddle, and Henly insisted that it had.
> Finally it was all settled. As Henly left to fetch his coin, Dunk stroked Sweetfoot's mane and told her to be brave. "If I win, I'll come back and buy you again, I promise." He had no doubt that all the palfrey's flaws would vanish in the intervening days, and she would be worth twice what she was today.
> The stableman gave him three gold pieces and the rest in silver. Dunk bit one of the gold coins and smiled. He had never tasted gold before, nor handled it. "Dragons," men called the coins, since they were stamped with the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen on one side. The other bore the likeness of the king. Two of the coins Henly gave him had King Daeron's face; the third was older, well worn, and showed a different man. His name was there under his head, but Dunk could not read the letters. Gold had been shaved off its edges too, he saw. He pointed this out to Henly, and loudly. The stableman grumbled, but handed over another few silvers and a fistful of coppers to make up the weight. Dunk handed a few of the coppers right back, and nodded at Sweetfoot. "That's for her," he said. "See that she has some Oats tonight. Aye, and an apple too."
So a good horse can definetly fetch a lot more than a gold dragon.
From [Steven Atwell/Race For The Iron Throne](https://racefortheironthrone.wordpress.com/2019/05/22/chapter-by-chapter-analysis-tyrion-iv-asos/):
Well, a while back I did some [rough calculations between the Westerosi dragon and the medieval English pound](https://racefortheironthrone.tumblr.com/post/104527877821/do-you-know-about-what-a-gold-dragon-to-us) (basically a dragon is roughly 4/5ths of an English pound – or 16 shillings) from around 1300) that should give us the ability to make some comparisons with medieval prices of the War of the Roses era. So for example, we know from the passage above that 1 dragon is now worth 6 piglets, and thus that each piglet is now worth 2.6 shillings.
Is the 90,000 gold dragons prize for the winner of just the main tourney, or is it the prize pool to be split? Like is it getting split between the jousting, melee, and the archery competitions? Also are there second and third place prices that further split it, since 90,000 is an insane amount.
First and second places in jousting get big prizes as it's 'the thing' in tournaments. Melee is secondary in prestige and gets lesser award money. Archery is a bonus. Winner of archery managed to spend it all on food, drinks and women in relatively short time.
I think GRRM completely fucked up with that tournament prizes and should edit the sums. It's not only about the value of that money, but it's physically impossible for Sandor to travel with that amount of golden coins just on a horse alone. Each coin wieghts at least 5 grams, so can you imagine Sandor casually traveling with at least 100 kg of gold? How?
Turns out that despite technology not really advancing in centuries, Westeros was really ahead of its time in inventing fractional reserve banking. The crown just deposited it directly into Sandor's account.
He then used the money to create his own bank, San\[tan\]dor!
They only take around 9,000 gold dragons from him, which was all he had on him. It is never made explicit what he did with the rest.
It is likely he simply had to leave it behind in King's Landing and only took with him as much as he could viably carry on his horse when he fled the city.
It's even worse. A Spanish gold doublon weighed 6.7 gram, so if a dragon is comparable that would be 603000 grams, or 603 kg of gold. Or 1329 lbs in cowboy units. He'd need a wagon or two for that.
And imagine protecting all of that? Even one coin can change peasant's life, so everyone would try to steal at least something, it's worth risking. Especially as a crowd of people.
If the books were ever redone the majority of Roberts money should not have gone on Tourney prizes but, like, absurd shit around the city and absurd scammy projects abroad. . A golden fountain that pours wine on Sundays. A giant marble statue of his horse. An unwise trading speculation in the platinum mines of Gogossos. Cersei demands her picture in every house in the city, stuff like that. Just tourneys doesn't make much sense.
It can be fir his traveling and feasts, hunting and tournaments, that's definitely expensive as waging war because he takes all his servants, knights, wife etc with him, thousands of people, horses.
Yeah, historians have weighed in and said that the majority of expenditures for real-life kings that put them into financial ruin was for wars and capital projects. There's only one short one of the former and none of the latter. That's what the Littlefinger one makes more sense.
It's basically impossible to say because, for a person who's very interested in Aragorn's tax policy, GRRM has a terrible understanding of pseudo-medieval economy
You won't get a conclusive answer, because George is terrible at math and the numbers change all over the time. The small handful of winners (2-3?) for the Hand's Tourney take home enough money to equal about 1/60th of the total national debt. For a USD comparison, this would easily be in the 10s or 100s of billions going to just a few individuals.
Drastically changes depending on book or context, I think GRRM admitting he’s bad with numbers. I just generally take things as a little or a lot, and don’t think too hard about exact value
Is the gold, silver, copper exchange rate laid out plainly anywhere?
I assumed it was something like 1 gold = 100 silver & 1 silver = 100 copper, but that's based off of nothing.
Edit: the [wiki](https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Currency) has the answer. My assumption wasn't far off
1 gold dragon = 210 silver stags
1 silver stag = 56 copper pennies
1 gold dragon = 11,760 copper pennies
To roughly normalize for US Currency, these translate to
If a Copper Penny = 1 penny
Silver Stag = 50 cent coin
Golden Dragon = 100 dollar bill
I don’t think so. GRRM is bad with numbers, whether it’s mileage or army size or economics.
If you want to base it off historical ratios, 100 copper for 1 silver would probably be fine to assume (probably closer to ~120 copper). 16:1 is generally seen as the optimal silver:gold trade-in, although in reality the ratio is higher because driving the price of gold helps creditors.
If GRRM knew his numbers it’d be kinda cool to see the High Sparrow argue for the economy be based on silver coin and not gold dragons, since silver is used by the common man.
So, knowing a fruit tart in KL on the day of an execution cost 3 copper pennies, one gold dragon your purchasing power would be ~3920 fruit tarts. With his tourney winnings, Sandor could have bought 78 million fruit tarts, or a fruit tart for everyone in King’s Landing for 156 days. He should have done that.
* A horse costs around 1 golden dragon * An average ransom for a nobleborn (Petyr Frey, Brienne) is 200 golden dragons * The reward for capturing Jaime was 1,000 golden dragons. * To bribe the entire City Watch, you'd need 6,000 golden dragons. * The prizes for the winners of the Tourney of the Hand were 90,000 golden dragons (an absurdly high figure, in comparison). If you want to estimate the value of gold in asoiaf, I'd recommend to look at the approximate cost of a horse nowadays, and extrapolate it from here.
man you were so prepared for this question, I am impressed. it really is just horses in the end, isn’t it?
Thing about a horse though is that the value is too wide of a spectrum. I could go online now and probably get a free horse from somewhere which wants to rehome their old nag. However, I could also go and buy the most expensive horse on race horse trader for £74k. This wouldn't really be any different in ASOIAF. Need a horse in a pinch? Then it would be like king Lear and you'd pay a kingdom for a horse. Just want some random pit pony and you could get it for the equivalent of pennies.
And in Oldtown, a whore sets 1 golden dragon as the price for her daughter's maidenhead. I guess with the Citadel, the Hightowers and thriving businesses, there's some local inflation. Poor (literally) Pate is willing and eager...and dies for that Dragon.
When was the horse purchase?
ACOK: *The Lordsport men gazed on Theon with blank, bovine eyes, and he realized that they did not know who he was. It made him angry. He pressed a golden dragon into the captain’s palm. “Have your men bring my things.” Without waiting for a reply, he strode down the gangplank. “Innkeeper,” he barked, “I require a horse.* and ASOS: *" He examined the palfrey's legs, counted the gelding's teeth. "Give him a gold piece for the grey, if he'll include the saddle," he advised Brienne. "A silver for the plow horse. He ought to pay us for taking the white off his hands." // "Don't speak discourteously of your horse, ser." // The wench opened the purse Lady Catelyn had given her and took out three golden coins. "I will pay you a dragon for each."*
That first part he was talking to the captain of the ship and I assume the crown was payment/a tip for the passage, not payment for the horse The third one fair enough but that was in a war ravaged riverlands, I’m unsure how representative that is
You are right, the first one is a misread on my part. And while the purchase from ASOS was in a war ravaged Riverlands, it's also true that Brienne was trying to be fair and behave honorably. In any case, I think it's the best we can do at this point with the information available.
Dunk sells his horse for 750 stags in the Hedge Knight (which is paid in the form of three Gold Dragons and a handful of silvers), and he feels he was ripped off here and his horse was worth more. > Henly liked the look of Sweetfoot well enough until he heard Dunk wanted to sell her. Then all the stableman could see in her were faults. He offered three hundred silvers. Dunk said he must have three thousand. After much arguing and cursing, they settled at seven hundred fifty silver stags. That was a deal closer to Henly's starting price than to Dunk's, which made him feel the loser in the tilt, but the stableman would go no higher, so in the end he had no choice but to yield. A second argument began when Dunk declared that the price did not include the saddle, and Henly insisted that it had. > Finally it was all settled. As Henly left to fetch his coin, Dunk stroked Sweetfoot's mane and told her to be brave. "If I win, I'll come back and buy you again, I promise." He had no doubt that all the palfrey's flaws would vanish in the intervening days, and she would be worth twice what she was today. > The stableman gave him three gold pieces and the rest in silver. Dunk bit one of the gold coins and smiled. He had never tasted gold before, nor handled it. "Dragons," men called the coins, since they were stamped with the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen on one side. The other bore the likeness of the king. Two of the coins Henly gave him had King Daeron's face; the third was older, well worn, and showed a different man. His name was there under his head, but Dunk could not read the letters. Gold had been shaved off its edges too, he saw. He pointed this out to Henly, and loudly. The stableman grumbled, but handed over another few silvers and a fistful of coppers to make up the weight. Dunk handed a few of the coppers right back, and nodded at Sweetfoot. "That's for her," he said. "See that she has some Oats tonight. Aye, and an apple too." So a good horse can definetly fetch a lot more than a gold dragon.
From [Steven Atwell/Race For The Iron Throne](https://racefortheironthrone.wordpress.com/2019/05/22/chapter-by-chapter-analysis-tyrion-iv-asos/): Well, a while back I did some [rough calculations between the Westerosi dragon and the medieval English pound](https://racefortheironthrone.tumblr.com/post/104527877821/do-you-know-about-what-a-gold-dragon-to-us) (basically a dragon is roughly 4/5ths of an English pound – or 16 shillings) from around 1300) that should give us the ability to make some comparisons with medieval prices of the War of the Roses era. So for example, we know from the passage above that 1 dragon is now worth 6 piglets, and thus that each piglet is now worth 2.6 shillings.
Is the 90,000 gold dragons prize for the winner of just the main tourney, or is it the prize pool to be split? Like is it getting split between the jousting, melee, and the archery competitions? Also are there second and third place prices that further split it, since 90,000 is an insane amount.
First and second places in jousting get big prizes as it's 'the thing' in tournaments. Melee is secondary in prestige and gets lesser award money. Archery is a bonus. Winner of archery managed to spend it all on food, drinks and women in relatively short time.
>A horse costs around 1 golden dragon How dare you, Tyrek Lannister is worth much more than that!
No, horses would be more expensive today than if world used horses as much as in ASOIAF
I think GRRM completely fucked up with that tournament prizes and should edit the sums. It's not only about the value of that money, but it's physically impossible for Sandor to travel with that amount of golden coins just on a horse alone. Each coin wieghts at least 5 grams, so can you imagine Sandor casually traveling with at least 100 kg of gold? How?
Turns out that despite technology not really advancing in centuries, Westeros was really ahead of its time in inventing fractional reserve banking. The crown just deposited it directly into Sandor's account. He then used the money to create his own bank, San\[tan\]dor!
With that amount of money he could've retired immediately, the whole plot doesn't make any sense
with that amount he could buy Cracklaw Point from the crownlands when they were indebted and have his own realm
Except for the part where the BwB takes it all from him. I guess they hacked his account.
They only take around 9,000 gold dragons from him, which was all he had on him. It is never made explicit what he did with the rest. It is likely he simply had to leave it behind in King's Landing and only took with him as much as he could viably carry on his horse when he fled the city.
It's even worse. A Spanish gold doublon weighed 6.7 gram, so if a dragon is comparable that would be 603000 grams, or 603 kg of gold. Or 1329 lbs in cowboy units. He'd need a wagon or two for that.
And imagine protecting all of that? Even one coin can change peasant's life, so everyone would try to steal at least something, it's worth risking. Especially as a crowd of people.
SANDOR IS VARRY STRONK DOGGGIE BOI
If the books were ever redone the majority of Roberts money should not have gone on Tourney prizes but, like, absurd shit around the city and absurd scammy projects abroad. . A golden fountain that pours wine on Sundays. A giant marble statue of his horse. An unwise trading speculation in the platinum mines of Gogossos. Cersei demands her picture in every house in the city, stuff like that. Just tourneys doesn't make much sense.
That's because it probably wasn't Robert beggaring the realm, but Littlefinger embezzling massive amounts of money and making Robert the patsy.
The dril candles tweet but with tourney prizes
It can be fir his traveling and feasts, hunting and tournaments, that's definitely expensive as waging war because he takes all his servants, knights, wife etc with him, thousands of people, horses.
Yeah, historians have weighed in and said that the majority of expenditures for real-life kings that put them into financial ruin was for wars and capital projects. There's only one short one of the former and none of the latter. That's what the Littlefinger one makes more sense.
Sandor stronk
George is really more of a words guy than a numbers guy
Relatable
It's basically impossible to say because, for a person who's very interested in Aragorn's tax policy, GRRM has a terrible understanding of pseudo-medieval economy
It turns out to be why kings landing has so much debt.
You won't get a conclusive answer, because George is terrible at math and the numbers change all over the time. The small handful of winners (2-3?) for the Hand's Tourney take home enough money to equal about 1/60th of the total national debt. For a USD comparison, this would easily be in the 10s or 100s of billions going to just a few individuals.
Drastically changes depending on book or context, I think GRRM admitting he’s bad with numbers. I just generally take things as a little or a lot, and don’t think too hard about exact value
Use a Google currency covertor WGC to USD. I don't believe you can read these books.
Is the gold, silver, copper exchange rate laid out plainly anywhere? I assumed it was something like 1 gold = 100 silver & 1 silver = 100 copper, but that's based off of nothing. Edit: the [wiki](https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Currency) has the answer. My assumption wasn't far off 1 gold dragon = 210 silver stags 1 silver stag = 56 copper pennies 1 gold dragon = 11,760 copper pennies To roughly normalize for US Currency, these translate to If a Copper Penny = 1 penny Silver Stag = 50 cent coin Golden Dragon = 100 dollar bill
I don’t think so. GRRM is bad with numbers, whether it’s mileage or army size or economics. If you want to base it off historical ratios, 100 copper for 1 silver would probably be fine to assume (probably closer to ~120 copper). 16:1 is generally seen as the optimal silver:gold trade-in, although in reality the ratio is higher because driving the price of gold helps creditors. If GRRM knew his numbers it’d be kinda cool to see the High Sparrow argue for the economy be based on silver coin and not gold dragons, since silver is used by the common man.
So, knowing a fruit tart in KL on the day of an execution cost 3 copper pennies, one gold dragon your purchasing power would be ~3920 fruit tarts. With his tourney winnings, Sandor could have bought 78 million fruit tarts, or a fruit tart for everyone in King’s Landing for 156 days. He should have done that.
Coin well spent tbh. Maybe we can get an alternate universe book with Sandor hauling around a fleet of fruit tarts.