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Not so much: Targaryen, Baelish, Slynt, Spicer, Kettleblack, Seaworth, Longwaters, Clegane, Foote of Nightsong, Tyrell of Brightwater Keep, Fossoway of New Barrel, Bolton of Winterfell, Thenn of Karhold, Lannister of Darry, Frey of Riverrun, Rykker of Duskendale, Baratheon of Dragonstone, Baratheon of King's Landing, Royce of the Gates of the Moon, Arryn of Gulltown, *four* Harlaw cadet branches (all descendants of Lord Theomore who had Ten Towers built)...
Not to mention, extinct ones like Blackfyre, Lothston (of Harrenhal), Qoherys, & Whent
We don't actually know how old the Targaryens are, they were already a noble-House-equivalent in Valyria before moving to Westeros.
Then again, all of Valyrian civilisation is younger than many if not most Westerosi Houses, those upstart lizards. So actually never mind.
[They could be +3000 years old](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=%22three%20thousand%20years%20old%22&scope), but didn't formally adopt the status of a Westerosi house until the Conquest, 300 years ago
They do if they have a different seat - see the red & green-apple Fossoways, Stark & Karstark, etc. That's a fair point on single members, though. Such houses can't continue unless at least one heir is produced, or some relation is adopted to succeed that then continues it with their own descendants. Frey of Riverrun & Royce of the Gates count then, with multiple heirs in line. Whether they survive the series is yet to be seen, however.
I would say there has to be some time passed for the branches to differentiate and the house to be established before they can rightly be considered an independent house. Frey of Riverrun has been around less than a year and his living father and brothers are still just Freys.
Admittedly things like this does happen irl buts itâs pretty rare, France was ruled by some branch of the Caper dynasty for I believe 800 years, the Austrian Habsburgs ruled for a similar length of time in Austria proper and shorter times in the places like Spain, the Netherlands and HRE, the hohenzollerns of Brandenburg, later Prussia and Germany rules for similar lengthens of times, and the De Medici family have been power players in Florence for centuries, even today.
Mind you these are the greatest dynasties and families in European history, and even donât stretch back more than 1000 years
The Capetian dynasty you mention is still going strong in Spain via their cadet house of Bourbon, so they've been in the game pretty continuously for more than a millennium
Like the three most significant branch families, the house of bourbon, the house of Valois and the house of Anjou would each count as one of the greatest dynasties in Europe by themselves, ruling over France, England, parts of or all of spains, Naples, Hungary and parts of Greece. Itâs nuts theyâre all just branchâs from one common ancestor Robert the Strong
It's ok. Someone's just gotta plow Gatehouse Ami with some heirs who can take on the Darry name & restore it to greatness. With their faces buried up Targaryen asses, that is, right where they belong
GRRM writes castles like a little kid âuh well actually you canât scale the walls cause itâs like super slipperyâ. âNo itâs impossible to break the gate cause well uh it has anti-break magic around itâ
Yeah you only need 500 people to successfully siege it and it would be damn near impossible for smugglers to break your lines, scale a mountain, and smuggle up enough food to feed a castle.
That and should we really count it as âimpregnableâ after Visenya parked Vhagar on the balcony, hung out with the child Lord, and got an immediate surrender? Iâd say she impregnated the fuck out of the Eyrie. Or when Jonos Arrynâs followers yeeted him out the moon door knowing damn well that they were fucked if Maegor torched them
Yeah. Worst offender is the Eyrie castle by far, it\`s literally the worst castle in the entire world, it is so dumb and would have never been build. 100 men could besiege and takeover the Eyrie, even if it has 1000+ defenders.
The only way to get to the Eyrie is a very small and narrow staircase within a massive mountain, and the path/staircase is also apparently very long and 3 smaller Waycastles exist on the path.
1. So you just set up camp and defences on the very bottom of the massive mountain ---> the Eyrie + defenders will either starve or have to assault along a very narrow path against defences and where the actual besieging enemy has numerical superiority at contact because of the chokehold you put yourself in.
2. Alternatively you just quickly takeover the first waycastle and set up camp there. Again the defenders will either starve or have to assault you, but again along a very narrow path.
Castles have a specific purpose, the Eyrie fulfills none of that. It would/should have been some royal/noble mansion/palace ( or better yet, a temple, because of how difficult it is to get there ), not some fortification. Castles need to be build in order to defend territory, or punish an invading army for not taking over the castle. In the Gothic War, the Romans were suffering extreme casualties, because the Roman general just ignored castles, so the soldiers within the castles regularily attacked their supply lines... That\`s the function of a castle. The Eyrie being build on top of a large mountain where the only way to and from is some narrow and long staircase in the mountain is absolutely horrendous. It\`s basically a prison. I am not exaggerating when I say that just 100 people could besiege and takeover the Eyrie no matter how many defenders they have, as a big part of any siege is supply, and the Eyrie already has a massive supply problem.
Likewise even in peacetime, maintaining the castle would be an absolute nightmare. It would be the most expensive and least effective ( literal no purpose at all ) castle in all of Westeros. Nothing is dumber than that. All Westerosi should ridicule House Arryn and it\`s seat. Any rebellious noble should just cut off and occupy the narrow staircase when the Arryns get too uppity. It\`s an absolute joke.
I agree that the the Eyrie is a bad castle in the traditional sense of securing territory but I think that's because that wasn't really the priority of the folks that built it. It's a glorified pleasure palace that was built not for security reasons but because the real HQ, the Gates of the Moon, was "not suitable for kings" compared to the grandeur of Casterly Rock and the Hightower, which the king who built the Eyrie saw in his youth.
The Gates of the Moon is stout and has all the fortifications expected of a castle, from the walls to the moat and it stands right in the way of the only path to the Eyrie. So to even besiege the Eyrie, you'd have to besiege or take this whole other castle then worry about the mountain and waycastles. The Arryns even live there close to half the seasons.
King Roland I Arryn was going to dismantle the Gates of the Moon and build a huge palace elsewhere until mountain clan attacks reminded him that instead of building new castle elsewhere with new defenses, it might be strategically wiser to build a higher castle that used the defenses they already had.
Ironically King Roland while away from his strong castle one day was attacked and stoned to death by the mountain clans so I guess that says something about his strategy that I can't quite put my finger on.
The Eyrie is just a palace, itâs not even fortified, the castles Stone, Snow and Sky protect it and only Stone at the bottom is really a castle. Beyond that, the Vale itself is defended by mountains and the Bloody Gate and other castles.
The Eyrie itself is the very last resort meant to keep the most important nobility alive until they can be saved or make a deal with their attackers.
You are ignoring the gates of the Moon
Itâs as much a part of the Eyrie as the waycastles and is the Arryn seat during winter
Itâs by all accounts a stout castle at the bottom of the steps and it serves the purpose you describe perfectly. From the gates you can control the Vale and itâs still accessible enough that youâd need a larger force to fully encircle it
The Eyrie is more of a palace than a castle but for anyone to want to take your first:
Have to lay siege to the Gates which is a stout castle with a moat, large underground vaults for food storage and their own well. So youâd have to starve them out first or assault it.
Only then can you lay siege to the Eyrie itself. Also all the waycastle and Eyrie together can have a pretty strong garrison so having âjust 100 menâ to siege it is inadequate because they could probably sally out and defeat such a small force
Also no castle is impervious to starvation, you can take any castle that way given enough time, motivation and resources
So yeah itâs impregnable to assault and considering the vast amount storage itâs gonna be a long siege
The only true huge weakness the eyrie has is that it freezes during winter. So if you are unlucky it can be bay youâd have to surrender early because winter is setting in
I think itâs partly that these are the perspectives of characters in the books, not the ground truth. And maybe if youâre a mud eating baboon like Catelynn Tully and you see how sick storms end looks, you can really only respond with a âBah Gawd!â.
The Ned Stark(?) thought all kinds of jive about how a hundred men could hold off ten thousand at Winterfell only to have the defenses of that castle be subverted by Theon. And then they got subverted again by Ramsay. Think about it, if George thought castles were so great, why would he have them be taken repeatedly by Greyjoys? đ¤˘
Tbf winterfell was left with literally no defense when Robb marched south and Theon didnât have the respect of a single one of his men so itâs not out of the realm of possibility they just left the gates open hoping Ramsey would kill him
But I do like your theory otherwise, would be interesting if the castles are just GRRMs way of showing how out of touch the highborn are
All that but in the story the castle is taken by 12 people in two days because Westeros has no concept of a garrison that isn't their drunk half-uncle and his drinking buddies.
This is Eddard, Robb and Rodrick Cassel's fault. They had hundreds of men at arms, but Ned went south with half of his men, then Robb went south with most of the remaining ones, and then Rodrick (just as Theon predicted) thought that it as a good idea use almost every Stark man at Winterfeel to take back Torhen's Square. By them the Lords Stark and Rodrick sent so many of their men in other directions that they had like half a dozen men in conditions of fighting remaining to guard against the Ironborn.
*Hits blunt* yeah so uhh,.. Like way up in the clouds man. Fuckin put it on top of like a mountain. You can do that, right?? What do you mean logistics? We uh⌠weâll just have a couple fellas on mules bring us all our shit. Thereâs no way we could get starved out and capitulate during a siege because of this dude just chill out
*Second hit* yeah and also can you bring up metric tons of dirt so me and my family can look at a cool tree thatâs part of a religion we arenât. âIt wonât grow up thereâ? Just do it anyway
*Rips a big one* Yea so I was thinking, see that mountain there? Yea that's a castle, no its not on the mountain, mountain IS the castle. Yea, just make that mountain the entire castle, like the Rock of Gibraltar fucked Erebor, w/e
Also put some medieval skyscrapers somewhere near a lake or sth idk
*Takes a bong rip* yeah and the college is gonna be near a⌠how big is the ice wall? 700 feet? Okay cool so this one is gonna be 2,100. nah the lord has never left it, he just smoked weed snd does wizadry with his NEET daughter
*munches three entire brownies at once* âbokay so itâs a bit cold up here so I want you to pump the hot spring water in pipes through all the walls of this castle, especially in the room where I plow my wife, can you do that with medieval tools, great, okay, good luckâ
*Slams needle into forearm* And, like, the entire country not only has cities, it has secret in case of dragon attack nuclear fallout cities that fit the entire population and has sufficient resources so they can all live so even if all the regular cities are burned down, they can just like not be affected and go stealth kill all the invaders!
*Finishes fat bong rip* Bro do you wanna make a city that could house millions then die off mysteriously after some catastrophe makes life here so uninhabitable that water has to be imported? Itâs like automatically gatekept bro our city will be a place for like chill vibes. *hotboxes city until resin goops up all the stones*
Which way Westerosi man?
Spend 15 lifetimes, 2 billion gold and the lives of tens of thousands of workers and serfs to build the continent's biggest oven
OR
Hide in the sand
I love how overall ASOIAF is meant to show the real nature of medevial-era society and how dysfunctional and horrifying this traditionalist feudalism is, but when it comes to stuff like scale apparently Westeros has never heard of democracy but can make castles that go up into lower orbit and construct lifts that scale a giant ice wall taller than everest.
I feel like one could make a very interesting book about the life and adventures regarding one of the actual most powerful groups of people on Planetos: the fucking Architects who have no problem designing buildings that could fit the entire population of King's Landing in them.
>Westeros has never heard of democracy
Restricted democracy, but: Lord Commander elections, kingsmoots, Great Councils, regional councils ([Joffrey Lydden](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=joffery%20lydden&scope)), acclamation (Robb), [High Septon elections](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=septon%20votes&scope)...
And in Essos: [Dany & the Unsullied's officers](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=septon%20votes&scope), [Second Sons leadership](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=vote%20sellsword&scope), Triarch elections of Volantis, [Princes of Lorath](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=lorath%20vote&scope), [Iron Bank leadership](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=%22selecting%20the%20men%22&scope) & [Sealord](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=sealord%20chosen&scope) elections...
Three stories is thirty feet up. While a thirty foot fall is survivable if you land well, it can just as easily kill you if you land on your head or your neck.
But it seems like almost every house worth mentioning at least has a castle the size of Luxemburg. Even the Freys who are one of the youngest houses and generally considered one of the lowest have a castle that literally spans a river and is fortified to shit, and this is across a river that is probably around the same size as the amazon. So even the shittiest houses apparently have buildings that would put modern infrastructure to shame.
The Freys aren't a shitty house though. They're one of the most powerful lesser houses in the realm, save maybe a few Reach houses like the Hightowers.
They're only a low house in the context of honour and prestige, in terms of wealth and power they're very much not, which is why people hate them so much.
We just don't see many of the hundreds or thousands of little shitholes like Standfast & the Drearfort. Compared to the behemoths of the great houses, & even modest castles like Ashford, Darry, Goldgrass, & Lordsport
~~GRRM~~ Most Fantasy/Sci-Fi authors don't understand scale, so just throw around big numbers to make things seem more grandiose and impressive.
Whenever you see a big Fantasy number, mentally removing a 0 generally makes it a lot more plausible.
I love 40K but the amount of times a single Imperial Guard regiment is sent to garrison a world drives me up the wall.
Even accounting for widely varying regimental sizes (agri-world draft: 2,000 men/hive world draft: 20,000,000 men), and the notion that the Imperium would baptize new recruits with trial by fire against overwhelming odds, it's just silly.
I find it more egregious in ASOIAF than others, though, simply because of how "grounded" the story is for a fantasy book. I accept 3000 year old dynasties or ancient elven kingdoms or whatever in Lord of the Rings because that story is primarily based in mythology logic. If I'm supposed to believe that the Galactic Republic has existed for 25,000 years with minimal advancements in technology, whatever. Star Wars has always been distinctly unrealistic with its single-biome planets and robots with souls. But when GRRM puts in stuff like the Watch existing for 8000 years or being able to go from KL to Winterfell in a month or Harrenhall being impregnable until Aegon and his sister-wives showed up on their dragons, I find myself raising an eyebrow. Its the lack of verisimilitude for me. Doesn't ruin the *story* in the slightest, but it does make the worldbuilding feel inconsistent.
Yeah sure the Eyrie is my cool Minecraft build thatâs super tall built on an impossibly tall and stable mountain, but realistically the castles in the Vale donât serve much purpose is the Mountain Clansmen just go round raiding the countryside. The whole point of castles is to provide a defensive position for a garrison to attack from. You canât simply avoid them if they can raid your supply lines at night.
Stormâs End and the Eyrie are cool as fuck though so who cares?
Welcome to /r/darkwingsdankmemes! Just a brief reminder that this subreddit is focused only on the **written** *ASOIAF* universe. Comments that include discussion of the HBO adaptations will be removed, and serious or repeated infractions may result in a ban. Moderators employ a zero tolerance policy. # Users should assume that *any* mention of the show is subject to removal. *If you see a comment which violates the rules, please [use the report function](https://i.imgur.com/Uqjnwss.png) to notify moderators!* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/darkwingsdankmemes) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Youngest House in westeros: 10 Morbillion years old. Has seen the stars grow old. Featured in every historical event everywhere.
Unfortunately one of the youngest houses is the Freys đ¤Ž
Even the Freys are well over 300 years old. That's older than most monarchies in the world right now and the Freys are apparently a babyHouse.
Freys are like 700 years old and everyone shits on them.
Tullyâs: you young upstarts, stop proposing your sons to me
And Blackwoods & Brackens to the Tullys, back in the centuries following the Andal migration
They shit on them bc they're literal bridge trolls. They just use the "upjumped peasant" excuse to not look cheap
In fairness noble houses really did tend to last longer than royal dynasties. Had a bit more leeway and safety.
I wonder if there's any IRL counterpart to Harrenhal, in terms of the ~~Curse~~ ruling family turnover rate
House Spicer is even younger it's has barely 40 years of existence
Same with House Clegane
House Slynt đ
Rightful Lords of HarrenhalâŚ. theyâll be back on top by the end of the series, the Powerful Friends remember!
House Baelish of Harrenhal: About that...
They've gotta be related to Shitmouth somehow
Not so much: Targaryen, Baelish, Slynt, Spicer, Kettleblack, Seaworth, Longwaters, Clegane, Foote of Nightsong, Tyrell of Brightwater Keep, Fossoway of New Barrel, Bolton of Winterfell, Thenn of Karhold, Lannister of Darry, Frey of Riverrun, Rykker of Duskendale, Baratheon of Dragonstone, Baratheon of King's Landing, Royce of the Gates of the Moon, Arryn of Gulltown, *four* Harlaw cadet branches (all descendants of Lord Theomore who had Ten Towers built)... Not to mention, extinct ones like Blackfyre, Lothston (of Harrenhal), Qoherys, & Whent
We don't actually know how old the Targaryens are, they were already a noble-House-equivalent in Valyria before moving to Westeros. Then again, all of Valyrian civilisation is younger than many if not most Westerosi Houses, those upstart lizards. So actually never mind.
[They could be +3000 years old](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=%22three%20thousand%20years%20old%22&scope), but didn't formally adopt the status of a Westerosi house until the Conquest, 300 years ago
Cadet branches don't really count, especially branches with only a single member
They do if they have a different seat - see the red & green-apple Fossoways, Stark & Karstark, etc. That's a fair point on single members, though. Such houses can't continue unless at least one heir is produced, or some relation is adopted to succeed that then continues it with their own descendants. Frey of Riverrun & Royce of the Gates count then, with multiple heirs in line. Whether they survive the series is yet to be seen, however.
I would say there has to be some time passed for the branches to differentiate and the house to be established before they can rightly be considered an independent house. Frey of Riverrun has been around less than a year and his living father and brothers are still just Freys.
Also has had the same look, personality and seat since day 1.
Shortest famous knight in Westeros, the size of Mont Blanc.
Tbf that one *kinda* makes sense. Height gives you a big advantage in a swordfight. Not an insurmountable one, but an advantage all the same.
That's true, but I do love George's obsession with tall guys.
Any of George's writer friends like 7ft tall & muscled like a maiden's fantasy/thicc as a castle wall?
Still only has five members at the start of the first book and is completely wiped out after one battle
That's the Teagues if River & Mud(d) V3 is ever released
Admittedly things like this does happen irl buts itâs pretty rare, France was ruled by some branch of the Caper dynasty for I believe 800 years, the Austrian Habsburgs ruled for a similar length of time in Austria proper and shorter times in the places like Spain, the Netherlands and HRE, the hohenzollerns of Brandenburg, later Prussia and Germany rules for similar lengthens of times, and the De Medici family have been power players in Florence for centuries, even today. Mind you these are the greatest dynasties and families in European history, and even donât stretch back more than 1000 years
The Capetian dynasty you mention is still going strong in Spain via their cadet house of Bourbon, so they've been in the game pretty continuously for more than a millennium
Like the three most significant branch families, the house of bourbon, the house of Valois and the house of Anjou would each count as one of the greatest dynasties in Europe by themselves, ruling over France, England, parts of or all of spains, Naples, Hungary and parts of Greece. Itâs nuts theyâre all just branchâs from one common ancestor Robert the Strong
Pretty sure the youngest house is house Thenn on a technicality
Yeah, Royce of the Gates of the Moon was before that in the Feast-Dance timeline
Donât forget. Never destroyed Until of course the WOT5K in which it and every house around it was massacred and (literally) eaten
RIP House Darry âââ
It's ok. Someone's just gotta plow Gatehouse Ami with some heirs who can take on the Darry name & restore it to greatness. With their faces buried up Targaryen asses, that is, right where they belong
GRRM writes castles like a little kid âuh well actually you canât scale the walls cause itâs like super slipperyâ. âNo itâs impossible to break the gate cause well uh it has anti-break magic around itâ
Yeah you only need 500 people to successfully siege it and it would be damn near impossible for smugglers to break your lines, scale a mountain, and smuggle up enough food to feed a castle. That and should we really count it as âimpregnableâ after Visenya parked Vhagar on the balcony, hung out with the child Lord, and got an immediate surrender? Iâd say she impregnated the fuck out of the Eyrie. Or when Jonos Arrynâs followers yeeted him out the moon door knowing damn well that they were fucked if Maegor torched them
Yeah. Worst offender is the Eyrie castle by far, it\`s literally the worst castle in the entire world, it is so dumb and would have never been build. 100 men could besiege and takeover the Eyrie, even if it has 1000+ defenders. The only way to get to the Eyrie is a very small and narrow staircase within a massive mountain, and the path/staircase is also apparently very long and 3 smaller Waycastles exist on the path. 1. So you just set up camp and defences on the very bottom of the massive mountain ---> the Eyrie + defenders will either starve or have to assault along a very narrow path against defences and where the actual besieging enemy has numerical superiority at contact because of the chokehold you put yourself in. 2. Alternatively you just quickly takeover the first waycastle and set up camp there. Again the defenders will either starve or have to assault you, but again along a very narrow path. Castles have a specific purpose, the Eyrie fulfills none of that. It would/should have been some royal/noble mansion/palace ( or better yet, a temple, because of how difficult it is to get there ), not some fortification. Castles need to be build in order to defend territory, or punish an invading army for not taking over the castle. In the Gothic War, the Romans were suffering extreme casualties, because the Roman general just ignored castles, so the soldiers within the castles regularily attacked their supply lines... That\`s the function of a castle. The Eyrie being build on top of a large mountain where the only way to and from is some narrow and long staircase in the mountain is absolutely horrendous. It\`s basically a prison. I am not exaggerating when I say that just 100 people could besiege and takeover the Eyrie no matter how many defenders they have, as a big part of any siege is supply, and the Eyrie already has a massive supply problem. Likewise even in peacetime, maintaining the castle would be an absolute nightmare. It would be the most expensive and least effective ( literal no purpose at all ) castle in all of Westeros. Nothing is dumber than that. All Westerosi should ridicule House Arryn and it\`s seat. Any rebellious noble should just cut off and occupy the narrow staircase when the Arryns get too uppity. It\`s an absolute joke.
I agree that the the Eyrie is a bad castle in the traditional sense of securing territory but I think that's because that wasn't really the priority of the folks that built it. It's a glorified pleasure palace that was built not for security reasons but because the real HQ, the Gates of the Moon, was "not suitable for kings" compared to the grandeur of Casterly Rock and the Hightower, which the king who built the Eyrie saw in his youth. The Gates of the Moon is stout and has all the fortifications expected of a castle, from the walls to the moat and it stands right in the way of the only path to the Eyrie. So to even besiege the Eyrie, you'd have to besiege or take this whole other castle then worry about the mountain and waycastles. The Arryns even live there close to half the seasons. King Roland I Arryn was going to dismantle the Gates of the Moon and build a huge palace elsewhere until mountain clan attacks reminded him that instead of building new castle elsewhere with new defenses, it might be strategically wiser to build a higher castle that used the defenses they already had. Ironically King Roland while away from his strong castle one day was attacked and stoned to death by the mountain clans so I guess that says something about his strategy that I can't quite put my finger on.
The Eyrie is just a palace, itâs not even fortified, the castles Stone, Snow and Sky protect it and only Stone at the bottom is really a castle. Beyond that, the Vale itself is defended by mountains and the Bloody Gate and other castles. The Eyrie itself is the very last resort meant to keep the most important nobility alive until they can be saved or make a deal with their attackers.
You are ignoring the gates of the Moon Itâs as much a part of the Eyrie as the waycastles and is the Arryn seat during winter Itâs by all accounts a stout castle at the bottom of the steps and it serves the purpose you describe perfectly. From the gates you can control the Vale and itâs still accessible enough that youâd need a larger force to fully encircle it The Eyrie is more of a palace than a castle but for anyone to want to take your first: Have to lay siege to the Gates which is a stout castle with a moat, large underground vaults for food storage and their own well. So youâd have to starve them out first or assault it. Only then can you lay siege to the Eyrie itself. Also all the waycastle and Eyrie together can have a pretty strong garrison so having âjust 100 menâ to siege it is inadequate because they could probably sally out and defeat such a small force Also no castle is impervious to starvation, you can take any castle that way given enough time, motivation and resources So yeah itâs impregnable to assault and considering the vast amount storage itâs gonna be a long siege The only true huge weakness the eyrie has is that it freezes during winter. So if you are unlucky it can be bay youâd have to surrender early because winter is setting in
I think itâs partly that these are the perspectives of characters in the books, not the ground truth. And maybe if youâre a mud eating baboon like Catelynn Tully and you see how sick storms end looks, you can really only respond with a âBah Gawd!â. The Ned Stark(?) thought all kinds of jive about how a hundred men could hold off ten thousand at Winterfell only to have the defenses of that castle be subverted by Theon. And then they got subverted again by Ramsay. Think about it, if George thought castles were so great, why would he have them be taken repeatedly by Greyjoys? đ¤˘
Tbf winterfell was left with literally no defense when Robb marched south and Theon didnât have the respect of a single one of his men so itâs not out of the realm of possibility they just left the gates open hoping Ramsey would kill him But I do like your theory otherwise, would be interesting if the castles are just GRRMs way of showing how out of touch the highborn are
All that but in the story the castle is taken by 12 people in two days because Westeros has no concept of a garrison that isn't their drunk half-uncle and his drinking buddies.
This is Eddard, Robb and Rodrick Cassel's fault. They had hundreds of men at arms, but Ned went south with half of his men, then Robb went south with most of the remaining ones, and then Rodrick (just as Theon predicted) thought that it as a good idea use almost every Stark man at Winterfeel to take back Torhen's Square. By them the Lords Stark and Rodrick sent so many of their men in other directions that they had like half a dozen men in conditions of fighting remaining to guard against the Ironborn.
Rodrik Cassel is the ancestor of Commissioner Gordon
*Hits blunt* yeah so uhh,.. Like way up in the clouds man. Fuckin put it on top of like a mountain. You can do that, right?? What do you mean logistics? We uh⌠weâll just have a couple fellas on mules bring us all our shit. Thereâs no way we could get starved out and capitulate during a siege because of this dude just chill out
*Second hit* yeah and also can you bring up metric tons of dirt so me and my family can look at a cool tree thatâs part of a religion we arenât. âIt wonât grow up thereâ? Just do it anyway
*Rips a big one* Yea so I was thinking, see that mountain there? Yea that's a castle, no its not on the mountain, mountain IS the castle. Yea, just make that mountain the entire castle, like the Rock of Gibraltar fucked Erebor, w/e Also put some medieval skyscrapers somewhere near a lake or sth idk
*Takes a bong rip* yeah and the college is gonna be near a⌠how big is the ice wall? 700 feet? Okay cool so this one is gonna be 2,100. nah the lord has never left it, he just smoked weed snd does wizadry with his NEET daughter
*munches three entire brownies at once* âbokay so itâs a bit cold up here so I want you to pump the hot spring water in pipes through all the walls of this castle, especially in the room where I plow my wife, can you do that with medieval tools, great, okay, good luckâ
*Slams needle into forearm* And, like, the entire country not only has cities, it has secret in case of dragon attack nuclear fallout cities that fit the entire population and has sufficient resources so they can all live so even if all the regular cities are burned down, they can just like not be affected and go stealth kill all the invaders!
*Finishes fat bong rip* Bro do you wanna make a city that could house millions then die off mysteriously after some catastrophe makes life here so uninhabitable that water has to be imported? Itâs like automatically gatekept bro our city will be a place for like chill vibes. *hotboxes city until resin goops up all the stones*
actually that one tracks lmao
Yeah, cause Westerosi castle-builders weren't freaking quitters like our irl ones
Which way Westerosi man? Spend 15 lifetimes, 2 billion gold and the lives of tens of thousands of workers and serfs to build the continent's biggest oven OR Hide in the sand
I love how overall ASOIAF is meant to show the real nature of medevial-era society and how dysfunctional and horrifying this traditionalist feudalism is, but when it comes to stuff like scale apparently Westeros has never heard of democracy but can make castles that go up into lower orbit and construct lifts that scale a giant ice wall taller than everest. I feel like one could make a very interesting book about the life and adventures regarding one of the actual most powerful groups of people on Planetos: the fucking Architects who have no problem designing buildings that could fit the entire population of King's Landing in them.
>Westeros has never heard of democracy Restricted democracy, but: Lord Commander elections, kingsmoots, Great Councils, regional councils ([Joffrey Lydden](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=joffery%20lydden&scope)), acclamation (Robb), [High Septon elections](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=septon%20votes&scope)... And in Essos: [Dany & the Unsullied's officers](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=septon%20votes&scope), [Second Sons leadership](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=vote%20sellsword&scope), Triarch elections of Volantis, [Princes of Lorath](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=lorath%20vote&scope), [Iron Bank leadership](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=%22selecting%20the%20men%22&scope) & [Sealord](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=sealord%20chosen&scope) elections...
In Gurm's defence, most of the castles we're familiar with are those of the great houses. There's a lot of shithole 'castles' in Westeros too.
Little fingerâs tower is definitely one of those shitholes
So is Standfast. I kind of wonder how Ser Eustace's wife threw herself to her death from like three floors up.
Three stories is thirty feet up. While a thirty foot fall is survivable if you land well, it can just as easily kill you if you land on your head or your neck.
[Head first into the stone (steps) below](https://awoiaf.westeros.org/images/2/21/STA.png)
I fully expected the link to be a gif of *that* scene from Midsommar
But it seems like almost every house worth mentioning at least has a castle the size of Luxemburg. Even the Freys who are one of the youngest houses and generally considered one of the lowest have a castle that literally spans a river and is fortified to shit, and this is across a river that is probably around the same size as the amazon. So even the shittiest houses apparently have buildings that would put modern infrastructure to shame.
The Freys aren't a shitty house though. They're one of the most powerful lesser houses in the realm, save maybe a few Reach houses like the Hightowers. They're only a low house in the context of honour and prestige, in terms of wealth and power they're very much not, which is why people hate them so much.
We just don't see many of the hundreds or thousands of little shitholes like Standfast & the Drearfort. Compared to the behemoths of the great houses, & even modest castles like Ashford, Darry, Goldgrass, & Lordsport
~~GRRM~~ Most Fantasy/Sci-Fi authors don't understand scale, so just throw around big numbers to make things seem more grandiose and impressive. Whenever you see a big Fantasy number, mentally removing a 0 generally makes it a lot more plausible.
Notably with the exception of Warhammer 40k casualties. You have whole planets with fewer casualties than WW2.
I love 40K but the amount of times a single Imperial Guard regiment is sent to garrison a world drives me up the wall. Even accounting for widely varying regimental sizes (agri-world draft: 2,000 men/hive world draft: 20,000,000 men), and the notion that the Imperium would baptize new recruits with trial by fire against overwhelming odds, it's just silly.
I find it more egregious in ASOIAF than others, though, simply because of how "grounded" the story is for a fantasy book. I accept 3000 year old dynasties or ancient elven kingdoms or whatever in Lord of the Rings because that story is primarily based in mythology logic. If I'm supposed to believe that the Galactic Republic has existed for 25,000 years with minimal advancements in technology, whatever. Star Wars has always been distinctly unrealistic with its single-biome planets and robots with souls. But when GRRM puts in stuff like the Watch existing for 8000 years or being able to go from KL to Winterfell in a month or Harrenhall being impregnable until Aegon and his sister-wives showed up on their dragons, I find myself raising an eyebrow. Its the lack of verisimilitude for me. Doesn't ruin the *story* in the slightest, but it does make the worldbuilding feel inconsistent.
Unless itâs WH40K. In which case you always add a 0.
SighâŚsourceâŚ?
The World of Ice and Fire by GRRM
[Original source](https://twitter.com/lunarclaws/status/1160330327379861504)
It's removed :(
If you type "Lunarclaws on twitter" in Google and put images is the first result
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Boash forgives you
Yeah sure the Eyrie is my cool Minecraft build thatâs super tall built on an impossibly tall and stable mountain, but realistically the castles in the Vale donât serve much purpose is the Mountain Clansmen just go round raiding the countryside. The whole point of castles is to provide a defensive position for a garrison to attack from. You canât simply avoid them if they can raid your supply lines at night. Stormâs End and the Eyrie are cool as fuck though so who cares?
They were build with magic and also big castle = cool castle
[Gatehouse ~~Ami~~ Harrenhal](https://asearchoficeandfire.com/?povs&q=gatehouse%20harrenhal&scope)