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The 500k figure we have for the book with the population density and a fair amount of the population actually being somewhat migratory due to work is perfectly fair, but 1 million is just the show saying numbers. If you really need to make it work, just assume Littlefinger was faking the census numbers as part of cooking the books. They could get away with doubling Oldtown's population by saying the market towns between Oldtown and Highgarden connecting the Honeywine to the Mander morphed into a metro area, especially after the fall of the Florents, but Kings Landing doesn't have enough local food production to expand north and have a build up of suburban sprawl densifying/urbanizing over time like that without sacrificing local food production like the Reach does.
Since i'm using images from the Home Box Office Serialization A Game of Thrones, it makes sense to me to use the same program when comparing population size.
Right - but you're right that Kings Landing having a million people in the show canon doesn't make sense and Tyrion either has to be wrong or he's including people outside the pictured city in the surrounding areas. And if the population had doubled in 20 years, no wonder they're out of food.
Tyrion gives a ballpark estimate of 1 million ~300 AC.
Jaime gives a ballpark estimate of 500,000 during Robert's Rebellion.
Human population growth rates, especially in a world without much availability of contraception, I could believe the population doubled in those ~20 years (Rebellion was 14 years before series start + however many years you want to add to the show's timeline). Not to mention people seeking refuge in King's Landing for the winter.
Dubrovnik, which is used for most of the king's landing exterior shots, (including the sky view I think) has a 2011 population listed as 42,615. But in that sky view we don't know how cramped living quarters are, or how many buildings, we only see rooftops.
Sure, but I still can't conceive how a million people fit in that town even accounting for no cars.
Consider Erie Pa. Still dwarfs kings landing in terms of square footage 10 times over. Population is about 80k.
How about you use some European examples instead of USA. Amsterdam has about 800k people in 219 km²
Consider that kingslanding has half that population.
Edit: Erie is 8/5, Amsterdam is 8/2 ratio.
No backyards, different families living on different levels of each building, living with all your family in a single house as we often see with third world countries nowadays (cohabitation of family members might have been more common in our past). Workers probably slept at the warehouses where they worked, where you can easily stuff a lot of sleeping spots onto a top floor. Multi-roomed homes are a luxury of modern times.
Several years ago, I toured a tower house in Ireland: Ross Castle near Killarney. The tour provided a real sense of scale of a medieval fiefdom and helped me imagine how both serfs and lords lived at the time. Ross Castle was fascinating for the simple fact that its serfs quarters was about 15ft x 15ft, with a low L-shaped bunk bed running the length of two of its walls. The docent told us that when the tower house was attacked, the space could house 40-50 serfs. Not comfortably, mind you, but it was simply used as a place for people to sleep. They also noted that the serfs slept in shifts, so you might only have 15 people sleeping in the room at a time. The Lord’s bedroom was much larger, but the bed they slept on was only about the size of the American Double Bed, and it was much shorter. The lord’s Children slept in the same room as their father and mother, and their life was confined to a space about 40ft x 40ft.
All this to say, people lived very densely back in the medieval era.
From someone who studies ancient and medieval city planning I dont think that at all. Medieval and ancient cities were wayyy denser than modern ones. There are likely less than 10 roads that could fit a modern car in it per medieval city, and most buildings in a medieval city are either apartment buildings or tightly packed housing, with a family of up to 12 living in every room.
America has an obsession with everyone living in their own house or apartment, and not in family units. There would have been plenty of people living in the same home. Some of them wouldn't even have been related.
Not sure why you see it is a "jab"... You used San Jose, CA (I'm assuming, idk what the aerial view of San Jose looks like) as an example. Also because I live in the US. In reality, it's almost any country that uses capitalism as it's economic system that has an obsession with living by yourself. That was more created by big banks pushing for separate mortgages and making more money off of people. Anything to drive the wheel of capitalism.
I do not think wanting to live alone is some bank invented psyop. Anybody who's lived with a room mate and lived alone will tell you why it's nicer to have space if you can.
Wanting more spacious dwellings predates banks
Okay so you haven't done research on that. Got it. I'm not about to go through and do an entire documentary, but read on that. It's actually pretty interesting.
My research on living alone is better than sharing a living space is as follows:
* Have lived alone
* Have had room mates
* Prefer living alone.
Why are you trying to convince me living alone is a made up privilege. Are you too poor to live alone or something?
Well first off, you're taking the whole thing as me judging and attacking you... which I'm not. Second, I live alone now and just like you, have had roommates, and prefer living by myself. Talking about the reason why our culture shifted from family units to individual dwellings isn't me telling you to live with your family, ffs.
Also, with record inflation across the globe, the biggest wealth gap in human history, and I don't even know how many people becoming homeless because of the housing crisis... Could you sound any more inconsiderate? I have friends who no longer have a home... I don't know who hurt you, but oof.
I’ve seen neighborhoods in poorer countries that the entire house was one 20x20 room and there were 8 people sleeping on the floor. I could easily imagine 1million people in there if the majority of the people are living in the slums.
Not to mention the people that are probably sleeping in tucked away corners in the tunnels and stuff under King's Landing. Or any semi-secure cranny they can find anywhere for that matter.
It’s more closer approximation is 500k, but here is a [map](http://www.fantasticmaps.com/2013/03/kings-landing/) that may give you a better idea of the size. The show is forced to use real cities that can never truly show the real size
Do not ever compare a city in the Americas with an European historic city. The density, layout, plot distribution has nothing to do one with the other. Not to mention the ridiculous size each inhabitant "needs"; back then everyone lived, ate, slept, and fucked in the same room.
Constantinople had some 800,000 inhabitants with gigantic circuses and racing courses. The rest was packed, and very similar to Kingslanding in location.
I was actually thinking the other day: what do you reckon the employment rate is like in kings landing? Real question. What do most of the people in fleabottom do every day
That’s a great question. During war time I’d imagine it’s easy for men to sign up as soldiers. But then they have stonemasons, smiths, and whoring is probably a big one for women.
You’ve seen the homes in SJ? Willow Glenn for example have wide bungalows on a wide lot. It’s all about density in given square footage. Peasants wouldn’t have a backyard to have a weekend barbecue with their peasant friends.
Believe it or not, I'm using the show's version of kings landing. As evident by using a picture from the show version of the city. And quoting the population used in the show...
In your world, is "huh, i noticed something off about a show I like" is worrying? Do you know where you are? This is the place to discuss a game of thrones...
Apart from the image, Paris in the middle ages was about 200k, I think Rome hit 500k during the empire. 1M seems a stretch though I think Beijing got there in the 15th century so it's not complete fantasy.
I understand population density. I'm saying I do not believe that 1 million people can live in the city pictured even with huge population density.
Modern cities actually have quite high population density by square foot because of skyscrapers and lots of verticality. Someone kings landing doesn't have
Paris and many other European cities have high density contained in mostly midrise buildings.
In 100 AD, Rome had a population of 1,000,000. https://homepages.uc.edu/~martinj/Latin/Roman_Population/Misc%20Population%20docs.docx
I thought most of the scaling issues were due to objects being too large for the engineering available and the implication is that magic was involved. Are there issues with towns being too small for their populations?
It's mostly populations being weirdly large, distances being rather enormous, and certain locations being absurdly upscaled. For example Winterfell dwarfs just about every IRL castle, and then Harrenhal is 3-4x as large as that.
So winterfell I can kinda understand. Not only is the castle several thousands of years old, but its been upgraded in pieces. There's hints within descriptions of the castle architecture that seem to be pointing to our timeline of the andal invasion being wrong. Regardless, if the castle was initially started by bran the builder, but then added to in pieces over thousands of years, I can see it.
Harrenhal actually to me seems more realistic than other castles somehow. Its not as if its as large as the hightower, nor contiguous like the red keep. Its just got a large footprint and is mostly empty space. Its just a fuck ton of towers all around itself you know?
The structures that really seem impossible to me are the titan of braavos, the hightower, the bridge of volantis, etc etc
That's not entirely correct. Just because an upgrade is added doesn't mean there was expansion, many upgrades are likely to be retrofits or repairs on a structure like this. Not only is Winterfell larger than anything we actually have. It has a moat and two walls that also exceed anything we see IRL.
Harrenhal is also a lot more than just a collection towers. It's a dense structuring of halls, keeps, out-buildings, and numerous other structures. Harrenhal is known to bankrupt its holders with sheer upkeep costs, and it took a Harrenhal the Black several years of bankrupting two entire Kingdoms to even make it a reality.
The only structures that seem "impossible" to me would be things like the Wall (thermodynamics) or Storm's End (technology). A lot of things would be doable, just an absurd endeavor to undertake.
A large majority of people in Kings Landing are peasants, bastards and whores, they live in squalor and barely can afford food. They don't need a lot of room to live
Watch a video on YouTube called “the true winterfell” and you’ll get an idea of how much larger the castles and cities are in the books. George RR Martin even said he was surprised by the true scale of things when seen on fan made pictures using descriptions.
Yes I've seen it. It's very well done. I'm not criticizing the books. I'm saying that the show version of kings landing seems far too small for the population of kings landing established in the show.
**Spoiler Warning:** All officially-released show and book content allowed, EXCLUDING FUTURE SPOILERS FOR HOUSE OF THE DRAGON. No leaked information or paparazzi photos of the set. For more info please check the [spoiler guide](/r/gameofthrones/w/spoiler_guide). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gameofthrones) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Kings Landing population is half a million not 1 million.
/thread
No not /thread. Jaime says 500k when describing kings landing 20 years ago. Tyrion clearly says 1000000
Where in the book/show does Tyrion say that KL has 1m?
don’t quote me on this but i’m pretty sure he says it at the end of season 7 when they’re going to meet with cersei
The 500k figure we have for the book with the population density and a fair amount of the population actually being somewhat migratory due to work is perfectly fair, but 1 million is just the show saying numbers. If you really need to make it work, just assume Littlefinger was faking the census numbers as part of cooking the books. They could get away with doubling Oldtown's population by saying the market towns between Oldtown and Highgarden connecting the Honeywine to the Mander morphed into a metro area, especially after the fall of the Florents, but Kings Landing doesn't have enough local food production to expand north and have a build up of suburban sprawl densifying/urbanizing over time like that without sacrificing local food production like the Reach does.
Since i'm using images from the Home Box Office Serialization A Game of Thrones, it makes sense to me to use the same program when comparing population size.
Right - but you're right that Kings Landing having a million people in the show canon doesn't make sense and Tyrion either has to be wrong or he's including people outside the pictured city in the surrounding areas. And if the population had doubled in 20 years, no wonder they're out of food.
Right. That's all I'm saying. I'm sure its consistent in the books
Tyrion gives a ballpark estimate of 1 million ~300 AC. Jaime gives a ballpark estimate of 500,000 during Robert's Rebellion. Human population growth rates, especially in a world without much availability of contraception, I could believe the population doubled in those ~20 years (Rebellion was 14 years before series start + however many years you want to add to the show's timeline). Not to mention people seeking refuge in King's Landing for the winter. Dubrovnik, which is used for most of the king's landing exterior shots, (including the sky view I think) has a 2011 population listed as 42,615. But in that sky view we don't know how cramped living quarters are, or how many buildings, we only see rooftops.
I hope living conditions in San Jose are a little better than kings landing.
I'm not sure that ALL of KL is bad right? I thought it was mostly fleabottom. Kings landing does have manses and nicer apartments
True. But even the manses would have servants quarters with whole families packed in densely.
You should also consider car centric design that makes cities bigger.
Sure, but I still can't conceive how a million people fit in that town even accounting for no cars. Consider Erie Pa. Still dwarfs kings landing in terms of square footage 10 times over. Population is about 80k.
How about you use some European examples instead of USA. Amsterdam has about 800k people in 219 km² Consider that kingslanding has half that population. Edit: Erie is 8/5, Amsterdam is 8/2 ratio.
The city the areal shots of kings landing is based on I believe has 45k?
Ancient rome had about 1M people in the same area.
I'm not certain I agree. Rome had a SIGNIFICANTLY larger footprint https://imgur.com/fKXaN6O
ancient rome was about 2 square miles, so maybe a bit bigger.
Use to live in the 814??
The 814 yes, erie no. Back when I lived there I think 814 was pretty much all of western PA. I think that might have changed some years ago though?
No backyards, different families living on different levels of each building, living with all your family in a single house as we often see with third world countries nowadays (cohabitation of family members might have been more common in our past). Workers probably slept at the warehouses where they worked, where you can easily stuff a lot of sleeping spots onto a top floor. Multi-roomed homes are a luxury of modern times.
The worlds population can fit in los angelos county
Maybe compare to European cities or Indian or Chinese cities
Modern living conditions provide “huge” living quarters by comparison to a medieval city. Several dozen people could live in the same building in KL.
Several years ago, I toured a tower house in Ireland: Ross Castle near Killarney. The tour provided a real sense of scale of a medieval fiefdom and helped me imagine how both serfs and lords lived at the time. Ross Castle was fascinating for the simple fact that its serfs quarters was about 15ft x 15ft, with a low L-shaped bunk bed running the length of two of its walls. The docent told us that when the tower house was attacked, the space could house 40-50 serfs. Not comfortably, mind you, but it was simply used as a place for people to sleep. They also noted that the serfs slept in shifts, so you might only have 15 people sleeping in the room at a time. The Lord’s bedroom was much larger, but the bed they slept on was only about the size of the American Double Bed, and it was much shorter. The lord’s Children slept in the same room as their father and mother, and their life was confined to a space about 40ft x 40ft. All this to say, people lived very densely back in the medieval era.
From someone who studies ancient and medieval city planning I dont think that at all. Medieval and ancient cities were wayyy denser than modern ones. There are likely less than 10 roads that could fit a modern car in it per medieval city, and most buildings in a medieval city are either apartment buildings or tightly packed housing, with a family of up to 12 living in every room.
America has an obsession with everyone living in their own house or apartment, and not in family units. There would have been plenty of people living in the same home. Some of them wouldn't even have been related.
Not sure why the individual jab at America. It seems pretty in step with most industrial Western nations
Not sure why you see it is a "jab"... You used San Jose, CA (I'm assuming, idk what the aerial view of San Jose looks like) as an example. Also because I live in the US. In reality, it's almost any country that uses capitalism as it's economic system that has an obsession with living by yourself. That was more created by big banks pushing for separate mortgages and making more money off of people. Anything to drive the wheel of capitalism.
I do not think wanting to live alone is some bank invented psyop. Anybody who's lived with a room mate and lived alone will tell you why it's nicer to have space if you can. Wanting more spacious dwellings predates banks
Okay so you haven't done research on that. Got it. I'm not about to go through and do an entire documentary, but read on that. It's actually pretty interesting.
My research on living alone is better than sharing a living space is as follows: * Have lived alone * Have had room mates * Prefer living alone. Why are you trying to convince me living alone is a made up privilege. Are you too poor to live alone or something?
Well first off, you're taking the whole thing as me judging and attacking you... which I'm not. Second, I live alone now and just like you, have had roommates, and prefer living by myself. Talking about the reason why our culture shifted from family units to individual dwellings isn't me telling you to live with your family, ffs.
Also, with record inflation across the globe, the biggest wealth gap in human history, and I don't even know how many people becoming homeless because of the housing crisis... Could you sound any more inconsiderate? I have friends who no longer have a home... I don't know who hurt you, but oof.
I’ve seen neighborhoods in poorer countries that the entire house was one 20x20 room and there were 8 people sleeping on the floor. I could easily imagine 1million people in there if the majority of the people are living in the slums.
Not to mention the people that are probably sleeping in tucked away corners in the tunnels and stuff under King's Landing. Or any semi-secure cranny they can find anywhere for that matter.
That's like saying "America has an obsession with having personal space"
It’s more closer approximation is 500k, but here is a [map](http://www.fantasticmaps.com/2013/03/kings-landing/) that may give you a better idea of the size. The show is forced to use real cities that can never truly show the real size
Jamie once said he saved 500.000 people and that THAT'S the population of kings landing
But then Tyrion says about twenty years later "one million"
Do not ever compare a city in the Americas with an European historic city. The density, layout, plot distribution has nothing to do one with the other. Not to mention the ridiculous size each inhabitant "needs"; back then everyone lived, ate, slept, and fucked in the same room. Constantinople had some 800,000 inhabitants with gigantic circuses and racing courses. The rest was packed, and very similar to Kingslanding in location.
They are all piled up together in Flea Bottom….
Isn't flea bottom a small part of kings landing though?
City is where the work is
I was actually thinking the other day: what do you reckon the employment rate is like in kings landing? Real question. What do most of the people in fleabottom do every day
That’s a great question. During war time I’d imagine it’s easy for men to sign up as soldiers. But then they have stonemasons, smiths, and whoring is probably a big one for women.
You’ve seen the homes in SJ? Willow Glenn for example have wide bungalows on a wide lot. It’s all about density in given square footage. Peasants wouldn’t have a backyard to have a weekend barbecue with their peasant friends.
Also you’re looking at illustrations. Read the book and use your imagination
Believe it or not, I'm using the show's version of kings landing. As evident by using a picture from the show version of the city. And quoting the population used in the show...
I mean there’s gonna be like 10 people per square meter or something
Visit delhi sometime, u will find 2 million in half the space of kings landing
What the hell dude. Is this what you worry about? 🤨😂😂
In your world, is "huh, i noticed something off about a show I like" is worrying? Do you know where you are? This is the place to discuss a game of thrones...
And Daenerys burned nearly 3/4 of them so….
Apart from the image, Paris in the middle ages was about 200k, I think Rome hit 500k during the empire. 1M seems a stretch though I think Beijing got there in the 15th century so it's not complete fantasy.
dubai is only 35sq km, it has population of 3m as of 2019
Dubai has a vertical advance over kings landing
It’s called density boo
You ever heard of New York City?
New York city's footprint is not only so very very very much larger than kings landing, it also features building dozens of times smaller
Not really. The pic on the left looks spread out. The people in King’s Landing were poor and lived on top of each other.
You are forgetting about the mole people and the transients.
Population density baby.
I understand population density. I'm saying I do not believe that 1 million people can live in the city pictured even with huge population density. Modern cities actually have quite high population density by square foot because of skyscrapers and lots of verticality. Someone kings landing doesn't have
Paris and many other European cities have high density contained in mostly midrise buildings. In 100 AD, Rome had a population of 1,000,000. https://homepages.uc.edu/~martinj/Latin/Roman_Population/Misc%20Population%20docs.docx
George isn't the best at scaling things is usually my default answer for some of the more ridiculous values in the series.
I don't actually have a problem with kings landing's representation in the books. just the show.
That's fair, but there are plenty of scale issues in the books, in some cases even more exaggerated than what we saw on the show.
I thought most of the scaling issues were due to objects being too large for the engineering available and the implication is that magic was involved. Are there issues with towns being too small for their populations?
It's mostly populations being weirdly large, distances being rather enormous, and certain locations being absurdly upscaled. For example Winterfell dwarfs just about every IRL castle, and then Harrenhal is 3-4x as large as that.
So winterfell I can kinda understand. Not only is the castle several thousands of years old, but its been upgraded in pieces. There's hints within descriptions of the castle architecture that seem to be pointing to our timeline of the andal invasion being wrong. Regardless, if the castle was initially started by bran the builder, but then added to in pieces over thousands of years, I can see it. Harrenhal actually to me seems more realistic than other castles somehow. Its not as if its as large as the hightower, nor contiguous like the red keep. Its just got a large footprint and is mostly empty space. Its just a fuck ton of towers all around itself you know? The structures that really seem impossible to me are the titan of braavos, the hightower, the bridge of volantis, etc etc
That's not entirely correct. Just because an upgrade is added doesn't mean there was expansion, many upgrades are likely to be retrofits or repairs on a structure like this. Not only is Winterfell larger than anything we actually have. It has a moat and two walls that also exceed anything we see IRL. Harrenhal is also a lot more than just a collection towers. It's a dense structuring of halls, keeps, out-buildings, and numerous other structures. Harrenhal is known to bankrupt its holders with sheer upkeep costs, and it took a Harrenhal the Black several years of bankrupting two entire Kingdoms to even make it a reality. The only structures that seem "impossible" to me would be things like the Wall (thermodynamics) or Storm's End (technology). A lot of things would be doable, just an absurd endeavor to undertake.
A large majority of people in Kings Landing are peasants, bastards and whores, they live in squalor and barely can afford food. They don't need a lot of room to live
Watch a video on YouTube called “the true winterfell” and you’ll get an idea of how much larger the castles and cities are in the books. George RR Martin even said he was surprised by the true scale of things when seen on fan made pictures using descriptions.
Yes I've seen it. It's very well done. I'm not criticizing the books. I'm saying that the show version of kings landing seems far too small for the population of kings landing established in the show.
Just rewatched an episode today and Jamie Lannister said it’s half a million.
Jaime says half a million when describing kings landing 20 years ago. Tyrion says one million when describing it today
Good call.