Game of Thrones season's question

[Kingmaker]

It may not actually have been 8000 years since that time; the historical record past, oh, 500-1000 years in the past seems jumbled in Westeros.

Even with a conservative interpretation of the timeline, the Starks as Kings of Winter pre-dates the Andal invasion, which would mean single dynasty has ruled the North for 2000+ years. (And yet by the time of AGoT, House Stark is literally down to the Lord, his immediate family, and his celibate brother). (Not that many of the other Great Houses are much better).

Well, frankly, Bran shows no sign of architectural skill. I think Brandon the Builder is just a legendary figure such that where another culture might say "giants built it" or "a god did it," they say "Brandon the Builder did it."

There's some So Spake Martin where he confirms that Bran the Builder had nothing to do with Storm's End and all sorts of shit gets attributed to him because of his legend. On the other hand, the parallels between Bran the Builder and the present Bran Stark rest more on the assumption that Bran the Builder was the Last Hero and the conjecture that Bran Stark is TLH mk II. And if Bran the Builder built the Wall with magic...

Perhaps. Although if the story of the Night King is true... that did NOT cause the Wall to fall down.

Well, the Night's Watch as a whole didn't desert their vows. Nor does the story imply that their doing so would cause the Wall to fall, merely that the bad things on the other side of the Wall would be able to march south. Now, the mundane interpretation of "they cannot pass so long as the Wall stands strong and the men of the Night’s Watch are true" is that they can't get past so long as the Watch is diligent in manning and maintaining the walls, no magic required. On the other hand, it could suggest that the magic of the Wall alone is inadequate to hold the Others at bay.

Curiously, Joramun was the wildling king who was alleged to have helped defeat the Night's King. (It's also possible that Mance Rayder was making shit up about the Horn of Joramun's abilities.)

[Imperial Overlord]

Even with a conservative interpretation of the timeline, the Starks as Kings of Winter pre-dates the Andal invasion, which would mean single dynasty has ruled the North for 2000+ years. (And yet by the time of AGoT, House Stark is literally down to the Lord, his immediate family, and his celibate brother). (Not that many of the other Great Houses are much better).

That's not unrealistic. Plenty of real noble and royal families died off in the real world and this is just the mainline Stark family. Other families, such as the Karstarks, are explicitly related to the Starks.

[Ralin]

Say, if it requires fifty thousand human sacrifices to construct something like the Wall... who would build anything like it for any purpose not of existential importance to the survival of civilization itself?

Given what we know of Westeros? A whole fucking lot of people. I really doubt they had a shortage of leaders willing to commit mass murder on an epic scale to leave the architectural equivalent of a giant sign saying "MY PENIS IS HUGE!" behind for future generations.

But yes, clearly they either couldn't do whatever they did to create the Wall again or found the price of doing so somehow prohibitive

Good point, but far from certain. There is at least reasonable evidence to support the idea that the Others can control humans on the south side of the Wall.

Are you talking about the wights that got through or...?

[Simon_Jester]

It may not actually have been 8000 years since that time; the historical record past, oh, 500-1000 years in the past seems jumbled in Westeros.

Even with a conservative interpretation of the timeline, the Starks as Kings of Winter pre-dates the Andal invasion, which would mean single dynasty has ruled the North for 2000+ years. (And yet by the time of AGoT, House Stark is literally down to the Lord, his immediate family, and his celibate brother). (Not that many of the other Great Houses are much better).

I think Martin has hinted that magic may be involved (so you don't see a Great House's children randomly turning out infertile as often as happens in real life). There may also have been a few rounds of legitimized bastards involved- retroactively we call them a Stark but they're... not. It almost happened to Jon Snow, and for all we know it may yet.

Also, there may be a tendency to encourage younger sons of younger sons of a Great House to do something other than sit around being eighth in line for the throne (or Lord Paramount's seat or whatever). Because that sort of thing breeds succession crises like nobody's business, as the Targaryens found out to their cost with the Blackfyres.

Well, frankly, Bran shows no sign of architectural skill. I think Brandon the Builder is just a legendary figure such that where another culture might say "giants built it" or "a god did it," they say "Brandon the Builder did it."

There's some So Spake Martin where he confirms that Bran the Builder had nothing to do with Storm's End and all sorts of shit gets attributed to him because of his legend. On the other hand, the parallels between Bran the Builder and the present Bran Stark rest more on the assumption that Bran the Builder was the Last Hero and the conjecture that Bran Stark is TLH mk II. And if Bran the Builder built the Wall with magic...

Well, I suppose it can't entirely be ruled out. Personally I don't think Bran is going to do that, precisely, although I'm sure he has a role to play as a magic-user.

Curiously, Joramun was the wildling king who was alleged to have helped defeat the Night's King. (It's also possible that Mance Rayder was making shit up about the Horn of Joramun's abilities.)

Or even if he wasn't, someone else in the centuries if not millenia since this happened may have made it up themselves.

Say, if it requires fifty thousand human sacrifices to construct something like the Wall... who would build anything like it for any purpose not of existential importance to the survival of civilization itself?

Given what we know of Westeros? A whole fucking lot of people. I really doubt they had a shortage of leaders willing to commit mass murder on an epic scale to leave the architectural equivalent of a giant sign saying "MY PENIS IS HUGE!" behind for future generations.

Well, maybe, although in an era of lower technology and population you might simply find that no ruler existed who could have made such a thing happen even if they wanted to.

But... look, I'm trying to get a point across here, that the expenditure involved for building the Wall required collaboration with magical races and an unknown but possibly very high price to be paid by the humans involved in the construction.

It is hardly unbelievable that any lesser project of comparable scale fell apart, either because the humans weren't willing to make the sacrifice for a lesser purpose, or because the magical races wouldn't cooperate, or because some irreplaceable asset was expended to build the Wall and can never be used again.

Any of those theories are credible in my opinion.

Good point, but far from certain. There is at least reasonable evidence to support the idea that the Others can control humans on the south side of the Wall.

Are you talking about the wights that got through or...?

The wights who were brought through in Book One. And yes, they were brought through by the Watch, so there's a loophole perhaps. But the point is, it's still quite plausible that wights can operate on both sides of the Wall without difficulty, even if the Others can't.

[Elheru Aran]

Also, there may be a tendency to encourage younger sons of younger sons of a Great House to do something other than sit around being eighth in line for the throne (or Lord Paramount's seat or whatever). Because that sort of thing breeds succession crises like nobody's business, as the Targaryens found out to their cost with the Blackfyres.

The Watch is explicitly said to be a common destination for excess sons. This is useful as they're expected to keep it in their pants and stay out of dynastic meddling. The Kingsguard is also occasionally an option, although openings in that don't come up very often except in times of war.

Parallels to real-world history would include sending them out to lead feudal militaries under the king, marrying them off to other families' excess children and giving them a little plot to sit on for themselves, and straight up telling them to go away and don't even think about coming home until the succession is safely passed down the line. Here's some money, keep busy and use a rubber, will ya?

They have enough minor clashes between Houses, as well as tournaments, occasional expeditions to fight someone in another land, etc, that younger sons can be kept busy. If they're killed or otherwise eliminated (predictable enough results of such activities), it's a tragedy, but the oldest son is kept nice and safe at home until such a time as Daddy dies. This has the side benefit of making sure (hopefully, providing that Daddy isn't a huge slacker or a total asshole) that he knows how things are run and what to do as the head of the House.

Mummy and Daddy also have the advantage of being able to tell him "you're marrying X Girl from That Nice House, and we won't heard a word against it, you hear?" while the younger sons can pretty much marry whomever they want as long as they're from another House and their fathers don't have higher ambitions for them.

[Guardsman Bass]

It may not actually have been 8000 years since that time; the historical record past, oh, 500-1000 years in the past seems jumbled in Westeros.

Even with a conservative interpretation of the timeline, the Starks as Kings of Winter pre-dates the Andal invasion, which would mean single dynasty has ruled the North for 2000+ years. (And yet by the time of AGoT, House Stark is literally down to the Lord, his immediate family, and his celibate brother). (Not that many of the other Great Houses are much better).

The Starks went through a culling a couple of decades before the events in the books, around the same time as the "Dunk and Egg" stories - I think GRRM has called it the "warring women" period. A whole bunch of the split-off branches of House Stark were wiped out, although the cadet branch of House Karstark is still around.

I don't think you'd literally have succession over the long period of time they've supposedly been on the throne in the North. More likely is that the "Stark" name became tied to Winterfell in the setting - "there's always a Stark in Winterfell" - and so distant cousins would take over the name and castle when the main line died out over and over again.

RE: The Wall

The Wall was not 700 feet tall when it was built IIRC. It's grown over time, helped by the fact that the Night's Watch used to be much bigger before the Targaryens unified the Seven Kingdoms (think 10,000 men instead of less than 1000). That was in some of the details that Elio and Linda - GRRM's co-writers on the World of Ice and Fire book - talked about over at Westeros.org.

RE: The dates

If you roughly halve the dates given in the book and then figure it's plus or minus a few decades, the background history makes more sense. 2000 years between when the Andals showed up and the events in the books works right, since it's pretty close to the amount of time between the beginnings of the real-life Iron Age and the beginning of the High Middle Ages. 4000-5000 years between the events in the books and what happened during the Long Night works for me as well, since it would be the difference between events in the High Middle Ages and events back in early ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia - all you would have would be myths and legends.

Even the Maesters seem to think that. A character in A Dance with Dragons mentions that the Maesters think the Andals came over to Westeros 2000 years before, not the 4000-5000 usually believed.

[Vympel]

The Starks went through a culling a couple of decades before the events in the books, around the same time as the "Dunk and Egg" stories - I think GRRM has called it the "warring women" period. A whole bunch of the split-off branches of House Stark were wiped out, although the cadet branch of House Karstark is still around.

House Karstark is so far removed from House Stark by this period that they have as much Stark blood in them as any other Northern house - I believe either Jon or Robb say that. It had been thousands of years IIRC.

The House Stark family tree in the book supports the idea of a big culling around the Dunk & Egg period though. It fits right in with Beron Stark being wounded around the time that Dunk & Egg wanted to go North and help him against Dagon Greyjoy's reavers. And so Duncan could impregnate someone to produce Walder/Hodor ancestors.

[Irbis]

RE: The Wall

The Wall was not 700 feet tall when it was built IIRC. It's grown over time, helped by the fact that the Night's Watch used to be much bigger before the Targaryens unified the Seven Kingdoms (think 10,000 men instead of less than 1000). That was in some of the details that Elio and Linda - GRRM's co-writers on the World of Ice and Fire book - talked about over at Westeros.org.

That would just make it even worse as while colossal wall made with amounts of magic ill-fitting the setting has problems, Watch adding substantial height to it without help of magic and the wall somehow not going all glacier-y under them is even worse.

RE: The dates

If you roughly halve the dates given in the book and then figure it's plus or minus a few decades, the background history makes more sense. 2000 years between when the Andals showed up and the events in the books works right, since it's pretty close to the amount of time between the beginnings of the real-life Iron Age and the beginning of the High Middle Ages. 4000-5000 years between the events in the books and what happened during the Long Night works for me as well, since it would be the difference between events in the High Middle Ages and events back in early ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia - all you would have would be myths and legends.

Though, even if we're very generous, feudal period lasted less than 600 years in both Europe and Japan. What killed it in both were firearms, which should also raise their head in Westeros seeing they have whole breed of proto-chemists and no edicts banning gunpowder like the one that prolonged feudal age in Japan for 150 years.

Hmm, imagine, Targaryens adopting dragon-headed calivers as a perfect homage to the past of their house and Robert's rebellion being high nobility uprising against king's plans to rely on common levy meritocratic military to curb their privileges, I'd pay to read that

[Elheru Aran]

RE: The Wall

The Wall was not 700 feet tall when it was built IIRC. It's grown over time, helped by the fact that the Night's Watch used to be much bigger before the Targaryens unified the Seven Kingdoms (think 10,000 men instead of less than 1000). That was in some of the details that Elio and Linda - GRRM's co-writers on the World of Ice and Fire book - talked about over at Westeros.org.

That would just make it even worse as while colossal wall made with amounts of magic ill-fitting the setting has problems, Watch adding substantial height to it without help of magic and the wall somehow not going all glacier-y under them is even worse.

Speculatively: The magic of the Children of the Forest and the humans that went towards building the Wall could have included the idea that the Watch would be expected to reinforce and build up the Wall over time, and provided for the extra weight over time. As for the Watch building it up without magic... well... guess they levied a bunch of wildings to help out? They do seem to have had better relations with the people north of the Wall back in the day...

[Irbis]

Speculatively: The magic of the Children of the Forest and the humans that went towards building the Wall could have included the idea that the Watch would be expected to reinforce and build up the Wall over time, and provided for the extra weight over time. As for the Watch building it up without magic... well... guess they levied a bunch of wildings to help out? They do seem to have had better relations with the people north of the Wall back in the day...

Sure, maybe there was safety margin in the Wall construction or magic somehow attached itself to new ice. That doesn't change the fact that if you wanted to raise the wall by 1 meter...

Let's conservatively assume wall is 10 meters wide and we want to raise 1 km long section. That's 1000x10x1 = 10.000 cubic meters of ice, or 9167 tons. Assuming we want to raise all that 200 meters up as wall isn't canon 700 feet high yet - I tried to calculate it and got a force of 2300 people working 8 hours, without breaks, tools and ropes weighting nothing, ropes being infinitely strong, low temperatures not slowing metabolism, and muscles being 100% efficient (not 20% like in well rested man).

I don't know, even 10.000 strong bodybuilders would struggle with doing that in a week if we don't ignore most of the above factors. The wall is 300 miles long - assuming it's 500 km, you'd need 10 years of incessant, bodybreaking work of the entire wall population to raise it 1 m. How would you even feed them?

Even on such inhuman schedule, in 2000 years you'd raise the wall just 200 metres, well short of its 700 feet height. Add any laxity to this and our Night Wallbuilders force would need longer than even the legendary 6000 years of Wall existence to merely built half of it, and we ignored thousands of things working against it.

[Elheru Aran]

Who knows. Maybe the Children cooked up some Metabaron magic floating-rock juice. Frankly, I think you're hitting the point where you'll have to throw up your hands and go "OK, it's magic because realistically there's no practical way to do this".