George RR Martin, his fanboys, and former fanbase

[Chuckwagon]

Then there's the issue of the Iron Islanders, whose entire culture is literally based around rape and pillage. Sorry, but under no circumstances would the rest of Westeros tolerate a force as destabilizing as them, nor would they count them as a "kingdom" worth being treated as equal to everyone else. (And before you say But They're Vikings, the Vikings themselves didn't base their entire culture around rape and pillage, either.)

Fantasy vikings live on small shithole islands but not only manage to completely sustain themselves without raiding but also had enough troops to take on the rest of Westeros

I'd like to zero in on the Ironborn in particular, because they (and the Dothraki, but those guys aren't on Westeros) really exemplify all of Martin's worldbuilding failings. Of course they are horrendous from any perspective grounded in 'realism' - can you imagine Vikings operating out of Ireland, but it's mostly a barren windswept rock rather than the Emerald Isle of reality, and defeating a kingdom spanning northern France from Brittany to Flanders & Normandy to Burgundy? Because that's pretty much what the Ironborn did in his history, twice - but they also don't even make sense in-universe. At one point they overthrow and torture a king who tried to reform their grimdark ways, but don't stop at just him - nope, they also insist on doing the same to his mother, a Lannister, and sending her back brutally mutilated to her brother the King of the Rock. The Lannisters, remember, are a Great House famed not only for their vast riches but also for their pride and extreme ruthlessness, as demonstrated by every single one of their important representatives in the books and quite a few other figures in their history.

So how do the Lannisters respond to this pile of outrages? Well, they invade the Iron Isles. They actually win, occupy the islands, and have the Ironborn dead to rights. They even inflict upon the new Ironborn king the same horrors he allowed his followers to visit upon his brother & mother. And then...the general of their army decides to declare himself king, so they pull all support from him and just go home. They didn't even kill the guy who overthrew and tortured their king's nephew & sister in the first place, he survives to off their overly ambitious and supremely retarded general.

What???

They could've just sacked this Crakehall character and appointed someone more loyal to take command. He didn't last the year against the Ironborn without their support so it isn't like he had any substantial army with which to resist Casterly Rock's directive himself. They could have tried to prop up someone from a different Ironborn house as their client King of the Iron Islands, someone who could be trusted to not raid them for at least one lifetime. They could've maintained a crippling occupation, plundering/destroying its already meager resources and taking every chance they get to terrorize or hang Ironborn, to ensure the Isles would never pose a threat again even after they leave a decade or so later - they're rich enough to stay in for the long haul thanks to the mines of Casterly Rock still being in their prime. Hell they could've annexed the Iron Isles themselves and genocided its population to make way for Westerlander settlers, it's not like anybody else on the continent would mourn given that the Ironborn have been a pain in their collective asses for literal millennia at that point. In short, they could and should have done literally anything but what they did according to Martin.

There is no medieval monarch who would've tolerated such a massive personal insult to themselves and their family in real life. None, zero, it wouldn't happen and they'd move heaven and earth to get revenge, not just for personal satisfaction but also to send a very clear message that they cannot be fucked with in such a manner, ever. The Khwarezmians killed Genghis Khan's envoys, so he famously wiped them off the map and did such a number on Persia & Central Asia that the region's population didn't recover and grow beyond 10 million until the 20th century - how do you think he (or William the Conqueror, or Alfred the Great, or Charlemagne, or Otto the Great, or Alexios Komnenos, or literally any other famous medieval ruler) would have reacted if the Khwarezmians had mutilated or butchered his sister and nephew instead, and then he had them at his utterly nonexistent mercy? Well I would put a pretty huge bet on them not acting like the Lannisters inexplicably did here (even though they were happy to utterly gut the Riverlands and breach the continent's most sacred taboo to assassinate Robb Stark for MUCH less in the events of ASOIAF), that's for sure. In fact I'd bet that he, and they, wouldn't even leave the region's rats and insects alive in the rampage to follow.

The Ironborn not only don't make sense as a culture, by all rights they shouldn't even have survived events from thousands of years before the books or even the Targaryens' landing, just as the Dothraki with their insistence on fighting unarmored and charging pike phalanxes head-on should have been destroyed by any adversary that had moved past the Stone Age technologically. At most there could've been an Ironborn diaspora screwing things up on the small scale in the Stepstones or something after House Lannister finishes composing 'The Rains of the Iron Islands', something like the Jewish diaspora following Hadrian's heated gamer moment. But still, here they stand, a testament to Martin's clueless worldbuilding.

 

[Divine right to rule]

What pretty much breaks the great houses in westeros for me is that there is no balance.
If the regions were roughly of the same power and influence, I could see how there could be a power equilibrium in Westeros, with the King keeping the balance and the peace.

Problem is, the Reach and the Tyrells are completely overpowered.
They have more manpower than 3 other regions combined, are the second most wealthy and have one of the biggest fleets.
The other lords, especially the North, Iron Islands and Dorne are downright pathetic in comparison.
The only (weak) reason that is given how they do not completely dominate the whole realm is that Mace Tyrell is a fucking limp dicked idiot.

 

[A Sentient Cloud]

I’m case anyone’s interested, an actual historian did a deep dive on the Dothraki and the real world cultures that GRRM claimed he based them on. It’s fascinating and worth a full read, but tl;dr it’s all a lie and GRRM most likely based them entirely on pop culture stereotypes and the Klingon.

 

[Newman's Lovechild]

GRRM's worldbuilding isn't bad, it's just annoyingly inconsistent

I would have thought that inconsistency is a pretty significant qualifier for bad worldbuilding.

 

[ShittlerNiggler]

I’m case anyone’s interested, an actual historian did a deep dive on the Dothraki and the real world cultures that GRRM claimed he based them on.

From Part 3:
The Dothraki account for 12 of the 117 (!!) rape victims in A Song of Ice and Fire in that counting (which I’d argue is an under-count, as it omits what happens to the dancers at Daenerys’ wedding, AGoT, 84-5),

>The characters every time Martin tries to make a new location look grimdark

 

[Kharash]

I’m case anyone’s interested, an actual historian did a deep dive on the Dothraki and the real world cultures that GRRM claimed he based them on. It’s fascinating and worth a full read, but tl;dr it’s all a lie and GRRM most likely based them entirely on pop culture stereotypes and the Klingon.

The author is a bit of a faggot whose biggest problem with all this seems to be that it's racist but it's still a pretty good read(as is his blog in general)
It's pretty amusing seeing just how badly George messed up the world building on steppe cultures. He also did some other articles on the more western side of things.

 

[TerminalTryHard]

I’m case anyone’s interested, an actual historian did a deep dive on the Dothraki and the real world cultures that GRRM claimed he based them on. It’s fascinating and worth a full read, but tl;dr it’s all a lie and GRRM most likely based them entirely on pop culture stereotypes and the Klingon.

Well he certainly like to hear himself talk, the whole first part could be summed up with the line

The Dothraki are not an amalgam of Steppe and Plains cultures, they are an amalgam of stereotypes about Steppe and Plains cultures.

For anyone trying to read it just skip to the title "a dash of pure fantasy" cause everything before that is just masturbation.

 

[A Sentient Cloud]

I'm pretty sure the books cover this in some form, and of course unlike Normandy, Old Valyria was destroyed and there were never a large number of Valyrians present in Westeros (outside of the island Stannis ruled from).

That's not how culture works, though. Valyria was a the most powerful state in the known world its time and the Westerosi should have had plenty of economic and cultural contact with them at their height (though Tyrion implies that they didn't, which doesn't make any sense at all given their proximity and abundance of natural and human resources, which for a society like Valyria would include slaves), and then with the Free Cities, which all preserve Valyrian cultural to some degree. There would have been people who admired the Valyrians and by extension the Targaryens when they showed up. People adopt and hybridize the culture of their rulers and economic partners regardless of whether they have the genetic material of said culture.

Why would they? They have their own affairs to worry about, their mercenaries are happy, and besides, the Iron Bank of Braavos is referred to be financing all the bullshit that goes on in Westeros during the war. I do agree Essos feels very underdeveloped compared to Westeros. They clearly have some relevance to the story but you barely hear about their own history.

The affairs of Westeros are "their own affairs" because Westeros is right next door, is presumably a major trading partner, and instability has a nasty tendency to spill into neighboring areas, there's a reason why there was a significant political movement for the US to build a wall with Mexico but not Canada. Just the presence of Dany wandering around causing chaos while declaring her intent to take over Westeros should have caused the ruling classes of Qarth etc. to take interest in what the hell was going on with their neighbor to the west.

For anyone trying to read it just skip to the title "a dash of pure fantasy" cause everything before that is just masturbation.

God forbid we actually *read* something. Learning about actual history is for faggots, I guess.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

What pretty much breaks the great houses in westeros for me is that there is no balance.
If the regions were roughly of the same power and influence, I could see how there could be a power equilibrium in Westeros, with the King keeping the balance and the peace.

Problem is, the Reach and the Tyrells are completely overpowered.
They have more manpower than 3 other regions combined, are the second most wealthy and have one of the biggest fleets.
The other lords, especially the North, Iron Islands and Dorne are downright pathetic in comparison.
The only (weak) reason that is given how they do not completely dominate the whole realm is that Mace Tyrell is a fucking limp dicked idiot.

To be fair, those 3 regions are almost assuredly a nightmare to invade with a massive home advantage to the defenders. Giving them lordship is probably better than a constant skirmishes on the borders.
However it it a question why the most fertile and rich areas weren't split up to prevent the risk of the bigger house conspiring together against the monarchy.

 

[TheHarbinger]

To be fair, those 3 regions are almost assuredly a nightmare to invade with a massive home advantage to the defenders. Giving them lordship is probably better than a constant skirmishes on the borders.
However it it a question why the most fertile and rich areas weren't split up to prevent the risk of the bigger house conspiring together against the monarchy.

The borders make sense when there are dragons. Because things like total land ownership, castles, military sizes. Are all just useless in the face of the massive dragons and the Targaryens who can control them. The largest castle will basically turn to ash once incinerated like Harrenhal. The dragons are basically written to be impossible kill in battle unless they are killing each other. So everyone has to bend the knee to an overwhelmingly dangerous foe. You could assassinate a Targaryen King or Prince. But never their dragons.

The Maesters figured out two ways to kill dragons because they wanted to rid the world of magic (according to Marwyn). Poison them. Or starve them. And if you kept them chained and living in a covered area they would not grow as rapidly. Once the last dragons were dead the Targaryens should have been dead within the week. Why would anyone in Westeros possibly want these alien foreigners that are basically demonic tyrants with evil beasts ruling over them? Especially ones prone to madness on the whim of a coin being flipped. Pretty much all groups of people, lords, commoners, maesters, would be executing the Targaryens right and left.

We see that once the Targaryens are without dragons that do eventually fall. People have had enough. And that once Robert is one his throne people are immediately back to warring over their own minor kingdom. The idea is great. It is just that GRRM's execution and his timeline are all over the place. But I do like the concept of various warring kingdoms. Then a new threat takes all of their kingdoms by force. Then the new threat dies out over time. And with no major threat left to replace them they go back to warring.

Yes stuff like no technological progress for millennia is ridiculous. And GRRM has tons of worldbuilding and realism issues. But with editors and publishers that actually checked or helped with his work it would have been amazing. Instead of the bloated corpse of an unfinished absurd mess we are all stuck with now.

 

[Ishtar]

What pretty much breaks the great houses in westeros for me is that there is no balance.
If the regions were roughly of the same power and influence, I could see how there could be a power equilibrium in Westeros, with the King keeping the balance and the peace.

Problem is, the Reach and the Tyrells are completely overpowered.
They have more manpower than 3 other regions combined, are the second most wealthy and have one of the biggest fleets.
The other lords, especially the North, Iron Islands and Dorne are downright pathetic in comparison.
The only (weak) reason that is given how they do not completely dominate the whole realm is that Mace Tyrell is a fucking limp dicked idiot.

The Tyrells were historically just a steward house of the gardeners. For this reason a lot of the great noble reach families do not overly respect them, and throughout the targaryen dynasty-many times "lesser" reach houses participated in wars the Tyrells stayed neutral in, including famously the Hightowers.

Why? Because the Tyrell's position is a tenuous one, there are families like the Hightowers, Redwynes, Peaches, Florents, among others that have claims to Highgarden through blood ties with the extinct gardeners as well as better pedigrees in general.

By the time of the books-the Tyrells have married fairly heavily into their most important vassals, the Redwynes being the family Olenna comes from, the Fossoways among others, Rowan as well.

Mace has a much stronger position than his ancestors even a century before did, but if Stannis should prevail the Florents will gain Highgarden, and there are Targ loyalists-like the Rowans who are visibly disgusted even to the timeline of the books of the Lannister's actions, as well as Tarly-who Mace foolishly doesn't give his due.

For this reason, Mace is cautious-if he should choose to support a side, its pretty much a war winner. But he has to consider his options carefully-both to preserve his own family and get a Tyrell(or Margaery's son) on the iron throne.

In all likelihood he will die in battle with the Golden Company in the books. And either the Tyrells will join Aegon or their more pro Targ vassals(and the aggrieved Tarly) will betray them once its clear the Lannister regime's life expectancy can be measured in days.

That's not how culture works, though. Valyria was a the most powerful state in the known world its time and the Westerosi should have had plenty of economic and cultural contact with them at their height (though Tyrion implies that they didn't, which doesn't make any sense at all given their proximity and abundance of natural and human resources, which for a society like Valyria would include slaves),

There is some sort of prophecy apparently that the gold of Casterly Rock would be the Valyrians doom. Which made them unwilling to conquer Westeros. Which someone explained to me was Tywin sacking KL(which doesn't make any sense but whatever)-probably Martin inventing a reason for this.

But yeah the Valyrians got as far west as Dragonstone, and would have known the Westerosi were a bunch of warring kingdoms-many of which were derived of races they conquered, the Andals and Rhoynar in particular. Why they didn't or even enterprising Valyrian dragon lords didn't muster their own expeditions(with far more resources and access to magic than Aegon and his sister wives would have had) is a plot hole.

What pretty much breaks the great houses in westeros for me is that there is no balance.
If the regions were roughly of the same power and influence, I could see how there could be a power equilibrium in Westeros, with the King keeping the balance and the peace.

Problem is, the Reach and the Tyrells are completely overpowered.
They have more manpower than 3 other regions combined, are the second most wealthy and have one of the biggest fleets.
The other lords, especially the North, Iron Islands and Dorne are downright pathetic in comparison.
The only (weak) reason that is given how they do not completely dominate the whole realm is that Mace Tyrell is a fucking limp dicked idiot.

The reach is also vulnerable from attack from multiple sides-Iron Born raids, the westermen, the stormlands, and the south. The Riverlands were rarely united long enough to be a major threat.

This means the Reach historically could never martial its advantages of manpower and wealth-as it has enemies or potential enemies on every side. Deal with the stormlands and besiege storm's end? The Lannisters attack from the west? Hold down the Lannisters? A storm king now has to be dealt with. Oh and Dornish raids are overwhelming the marches.

So a power balance did exist-the North was isolated and could fight the Vale or Riverlands, but not really both at the same time(and resist wildling incursions), the west had to deal with the ironborn, riverlords, and the vale, the dornish lacked the numbers to do more than raid, and also defend their eastern shores, from piracy and the predations of the free cities, the stormlands always had a smaller population but had to deal with stepstone piracy, dornish attack and the reach, the riverlands were rarely unified but faced attack from all sides even when they were.

The Ironborn could conquer the Riverlands (but the Hoares pretty much enjoyed living in the Riverlands and just used the islands as a source of manpower), and so on.

This constant push and pull was the norm before Aegon but after the various petty kingdoms and tribes were unified into the identifiable regions we know. No king was strong enough or had enough resources to conquer the entire continent, as he always faced threats from many angles, including from his subordinates, as well as geographical barriers-such as the neck, the vale mountains, dornish deserts, and so on.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

What pretty much breaks the great houses in westeros for me is that there is no balance.
If the regions were roughly of the same power and influence, I could see how there could be a power equilibrium in Westeros, with the King keeping the balance and the peace.

Problem is, the Reach and the Tyrells are completely overpowered.
They have more manpower than 3 other regions combined, are the second most wealthy and have one of the biggest fleets.
The other lords, especially the North, Iron Islands and Dorne are downright pathetic in comparison.
The only (weak) reason that is given how they do not completely dominate the whole realm is that Mace Tyrell is a fucking limp dicked idiot.

It's vaguely historic too because some kingdoms really did have insanely powerful vassals like Burgundy was to France. And I'm pretty sure the Reach was once its own kingdom that like all the others submitted/was conquered and I guess kept intact.

That's not how culture works, though. Valyria was a the most powerful state in the known world its time and the Westerosi should have had plenty of economic and cultural contact with them at their height (though Tyrion implies that they didn't, which doesn't make any sense at all given their proximity and abundance of natural and human resources, which for a society like Valyria would include slaves), and then with the Free Cities, which all preserve Valyrian cultural to some degree. There would have been people who admired the Valyrians and by extension the Targaryens when they showed up. People adopt and hybridize the culture of their rulers and economic partners regardless of whether they have the genetic material of said culture.

I can't remember enough about that part of the books so I'll give you a pass.

The affairs of Westeros are "their own affairs" because Westeros is right next door, is presumably a major trading partner, and instability has a nasty tendency to spill into neighboring areas, there's a reason why there was a significant political movement for the US to build a wall with Mexico but not Canada. Just the presence of Dany wandering around causing chaos while declaring her intent to take over Westeros should have caused the ruling classes of Qarth etc. to take interest in what the hell was going on with their neighbor to the west.

It's a different continent. You might as well ask why the Italian city-states are more or less a footnote in the history of wars in the Islamic world. They're safe behind their fleets and armies, their mercenaries are getting rich, etc.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

We see that once the Targaryens are without dragons that do eventually fall. People have had enough. And that once Robert is one his throne people are immediately back to warring over their own minor kingdom. The idea is great. It is just that GRRM's execution and his timeline are all over the place. But I do like the concept of various warring kingdoms. Then a new threat takes all of their kingdoms by force. Then the new threat dies out over time. And with no major threat left to replace them they go back to warring.

You'd think that the Targaryens having control of insane weapons of war and being way different physically than humankind will make Westeros have a "god emperor" treatment towards them, making them religious demi gods and protected even without the dragons. But I guess then it wouldn't be a copy of historic europe.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

And yet, people are claiming for the Targaryans to come back now the Lannisters fucked up. I remember one or two characters say something like "with King Aerys this wasn't happening" which is also very accurate with humanity as people don't give a shit about how many commies Pinochet gave helicopter rides because they had good economy with him.

 

[Ishtar]

And yet, people are claiming for the Targaryans to come back now the Lannisters fucked up. I remember one or two characters say something like "with King Aerys this wasn't happening" which is also very accurate with humanity as people don't give a shit about how many commies Pinochet gave helicopter rides because they had good economy with him.

Someone in the books actually praises Aerys-an old man in Harrenhal. The Lannister guards cut out his tongue(or kill him) for talking. Aerys' madness only really affected the nobility, his immediate family and King's Landing.

As far as the average peasant was concerned-times were good when Aerys was king. This wasn't due to any merit on his part, rather Tywin's excellent administration, the lack of a famine, crippling winter or (prior to Robert's rebellion) major conflict.

 

[JoseRaulChupacabra]

I'm not big into GoT or the books, but I do read up on the battles and one battle in particular caught my attention: the battle where the North faced the Lannisters + Mountain Tribes.

Something about Tywin's plan there doesn't seem right with me. IIRC, his plan was to let his left intentionally route so that his center could roll on it as it advanced which is... a little suss. There are several problems I can think of with a plan like this.

1. This risks a gap in the center. Could be intentional, but such tactics always carried a risk of that gap becoming a funnel for the enemy to do their own roll ups.
2. Say the roll left actually happens, now the center faces left. Wouldn't their flank be at risk from the Northman center which is still fresh at this point?
3. Whenever a wing gets beaten, there is always a potential that panic can spread in the army and turn into a general route of the entire front. It doesn't even need to be route. There's at least one instance (Battle of Marchfeld) I can think of where a simple repositioning of troops to the rear was misinterpreted as a route and resulted in panic.

Ultimately, none of this happens, and the tribes men prove stronger than expected and beat the enemy.

 

[AnyballLecter]

I'm beginning to wonder if the stuff in these books really happened at all.

 

[Chuckwagon]

I'm not big into GoT or the books, but I do read up on the battles and one battle in particular caught my attention: the battle where the North faced the Lannisters + Mountain Tribes.

Something about Tywin's plan there doesn't seem right with me. IIRC, his plan was to let his left intentionally route so that his center could roll on it as it advanced which is... a little suss. There are several problems I can think of with a plan like this.

1. This risks a gap in the center. Could be intentional, but such tactics always carried a risk of that gap becoming a funnel for the enemy to do their own roll ups.
2. Say the roll left actually happens, now the center faces left. Wouldn't their flank be at risk from the Northman center which is still fresh at this point?
3. Whenever a wing gets beaten, there is always a potential that panic can spread in the army and turn into a general route of the entire front. It doesn't even need to be route. There's at least one instance (Battle of Marchfeld) I can think of where a simple repositioning of troops to the rear was misinterpreted as a route and resulted in panic.

Ultimately, none of this happens, and the tribes men prove stronger than expected and beat the enemy.

It becomes quite clear on a second read that Martin's warfare is as grounded in 'realism' as the Dothraki & Ironborn - that is, they aren't, and instead take after post-Enlightenment/Hollywood caricatures of what medieval (and ancient) warfare was like, as has been mentioned by that professor whose deep dives into ASOIAF got posted here a page or two back. You can tell just from how even just the Battle of the Green Fork above there plays out that he thinks very much like a basic Total War player, controlling an army of automatons who will do exactly what they're told and are immune to the prospect of making mistakes in their maneuvers or misinterpreting orders or any of the other bullshit that's affected armies since time immemorial, rather than anyone who's done any real research into medieval battles, and it actually contradicts his characterization of Westeros' armies as huge mobs of conscripted peasants with a core of knights & men-at-arms (as described in Septon Meribald's 'broken man' speech from A Feast For Crows).

An army which is mostly comprised of peasant draftees would not be able to execute complicated tactical maneuvers such as the ones Tywin planned out without falling apart due to a lack of training, discipline and experience, which is why most medieval armies were actually comprised of professional soldiers who knew what they were doing (knights/men-at-arms + mercenaries) and drafting peasants was an absolute last resort. For that matter, the Northmen in that same battle were described as withstanding repeated cavalry charges to eventually withdraw in good enough order that they avoided catastrophic losses, which is also not something a huge peasant mob would be capable of. Even professionals weren't immune to making mistakes, either - other than the Marchfeld example you brought up, the Battle of Grandson stands out as another fantastic case of miscommunication causing a battlefield disaster, as Charles the Bold of Burgundy (whose army was entirely professional, being composed of a versatile mix of all the best mercs from Western Europe - English longbowmen, German artillery & handgunners/arquebusiers, Italian crossbowmen, etc. in addition to his own Flemish pikemen and Burgundian knights & coustiliers or medium cavalry) was doing well until he ordered his cavalry to pull back so he could use his cannons against the Swiss, only for the rest of his army to think that meant his elite cavalry was withdrawing in the face of enemy reinforcements and leaving the rest of them to die, sparking a rout.

How Dorne manages to continue existing is another good example of Martin's approach to warfare as a Total War player with absolutely, robotically loyal troops and citizenry rather than someone who has the slightest clue how medieval armies and feudatories actually functioned. It's not as egregious as the Ironborn managing to defeat the Riverlands multiple times or the Dothraki being anything but a laughingstock, but the Dornish are described as remaining defiant even after Aegon the Conqueror burns every single town and castle in their realm at least once and laying utter waste to their farms over a three year period, after which they manage to make him back down with a simple letter. (Its contents are never told to us, although a few retarded explanations are suggested in-universe, because I'm pretty sure GRRM can't actually think of an explanation that would make any sense, similar to how he's putting off writing the next two books because he can't conceive of any remotely sensible way to tie all his plot threads back together for the ending)

Problem is, Dorne's mostly desert and all its farmland is concentrated along several major rivers in the far north & east of the country. Without these farms their population will starve, and I don't care how nationalistic a populace is said to be (nationalism itself is a hugely anachronistic concept in a supposedly high-to-late medieval fantasy world anyway, it basically was not a thing as we understand it until the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars), without food they're not going to fight for long. After all control over and denial of resources has always a key part to every successful counterinsurgency strategy, from Eastern Wu's subjugation of the Shanyue tribes in southeastern China during the Three Kingdoms era (Sun Quan's generals made sure the Shanyue couldn't steal any rice from Chinese peasants to feed themselves, thereby starving them into submission in their normally impregnable mountain strongholds) to the British suppression of the Malay Communists in the 1960s (which did involve the use of Agent Orange-esque herbicides). Also, not a single Dornish house betrays the Martells in return for the Targaryens making them Lords Paramount of Dorne or offering some other huge reward drawn from the other six kingdoms under these extreme conditions, not even the Yronwoods who are said to be the #2 rival house to the Martells - basically Dorne's equivalent to what the Reynes were to the Lannisters or the Boltons to the Starks. That is, to be blunt, self-evident bullshit with no grounding in reality or basic human nature, especially as both of the Martells' northern neighbors were ultimately defeated by self-interested treachery & subversion in the face of overwhelming odds (the last Storm Queen was hand-delivered to Aegon's brother Orys Baratheon naked and in chains by her bodyguards, while the Tyrell stewards of the Reach surrendered that kingdom to Aegon after he BBQ'd their former overlords the Gardeners).

Now it's also been said that Martin took inspiration from the War on Terror and how all those Mideastern/Central Asian insurgencies have managed to survive the overwhelming firepower of America & friends until the latter fucked off. Except even in that regard he 1) shows why projecting modern conflicts onto ostensibly pre-modern ones is a bad idea and 2) betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of those insurgencies, same as he's fundamentally misunderstood a crapload of other things. The most effective Iraqi insurgents weren't hiding out in the open desert where the US could've just bombed them without fear of collateral damage and attendant bad press, they were embedded right in Iraq's cities - Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdist Army for example turned a chunk of Baghdad into basically a bigger, better-run Islamist CHAZ, and this was not some well-hidden secret either. The Taliban too, far from staying cooped up in caves trying to make bread out of sand and rocks, had extensively infiltrated and built underground networks within Afghanistan's cities, which not only gave them a pipeline of resources (nabbed right from their enemies' maw no less) but played a big role in the rapidity of their advance during the collapse of the Western-backed government last year - they were even able to take northeastern cities they'd never captured before in the '90s with insider help. But this urban strategy would have been impossible against an enemy that didn't care about collateral damage and was actually bombing/nuking every settlement they saw into ash nonstop for three years straight as the Targs did, and the alternative (starving in the desert or mountains) is not actually viable for an insurgency outside of Hollywood Fantasy Land, ever.

In warfare as in so many other things, Martin's worldbuilding starts to fall apart under even a little bit of scrutiny. Tolkien's approach of not describing most of his battles and especially the strategists' strategizing in detail actually plays to his advantage here, since not only does it make both thematic and personal sense - as a veteran of one of history's most horrific and pointless conflicts, it's something he wouldn't have wanted to dwell on for his epic fantasy story where the good guys' success came down to whether or not the Hobbits could drop the One Ring into Mount Doom rather than whether they could outwit Sauron with a heckin epic flanking movement on the Morannon or wherever, plus he'd also be painfully aware of how rarely the fancy plans of General Haig and the rest of the Allied high command survived contact with the enemy - but it also gave himself fewer chances to make an unnecessary suspension-of-disbelief-cracking mistake in his narrative.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

@Chuckwagon

Tolkien's approach of not describing most of his battles and especially the strategists' strategizing in detail actually plays to his advantage here, since not only does it make both thematic and personal sense - as a veteran of one of history's most horrific and pointless conflicts, it's something he wouldn't have wanted to dwell on for his epic fantasy story where the good guys' success came down to whether or not the Hobbits could drop the One Ring into Mount Doom rather than whether they could outwit Sauron with a heckin epic flanking movement on the Morannon or wherever, plus he'd also be painfully aware of how rarely the fancy plans of General Haig and the rest of the Allied high command survived contact with the enemy - but it also gave himself fewer chances to make an unnecessary suspension-of-disbelief-cracking mistake in his narrative.

In general it's a good writing advice - If you aren't well versed at a subject just avoid describing it as much as possible and let the readers fill in based on their own knowledge. Maybe that's why half of GRRM's books are food descriptions

 

[JoseRaulChupacabra]

Shitty reply bug again... Oh well.

More issues I have with the supposedly good commander Tywin and his elaborate tactic at the time:

1. The plan almost certainly relies on the Northman right going into a disorganized charge to pursue the routed tribesmen, but they could always advance in good order.
2. Tywin has numerical superiority and doesn't need to risk elaborate maneuvers when very simple alternatives are around.
   • Stretch his front and threaten envelopment (possible terrain constraints)
   • Force concentration - shove more troops on one wing and push hard there. If it works, he can have the Wikipedia worthy roll up he planned.

As for the whole Martin-Tolkien comparison, I can't really comment there. I don't read fantasy books much. I can only go by the fans, and honestly, some of the GoT fans I know IRL are some of the most stuck-up people around. And Martin looks like a neckbeard, so I don't have a good initial impression of him. The needlessly elaborate battle plans aren't helping.