There is one thing about GoT the show that I hate is (and I said this after checking someone reviewing the show after watching by first time, can't remember which channel it was, I just watch them as background noise when I'm working) that people are convinced of this being an accurate representation of middle ages time as in, nobility simply hated everybody who wasn't theirs, which wasn't the case at all. While they weren't the most egalitarian folk, they had the concept of noblesse oblige. While the books are more nuanced about this, the show does portray them as if they just hate people just because.
The Church beat the idea into the nobles' heads that if they don't help the poor, God will hold them accountable in the next life. Many real-world nobles did things that Westerosi nobles would've seen as nonsensical, such as donate large fortunes to the Church, go Crusading for the Church, or even allowing Church officials to be as powerful or even more powerful than the nobles. If you applied the godless, Machiavellian ideology of the Westerosi nobility onto the Medieval nobles, they wouldn't have done half the shit they actually did in real life.
Some noble ladies refused to marry/remarry when their husbands, brothers, or fathers died, and gave away their land and wealth to the Church when they died, keeping themselves chaste. Some noble lords risked their lives and fortunes and fought in the Holy Land, in Spain, in Lithuania, in Novgorod, or even in Byzantium, crusading for the Church against pagans, or Orthodox and Muslim heretics. And of course, there's the obvious acts of charity that the Church encourages at home.
Outside of nobles like the Tyrells who used charity for PR, one could never imagine Westerosi nobles doing something like this in ASOIAF. Imagine an Andal noble or even a Targaryen king crusading in Essos to fight against Volantis for worshiping the wrong interpretation of God. Or imagine Westerosi noblewomen purposefully remaining chaste after their fathers, brothers, or husbands died off, so that their land would be given to the High Septon when they died. Or imagine the average noble donating money in the same way Margaery Tyrell did, to the point where she wouldn't be so special since most nobles would be donating to the poor to buy their way to heaven.
It just astounds me how Westerosi nobles think, when actual Medieval nobles had concerns that ASOIAF never brought up, such as economic concerns, concerns for their people, (yes, they cared for their serfs, if only because they needed manpower) and their relationship with the Church, which in some instances, is a familial one, since they have family members acting as bishops who also participate in the welfare system.
It does make you wonder what's the point of Martin's comments about Tolkien not being realistic enough when he's portraying nobility in the most inaccurate way.
Exactly. Hell, LOTR's politics is closer to how Medieval societies work, given how there's no central locus of power, and local kings and principalities can feel free to ignore the so-called superpowers and do their own thing. Rohan can decide whether or not they want to support Gondor, and other local powers like Isengard or the Easterlings can decide to support Sauron over Gondor and Rivendell. That's how Medieval allegiances were like; they can shift with the wind, and you'll have to deal with them.
You don't have a king with absolute power in a time when lords still fielded their own private armies. Absolute monarchs either relied on large armies of levies or mercenaries (Byzantium, Spain), or used large numbers of royal footsoldiers who are trained and supplied by the crown, and no one else. (France, Prussia) That's how a monarch can get away with being an absolutist; they've got the only army in town, and it's a pretty big one, so you'll have to play ball with them. Meanwhile, in a feudal society, every local power has their own army, and like the LOTR example I cited above, they can choose which side to fight on.
Some French duchies can choose to side with the British over their own native French king. Some Italian city-states favored Imperial rule, others preferred freedom or allegiance to the Pope. Sometimes the King of Sicily helps the Pope against the Holy Roman Emperor, and in other times, the King of Sicily IS the Holy Roman Emperor, and he's got the Pope sandwiched between his German and Sicilian lands.
GRRM has some real brass balls (not brains) to bitch about how Tolkien got things wrong, when Tolkien's approach to feudal politics is closer to how the real Medieval Europe worked.
The closest thing to absolutism the Targaryens had was when they had dragons. But once the dragons died, Targaryen absolutism should've died with it. The fact that GRRM didn't notice this goes to show that he doesn't even keep up with the logistics of his own creation. Other lands such as the Reach, the Westerlands, and the Vale can each muster armies larger than the Crownlands; so at that point, the Targaryens would only be able to rule with the tolerance of the nobles, yet the story still acted as if the post-Dance Westerosi monarchy can be an absolute monarchy.
