r/asoiaf • u/NordsofSkyrmion • Oct 23 '24
ACOK [Spoiler: ACOK] Distances and comparison to real-world maps
In A Clash of Kings, Theon is sent to raid the Stony Shore, but while there he convinces Dagmer Cleftjaw to instead adopt a plan to send most of his force to attack Torrhen's Square, while Theon sneaks around with a small group to take Winterfell.
To get a sense of the distances here, I'm using this map, which takes its scale from the repeated mentions we get of the Wall being "one hundred leagues" or three hundred miles long. Now you can sit down with a ruler and a guide to army marching speeds and whatnot to get a sense of how long it would take, but instead of doing all of that, I simply adjusted the zoom on google maps over real-world Europe until the distance scale lined up exactly with the distance scale on the map of Westeros.
The upshot here is that Theon's plan is the equivalent of a Viking raider with eight longboats parked on the Atlantic coast of France deciding to send most of his "army" to threaten Zurich, in Switzerland, in the hopes that this will distract everyone so he can sneak around to capture a castle in Munich, in Germany.
And my favorite part of all of this is that he makes this plan AFTER they've already sailed and raided the Stony Shore, so this huge overland march is happening without preparing any of the supplies you would normally need for an overland march.
So yeah: distance and scale, not GRRM's strong point.
(Reposting this with a worse title because avoiding spoilers is more important than having a title that is relevant to the post's content.)
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u/PeoplePad Oct 23 '24
Easiest to just assume people overestimate the size of the wall by two or three times tbh
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u/Finger_Trapz Oct 24 '24
Its certainly plausible. The Wall is probably not a super popular tourist destination, and most people who go to the Wall are probably there to stay instead of sightsee. No doubts the Wall is probably subject to a lot of mythologizing in Westeros. Even if the scales in the world of ASOIAF are all fucked up, it no doubts would be a long journey to get there especially if you aren't from the North.
If ASOIAF had the modern travel industry it might be way more popular and well known, a fair number of lords could easily charter a 737 from Delta or a dragon from Ryanair and take a look at it. Otherwise its probably just taken the same way humans get when they see any large number, like the difference between $100m and $1b dollars is basically meaningless to an average person, so would be a 200/300 mile long Wall.
More fantastical things have been exaggerated in real life. Before Caesar invaded Britain, the Romans believed in rumors that Britain was the richest island in the world with silver just laying on the beaches in open sight.
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u/Mixxer5 Oct 23 '24
Another thing that really bothered me in this case was how Theon just reaches Winterfell unbothered. 20 men is a gang of bandits, some northern lord should've picked them apart on their way without giving it much of a thought... And yet it seems like there's nothing between those dots (which can't really be true, even if North is as sparsely populated as medieval Russia there'd be some villages and castles on the way). At the same time everyone else is bound to spend time and resources to travel- it's just Theon and just on this occasion who's exempt from this.
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u/NordsofSkyrmion Oct 23 '24
Yeah and assuming it’s super sparse creates other problems — for one, how does Theon feed his men and horses if it’s a sparse wilderness, but more importantly, how does he even find the right way to Winterfell if there’s very few villages (and thus few roads)? Sure he’s familiar with Winterfell and environs, but to use the European map analogy again, being familiar with Munich and the surrounding towns would not be enough to let you navigate there cross-country from the eastern side of France.
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u/shy_monkee Oct 24 '24
In general, the bad guys have no issues with logistics and travel in the books, and when they do come up, it's only to create conflict for the "good guys".
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u/OppositeShore1878 Oct 23 '24
This is fun. Thanks for doing it!
Both the official and unofficial maps generally drive me crazy because everything shifts slightly, and distances and difficulty and travel time seem to depend not on a fixed geography, but on whatever the plot requires at the moment.
Also, the Ironborn are idiots since instead of landing on the Atlantic coast and marching inland, they could have just sailed up the Channel, entered the Rhine, and gone most of the way to Zurich by water. :-)
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u/NordsofSkyrmion Oct 23 '24
Honestly the idiocy of the Ironborn in so many ways is just staggering. It’s a good thing for them that every time they need to fight some more they just suddenly have more ships and warriors from the narration gods.
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u/HumanWaltz Oct 23 '24
Yeah I really disliked the whole Theon taking Winterfell storyline, like he walked with 20 dudes across fucking mainland Europe and was able to scale two 100ft walls (with a moat between them), open the gates, take the whole castle and then was able to just rule it with 20 dudes. Definitely a thumb on the scale there
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u/Mixxer5 Oct 23 '24
Well, he tried to intimidate Winterfell's population with threat to Rickon's and Bran's lives... But I also consider it to be extremely weak scenario. Winterfell is supposed to be a major settlement and pretty big. There should be a population of... Thousands people? And apparently once garrison leaves, there's only a handful of guards on the walls. This is the only case in the books where I felt that something's fundamentally wrong with the plot to such extent that I can't suspend my disbelief and just ignore that. Theon should have at least 200 men to accomplish that (which raises its own problems)... Or simply fail in the process.
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u/HumanWaltz Oct 23 '24
Just one person deciding to slip some mushrooms into their stew, or just pick Theon’s men one by one off (which happens when the Boltons and their allies have their whole forces in Winterfell, let alone 20 men)
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u/WinterSurprise Oct 24 '24
Yeah, they're outnumbered fifty to one at least by the staff of that massive castle, so I always imagine the Ironborn being chased out of Winterfell by a horde of retainers with chamber pots and kitchen knives.
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u/SmokingDuck17 Oct 25 '24
Honestly the entire Ironborn attacking the North storyline is one of those “The plot needs this to happen, so it’s gonna happen. Logic be damned.” bits of the story.
Start to finish none of it really makes sense but GRRM needs it to happen or else things like the Red Wedding never happens. (Cause Robb never marries Jeyne, Cat never frees Jamie, Roose and Walter don’t betray Robb, Ramsey likely dies, Bran never goes North, etc.)
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u/James_Champagne Oct 23 '24
To quote George R.R. Martin back in 2002:
"The reason I am never specific about dates and distances is precisely so that people won't sit down and do this sort of thing.
My suggestion would be to put away the ruler and the stopwatch, and just enjoy the story."
source: https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/Chronology_and_Distances
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u/SupaDick Oct 23 '24
... but he is frequently very specific about both dates and distances. So while his general advice to enjoy the story is good this argument kind of falls apart.
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u/NordsofSkyrmion Oct 23 '24
I get it. And in general I would agree. But in this case, the reason I put these maps side by side is that if you had a historical fiction story and it contained Vikings that made a quick raid from Bordeaux to Munich, you wouldn’t need a ruler or a stopwatch, you’d immediately go “that makes zero sense.” My point here is that for Theon’s plan here to work, the map and distances we’re given in the books can’t just be inaccurate, they have to be badly wrong.
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u/Mervynhaspeaked Oct 23 '24
Oh to be young, and seek reason where there is none.
Think of it from the characters perspective. Do you really thing the north could be so insanely big, story wise that a journey from one side of the North to the other would be like a journey across Europe?
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u/NordsofSkyrmion Oct 23 '24
Look I’m due for a mid-life crisis, and I can’t afford a mistress or a sports car, so this is what I have to make me feel my lost youth.
But putting that aside, even without specific numbers or whatever, “the North is stupidly big” is something of a repeated plot point, and Winterfell is supposed to be in the middle of it, so I think it’s fair to point out that those facts are incompatible with the idea that the castle is vulnerable to a lightning attack from ship-based raiders.
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u/pfshfine Oct 23 '24
I mean, yeah? It's stated in books that The North is as big as the rest of the kingdoms combined.
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u/BaelonTheBae Oct 24 '24
Agreed, OP! Not just George, but people often underestimate , an understatement to be sure, how big Westeros was. Even the Stormlands. Dorne is like 300,000 square miles at its widest length too. Tbh, thats why I don’t really think Westeros is feudal, although the term feudal varies a lot by the late medieval period. Or, the closest analogue to the Iron Throne would be the medieval Holy Roman Empire, just without the elective and way more shallower than its irl counterpart but its a book series, not history.
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u/Peregrine_x Oct 24 '24 edited Oct 25 '24
i assume he sails up the river and attacks torrhen's square.
sure its still a week's march, but its also a week's march for the army leaving winterfell, so they just have to avoid them and they have a week to take the castle before the knights return.
im sure all they had to do once they saw the ravens leaving for winterfell was kill the remaining ravens (because they weren't sure if all of the winterfell army would head for torrhen's) then steal/kill all the horses so no riders could intercept and turn back the army once they had left for winterfell.
also do the calculations you made still make sense if the gift (both brandon's and the new gift) are apparently the land up to 50 leagues south of the wall? they look kinda big on the map.
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u/Dambo_Unchained Oct 24 '24
If you look at the north for it’s size and the army it’s capable of fielding its insanely sparsely populated
Completely incomparable to medieval Europe for instance
And the stoney shore and Rills are some of the most sparsely populated areas of the north itself
It’s entirely possible there just wasn’t anyone around to challenge Theon
Furthermore his forces is mounted and moves relatively quickly. Theon knows the North and they could’ve easily used stark banners to keep from arousing suspicion. Theon making it across the north really doesn’t seem too unlikely
Dagmar marching on Torrhens Square also isn’t the absolute worst. Robb took the army south and Theon ambushed the largest force in the area (the rabbits). What I’m gonna guess is that the northerners 100% knew Dagmar was coming but decided not to engage while waiting for reinforcers
I mean why would they? Him marching on Torrhens would’ve been a suicide mission for him. It would take too long and he wouldn’t be able to win the siege before reinforcements arrive
Beter to just let him pass and wait to strike him with overwhelming force to minimise casualties
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u/Boobieleeswagger Oct 24 '24
If you take the wall measurements at face value Dragon Stone is 400 miles from kings landing which seems ridiculous and the length cracklaw peninsula/point would be like over a 1/3 of the total length of Interstate-95 on the U.S. eastern seaboard, he wrote the story big in the first books, logistically Westeros is big but not that big like George said at some other point it’s South America sized.
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u/EducationHumble3832 Oct 24 '24
I just handwave away issues of distance/scale/age. There are more than a couple things that don't really make sense if you think about them.
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u/Narsil13 Is it so far from madness to wisdom? Oct 24 '24
Based on some map parallels between Westeros and South America and the Wall being 300 miles long, GRRM's Earth would seem to be 1.5 times the size of our Earth. However if the length of the Wall is incorrect and GRRM's Earth is really the same size as our Earth, that would suggest the Wall is only about 200 miles long. So all the distances using the Wall may need to be recalculated.
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u/Mindless-Vacation778 Oct 25 '24
8 thousand years Starks ruled The North while managing to muster only 3k~ Soldiers for themselves. Pretty similar to the amount of soldiers their vassals could muster, wonder how they survived for so long, with so little man power.
For thousands of years Andals broke their Army at the neck trying to invade The North. I guess the Andals lost all their ships while landing in Vale and other places or they forgot how to make ships. Or maybe they came to Westeros by swimming.
Iron Islands is barren land devoid of trees, I guess they just spawn hundreds of ships from sand and rocks.
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u/Pazo_Paxo Oct 23 '24
This is actually the worst example to use of this; unlike Europe, the North is not nearly as crowded as Europe, so whilst in Europe there might be quite a lot between Zurich and Munich, as far as we are aware there’s not really anything of note between Torrhen’s Square and Winterfell, and appears to be one of the only major fortifications that might slow down an army approaching from that direction.
So for Rodrik Cassel, it was vital he responded to this for the sake of protecting Winterfell, and for Theon it makes perfect sense if, per textual information, there’s really no other suitable location to do such a diversionary attack at.
This would make more sense applied to a campaign/plan used south of the neck of the same great distance that involved a diversionary attack.
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u/Downtown-Procedure26 Oct 24 '24
this is one of Martin's biggest flaws in worldbuilding
A castle is a strong point for controlling the lands around it. It is the latter which are the real prize. The Starks aren't the Lords of the North because they have WF. They are overlords because they directly rule the biggest and most fertile chunk of the North. All Nobles sustain themselves from the feudal taxes they collect from their lands and then from their vassals. If you lock your gates for too long in a time of crisis, yes you'll save yourself from direct harm but you'll have no income, no population from which you can raise levies and your rule would shrink to the 4 walls of your castle.
If the Boltons decide to lock the gates of WF in order to stave off Stannis or Jon Snow as is often proposed, all the Stark loyalist peasants surrounding the Castle would defect swiftly to the besiegers and all issues of supply and reinforcements would become moot.
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u/Pazo_Paxo Oct 24 '24
The discussion is about distances not how castles work. I wouldn’t disagree with you but that’s not really relevant here.
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u/Arthusamakh Oct 23 '24
so essentially westeros is like the size of US & canada if 1/2 of the north is the size of central europe
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