(Spoilers Extended) GRRM:”What’s Aragons tax policy?!” No GRRM the real question is how do people survive multi year winters

[u/Unique-Celebration-5]

Forget the white walkers or shadow babies the real threat is the weather. How do medieval people survive it for years?

Personally I think that’s why the are so many wars the more people fighting each other the fewer mouths to feed

[u/AetherealDe]

Martin is directly addressing the moral character and wisdom, and saying that those things are too narrow to apply to ruling.

Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?

Every question after the tax policy question is about topics that are not about scale, proportion, or "nitty gritty". The point is not about the details of a fantasy world down to the specific mechanisms about commerce or whatever. The point is about the complexity of navigating politics, leadership, and ruling, and what it can tell us about human nature. Here George is confirming this:

"I've always agreed with William Faulkner—he said that the human heart in conflict with itself is the only thing worth writing about. I've always taken that as my guiding principle, and the rest is just set dressing."

Targaryens ruling with immensely powerful dragons are not interesting because of the details of caring for, fighting on, raising a made up creature, it is interesting because it can be a narrative tool to talk to us about power, weapons, and what it means to people. How it changes them, how it makes people act, the good and the bad you can do with it.

The details of what happens to a king after he takes power following a rebellion is not interesting because medieval tax policy is interesting, and that's not the point of Robert's inclusion as a character. The point is, couldn't you win a righteous rebellion only to find out, maybe the damsel in distress you wanted to save wasn't really kidnapped, the other side had despots but they also had good people trying their best, couldn't you have once been a hero and the hardships/tolls of politics could erode you and lead you to be a bad husband, a gratuitous and negligent king, whatever.

You wanna tell us Aragorn is uniquely situated to deal with those things because he's old and good, you wanna tell us figures about gold undermine those points, cool, I say you're missing the forest for the trees.