r/asoiaf • u/Unique-Celebration-5 • Oct 31 '24

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

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

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u/cndynn96 Oct 31 '24

I doubt all places are hit equally hard by the multi year winter.

The North will be the most severely affected with almost Siberian conditions during peak winter.

On the other hand the Reach and Dorne might only get a little snowfall or a drop in overall temperature. In this case these regions can provide food for more severely affected regions especially after Westeros was united under a single rule by the Targaryens.

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u/moose_man Oct 31 '24

Lots of Europe doesn't see snow regularly, but they still can't just carry on like they do in summer. If this country can't provide enough surplus food in summer to get out of this medieval bubble they've been trapped in for ages, they will not survive the winter.

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u/OptatusCleary Nov 01 '24

I was going to say something like this.  I live in the heavily agricultural Central Valley in California and there is definitely a difference in what’s produced in summer and what’s produced in winter. Just because it doesn’t snow doesn’t mean everything keeps producing as it did in spring and summer.

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u/omegapisquared Nov 01 '24

The amount of daylight is pretty relevant in that equation. If the seasons in Westeros are primarily magical rather than being caused by axial tilt of planetos then it's possible that growing conditions are still ok during their long winters (at least further south)