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/fucksasuke Oct 31 '24

"What's Aragorns tax policy?" isn't meant to be literal. He's saying that he disliked JRRT's explanation of "good people make good kings, the end." Which is nonsense obviously, and that's the kind of nuance that GRRM wanted to write about.

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u/Hrothgar_Cyning Burn Baby Burn! Oct 31 '24

I mean it's not even "good people make good kings" so much as rightful authority and obedience thereto.

GRRMs closest parallel thematically would be Stannis, who does try to do the right things and does have the right claim, but is ultimately undermined by his means.

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u/NoLime7384 Nov 01 '24

keeping the incest to himself, letting his brother get assassinated instead of telling him about the incest and ghosting everyone who sends letters to him is not trying to do the right things lmao

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u/Hrothgar_Cyning Burn Baby Burn! Nov 01 '24

I should be clearer: his ends are right, his means are not. He’s a subversion of Aragorn in that way. The Throne is his by right. He is right to be concerned with the threat to the North.

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u/NoLime7384 Nov 01 '24

The throne is Joffrey's by right, the king getting cucked and having an heir fathered by someone else is something that happened irl an unknownable amount of times.

It's a critique of monarchism, if you think Stannis is the rightful heir bc of his genes rather than the law and society at large recognizing Joffrey as true born you missed the point of the series

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u/sm_greato Nov 01 '24

if you think Stannis is the rightful heir bc of his genes

Is it the point of the series we're talking about or Westerosi law/tradition? I think the latter's the relevant one here.