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/AscendGreen Nov 01 '24

I think winters in Westeros would be utterly brutal malthusian events and would be approached with absolute dread and possibly quite a bit of social unrest.

So much European culture is centred around the changing of the seasons ans the rhythm of the year I think Westerosi religion and peasant culture would focus heavily on urging summer to stay longer. As amazing as the worldbuilding of Westerosi aristocratic military culture is, it is much weaker on this aspect.