>family dates back 8000 years>Only people in line of succession for winterfell is a family of 6, no other family members existLmao wut? I thought George was all about "realistic" fantasy and tax policies. A 8000 year old family would be a MASSIVE family tree. It'd honestly be more impressive if there was somehow NOT a Stark in Winterfell. But apparently their whole line is almost ended and Winterfell is vacant for years because a couple kids died?? What a fucking idiot, no wonder he can't finish the books
>>214213932>Tolkien Elves>Live for thousands of years>Only have 1 or 2 kidsFantasy just really doesn't work well when it comes to realistic family trees
>>214213932Unlikely anything happens to all 5 kids of a wealthy, powerful family, and if it did they could just legitimize Jon, or Eddard's brother who joined the nightswatch, or pass it onto one of the Karstarks. None of that served the story he wanted to tell though
>>214213932The bulk of the northern families are related. Also war seems pretty common so it's not unreasonable to see stagnated or reversing birth rates.
>>214213932There is a dude in the Vale of Arryn on the line of succession and the Karstark are relative of the Stark
>>214213932Each country has different laws and customs. You have no clue how line of succession is determined in the North.In the end it's always about the power you wield, not about the rights.Can you imagine if someone from a poor side-branch of the Stark family tried to claim the throne, because he had the same great-great-grandfather as Ned Stark? No one would give a shit.
>>214213932>"realistic" fantasy>8000 years without 0 innovation, not even Renaissance's nor Enlightment's wonders nor customsAnon...
>>214214383Tolkien explained this in universe and a ton of fantasy stuff borrows from it.
>>214215119Would we be this far in the tech tree if we were hit with mini ice ages every several decades or so?And don't pretend our drop of temperature in 14th century is an equivalent of that. We still had summer and harvests just less time to collect it.
>>214215660Whats this we shit about ?
>>214214448that's not what he meant though. He's talking about how after 8000 years there are going to be a lot of lords who had more than 1 kid, more specifically, more than 1 son. And those sons will have kids as well, and their kids will also have kids, etc. It would get to a point where there'd be random starks living all over the north, just by expansion.
>>214213932dude played gavelkind succession locked cultures in CK2 enough to understand that you need to keep the tree lean to not have your country split up every time your ruler dies
>>214215660I mean no one would be able to live there since a yearly winter is necessary for sustainable agriculture
>>214213932Rome and much of European royalty massively failed at producing living adult heirs
>>214216327Which would be believable if the Starks had been around for only 100-200 years. But 8000+ years? Yeah, no. Georgie just likes realism when it suits his narrative and to try and dab on Tolkien
>>214215039Irl retard
>>214213932Distant cousins dont count as starks. If they did the Karstarks would be in line. All of Ned's brothers die without any kids. So stfu.
>>214213932To be fair there was just a massive civil war 15 years past that killed off a good chunk of Starks. The House was probably more numerous before the rebellion.
>>2142165588000 years IS a lot
>>214216683How were the Starks reduced down to just Neds parents? Also how convenient that once Ned becomes a parent the Starks are widdled down to just his family being the only ones in existence
>>214215700Talking about White people and other civs that weren't dragged out of the ....wood/stone age kicking and screaming, and apparently who are still mad about it judging by the detriment they are to humanity
>>214213932Almost every great house is in the same situation. If you want an in-story reason, Westeros has over the top mortality rates. If you’re a woman in GRRM’s world, there’s like a 75% chance that you’re dying in childbirth and if you’re a man, you’re probably going to die in one of the continent spanning wars that happen every 25 years. The real reason is that keeping the family trees small adds tension to the story and limits what’s already a pretty bloated cast of characters.
>>214216818Wasn't there like 300 years of peace before that though? Even if there was only 1 Stark alive at the beginning of Targ rule, there would literally hundreds of Starks by the time of Roberts Rebellion, and that's being conservative
The 8000 years thing was bs and propaganda.
>>214213932Yeah its a bit silly. Whenever I start a new Ck2 campaign I have to keep tabs on like 50 dynasties and spam them children via cheat decisions so that half of the historical bloodlines don't die out in the first 50 years.
>>214214383It's perfectly logical for people who live wealthy and healthy for thousands of years to have very few kids, it's cruel to create people just to have them waiting around forever.
>>214213932>A 8000 year old family would be a MASSIVE family tree"But only THIS branch is important."Boom, you are excluded from succession, deal with it
>>214213932Didn't one of those british princes throw a fit at some point about how he only existed to be a potential organ doner to his older king-to-be brother or something?If the trope about landed nobility having constant family squabbles about inheritance and other things is true then it would kinda make sense that they don't have too many extra children.
>continent the size of south america>distinct kingdoms, each with their own culture>thousands of years have passed, most of it having independent kingdoms>everyone speaks the exact same language>somehow no language divergence occurs, no local dialectsalso>no one talks about any type of artforms exept tapestries and bard songs
>>214217884didn't the wildlings have a language? Also targs spoke vylarian or w/e it was called.
>>214214383Tolkien Elves live in Earthly Paradise and are too busy singing praises to God and the Madonna for anything else. Also Tolkien Elves only have kids within the context of marriage and only early in the marriage, as soon as the short window of early marriage ends they want to sing praise to God and nothing else. And Tolkien Elves don't marry young.
>>214217929I'm talking mostly about Westeros. Essos is a bit more diverse (not realistically diverse for its geography and history, but still). The wildlings and some northerners remember the old tongue, but its ridiculous how prevalent the common tongue is in westeros. Does the text even mentions accents for each kingdom and region? I honestly can't remember.
>>214215660>if we were hit with mini ice ages every several decades or so?>The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of relative cooling that occurred roughly between the 14th and 19th centuries, most notably from the 16th to the 19th centuries. It caused mountain glaciers in areas like Europe, Alaska, and New Zealand to expand and was characterized by cold winters and mild summers, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere.
The guy is a fucking hack, although I doubt he does much fucking. Thinking we need to know about the queen's explosive diarrhea or the knight taking it in the ass because 'its real life.' No, you fat pervert, in normal life that shit is something we mostly get out of our system in private so we can get on with our day to day affairs like adults.
>>214217732And then two branches team up against that one. The fat hack likes to think he's writing this ultra realistic realpolitik but then nerfs family dynamics down to tutorial level because it ruins his little story
>>214217227Westeros blew up every few decades within those 300 years. >First Dornish War>Faith Militant Uprising>War in the Stepstones>Dance of the Dragons>Dagon Greyjoy’s Reavings>Redbeard’s invasion>”Conquest” of Dorne>Blackfyre Rebellions>Ninepenny Kings>Robert’s Rebellion>Greyjoy RebellionAnd there’s probably a ton of unmentioned smaller wars, border skirmishes and campaigns against outlaws and rebels, like the fights against the Vulture Kings, the Peake Uprising, and hunting the Kingswood Brotherhood
>>214213932Are you absolutely fucking retarded? That's not how lineages work, you stupid asshole. By your logic, literally every person alive is royalty.
>>214213932Call me autistic, but it honestly upsets me that in a setting where shit happens all the time, where technology and scientific knowledge are perpetually stuck in the early Middle Ages and where winters last for years or even decades killing off huge amount of people every time.. there are so many orders that demand a celibacy vote so that nobles can put their cadet sons and unfit heirs in.Maesters, kingsguard, night's watch, septons/septas, silent sisters.. Mortality rates are huge and yet they can afford to trim their family tree so that only a couple or less of branches are left each generation, and that never once in 8k years came to bit them in the ass? Yeah sure.
>>214219145This is a fantasy world where diseases are not as common and deadly as they were in the real middle ages (except when they have to be for the convenience of the plot) and where child birth is not so deadly (again, except when its convenient).
>>214215660One would have to be expectionally stupid to just accept the fact that they will starve every years-long winter (which only happens in Westeros btw) without even trying to come up with some innovation, like long lasting food storage or build tons of fishing vessels to meet the kingdom's demand in the winters. Martin obviously thinks they are all retarded.
>>214219437>the greenhouses bro
>Targaryans rule for almost 300 years>Do incest>People of Westeros don't care>Cersei and Jaime do incest >Everyone loses their mind Major plot hole that always bugged me
>>214219648Targs are like their own fantasy race with their own customs. And I doubt everyone liked their incest practices.
>>214213932Cersei being Queen Regent means that, legally, Joffrey isn't King. Not in the real world and not in Westeros. And yet the dumb bitch allows and encourages him to act as King. She should have been sitting on the throne herself, in Joffrey's name. And its even dumber in the books when Joffrey is even younger and isn't months away but literally YEARS away from his majority.And she would have had every legal right to do so. Both in Westeros and in real life Eurasia.
>>214215119Firearms are another revolution of infantry over cavalry. Another revolution of making mass peasant levees nearly or more effective than elite lifetime trained warriors. But without firearms, Medieval Europe is basically the technological peak of warfare.
>>214219842Joeffery would have been a good king and just what the realm needed despite his sadism.
>>214216962They regularly send their family members to Skagos. During long winters, they turn to cannibalism (the only source of food five years in), which reduces the number of Starks, then anyone who doesn't stop gets sent to live on Skagos and their name is purged from the records. It is known.
>>214213932Many noble houses died out in real life, and a lot of times when you're a ruler you don't want to have too many kids, because it opens up succession issues and leads to civil wars and strife and likely the eradication of your bloodline by a third party.
>>214218343Nigga read the whole post before asking grok for Europe temperature drop. Year long winter for a decade is not the same as Brits not being able to grow grapes anymore.
>>214213932None of this was particularly well thought out.
>>214219648People were bothered by it, especially the Faith. They couldn't say shit about Aegon the Conqueron and his sisters-wives because they were too scared of being burned alive, but the moment he died and his grandson married his granddaughter the High Septon called them abominations and incited the masses against them.In the end they explained it away using Targaryens' exceptionalism. Incest is a mortal sin and strictly forbidden for everyone BUT the Targaryens are not like everyone's else (they can subdue dragons, they have silver hair and purple eyes, they are immune to most diseases) so they deserve to keep their bloodline as pure as possible.
>>214219648Targs literally had the Doctrine of Exceptionalism, which allowed them and only them to be exempt from standard no incest laws. And even then it was mainly sibling incest and other really close ones that is frowned upon by the Faith, cousin incest is normal and allowed.
>>214219540They are obviously not nearly enough if a winter lasting a bit too long is enough for a devastating famine.
>>214216854I don’t think George realized how ridiculously long of a dynasty that is, like I don’t think any dynasties in real life even lasted a fraction of that time.
>>214220603Look, Gurm might be a hack, but that wasn't really that much of a slip, he covered his bases: the history of Westeros is highly disputed, much was lost, myths get thrown around as real history, a lot of maesters believe that its mostly bullshit and houses are merely a fraction of the age they claim to be.
>>214215039>Can you imagine if someone from a poor side-branch of the Stark family tried to claim the throne, because he had the same great-great-grandfather as Ned Stark? No one would give a shit.That’s literally what Richard of York did and his son won the throne
>>214220603I like the theory of (((maesters))) being conniving little shits and the true villains of the series, if they're teaching a bunch of bullshit and rewriting History as they see fit then they could be willingly exaggerate the timeline for whatever reason. But I doubt Martin planned that.
>>214215119Thats how the real world would be without the British
>>214213932Eddard apparently has no aunts uncles or cousins
>>214219648>Cersei and Jaime do incestNeither of which were the king. Their incest was irrelevant other than being a laughing matter among the commoners, the Lannister incest children simply had no claim to the throne.
>>214222508And yet Joeffery was put on the throne even tho it was an open secret
>>214222579Just like the Strong boys- which lead to a Westerosi civil war, just like bastard incest child Joffrey being put on the throne did.
>>214213932>is based on medieval europe>hundreds of characters>99% of them don't fear the gods or take the faith seriously
>>214213932George likes to do the ambiguos explanation and subverting expectations so the Bran the Builder story could just be a myth invented by the starks or Bran the Broken is him. We'll never know
>>214222716They do. That was a major plot point when Stannis converted to the religion of the red god and several Lords rebelled against him (especially after the burning of the statues in Dragonstone). Also the main reason the faith and the commoners start to become hostile to Cersei at the end of the last couple books is because of how much of a religious tabu incest is. There is also that pious Lord that Jaime puts in charge of Harrenrall, the leader of the Templar-style knights. In fact, several Lords bring the Seven numerous times.
>>214222936Do the 7 do anything? The lord of light and drowned god seem to actually accomplish things whereas the 7 are conspicuously absent in the story.
>>214223013Well, it is implied that Davos was saved from drawning after the battle of the black water by the Mother, through miraculous intervention he also survived in a small island and was rescued by the only ship of Stannis supporters around. I like the idea that the Seven are the real gods that influence the events of history through subtle interventions, not flashy miracles or granting magic to its devout followers. They shape destiny itself. The other gods are merely demigods, merely one step above the humans in the hierarchy of the cosmos.
>>214220041This. Literally the only one who wanted to do something about Dany
>>214218812for a lot of those the Starks weren't involved at all, but I'm sure they had some uprisings/raids/wildling incursions which pruned the family tree in the same way.>>214220130Southron gossiping scum
>>214216124a skilled ruler makes useless heirs disappear or otherwise not matter.
>>214218398I have the shits right now and am grateful GURM was thoughtful enough to give me representation.
>>214220041he was too mean and petty without the power or cunning to back it up, he would have been killed by someone else eventually. There are like a handful of good kings in known Westeros history, Joffrey doesn't qualify.
>>214223138Or he was saved from drowning by the Drowned God who is either the Other or a servant of the Other, in order to oppose Melisandre and the Lord of Light which he does by trying to kill her.
>>214213932I am your fathers cousins best friends roomate...now king me
