Why is Westeros so hopelessly fucked up in the first place?
May 2, 2016 8:31 PM   Subscribe

"We are told that recorded history goes back over 10,000 years, much longer than our own, and yet we find so little in the way of progress, innovation, new theories, or new philosophies. It’s a wonder Varys even considers an alternative to the status quo. What gives?" - Robert Repino, TOR [spoilers]
"As the story edges toward its conclusion, with numerous holy wars on the horizon, issues of religion, magic, and superstition have been moving to the forefront of the conflict. We have the Sparrows running amok in King’s Landing; the Lord of Light overtaking the Faith of the Seven at the court of Stannis Baratheon; the Sons of the Harpy staging terrorist attacks against Daenerys in Meereen; the religion of the Drowned God spurring the ironborn to a new destiny; and the old gods of the north playing a role in the war to come with the White Walkers. At this point in the saga, the power of belief, the spectacle of magic, and the appeal of superstition drive the action in almost every subplot."
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome (100 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm still calling it for malfunctioning generation ship.
posted by Artw at 8:36 PM on May 2, 2016 [37 favorites]


This article is interesting, but completely fails to note the problem in the guild secrecy of the Maesters. Of course tech has stalled - the only people engaged in looking into it swear oaths of secrecy and hide most of the shit they can do.
posted by corb at 8:39 PM on May 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


This is not to say that destroying religion is the answer. Our species has already played that game, with dire consequences

wat
posted by lalochezia at 8:41 PM on May 2, 2016 [18 favorites]


I think it might be referring to attempts on the parts of Communist Revolutions to declare religions unacceptable within the revolutionized societies.
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:44 PM on May 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Because George can't write.
posted by schmod at 8:46 PM on May 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


So, what, magic and assholes?

It's fucked up because Martin wanted it that way, not because of some deeper human truth
posted by Existential Dread at 8:47 PM on May 2, 2016 [28 favorites]


Feudalism is the worst, amirite?
posted by wuwei at 8:47 PM on May 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


This article is interesting, but completely fails to note the problem in the guild secrecy of the Maesters. Of course tech has stalled - the only people engaged in looking into it swear oaths of secrecy and hide most of the shit they can do.

You make it sound sinister, but I think this is less about control and more about self-preservation since I get the impression that the Faith of the Seven doesn't look too kindly on tech and science.

Because George can't write.

He writes just fine. He can't write quickly.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:48 PM on May 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Magic Vs. Science [TVTropes]
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:49 PM on May 2, 2016


This article is like asking why Gotham has such a high crime rate.
posted by Spacelegoman at 8:50 PM on May 2, 2016 [65 favorites]


I would watch the hell out of The Maester Files tho
posted by Doleful Creature at 8:51 PM on May 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


Frankly, Martin's main operating principle appears to be "...the weak suffer what they must." And his greatest pleasure is devising new and ever-more degrading visions of that suffering. And then HBO adds some boobs.
posted by Existential Dread at 8:51 PM on May 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


The ancient Egyptian civilization lasted 2500 years by itself. Given Westeros has literal MAGIC and DRAGONS and UNDEAD WRECKING SHIT, I can imagine why they haven't had a Renaissance and Enlightenment.
posted by clockworkjoe at 8:52 PM on May 2, 2016 [10 favorites]


1) High income inequality
2) No government-funded scientific research
3) Periodic zombie invasions
posted by miyabo at 8:57 PM on May 2, 2016 [51 favorites]


I'm not sure the author understood what Varys meant. I don't think Varys is some secret republican (small r, people). I think Varys meant he wants the peace imposed by the Targaryen order to return to Westeros, and that only a powerful outside force can subdue the petty, bloody squabbling of the native great houses.

I also agree with clockworkjoe: the author has a very modern, Western idea of what progress should be and how fast it comes when some form of monarchy was in fact the dominant social structure for millennia in the real world, and that's without the entire world periodically being plunged into years-long winter where ice zombies invade, and people can wield magic and tame dragons. What regular technological advancement thousands of years ago is going to beat an empire that used dragons?
posted by Sangermaine at 8:58 PM on May 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


I'd like to see a "View From the Other Side" that tells the story from the Other POV: Periodically the awful Great Summer comes and the People of the Ice are terrorized by these horribly warm and squishy things that sprout up like weeds. The squishies wield horrific weapons like fire and obsidian and magic blades. The good Ice People are forced to retreat back to their northern homelands by the changing weather and the squishy monstrosities, who then use their terrible magic to build a wall and seal the Ice People in, while the squishies rule over the burning hell the world has become.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:15 PM on May 2, 2016 [63 favorites]


Well, our own European Dark Age ran for approximately 1000 years, because of one god (or, generously, a trinity). Westeros is for the most part modelled on Europe and has at least a...septinity?...plus a bunch of other gods like the Storm God, the Drowned God, and the Lord of Light. So they get a thousand years each, say. The maths speaks for itself!
posted by turbid dahlia at 9:18 PM on May 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


I know in my HEAD the ideal ending is Queen Sansa The Reformer And The Establishment Of A Constitutional Monarchy And Strong Parliament but it's probobly going to be everyone dies of ice zombies
posted by The Whelk at 9:24 PM on May 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


There are hints here and there that the ten thousand year chronology is an exaggeration or artifact of oral tradition, reminiscent of the inconsistent longevity of the Biblical patriarchs or the thousand year protohistory of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. The most reliable in-universe resources indicate that the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age occurred about two millennia before the events of ASOIAF, which puts Westeros at roughly Earth-par for technological development.
posted by Iridic at 9:26 PM on May 2, 2016 [20 favorites]


everyone dies of ice zombies

"And as Varys, the last living human in Westeros, felt his life slip away in the grip of the White Walker, he dreamed of spring."

see there you go it even ties in with the book title.
posted by russm at 9:28 PM on May 2, 2016 [10 favorites]


I'd like to see a "View From the Other Side" that tells the story from the Other POV

One of my favorite ASOIAF essay/theory sites, Weirwood Leviathan, has a great series on this, the "Cold War" essays that lean pretty heavily on the intersection of GRRM's trope-breaking tendencies and his history as an anti-war writer.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:40 PM on May 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


I believe the variable seasons provide a perfectly reasonable rationale for the lack of progress (I think this is mentioned in the comments, but I skimmed to avoid spoilers -- I'm season behind on the TV show, caught up on the books).

Every once in a while a really, really long winter comes along -- it's implied strongly in the books that this is what's happening now -- and just crushes civilization. A ten-year winter hits like a mini-ice age, and could kill off as many as the Black Death, easily. Some things survive, and may even get a boost -- good steel, castle building, the Maester system (I get an Anathem/"Math system" vibe from it, good for preserving civilization through a collapse). But if you periodically lose a good part of your population, and maybe get your political system knocked back to local feudal lords, that could quite reasonably prevent a real renaissance/enlightenment from happening.
The variable-length seasons seem to have been downplayed in the series in favor of gratuitous violence, nudity, and rape, but in world-building terms it really is a defining feature of the planet.

Whatever the mystical reason for it, I think that's what GRRM has in mind. Some sort of perpetual mystical throw-down between various powers ("Fire and Ice," plus the drowned god and perhaps others) gives the world chaotic seasons, and that's kept it as a neatly D&D-like tech level.
posted by kikaider01 at 9:47 PM on May 2, 2016 [14 favorites]


One of my favorite ASOIAF essay/theory sites, Weirwood Leviathan, has a great series on this, the "Cold War" essays

There's also the Heresy theories on Westeros.org, some of which argue that the WW might not be evil, or might have a role to play in the world. (Then there's the Jon-leads-the-WW-against-Dany-and-the-dragons theory...)
posted by Pink Frost at 9:50 PM on May 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


reminiscent of the inconsistent longevity of the Biblical patriarchs or the thousand year protohistory of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors.

or my personal favorite, the phantom time "hypothesis"

Well, our own European Dark Age ran for approximately 1000 years, because of one god (or, generously, a trinity).

What? No. I'm not a historian, but... no. The Church was the only institution that actually survived the Roman collapse halfway intact. They preserved and recopied many of the Greek & Roman texts that still survive (they don't get all the credit, mind you, but they should get some). The influence of the Catholic Church is a land of contrasts, but they really cannot be blamed for the Enlightenment not happening sooner.

(also the notion of a 1000 year dark age is not considered Good History anymore. There was a pretty nasty period of a few hundred years after Rome fell, especially in Roman Britain, but it was not a thousand years of stagnation.)
posted by BungaDunga at 9:52 PM on May 2, 2016 [28 favorites]


The article makes a decent point. I think at least part of it is probably explained by the unsatisfying "GRRM didn't really think things through when he was writing book X, and now it's grandfathered in."

Regardless, I feel like things like R'Hollor, the Drowned God, and The Great Other all have to be super-powered beings who've slipped the bounds of mortality in some way, but aren't actually Gods. That puts the story in line with a few of GRRM's obvious influences, and also squares it with his stated desire to bust the tropes of western power fantasy (at least as he was writing it in the early 90s.

When you have that sort of external, supernatural influence on humanity, it makes it a lot harder to justify the development of scientific method. Especially since GRRM unfortunately tends towards boring, magic-missile style D&D magic instead of more realistic interpretations of symbolic magic and ritual magic as it's actually been practiced as a belief system for much of IRL humanity.

The sort of sad part of that is that the stuff he was writing against is no longer that relevant, and his subversions are no longer that interesting. Point of fact (especially with the TV show) his brand of gritty, "realistic" (heavy scare quotes) fantasy has become the norm. I feel like this has to be a major roadblock that's kept him from making any serious progress on the narrative for the past 2 books, and 10 years.
posted by codacorolla at 9:59 PM on May 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


Every once in a while a really, really long winter comes along... and just crushes civilization.

Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg wrote a book named Nightfall that was specifically about something comparable: on an Earthlike planet with six suns of varying size, there's never true dark; but every couple thousand years, another planet on a severely eccentric orbit causes an eclipse during an alignment of the suns, and the world is suddenly totally dark for an extended period. What does everyone do?

They burn civilization to the ground in a mass psychosis of trying simply to bring back the light. Not coincidentally, the cataclysm destroys records of what actually happened or why, leaving only a "flood"-myth in their oral history. The periodicity of the event is such that they never advance far enough rebuilding to figure it out in time to preserve society.

[There's a lot more to the novel than that, which is just the frame]
posted by fatbird at 10:07 PM on May 2, 2016 [12 favorites]


I'm still calling it for malfunctioning generation ship.

Sam would be disappointed but entirely unsurprised.
posted by wotsac at 10:15 PM on May 2, 2016


When you have that sort of external, supernatural influence on humanity, it makes it a lot harder to justify the development of scientific method.

This is the overriding answer, same as in every high or low fantasy setting. When there's magic in the world that can conjure something into existence, or burn your enemies with fire from 1000 paces, there's no real impetus to develop the steam engine or gunpowder. Why were there no airlines in Middle Earth, which also had thousands of years of recorded history without technological progress? Because they could fly on magic eagles.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:17 PM on May 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm surprised the article doesn't mention Medieval Stasis-- the literary trope where you want to set your universe in some approximation of medieval times, but also want to have an ancient history lost in the mists of time that stretches back to... medieval times. Tolkien had the same situation.

It's not realistic from a historical perspective, but that's why it's fantasy.
posted by justkevin at 10:19 PM on May 2, 2016 [12 favorites]


nothing resembling the scientific method is ever applied. As a result, Westeros suffers from a lack of innovation and technology.

brb, starting kickstarter to force SFF fan-bloggers to learn anything at all about the history and philosophy of science, Clockwork Orange-style if necessary
posted by RogerB at 10:33 PM on May 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


Like, I had to take both History of Science and Philosophy of Science in High School, soooo.
posted by The Whelk at 10:37 PM on May 2, 2016


or burn your enemies with fire from 1000 paces

Game of Thrones has wildfire, which is basically Greek Fire, and probably isn't magic.

It would be one thing if everyone in Middle Earth or Westeros had magically conjured hot water, magic-powered carts, flying carpets, whatever, but they don't. Magic is much rarer and much too dangerous for that. Nobody is using magic to conjure textiles into existence. There seems to be plenty of motivation for inventing steam power- the dwarves could use steam pumps for their mining efforts, etc.

It doesn't seem obvious to me that a medieval-ish society is guaranteed to eventually have a scientific/industrial revolution. It's happened exactly once. Throw in a completely unpredictable climate and bob's yer uncle: medieval fun-time land.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:37 PM on May 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Every once in a while a really, really long winter comes along -- it's implied strongly in the books that this is what's happening now -- and just crushes civilization.

It wouldn't have to be quite so bad if their civilization could act like one. People should not be fighting wars right now, they should be pickling, salting, and drying. Giant wheels of hard dry cheese should be going into the earth. But, noooo, it's more important to squabble over a throne and sleep with your close relatives.
posted by praemunire at 10:42 PM on May 2, 2016 [14 favorites]


I actually like how at the start of the show everyone is like bah magic, bah dragons it;s all claptrap fables and now magic is totally returning into the world and everyone is dealing with it REALLY BADLY, like all the hope they might of had of stable new kingdom is just gone and also people can totally do magic now and all those old rituals we did like ..WORK and aaaaah holy shit holy shit


I like GoT cause it's a fantasy world in pretty much constant collapse where nothing is too big to fail .
posted by The Whelk at 10:43 PM on May 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


Regardless, I feel like things like R'Hollor, the Drowned God, and The Great Other all have to be super-powered beings who've slipped the bounds of mortality in some way, but aren't actually Gods.

Maybe these gods are just echoes of the exploits of the last cycle's Jon, Danaerys, etc. It would fit with the theme of the faces changing but shit staying the same, and it's all meaningless anyway. Whatever temporary victories you achieve today will be wiped away tomorrow. The Wire of fantasy worlds.

Though that seems a little too Wheel of Time-ish for someone like Martin who set out to combat those tropes.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:44 PM on May 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


The article appears more focused on the show than the books, but it's worth mentioning that the Free Cities in Essos demonstrate Renaissance Italy style democracy (modeled off the old Valyrian "freeholds", the rough equivalent of Republican Rome), freedom of religion (Braavos especially), international banking (the Iron Bank), and a flourishing slave trade (which was, albeit in a very negative fashion, a large part of economic "modernization" in the West for centuries). Westeros could be seen as a sort of backwater in this sense, retaining a feudal structure for much longer than West-Essos across the sea in the same way that serfdom survived much longer in Eastern Europe than West of the Rhine.

But even Westeros has, if we take seriously the descriptions of places like Winterfell and Riverrun, some extremely advanced architectural and construction technologies, and the maesters of Oldtown seem to have a Renaissance-level appreciation of textual criticism in their interpretations of the historical documents that have come down to them, as well as being pretty damn good at running a continent-wide network of weather-watchers and climatologists (finding out when, exactly, winter is coming).

There seems to be plenty of motivation for inventing steam power- the dwarves could use steam pumps for their mining efforts, etc.

It doesn't seem obvious to me that a medieval-ish society is guaranteed to eventually have a scientific/industrial revolution.


I'm wracking my memory for any mention of coal usage, or any sort of fossil fuels, even as lamp fuel, in ASoIaF. You're not going to be able to power an industrial revolution on waterwheels and Gendry's rowing muscles alone. This is something I tend to remind people (tongue firmly in cheek) whenever they complain about fantasy worlds that don't invent the internal combustion engine: half of these places were actually created by gods or formed out of Chaos or whatever six thousand or so years in the past. And without breaking into that hundred-million-year-old fossil savings account, it gets hard to pay for that rapid expansion of industry and the birth of a fat middle class.
posted by AdamCSnider at 10:46 PM on May 2, 2016 [20 favorites]


Every once in a while a really, really long winter comes along -- it's implied strongly in the books that this is what's happening now -- and just crushes civilization.

It wouldn't have to be quite so bad if their civilization could act like one. People should not be fighting wars right now


Replace the long winter with another type of massive climatological shift and this has chillingly uncomfortable parallels with the real world, too.
posted by AdamCSnider at 10:48 PM on May 2, 2016 [9 favorites]


Also I can't find the reference now, but don't the books (or Martin) say somewhere that people in this world don't actually have a good record of their history, and that the dates given are largely traditional and unverified, especially for events supposedly thousands of years ago?
posted by Sangermaine at 10:51 PM on May 2, 2016


I'm wracking my memory for any mention of coal usage, or any sort of fossil fuels, even as lamp fuel, in ASoIaF.

They have coal at least. There are some mentions of it in the books. Burning in braziers, coal tar in ink, stuff like that.
posted by Justinian at 10:53 PM on May 2, 2016


Metafilter: magic and assholes
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:59 PM on May 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Another unmentioned factor: slavery.

Westeros may not have full chattel slavery but the older and more established nations and free cities of Essos certainly do. Valyria pretty much ran on magic and slavery and in the in-world history GRRM has created, Valyria dominated most of the world until relatively recently. Slavery remains the economic foundation of many of its successor states and it's kind of odd for the article to basically ignore the effect that would have..
posted by Nerd of the North at 11:08 PM on May 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


The premise of the article betrays an ignorance of history, or rather an unquestioned assumption that humanity is destined to progress. The real medieval Western Europe didn't believe in that; post Renaissance, with the rediscovery of classical Greek and Roman texts, they saw their own age as a fallen one. You even get some sense of that in stuff like the Anglo-Saxon poem The Wanderer. To the medieval mind, technological development was a process that could run backward as well as forward, the past a time far more "advanced" than their own.

The industrial revolution, as Adam Snider alludes to, was a change sparked not simply by some inexorable process of gradual Enlightenment but by chance and happenstance (Chinese invented the printing press, didn't have the alphabet to exploit it) and vicious, religion-fuelled rivalries (can't let those Popish bastards conquer new territories unchecked) and perhaps most of all by suddenly gaining access to vast new resources to exploit (fossil fuels, slaves and the Americas).

My name is Ozymandias king of kings...
posted by Diablevert at 11:41 PM on May 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


The Maesters ultimately put morality above the pursuit of knowledge as an end in itself. It's why Qyburn is kicked out, for instance. They don't hide their knowledge to hold back society, but like Pycelle, they are wise enough to play "dumb" and docile, quietly compliant with whomever is currently in power so as to keep their research operation running under the radar. They may not have an answer for why Westeros is fucked up, but they aren't the cause, and their work to record and pass on history ultimately triggers the (deserved) downfall of the Lannisters, provides some hint as to the benefits of dragonglass, and gives some hint as to the onset and length of winter, all of which will likely save many more lives in the long run.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:43 PM on May 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm still calling it for malfunctioning generation ship.

I wrote this and this for you.
posted by The Tensor at 11:51 PM on May 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Every once in a while a really, really long winter comes along -- it's implied strongly in the books that this is what's happening now -- and just crushes civilization.

It wouldn't have to be quite so bad if their civilization could act like one. People should not be fighting wars right now, they should be pickling, salting, and drying.

Exactly! It's been a few years, but as I recall that theme is in the books too. With a long winter threatening they should have spent, oh, books two through — five? four? n minus 1, anyway — filling the storehouses. Instead this whole, er, "game of thrones" thing happens, and they're killing off the "smallfolk" and burning the fields. In the past (according to the sense I got of it) they might have prepared well enough to survive a 10-year winter, but a huge war of succession has come along at the worst of all possible times... just as a long summer (which led many to forget the danger) gives way to an apocalyptic winter.

I think at its core there's some good worldbuilding here (book version, not so much the simplified, rapey TV version). "Winter is coming" doesn't mean "bad times are coming" (OK, that too, a little bit) — it means winter is coming, and every winter could be a long one, so start stockpiling and prepping. The "sweet summer children" of the south forget, but the north remembers. The Stark family motto is primarily literal.

At its core it's a really clever worldbuilding seed: what if the thing whose regularity has to a large extent defined our civilization's progress, the seasons (watching the heavens, building graineries, planning around the harvest and planting seasons, etc.) was deeply, profoundly, irreducibly irregular? And then what if one of these fimbulwinters came along just as a perfect storm of stupidity causes a stupid, internecine conflict, blinding everyone to the real threat?
posted by kikaider01 at 12:21 AM on May 3, 2016 [10 favorites]


The Maesters ultimately put morality above the pursuit of knowledge as an end in itself. It's why Qyburn is kicked out, for instance. They don't hide their knowledge to hold back society, but like Pycelle, they are wise enough to play "dumb" and docile, quietly compliant with whomever is currently in power so as to keep their research operation running under the radar. They may not have an answer for why Westeros is fucked up, but they aren't the cause, and their work to record and pass on history ultimately triggers the (deserved) downfall of the Lannisters, provides some hint as to the benefits of dragonglass, and gives some hint as to the onset and length of winter, all of which will likely save many more lives in the long run.

So in some ways, they're both like the medieval clergy, and the scholar-gentry of Imperial China. Conservative, courtly, mindful of the powers that be. Of course, both groups made many scientific and technological discoveries.

I also find it interesting that GRRM split his scholarly class from the actual established church in his setting. But I don't believe there's any animosity between the Faith and the maesters. And the latter aren't the only proto-scientist group in Westeros- the alchemists have their own guild.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:38 AM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


It wouldn't have to be quite so bad if their civilization could act like one. People should not be fighting wars right now, they should be pickling, salting, and drying. Giant wheels of hard dry cheese should be going into the earth. But, noooo, it's more important to squabble over a throne and sleep with your close relatives.

Flips back and forth between the World News section and the Science & Environment section. *nervously* Ha ha ha, those fantasy chowderheads are soooooo primitive...
posted by Apocryphon at 12:41 AM on May 3, 2016 [13 favorites]


I don't know much about GRRM's world, but there's nothing strange about a world that doesn't progress past subsistence agriculture for 6000 years, because that's our world. Most of history was horribly grim, worldwide-- peasants one bad harvest away from starvation, kings venal and incompetent, and things were just as bad in 1800 as in 800.

(Which isn't to say that there weren't comfortable bits, but that was for the 10%.)
posted by zompist at 1:26 AM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


But then, fantasy is a deeply conservative genre - Tolkien, like many others of his time, was deeply nostalgic and felt much had been and was being lost to technological and social progress, and whether you looked back to imagined world of Roman and Greek Empire, or feudal equilibrium, or heroic Dark Age magical adventures in Britain or the Nordics or Continental Europe, you couldn't really say what you wanted to say and wire in better living through chemistry.

And there was technological progress throughout history. Spectacles and timekeeping machines were both firmly medieval in origin and were improved thereafter. Continent-wide disasters that decimated (and more!) populations didn't necessarily mean a reset to earlier times - quite the opposite, if the surviving workers became more important and could demand reform in return for feeding the remaining elite.

There's nothing wrong in positing long periods of general stasis in civilisation, especially when populations are relatively small and resources relatively plentiful, but I think there is in having that alongside perpetual high-level warfare. Even if warring tribes are at it for long periods, there's nothing like war to promote innovation, either in general or to open up chances for genius or heresy to prosper rapidly. It is an unstable equilibrium. For things to stay the same for a long time, you need a very regimented hierarchy with a lot of social control and resource managment, and the ability to react flexibly and fast to changing external circumstances. I don't see much of that in GoT -it's the melee of mid-late medieval Europe, with added dragon but without the trade and cultural drivers that were building to the modern.
posted by Devonian at 2:48 AM on May 3, 2016 [6 favorites]


The sort of sad part of that is that the stuff he was writing against is no longer that relevant, and his subversions are no longer that interesting. Point of fact (especially with the TV show) his brand of gritty, "realistic" (heavy scare quotes) fantasy has become the norm. I feel like this has to be a major roadblock that's kept him from making any serious progress on the narrative for the past 2 books, and 10 years.

This! Dear Fantasy Writers! The Return of the Old Ones as a genre is overplayed! Please stop it. Please. I can't tell your gritty fantasy series apart anymore. Powder Mage, Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, Crown for Cold Silver, The Dagger and the Coin, The First Law, The Shadow Campaigns, Dinosaur Knights, Demon Cycle, etc etc etc - all feature the through-line of "Civilization has forgotten the reason why it banded together in the first place, so now Past Baddies are back and everything is turning to shit." and it's getting old.

I know this is a rejection of the bright, epic fantasy of nostalgia but that has not been a viable fantasy genre for a generation now. Hell, even the Encroaching Darkness/Evil Wizard to the West neo-Tolkien stuff would be a nice change - at least then there is an enduring light in the darkness.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:46 AM on May 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


the funny thing is that, like everything in GoT, the whole 'variable seasons" thing was just a one-off idea thrown into the blender and two billions words of zombies, ninjas, pirates, vikings, dragons, battling it out in the genre blender it's been totally irrelevant.
posted by ennui.bz at 5:14 AM on May 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


Like, I had to take both History of Science and Philosophy of Science in High School, soooo.

I'm always amazed that those kinds of schools exist. I went to schools that had classes with titles like "Social Studies" where every day each person read a few sentences out loud from the textbook, quiz on Friday, and maybe a documentary every month or so.

I've read the books but have only seen Season One of the show, but at least in the books it feels like Martin had a bunch of neat ideas without necessarily creating a coherent whole. He has the Great Northern Trump Wall, he has a bunch of different regions differentiated by race and what the historical model is, and he has the Westeros society divided into very neat church/royalty/etc lines. It makes for a good narrative, especially in the first book, because of the simplicity, but these attempts to overlay logic and create a coherent world out of it don't really work.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:21 AM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


all feature the through-line of "Civilization has forgotten the reason why it banded together in the first place, so now Past Baddies are back and everything is turning to shit." and it's getting old.

This is pretty much the history of China, tho. Nomadic horse-archers (who's schtick was pretty much the same from the domestication of the horse up until the introduction of gunpowder) rampaging through squabbling factions of civilization. A strong and unified China could easily send them packing, but that's not the way things go most of the time.

The Mongolians came back a few times to Europe, too, to Georgia twice, Russia a bunch of times, and they tried going after Hungary and central Europe again - only here, the Good Guys Won. This is because they had been preparing for the Mongol Horde's return after what must have seemed to them a supernatural miracle - Subutai and his horde abruptly left after wrecking everyone's day.

Ladislaus IV, a character too unlikely for a GRRM novel, heeded the warnings of the Cumans (both his pagan buds and their unwanted relatives who tried to invade the place) that the Mongols were returning, doubled down on Bela IV's scorched earth, Fabian strategy backed up by zillions of castles and a ton of knights hanging out in them. He sorted out the political situation caused by zillions of castles and a ton of knights hanging out in them, each with their own agenda, to save everyone's bacon from the Golden Horde just in time, and was excommunicated and assassinated for his troubles.

That's why it's in so many fantasy novels. It's a story that's happened a bunch of times in history, and makes for exciting plot twists and memorable characters.
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:30 AM on May 3, 2016 [12 favorites]


This essay is almost entirely wrong. Westeros in particular is hobbled by long winters which makes it more dependent on subsistence agriculture than peer civilizations, hobbling progress. Plus, Westeros has no domestic access to capital outside of what they can mine. They depend on the bank of Braavos.

Which gets us to the point: Westeros is SUPPOSED to be the backwater of civilization. All the interesting stuff happens in Essos. Valeria was destroyed, leaving its remnants to be the comparatively advanced (but stagnant) places like Qarth and Slaver's Bay. Meanwhile, the only place that has developed a more modern financial system is Braavos, upon whom Westeros is becoming dependent to finance its wars and struggles rather than to invest in the future.

In short, Westeros is precisely where we would expect there to be very little progress, in the same way that most of the world stayed the same. Progress happens in geographically limited areas, and if it doesn't spread, the knowledge can become lost. Westeros is just representative of MOST of the world that made little technological progress.
posted by deanc at 7:06 AM on May 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


I don't know... the Maesters seem to have advanced medicine fairly far. And they even have a sort of off-shoot group (Qyburn) that pushes the bounds of medical ethics.
posted by prepmonkey at 7:22 AM on May 3, 2016


That's why it's in so many fantasy novels. It's a story that's happened a bunch of times in history, and makes for exciting plot twists and memorable characters.

Except in the fantasy series I mentioned, it's not the ebb and flow of history* - it's There Are Dark Things That Time Forgot Returning. They can be ancient gods, space aliens, demons, dragons, or whatever, but they are very rarely just people. The setup then becomes "Look at this fantasy land! Things are not as great as you might think here! Look, people swear and fuck and stab each other! Pretty bad, huh? BUT WAIT! It could get worse! They spent so much time swearing and fucking and stabbing each other that they forgot their civilization only exists because they defeated the INSERT OLD ONES HERE long ago! And now INSERT OLD ONES HERE are back! Will humanity stop swearing and fucking and stabbing each other in time to defeat them? Will the author die before he's done writing said swearing and fucking and stabbing? Sign up for at least three books now and find out!"

* - I had a classical history prof that summed up history as "Jerks from the hills comes down to take stuff from complacent people in the valley, become complacent themselves, and the cycle repeats." I would be fine with this in fantasy lit. Instead of Oh Shit, The Orcs Woke Up Cthulhu how about Oh Shit, The Orcs Have Muskets?
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:15 AM on May 3, 2016 [5 favorites]


The Dagger and the Coin, The First Law, The Shadow Campaigns, Dinosaur Knights, Demon Cycle, etc etc etc - all feature the through-line of "Civilization has forgotten the reason why it banded together in the first place, so now Past Baddies are back and everything is turning to shit." and it's getting old.

I'm not disagreeing with your general point, just want to point out that The Dagger and the Coin involves a different approach. Yes, bad shit from the past wakes up and causes problems, but our heroes get busy with inventing some new shit - like the creation of fiat currency in order to ensure the baddies can be stopped and exploring questions about how to ensure that when the war ends the entire fucking cycle of anger begetting atrocity begetting new wars doesn't keep going, alongside making sure that the Great Old Ones who came back this time are well and thoroughly destroyed so that whatever problems the world has next it isn't the result of the fucked up beings who started shit in the first place, but new shit because of their own problems.
posted by nubs at 8:27 AM on May 3, 2016


T.D. Strange: "When there's magic in the world that can conjure something into existence, or burn your enemies with fire from 1000 paces, there's no real impetus to develop the steam engine or gunpowder. Why were there no airlines in Middle Earth, which also had thousands of years of recorded history without technological progress? Because they could fly on magic eagles."

I don't think this describes Middle-earth accurately. It's a very low magic setting - yes, there are dragons and orcs and such, but actual magic is available basically only to a small handful of immortal beings, who by and large don't interact with the world after the very earliest times.

You can reasonably question whether there is a good in-universe reason for lack of technology in Middle-earth (the real reason, of course, is that Tolkien didn't like it), but that reason is definitely not that magic has taken its place.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:31 AM on May 3, 2016 [3 favorites]



In short, Westeros is precisely where we would expect there to be very little progress


Dunno, man. Westoros is analogous to Anglo-Saxon Britain in this analogy, yes? But the British Isles were at a couple different points the among the leading centres of learning during the Early Medieval (aka Dark Ages period). They waxed and waned, but managed some impressive accomplishments and remained connected to the larger world. Until the Vikings showed up, basically. And the Vikings themselves, for all the brutality of their raids, were among the most well-travelled and worldly peoples of the age; you've got figures like Harald, who was a slave in Russia, a imperial guard in Costantinople, and died King of Norway. The idea of a slow and steady progress of civilisation from darkness to light is a post-Industrial Revolution, 19th century idea that we apply to the past. Human history can just as easily be read as a repeated cycles of rises and falls, as empires spread and decline, the golden ages followed by the bronze.
posted by Diablevert at 8:39 AM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


"Jerks from the hills comes down to take stuff from complacent people in the valley, become complacent themselves, and the cycle repeats."
This sounds like a paraphrase of the cycles of ʿAsabiyyah hypothesized by Ibn Khaldun, "father of historiography". Cyclic theories of history have been common around the world for millennia, but Khaldun seems to be the one who really popularized the importance of peripheral threats.
posted by roystgnr at 8:59 AM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


The idea of a slow and steady progress of civilisation from darkness to light is a post-Industrial Revolution, 19th century idea that we apply to the past.

Additionally, those ideas of innovation, progress, class advancement, and even the idea that the world around you and can be taken apart (either physically or through conceptual models) and examined to not only understand its workings, but use that process as a basis to discover something that wasn't readily apparent before are particularly 'western' in their origins. That's not to say that those things didn't happen elsewhere, such as China or India, but that the western world's path of development contained an unusual combination of those elements and situations over time that allowed for a more rapid progression that eventually was able to frequently get the upper hand over the social and cultural forces that either block or put less value on what we call the western idea of change.

If anyone in this thread finds this stuff interesting, I cannot recommend strongly enough seeking out the incredible work of James Burke's BBC series The Day the Universe Changed, and Connections television series, as well as Jacob Bronowski's BBC series The Ascent of Man. Though they are from the 1970s-1980s, they remain invaluable sources regarding how we got to where we are now.
posted by chambers at 9:13 AM on May 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


The Maesters ultimately put morality above the pursuit of knowledge as an end in itself. It's why Qyburn is kicked out, for instance. They don't hide their knowledge to hold back society, but like Pycelle, they are wise enough to play "dumb" and docile, quietly compliant with whomever is currently in power so as to keep their research operation running under the radar.

There are some pretty strong indications that the Maesters worked behind the scenes to ensure the dragons died off, and to supress/eliminate any knowledge of magic (and the presence/strength of magic seems to be tied to dragons). I think they keep things like that quiet for similar reasons they got rid of Qyburn - not because of morality, but because certain things might cause the powers that be to come in and tear apart their order. They've learned discretion, and that sometimes you make a public show of something to create and maintain a certain appearance. The Maesters are considered a valuable resource by all the noble Houses of Westeros, which basically means that the Maesters are in position to have insight into the plans being formed at all levels of the ruling class, to advise and influence those plans, and to educate the next generation of rulers. Like many of the institutions of Westeros, I think they prize stability for themselves and work towards it, and as a result, are going to be inadequate to the task at hand. I feel like a lot of what the series is about is exposing and exploring the inadequacies of the societal structures in the face of existential threats - and, that in some cases, those institutions have forgotten their true purpose over time (the Night's Watch is the glaring example; but the feudal structure is breaking down because the nobility have forgotten the basis of their social contract with the small folk. Going back to "power resides where people believe it resides", the people are giving power to structures other than the norm in terms of the Faith Militant, the BwB, etc, and rival systems are starting to emerge that provide substantial challenges to the status quo).

On the question of magic, well, magic is a slippery thing in Planetos by design, so I don't think that it's presence or absence is influencing social development. Martin has spoken about how there should be no school for children to go off to and learn how to be wizards; that magic should be beyond understanding and rules, unpredictable. He also points out that in Lord of the Rings, Gandalf performs magic fairly rarely and that it should never be a commonplace thing, or it ceases to be magic. But magic on a larger scale here in the story is about forces beyond control, beyond understanding for the existing structures of Westeros as well, and the question becomes what can be shaped to counter them and then what derives from that in the world after the Apocalypse gets averted? If the story writ large is about deconstructing the fantasy tropes of the mystical faux-medieval kingdom, then once that structure is destroyed, what comes next? And can you expect to build much after you bring on war, pestilence, environmental and metaphysical apocalypse?

I honestly think Martin has bogged down because he has reached a point at which you can't deconstruct much further without bringing the story down around his ears; he's taking apart a lot of fantasy tropes but he is still writing a fantasy story, and I think he's been butting up against that fact for a while. At the same time, the impact of the start of the story (A Game of Thrones came out in 1996 - twenty years ago) has been impacting fantasy all around him at the same time, which is something that prize bull octorok has noted in this thread. Can it keep being an interesting story when the culture and the fandom has changed all around since he started? Have enough things changed that he could bring back some of the high fantasy Tolkien-esque touches now and it would work as another tonal shift away from where things are now?
posted by nubs at 9:39 AM on May 3, 2016 [6 favorites]


I think the biggest thing that GRRM could do to continue subverting fantasy stereotypes (and even then, maybe not) would be to make the Others the eventual victors of the war of Fire and Ice. Possibly with a zombified Jon Snow at their helm (likely facing off against Daenarys). However, I can only imagine how pissed show watchers would be at having a complete loss for the characters they've been rooting for for ~10 years.
posted by codacorolla at 10:45 AM on May 3, 2016


Like many of the institutions of Westeros, I think they prize stability for themselves and work towards it, and as a result, are going to be inadequate to the task at hand.

That's an interesting idea. I wonder if even Varys' own behind-the-scenes pursuit of stability will have caused similar problems for the same reasons, even though he aligns himself with the "good guys", as such, to pursue his goals.

Can it keep being an interesting story when the culture and the fandom has changed all around since he started?

Tolkien touched on the cultural themes of his day, particularly the paired rising of fascism and industrialized war. Now that the HBO show is ahead of the books, I think a lot could be done to extrapolate current political winds into narrative form in an interesting way, without being so literal as to permanently tie the show to the year 2016. The unrest of a mob is a timeless phenomenon, but we seem to be in the middle of a current surge now.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:47 AM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think the biggest thing that GRRM could do to continue subverting fantasy stereotypes (and even then, maybe not) would be to make the Others the eventual victors of the war of Fire and Ice.

The Others don't appear nearly as much in book as in show; and when they do, there's some indications of some interesting things going on. For example, the first encounter with them (in the Prologue of the first book) reads amazingly like a formal duel between an Other and a member of the Night's Watch, with the Others being rather unimpressed with the level of the opposition. So I expect/hope that at some point we will come to understand what the Others want and that it isn't just to kill everything and everyone and turn the world into a giant glacier where they play with ice spiders.
posted by nubs at 11:11 AM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm with you on that, but the show definitely indicates that they want to rule the world and kill humans.
posted by codacorolla at 11:18 AM on May 3, 2016


I think it is pretty clear (is it?) that the Red God is the villain of the piece, and that the Seven are bystanders in the struggle between the Fire and the Ice. As is usual in these things, it is the bystanders who get trampled when the elephants fight...

I'm not sure how dragons (and the Targaryens) fit into this - the union of Jon Snow and Danerys opens up access to the climate controls of the Generation ship?
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:20 AM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm with you on that, but the show definitely indicates that they want to rule the world and kill humans.

THE OTHERS 2016: EVERYONE UP AGAINST THE WALL!
posted by nubs at 11:21 AM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


the union of Jon Snow and Danerys opens up access to the climate controls of the Generation ship?

And then they give birth to Jon Connor, and learn that the whole thing is the latest attempt by Skynet to eliminate humanity.
posted by nubs at 11:24 AM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Powder Mage, Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, Crown for Cold Silver, The Dagger and the Coin, The First Law, The Shadow Campaigns, Dinosaur Knights, Demon Cycle, etc etc etc

I can't be the only person that thought these were all fake names that you came up with on the spot. I actually loled when I got to Dinosaur Knights.
posted by Peter J. Prufrock at 11:40 AM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think it is pretty clear (is it?) that the Red God is the villain of the piece, and that the Seven are bystanders in the struggle between the Fire and the Ice. As is usual in these things, it is the bystanders who get trampled when the elephants fight...

That was my thinking until the last two seasons of the show, where the Others are being presented as being primary villains. I actually wouldn't be surprised if they're BOTH villains, or maybe even the same side of the coin. That would be less a Western Christian conception of light/dark, good/evil, fire/ice being diametrically opposed forces (typically tilting towards an apocalyptic final battle), and more of a Taoist philosophy similar to Yin and Yang (with the two forces being complementary elements of the same core force).
posted by codacorolla at 11:41 AM on May 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


I can't be the only person that thought these were all fake names that you came up with on the spot. I actually loled when I got to Dinosaur Knights.

Dinosaur Knights was super disappointing - I never knew that my reaction to a book featuring knights on dinoback and grey aliens could be 'meh.'
posted by robocop is bleeding at 12:08 PM on May 3, 2016


I'm with you on that, but the show definitely indicates that they want to rule the world and kill humans.

Thus setting the stage for the big reveal, in which the King Ov VVinter is actually Bender in an ice suit, and Jon Snow was just a doomed paradox body of Fry. KILL ALL HUMANS
posted by Existential Dread at 12:19 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


If the magic of the Red God brings "good guys" like Beric Dondarrion and (now) Jon Snow back from death, it would be slightly odd if it turned out that the Red God is a villain. The storyline has some grey areas, but this kind of turn would complicate the story perhaps too much to resolve in what's left of the one or two seasons of shows that remain.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:22 PM on May 3, 2016


I honestly think Martin has bogged down because he has reached a point at which you can't deconstruct much further without bringing the story down around his ears; he's taking apart a lot of fantasy tropes but he is still writing a fantasy story, and I think he's been butting up against that fact for a while.

To further this point, one of the primary modes in which Martin has been operating is goring the sacred cows. Establish characters that the audience empathizes with, give them noble struggles, and unceremoniously bring them low, mutilate them, or kill them. It's a way of painting himself into a corner, because he may then wind up with a bunch of characters that the audience has no connection to (which is my problem with his approach), or he doesn't have enough characters to carry the story. For me, he killed off far too many of the characters I connected to, and left enough that I don't care about, that I stopped having an interest in the story (plus all the rape/incest/rape/mutilation/rape).
posted by Existential Dread at 12:36 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Game of Thrones has wildfire, which is basically Greek Fire, and probably isn't magic.

Isn't it implied that the wildfire recipe seemed to become more potent after the reintroduction of dragons?
posted by hellphish at 12:40 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


If the magic of the Red God brings "good guys" like Beric Dondarrion and (now) Jon Snow back from death, it would be slightly odd if it turned out that the Red God is a villain. The storyline has some grey areas, but this kind of turn would complicate the story perhaps too much to resolve in what's left of the one or two seasons of shows that remain.

The Red God also apparently likes human sacrifice, including a character burning his own daughter alive, so I'm struggling with him being in the "good guy" list. Perhaps the upshot of things is Melisandre realizing she has been used/manipulated by whatever the Red God truly is, and that it, along with the Others, represents a threat to humanity.
posted by nubs at 12:46 PM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


Establish characters that the audience empathizes with, give them noble struggles, and unceremoniously bring them low, mutilate them, or kill them. It's a way of painting himself into a corner, because he may then wind up with a bunch of characters that the audience has no connection to (which is my problem with his approach), or he doesn't have enough characters to carry the story.

In at least two cases (for me), characters who have been brought low and mutilated became significantly more interesting and compelling. And for all of the problems the books have, lacking characters is not one of them.

But it isn't going to work for everyone, nor should it. At the end (if there is an end) it might not work for me anymore either.
posted by nubs at 12:53 PM on May 3, 2016


Perhaps the upshot of things is Melisandre realizing she has been used/manipulated by whatever the Red God truly is, and that it, along with the Others, represents a threat to humanity.

What's wrong with a God that appreciates human sacrifice and rewards his faithful with supernatural powers? Conceptually, that is? The Judeo-Christian God (according to to the strand of Christian theology that violently suppressed all other contenders) is supposed to be omnibenelovent. Plenty of other places and cultures gods aren't. Maybe Macbeth's a red God believer: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport."
posted by Diablevert at 12:55 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Conceptually, I have no problem with that. But the show seems to be driving hard for the Others as the Big Bad and I was responding to the thought of R'hllor also being a villain being problematic in that context. I'm arguing he already has a villanious side and that maybe the show will deal with that via Melisandre.

If both "sides" accept human sacrifice as a placating gesture, as we have evidence for, then that would seem to be something to address.
posted by nubs at 1:59 PM on May 3, 2016


Why does it have to be a generation ship why can't they just be on a ringworld
posted by Apocryphon at 2:05 PM on May 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


Just about every sacrifice that Melisandre has made has led to tragedy. What's to say that R'hllor (if a real entity in Throneos) isn't punishing them, instead, for continuing to misread signs?
posted by a lungful of dragon at 2:06 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Why does it have to be a generation ship why can't they just be on a ringworld

It has to be a ship so it can explode over New York releasing the Wild Card virus on humanity.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:11 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Just about every sacrifice that Melisandre has made has led to tragedy. What's to say that R'hllor (if a real entity in Throneos) isn't punishing them, instead, for continuing to misread signs?

Tragedy for who? Renly was a tragedy for Loras and Brienne. The Red Wedding for the Starks and their allies. The Purple Wedding a tragedy for Cersei. For Stannis, it was all good until it was his own daughter - and then Stannis lost half his men because they couldn't stomach following the guy who burnt his daughter alive. The Red God didn't make them desert, they made that decision on their own.

Thinking about it, the takeaway might be that magic in Planetos seems to be highly transactional ("only death may pay for life"), and the problem is that the buyer isn't always clear on the price or that what is delivered may not be as expected. In other words, you call on the aid of the gods/powerful forces at your own peril and risk, and they assume no liability for the service you receive.
posted by nubs at 4:11 PM on May 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


The whole planet was actually settled by scientists who crash landed. The dragons are just genetically altered lizards they need to fight the thread that falls from the Red Star.
posted by Squeak Attack at 4:43 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh what, so Tree-wizard is going to give them all lasers so they can fight their way to the control room of a ring world so they can land it properly?
posted by Artw at 5:01 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Apocryphon: "Why does it have to be a generation ship why can't they just be on a ringworld"

Well, the Ringworld was originally unstable (until this was pointed out to Niven, and he retconned some attitude jets in). So maybe the seasons are unpredictable because Planetos is going to crash into the sun or something.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:12 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's actually Pern.
posted by Artw at 6:01 PM on May 3, 2016


Most of history was horribly grim

Still is really.
posted by juiceCake at 6:12 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


> They waxed and waned, but managed some impressive accomplishments and remained connected to the larger world ... The idea of a slow and steady progress of civilisation from darkness to light is a post-Industrial Revolution, 19th century idea ... the golden ages followed by the bronze.

Diablevert - that sounds almost like the kinetics of an action potential triggering through a neuron. Signals are small but additive and from different sources, but decay if they aren't kept up. Once a certain "threshold" of sufficient activity all at the same time gets past the activation energy then a cascade of voltage gated channels engage and you get an action potential - a takeoff of those little signals that can travel (much) further down the line. ... and be summated by the next processing cluster.
posted by porpoise at 8:26 PM on May 3, 2016


Just because the magic works and the practitioners believe does not make the gods real. I'd assume that Melisandre believes in R'hllor, but that R'hllor does not actually exist. And nor do any other gods.

All the magic we see fits into three categories, children related ala greesight and warging, others related, and human related blood magic. In particular it appears Melisandre actually practices the same blood magic as Mirri Maz Duur used to resurrect Khal Drogo, and Daenerys Targaryen used to birth her dragons. In that vein, it's suggested the Maesters sabotaged the Targaryen's dragons over the blood magic required to birth them. There are "blood" related comments about Melisandre's shadow things and her visions, so probably everything she does fits that category. And her longevity suggests she needs a constant influx. We donno where Thoros of Myr gets the deaths to keep resurrecting Beric Dondarrion, etc., but it's maybe related to his own involvement in the fighting. As an aside, there are no indications that Qyburn learned blood magic to resurrect Gregor Clegane, but why not.

Also, there is no reason advanced technology like electricity needs to work in a fantasy world, but if the powerful magic-technology all involves killing people, even powerful people, then yeah that might limit advancement along that route too.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:33 AM on May 4, 2016 [2 favorites]


Magic only really works when an apocalypse is imminent, too, which is limiting.
posted by Artw at 8:41 AM on May 4, 2016


Did the dragons returning bring the magic back, or did the return of magic/impending apocalypse bring the dragons back? I don't think we'll ever get clear answers about how or why magic works (or doesn't) in Westeros.

jeffburdges, I think you are on to something. Theology in Planetos is a confusing affair, and we've seen adherents to some religions able to affect magical change (R'hllor; the Faceless Men, who serve Death). It might just be that there are no gods, just a (very) dimly understood set of rules that govern these transactions. Anyways, to try to create a taxonomy of magic in Planetos:

-blood magic: as seen through the actions of Melisandre, requires human sacrifice or (at minimum) blood and other bodily fluids. Blood from royalty is supposedly more powerful in these rituals, though the fact that anyone in Westeros can name themselves King (holding onto that title is a different thing) makes that equation unclear. Not sure if I'm mistakenly lumping Shadowbinding in here.

-warging: primarily seen in the Stark children and wildlings to this point. Both claim descent from the First Men, who lived with the Children of the Forest for a time. Intermingling of some bloodlines?

-greensight: Seen in Bran and Bloodraven. Uses the Weirwoods, and those trees were often the sites of burials/executions if I remember? And again, this is also a reputed ability of the Children of the Forest.

-the Maegi - I think of Maggy and Mirri. Maggy needed a drop of blood to work her visions. For her bigger rituals, Mirri used blood magic.

-the Faceless Men: applying the mask of another's face appears to require blood.

-firesight: Melisandre can see visions in the fire, similar to greensight. But I don't think this has been explained in any way, other than R'hllor.

-Varys - lost his bits so that someone could summon a demon for answers.

-White Walkers - zombie resurrection. Magic swords. Magic armor. No understood mechanism.

-R'hllor resurrection - unclear mechanism.

-Warlocks of Qarth - ???

In short, though, there appears to be a huge common denominator in the use of blood (or, potentially, a bloodline), death, and sacrifice. I wouldn't go quite so far as to say Blood Alone Moves the Magic of Westeros, but seems to tip strongly in that direction.
posted by nubs at 9:14 AM on May 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Firesight uses blood, sometimes taken with leeches, sometimes with a skin prick.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:25 AM on May 4, 2016


I think her shadow assassin is the only magic Melisandre uses that is not overtly blood related. It's semen and egg related though. And she mentions blood when she refuses to do it twice with Stannis.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:30 AM on May 4, 2016


I haven't read ASOIAF at all - when it first came out, I thought, "I'll wait until the full series is published," and well, here I am.

That being said, this reminds me in a distant way of Lawrence Watt-Evans' Ethshar novels, where there are like a dozen distinct ways of doing magic, all quite different.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:33 AM on May 4, 2016


Melisandre is both a Shadowbinder and a priestess of R'hllor, so that might be where some confusion comes in, in terms of her abilities and how they work.

But yeah, it is looking very much to me that this is about blood.
posted by nubs at 9:45 AM on May 4, 2016


Here is how the series should end:
After ignoring the threat for too long, the white walkers and the winter slaughter humans and destroy civilization, until the last remnants of humanity are huddled together in a last outpost, with the white walkers at the gates. Just then, someone comes up with the westeros equivalent of carbon credits and electric cars, whereupon the white walkers say "shucks, I guess you got us!" and slink off back to the North.
posted by Galaxor Nebulon at 10:06 AM on May 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Excerpt from The Winds of Winter, May 10, 2016: ARIANNE
posted by homunculus at 2:37 PM on May 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


Appears warging might be the only non-blood magic we've seen. Google "Jojen paste" if curious.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:23 PM on May 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


« Older That washing thing on a stick   |   "That's insane terrain at its finest." Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments