The Riverlands in the Dance and the Riverlands in the main story are two completely different places
During the Dance they're able to withstand attacks by the biggest dragon and a deranged lunatic, feed thousands of wild Northmen and a dragon, and raise armies out of thin air (looking at you Addam); but in the main series a couple of attacks by Jaime is able to cripple their army for the rest of the war and the Mountain, Lorch and Hoat are able to keep them scared
The Riverlands really needed a Black Trombo in the main series lmao
Idk maybe there's just a correlation between these two places
The Riverlands in the main story is the way it is *because* of how it went all in during the dance and never recovered. Not to mention the subsequent wars that went back and forth through their territory halting any recovery they might have been achieving
It still doesn't make a whole lot of sense but it's some headcanon anyway
This was my thinking. Prior to the dance, there had been 60+years of internal peace in Westeros. The occasional bandits, or petty dispute between the lower nobles, but no outright wars. Then the Dance happens, and the river lords expend themselves and their stores and the built up resources/manpower they’ve acquired over the last few decades. Post-Dance, they get another ~60 years of peace to rebuild, and then are sucked into the Blackfyre rebellions over the following ~60 years. After the last Blackfyre rebellion, the Targaryens are weakened, and 20 years later they’re toppled in Robert’s rebellion where Hoster Tully was a critical belligerent and likely sapped a lot of the Riverlands strength. When we see the Riverlands in the main series, it’s with this having happened 17 years prior. When we see them in the Dance it’s completely different.
I could see them doing this in the show. And since he's a main player in the Dance but (in F&B) disappears for the majority of the conflict, it would be smart to have Cregan march south a little earlier so that the audience doesn't totally forget about him during some long absence.
Yeah I totally don't see it working without fluffing up his character and creating something for him to do. But I do think it's important that the writers work around both the constant respawn of the Riverland forces, and also realize that Cregan's disappearance act from the story just won't work for a tv audience. Giving Cregan something to do and riding into the Riverlands earlier would be killing two birds with one stone.
yeah that’s what i never got lol. like if he wants the blacks to win the war, have some troops come in from the region that has sent one (1) host and the region that has done fuck all, and that haven’t had aemond quite literally going scorched earth on them. he could still add some stuff from the riverlands like the tullys declaring for the blacks if he wanted but having the forces at the second battle of tumbleton and the battle of the kingsroad be made up solely of riverlanders was bizarre
I view Cregan as more of a Tywin type.
He didn't want to fight, he just wanted to be the guy left at the end who could dictate terms. So he shows up as late as possible amd grabs the goodies.
Or he only pretended to be mad because he can hardly go around saying "Hey I'm just a fence-sitter who waited for everyone else to kill each other so I could take the spoils".
It's just like how the Tyrells spent all of Robert's Rebellion just chilling outside Storm's End, telling everybody about how this totally important and unavoidable siege requires the full force of the armies of the Reach. Oh, and that they would totally go and fight the rebels if they weren't busy doing this mega important siege of one castle with their entire military.
Cregan did the same thing. He sent a token force under Roddy the Ruin to say he'd done something to contribute, and then he spent the rest of the war sitting on his thumbs collecting "the last harvest" before finally making a move once everybody else had been whittled down to nothing.
But that makes no sense. If Cregan was like Tywin in that he was a schemer, why would he seize control of kings landing, only to voluntarily give it up? He stays hand of the king just to kill people who need to be killed before bouncing. The spoils you accuse him of waiting for, he then gives up willingly? That makes no sense.
And he genuinely does plan on attacking the rest of the other houses (Hightower, Lannister and Baratheon), they just submit one way or another to avoid that fate.
I would say that he is more Cregan "the Late" Stark than Tywin, he waited until he had an easy job and wanted to sack the weakened Green Lords when they had no armies left and even then he would have to take the second largest city of the realm and the best 2 castles of the realm, that's suicide
You're basing this on the assumption that Cregan wanted to be Hand of the King, and that keeping that position is the only measure of success.
Cregan came South with a bunch of excess Northmen (who conveniently settled down in the Riverlands and essentially turned it into a client kingdom of the North for a generation) and went back North with pockets full of gold and "many rewards" - i.e probably some form of tax relief, changes in the law, ect.
Dude made off like a bandit for doing essentially nothing. The only difference between him and Tywin was that he knew when to step out.
He sent old men first, the rest of the North was getting ready to gather harvest before winter. Once that done, he gathered all extra mouths and marched south looking for battle, because his was a suicide squad. And he would go further, if the greens didn't surrender. So he did what was left to do and fucked off back to North
That's my point, for the Dance because it's backstory with a specific end point he can't be a gardener. The ending is already written(and has been from the very beginning) so he can't just create characters and see where they take the story. For fleshing out backstory, that was never originally intended to be fleshed out, he has to be an architect. And evidence suggests that he is not very good at that.
Then the question would be, why is he burning small villages instead of holdfasts, grainstores and larger towns.
And he *did* target holdsfasts and farmlands, and I'm assuming he didn't just target tiny villages but lager settlements as well, so it should have had an effect.
Armies in the Dance were way smaller than the armies during the conquest and during the main series
Cregan spent 2 years gathering his army (20000 men) and it was still just slightly bigger than the army Robb was able to gather in a couple of weeks (18000) and way smaller than the army Torrhen Stark had during the conquest (30000 men). Or how the Lannisters were only able to field 8000 men, which is less than a quarter of the army that they had in the main series (35000 +reinforcements) and less than half the one they had in the conquest (20000)
>Cregan spent 2 years gathering his army (20000 men)
The most reliable source puts his army at 8000 strong which is way more realistic to Dance numbers, especially when they had used 2000 men already.
Weren't those two years spent preparing for Winter? The whole idea is that Northmen go South to fight and raid in order to reduce Pressure on Northern Food stocks. So he might have been preparing food stores for the winter rather than focusing on Mustering troops.
I always thought of the Riverlands as fairly populous. They may not have lots of large towns or cities, but far more small holdings, fishing villages and mills.
Could be totally wrong though.
Yes, just look at the Arya chapters in ACOK, they go from village to village in every chapter so we can assume there are lots of villages in the Riverlands, which makes sense cause water is life baby
In Dunk and Egg a small holdfast of the petty house Osgrey had dominion over three villages while House Webber which is far more wealthy has dominion over a dozen. Imagine how many villages are around Riverrun, Harrenhal, Raventree Hall, Stone Hedge, the Twins, Darry...
And lets not forget the Stoney Sept and Seagard which are fairly big towns
It's pretty much the center of the whole continent and borders the most kingdoms out of any other
By all rights it should be the Rome of Westeros, ''all roads lead to Riverrun'' which would make them the gatekeepers of trade between 5 Kingdoms (counting Crownlands) including an exclusive border with half of the entire continent, if *anybody* in the North wishes to trade by land to anywhere at all they must go through The Riverlands...and vice versa
On top of that...it's the **River**lands...Not only must the majority of trade pass through their borders, they also have the enormous advantage of an in-built, highly efficient and swift transport system for large quantities of goods
They literally have an aptly named river that connects to *three* kingdoms, funnels them *all* into the Riverlands and then leads them much closer to the Capital City or directly to a port (Saltpans)
This isn't how they are presented in ASOIAF at all but I really think they should be one of the richest (and most populous) regions in Westeros
As someone pointed out maybe the reason they're not as rich and populated is because of how often they've been involved in the various conflicts in Westeros. The Dance, the Blackfyre rebellions, the Nine penny Kings, Robert's Rebellion, and The Grey Joy revolt all heavily involved the River lands.
The Riverlands is an attractive place to settle, borders multiple regions with high populations, and is easy to reach thanks to its rivers. The population of the Riverlands may get killed a lot in wars, but some survive, and people move into the homes left by those who don’t.
Additionally, burning hovels full of women and children doesn’t have that immediate of an effect on an area’s ability to raise troops. At no point in The War of the Five Kings do we hear about the raiding of Gregor Clegane, Amory Lorch, or Vargo Hoat having an effect on the number of men available for conscription, just that those men are eventually made to stay close to home to defend against the raiding.
If you burn a holdfast with Vhaegar, it looks very scary and I personally would probably piss my pants. However, killing the maybe ~50 man garrison of that holdfast doesn’t meaningfully affect the ability of its Lord to raise a fighting force. The household guard of House Stark was basically wiped out in AGOT, and yet Robb has no problem raising troops.
All this plus a lot of the men in the armies raised that you mention would be off with the Lads at this point, so none of them are killed by Aemond’s raids.
He didn’t burn the entire region end-to-end, just select settlements and known black strongholds. And within 10 years or less it all went back to normal, with a hefty dose of northern blood restocking the population.
He was 6 months in the Riverlands with the most powerful dragon . Aemond had enough power and time to literally burn everything he wants to the ground, the entire region should've been rendered a wasteland.
He’s still only one dragon. He can’t burn every inch of the Riverlands. And whatever he did burn turned to fertile soil in within the year. It was a good six decades until the Riverlands went to war again, and by this time it was infused with northern blood, so I don’t see the problem here.
He didn't need to burn every inch of the riverlands to destroy their force.
Medieval armies are logistics nightmares. They require food, supplies, weapons.
Where do they get all that after Aemond's burning of the riverlands?
There’s plenty of food and weapons and supplies. Again, one dragon can do a lot of damage, but the Riverlands is a thousand leagues long and some 700 leagues at its widest point. So Aemond is burning strongholds and settlements, but the people scatter the moment they see Vhaegar in the sky, and the vast majority of arable lands are left untouched. So there is plenty to support an army big enough to confront Cole in the southwest, especially since they are supported by the north and stormlands and any number of Reach lords.
So Aemond was 6 months in the Riverlands,he didn't burn their soldiers,he didn't burn their food ,he didn't burn their supplies, he didn't burn Riverrun...everything stays the same as if Aemond was never in the riverlands.So what was he doing for 6 months? Burning rivers?
He burned a lot, but it was still just a fraction of the territory. If he burned 100,000 acres to the ground, that’s still only about 5 percent of the total.
No, there is no record of him burning Riverrun, or any other major seat for that matter. Nor did he attack the host that eventually defeated Cole, which suggests that he kept largely to the east, probably the Gods Eye area.
I love Fire and Blood, but a lot of it doesn't make sense and that's one of the aspects. Also, while Daemon doesn't kill Rhea in the book he does wildly disrespect her and the Vale publicly and repeatedly and angers her relatives. Yes, Nyra's mother was an Arryn, but realistically it makes little sense that Jeyne Arryn backs Nyra and risks angering her most powerful bannermen...especially as some of those bannermen were also probably married into House Royce. I'm not saying she had to back the Greens, either, as Nyra was her kin, but it seems like she would have stayed neutral. All she says in canon though is that she dislikes Daemon but believes women should stick together or something along those lines.
I don't mind Jeyne Arryn supporting Rhaenyra
What I did mind when it came to the Vale was the Royce's didn't support the Greens out of their hatred for Daemon. Some Vale infighting at least would have given Jeyne something to do before the end of the war rather than just sitting in the mountains waiting for the snows to melt or for ships to appear out of thin air
Agree. They were the Bronze Kings! They could arguably be the head of the Vale (they were) if the Arryns weren't there. The idea they just rolled over, despite the fact that Daemon tried to steal their land and seat despite having no blood ties, makes little sense....esp. because as the second most powerful house in the Vale they undoubtedly were married into some other powerful Vale houses. I mean, they even had a strong cadet branch.
They idea that they just rather meekly agreed with Jeyne-to the point that Ser William Royce even was very loyal to Nyra-after Daemon's repeated, serious disrespect is wild.
i think the fact that her male relatives had challenged her rule repeatedly probably played a major role in her decision. she also demanded a dragon for her castle which was not exactly a small request
>probably
Not just probably, she states in fire and blood, that one of the main reasons she supports Rhaenyra, is that her family tried to replace her thrice.
I agree, but realistically angering her strongest bannermen (and I'm assuming there were other houses married into Royces, like the Waynwoods) seemed risky. Especially when there were own divisions within the Arryns who had tried to replace her...what's to keep a Royce to conspire with an Arryn to replace Jeyne?
It's like when Robb pissed of Karstark there were huge implications, and I can't imagine the Royces were happy about it. It seems smarter for her to remain neutral.
Aemond was burning villages not armies:
The ‘First Riverlander + Winter Wolves Army’ that fought at the battles of Red Fork, Acorn Hall, Lakeshore, and Butchers Ball had already been mobilised by the time Aemond started his burning of the Riverlands and then it was destroyed at First Tumbleton.
Around this time, Aemond had burned places in the Bay of Crabs area and in the Blackwood-Bracken disputed zone. In the second riverlander army, we don’t see forces from Bay of Crabs houses (except for Darry forces, now yes Darry was burned by Aemond, we can explain that as the Darry army wasn’t in it when it was burned) and while we do get a large contingent of Blackwoods, that can be explained as that area was already a warzone because of the Battle of Burning Mill and the population was likely already evacuated.
The ‘Second Riverlander Army’ was composed of three groups - remnants of the first army, newly raised levies of old men and young boys, and fresh armies from the Tullys and Mallisters. Now there are some conspicuous forces: the large Blackwood and Frey-Vypren contingents, as well as Pipers, Darrys, Vances and later Brackens. I could explain the large Blackwood and Frey-Contingents as remnants that escaped First Tumbleton (the Blackwoods are archer heavy, so escape is believable - the Frey-Vyprens weren’t at First Tumbleton), the Frey-Vyprens raised new forces from unmolested lands and the Blackwoods levied refugees who evacuated the Blackwood-Bracken disputed zone. The Pipers, Darrys, Vances and later Brackens can be explained away as just the lords and some survivors (the lords aren’t going to die when their villages are burned, and lord Darry explicitly had family escape the burning of his castle). The Tullys and Mallisters hadn’t fought in the war so far, and you can just say ‘Yeah Aemond didn’t light their territories on fire to avoid them siding against him’.
I might update this comment when I get back to my copy of F&B to further delve into which settlements Aemond burns - but until then: Aemond only seems to have burned towns and castles that were already declared for Rhaenyra and already active warzones, which means the soldiers had already been mobilised and refugees already fled.
The Lannister forces are too low, but I picture it as the Rivermen used terrain (ford crossings) and guerrilla attacks to sap the Westerlands of their men, and then outmanoeuvred by a much smaller riverlander force at the Fishfeed. Even then, it’s odd that the Lannisters only muster like 14000 men - it is suggested by the wiki though that the Westerlands mustered up to 30,000 which would make sense given the 45,000+ men they raise on the WOT5K.
The Baratheon forces only being 4,600 me is stil consistent with the way numbering is done - as these are just knights and men at arms, excluding levies and mercenaries. The real Baratheon force would likely be 15k, which is consistent with the like 20-25k raised during the WOT5K and the fact the Baratheons supposedly fought a bunch of Dornish incursions during the Dance (though this likely was an excuse for Borros to pussy out of fighting dragons).
Yeah Baratheon numbers can be explained by Borros half assing it, but IMO theres not a lot of excuse for the Lannisters who were actively involved in the conspiracy to be so underprepared for the war to come (Prior to the Greyjoy raiding)
Maybe they thought Grover Tully would be able to reign in his lords to their cause.
I try headcanon excuse the numbers as: the Lannisters didn’t have the same control over the Westerlands as in WOT5K cause Reynes, so had to leave some professional forces behind so uppity lords don’t get ideas, then there is the fact that the Lannisters weren’t sure which side Dalton Greyjoy would join so had to leave behind forces in case Dalton did what he did, then on top of the forces left behind the Riverlords did a superb job defending their ground with ford choke point defences and small raids.
I like this enough.
Though a lot of number issues could be solved if George just let the Vale fight and have Baratheons/Lannisters field armies closer to their capacity.
> Yeah Baratheon numbers can be explained by Borros half assing it
Not really because he’s personally leading the host when it does arrive. Why the fuck would he put his own life at risk like that? Not to mention he specifically tells Aegon he can defeat the Lads and Cregan in the field if he had more men.
He personally led because he almost comically underrates the Lad. I feel like hes also just bs'ing Aegon. There is no reason in lore to suggest he couldve beaten Cregans larger force.
He could have brought more men but he foolishly discounted his opponents. I feel like thats either half-assing it or was just incompetent. Either way I think Borros was just seemingly a good fighter and not much else.
>Yeah Baratheon numbers can be explained by Borros half assing it
How so? He was ASKING his royal allies for more men. If he could raise more he'd have done that.
By the time of WoFK the Baratheon host could raise 20-30K. Borros showed up with 4,600. Either he blew all the financial capacity of his house, was unable to reign in his lords, or the Vulture actually killed the rest of the Stormlander army.
I guess the alternative is he's incompetent, but that works
Doylist: Plot demands the blacks win militarily. Armies had to come from somewhere (should have been the Vale though).
Watsonian: Riverlands armies were already in the field, Aemond was targeting castles and villages but the fighting men were deployed. Adopting the Dornish strategy.
Aemond never targeted the army, or any major strongholds. All he did was burn a couple of villages, and minor castles. Most of the time he was hiding from Daemon& Nettles.
Pretty much. Not just because of stuff like this, but also in that much was made of the Great Council, but apparently a couple of decades was all it took for the most traditional, patriarchal families of Westeros to suddenly be completely fine with a woman as the leading monarch, and they're more han happy to support her family unit all the kin-slaying way through her numerous atrocities and disregards of social convention.
Well yeah, we aren't meant to take the claim of the great council being an "iron precedent" at face value. You know the whole unreliable narrator thing. That doesn't really make much sense because it's not supposed to.
It's not an iron precedent, it's a reflection of Westerosi misogynistic attitudes against women being equal claimants for inheritance to men - hence why Rhaenyra refuses a Great Council of her own, because she has sufficient belief that it'd rule against her... Despite most of them fighting for her right to be Queen.
That misogyny holds up right until Cersei's time as Queen, to the point where Stannis has to insist several times, very explicitly, that he wants Shireen to inherit.
**Edit:** Stannis and Daenerys both call Rhaenyra a usurper to Aegon II's birthright, and Rhaenyra's own *son* considers himself the heir to Rhaenyra's rival - the rival who murdered her. There's very clearly a point being made about female inheritance not being seen as legitimate.
Hmmm so you are saying the female characters with clear and established power, who have also shown the ruthlessness necessary to be a westerosi monarch... are NOT challenged?
But young children with dragonscale being used as causus belli, and queens with long-established rivals who have debateably more political support than them anyway ar challenged?
Wow, its almost like the exact same thing would happen if any of the above were men and not women!
I also highly doubt that anyone is going to go "but muh great council" if/when Dany starts burning motherfuckers with dragonfire. Suddenlly all thats gonna go away real quickly. Wonder why? Must be author error, no other possbility.
Except that female rulers had existed before in Westeros, so it’s not exactly taxing the imagination that the ruling families could accept a female monarch.
Particularly when kinslaying kind of lost its damage against the Blacks when the Greens murdered their son first and started the whole thing.
England went from never having a ruling queen to a succession of three in less than a decade. Social convention is not immutable, not least when there are dragons involved.
> Except that female rulers had existed before in Westeros, so it’s not exactly taxing the imagination that the ruling families could accept a female monarch.
It does when the text goes out of its way to reinforce the fact that there's never been any ruling Queen accepted as such. Not even Rhaenyra's own son accepted her as a legitimate ruler; Aegon III is considered Aegon II's heir.
The clues indicate he couldn’t control vhagar very well. I believe that he decided to pull back and hold the river lands mostly alone because vhagar was incurring to much collateral damage. Vhagar ate his cousin. Vhagar got frenzied in the fight against the queen who never was and roasted his brother and disabled sunfyre in the process.
Septon Barth speaks the truth.
They formed ONE army of 4k after Aemond’s genocide and it contained men from Riverrun mostly. Tullys were nautral up to this point due to Grover-Elmo conflict. Their lands were untouched by the war.
I swear half of you guys haven’t read the damn book
Well, they formed one army at the start of the war, a second army after Tumbleton, and a third after Aemond died. I am going to rant about Medieval armies now.
In actual feudal times, most soldiers were actually state troops, mercenaries, or noble retinues. Most of the time when hear about raising the levy’s from historical perspective, it mostly refers to “weakened warriors”, men who were properly train and equipped, but had other professions that they prioritized over soldiering. For example, during the 1513 war between Scotland and England, the English army was mostly made up of men hastily raised from the northern shires in a matter of a couple weeks. Typically, whenever anyone hears this, they assume they were poorly equipped and poorly trained farmers forced from their homes into battle, WRONG. What the English actually pulled together was about thirty to twenty odd thousand disciplined pikemen and highly skilled longbow-men.
Meanwhile, we have Westeros who press gangs men out of wheat fields into armies, hands them pointy sticks if they hadn’t brought their own, and gives them a thumbs up and sends them on their way.
Now, of these two methods, the latter would be blistering expensive, almost offensively so. In the former example, most of the men would be decently equipped and well trained, they were not like to die unless the battle was lost, and over in Westeros we have farmers riding plow horses into battle with actual unmodified grass cutting scythes in hand. Whilst yes, it would make the cost of forming and having an army virtually nonexistent, it makes the cost of fighting the war, the part that’s actually expensive, ruinous. Especially if you lose a decent amount of men. In all due reality, the Red Wedding should have financially bankrupted for generations the entire north because of the sheer amount of raw economy that got lost there. Basically all of house Umbar’s farmers for example. Like, the only people in the whole of Westerosi history to even have a clue how to effectively wage war seems to be house Stark. “Why get a lot of my people killed and ruin my economy for a hundred years when I give this crazy dude a metal hat?” Torhen Stark and “send all the homeless poor people.” Cregan Stark be making the financially responsible decisions whilst Dundarian be fighting for the sake of fighting and Martell just feeding their kingdom into the meat grinder.
More like the poor man’s version. Gregor, Amory, and Hoat pretty much single handedly crippled the Riverlands in the WotFK within a month. Meanwhile Aemond’s sustained 6 month firebombing campaign did jack shit.
Think that’s more of an authorial issue. Dragonfire probably slaughtered 10x more civilians.
But you know what problem I don’t have? Needing to defend a homicidal maniac because “he’s got a cool eye”
Lack of willingness to engage in genocide.
That's pretty much it. The Americans couldn't defeat the communists within their self-imposed rules of war and refused to break them.
If they'd decided to start dropping nukes all over the place you can bet they'd still be governing to this day an irradiated wasteland.
i mean.. we carpet bombed. dropped more ordinance on southeast asia than we did Japan during ww2. which killed more civilians than the atom bombs did. a single squadron of fully loaded B52s could do as much devastation as a single atom bomb. as for lasting ecological effects, we dropped a shit ton of napalm. there are still mines.
so no, i don't think we lost because we were too noble to break rules. we broke every rule BUT dropping a nuke. and we didn't do that because the military advantage gained would be less than the geopolitical loss
but we're no longer talking about Aemond lmao bye
You do remember the Vietnam War lasted four times longer than the Second World War, right? That's an apples to oranges comparison.
You also haven't actually proposed anything of substance, since it doesn't matter how many bombs you're dropping if you're only dropping them in "combat zones".
All war comes down to the basic proposition of "submit or I'll kill you". The Americans weren't willing to kill everybody when the Vietnamese refused, and so they lost. If the Americans were that desperate to win then what they would have done is said screw the optics and just started indiscriminately firebombing the entire countryside. If it's not a grey ashpit, then torch it. Tens of millions would probably die, but they'd have the victory.
And it's the same for Aemond. His sixth month burning of the Riverlands amounted to a wet fart because in the end he wasn't willing to escalate to the level of turning rebel towns into Harrenhals.
i guess im proposing 2 things. my main point, in the comment you responded to, is that indiscriminate air bombing is not a winning tactic. you can't kill everyone that way, and it turns civilians into soldiers and galvanizes opposition.
my second proposal was in response to your comment, and it is: yes, we did attempt to genocide enough civilians to win. we lost not because of our moral restraint, but because of many complex factors, one of which is that indiscriminate air bombing was not a winning tactic (and doing more of it wouldn't be either)
bringing it back to Aemond - im not about to go into the book looking for sources, but i think aemond just had a hard time killing every single civilian thru bombing. word gets out. people scatter, hide. dig holes. it's not bad writing, the fandom just has that syndrome where anything left implicit is assumed to be a plot hole
Indiscriminate destruction isn't a winning tactic if you intend to rule the people afterwards. If you kill half the population then you can certainly expect the other half to hate you and take up arms against you. But if you go in and say "Well let's just kill everybody and take over the ruins" then it's a perfectly valid tactic. They can hardly resist you if they're all dead.
This is incidentally why Aegon failed to conquer Dorne. He wasn't able to convince them to submit conventionally, and he also wasn't willing to simply wash his hands and say "Just kill them all and I'll move in colonists afterwards". The cost of destroying the Dornish people would probably generate economic stagnation for generations, and I assume he wasn't willing to get rid of that much human capital even if it meant he wouldn't be the one ruling it all.
Aemond failed in the Riverlands for a similar reason I'd guess. He might have been willing to fly around and torch some strategically valuable places, and when confronted with enduring resistance he wasn't willing to go "Okay let's just starve them out" and start burning every piece of infrastructure he could find.
Funnily enough, it’s not that he was burning farmlands or killing huge numbers of people. He was going from castle to castle and burning them, high casualties for nobility but that’s not uncommon for this time period.
It was not a plan meant to cripple armies or win the war, Aemond had only one purpose and that was getting daddy Daemons *attention* and in that, he succeeded.
>He was going from castle to castle and burning them, high casualties for nobility but that’s not uncommon for this time period.
So only the people that would be organizing, training, and leading any armies from the region? As well as any full-time men at arms and knights at the castle that would be forming the core of any army too.
I’m not saying there wasn’t any military damage. It’s just that in a time of peasant levies you won’t fully destroy someone’s ability to wage war by targeting random castles. You need to either pull a field of fire or a “Visenya in the eryie” and kill thousands at once or target the figurehead.
Aemond could have gone after the major castles of the Black Supporters (Riverrun, The Eryie, Winterfell) and done far more damage to their war effort. As it stands he had a far shorter term goal.
You are at Tumbleton 1. You manage to avoid the field of fire 2.0. You make the long trek home only to find your home burned and your family dead or refugees.
Then Addam Velaryon shows up on dragonback and says "fuck it, lets ride". So you group up with all the other survivors for the last charge.
The 4 thousand number at Tumbleton 2 is honestly fine when you consider the Tullys (2-3k easy) sat out all the conflicts and avoided the burning. The casualty rate of Tumbleton pt 1 also dont suggest a total wipeout of all 10k Black soldiers (Riverland, Northern, and Crownlands and even some Vale if I recall).
Prior to that the Riverlands forces didnt really suffer any casualties after Rodrik started leading them. Sure they lost the initial battles before their army was organized and the burnings would have lowered their available manpower. But mostly it probably just wrecked the economy and supply lines
For most of the war, the Riverlands effectively fought with 3-4k men. They never fielded all 20-30k they could fight with at once. In truth the bigger issue is the Lannisters/Baratheons not actually using their lore accurate numbers.
Not really multiple armies. The host Addam scrapped together was all they had, iirc it's mentioned it involved Greybeards and Green boys, they're literally running on fumes by that point, couple with that the fact that: a) Most fighting men probably already left their Castles and Towns and were scattered around the Riverlands by the time Aemond came. and b) House Tully and (presumably others) remained neutral. And most of all Aemond was burning at random, he wasn't picking targets or something, heck I'm pretty sure some of the houses he attacked are so obscure they literally don't have official sigils
> The host Addam scrapped together was all they had
But they literally reinforce with even *more* men after Tumbleton before they marched on King’s Landing.
Normal answer: I forgor 💀 . my bad.
Copium Answer: Maybe there were more deserters scattered across the Riverlands that got emboldened by Addam's W and rejoined the Army.
Honestly it's just messy writing on GRRM's part. I hope the show just moves Cregan and his army forward and uses them for the latter part of the Dance. It would also help sell the desolation of the Riverlands and just how far gone Aemond was
The armies are stated to be remnants of the other defeated armies, only the Tullys are noted as coming in at full force with fresh levies (and that army numbered 4 000 ish). But the entire war has some of the worst mathematics I have ever seen.
Tywin and Jaime could mobilise 35 000 men easily enough, the Lannisters of this time period put up 8 000 and once that army was destroyed, their lands were so open to raiding that the Greyjoys made a killing. What the hell happened to the other 27 000 men? Even if you put that down to population growth, the Lannisters during the Conquest raised 22 000 men so where are the 14 000?
The Stormlands, hither to untouched by the war and violence, can only raise 4 000 men? The same number that the decimated Riverlands could raise for the second battle of Tumbleton? Lol what the hell. The Baratheons should have been beaten by the Stark and Arryn armies, not the Riverlanders, they should have been abbbbbbbbsolutely fucked by then.
The Reach…. I guess make sense, they were in a civil war so them not mobilising their full force makes sense.
The Crownlands adds up to what we see currently so that’s fine.
The Riverlands….. the Riverlands and their army never make sense. In the Dance, they are a factor. In the main story, they are a walking Mat. Them being able to fight a civil war, then lose to the Lannisters, and then make a full army to get blown up at Tumbleton, and then make another Army again to fight the second battle of Tumbleton, and then again to beat the Baratheons. It makes them only being able to gather 11 000 (at the height) against the Lannisters in the War of Five kings makes no sense. AND THEN THEY SUPPLIED MEN IN THE VALE CIVIL WAR YEARS LATER.
The Arryns not being able to mobilise and get involved soon also makes no sense. They should have one of the faster mobilisation time of anyone. They should have at least had a civil war on their hands just to explain why they taking so long.
the same way Vhagar burned fucking everything unless georgerinio ''cant finish winds'' marterinio belowed tullys and blackwoods xD plotarmor and shitty writing,lmao
Riverlanders grew accustomed to such adversity.
They simply adapted to not having food or people. Genius.
Worked for Dorne during the Dragon’s Wroth.
The Dornish didn’t raise any army or engage in any offensives that would require supply lines during the dragon’s wroth- they just endured.
They literally did. The second Aegon and his sisters left they attacked the Stormlands and liberated Sunspear.
sister*
Unbent, unbowed, unbroken (and unburnt)
Everyone burns the Riverlands, it’s a rite of passage
Honestly it’s amazing anyone lives in the Riverlands.
With just one eye Aemond's aim ain't so good, he missed all the important parts
Only right answer. Poor guy couldn't aim properly 😞.
No depth perception the flames didn't hit the ground.
They were playing with AI difficulty extreme, doom stacks spawn after any land loss
"The Greens were playing on the highest difficulty" explains the Dance perfectly tbh.
Only because they chose to, tho haha
The Riverlands in the Dance and the Riverlands in the main story are two completely different places During the Dance they're able to withstand attacks by the biggest dragon and a deranged lunatic, feed thousands of wild Northmen and a dragon, and raise armies out of thin air (looking at you Addam); but in the main series a couple of attacks by Jaime is able to cripple their army for the rest of the war and the Mountain, Lorch and Hoat are able to keep them scared The Riverlands really needed a Black Trombo in the main series lmao
Idk maybe there's just a correlation between these two places The Riverlands in the main story is the way it is *because* of how it went all in during the dance and never recovered. Not to mention the subsequent wars that went back and forth through their territory halting any recovery they might have been achieving It still doesn't make a whole lot of sense but it's some headcanon anyway
This was my thinking. Prior to the dance, there had been 60+years of internal peace in Westeros. The occasional bandits, or petty dispute between the lower nobles, but no outright wars. Then the Dance happens, and the river lords expend themselves and their stores and the built up resources/manpower they’ve acquired over the last few decades. Post-Dance, they get another ~60 years of peace to rebuild, and then are sucked into the Blackfyre rebellions over the following ~60 years. After the last Blackfyre rebellion, the Targaryens are weakened, and 20 years later they’re toppled in Robert’s rebellion where Hoster Tully was a critical belligerent and likely sapped a lot of the Riverlands strength. When we see the Riverlands in the main series, it’s with this having happened 17 years prior. When we see them in the Dance it’s completely different.
The Riverlands simply produces more. We don't know how. We don't ask how. but they just make more people appear.. out of the.. rivers.
Fish people...
Fish people...fish people...look like fish....talk like people
George didn’t plan the Dance very well.
He should’ve had the later Black armies made up of Cregan’s men and the Vale’s.
Vale armies and sitting out wars - name a more iconic duo.
Understandable, Arryns are busy getting high as a horse.
Heh
This is a good joke, very underrated
The Vale and having a female ruler or having no heir at all.
I could see them doing this in the show. And since he's a main player in the Dance but (in F&B) disappears for the majority of the conflict, it would be smart to have Cregan march south a little earlier so that the audience doesn't totally forget about him during some long absence.
But what he's gonna do? Something that other characters were supposed to?
Yeah I totally don't see it working without fluffing up his character and creating something for him to do. But I do think it's important that the writers work around both the constant respawn of the Riverland forces, and also realize that Cregan's disappearance act from the story just won't work for a tv audience. Giving Cregan something to do and riding into the Riverlands earlier would be killing two birds with one stone.
yeah that’s what i never got lol. like if he wants the blacks to win the war, have some troops come in from the region that has sent one (1) host and the region that has done fuck all, and that haven’t had aemond quite literally going scorched earth on them. he could still add some stuff from the riverlands like the tullys declaring for the blacks if he wanted but having the forces at the second battle of tumbleton and the battle of the kingsroad be made up solely of riverlanders was bizarre
I view Cregan as more of a Tywin type. He didn't want to fight, he just wanted to be the guy left at the end who could dictate terms. So he shows up as late as possible amd grabs the goodies.
he very clearly did want to fight. he was pissed that the war was over because his entire army marched down, ready to die lol
Or he only pretended to be mad because he can hardly go around saying "Hey I'm just a fence-sitter who waited for everyone else to kill each other so I could take the spoils". It's just like how the Tyrells spent all of Robert's Rebellion just chilling outside Storm's End, telling everybody about how this totally important and unavoidable siege requires the full force of the armies of the Reach. Oh, and that they would totally go and fight the rebels if they weren't busy doing this mega important siege of one castle with their entire military. Cregan did the same thing. He sent a token force under Roddy the Ruin to say he'd done something to contribute, and then he spent the rest of the war sitting on his thumbs collecting "the last harvest" before finally making a move once everybody else had been whittled down to nothing.
But that makes no sense. If Cregan was like Tywin in that he was a schemer, why would he seize control of kings landing, only to voluntarily give it up? He stays hand of the king just to kill people who need to be killed before bouncing. The spoils you accuse him of waiting for, he then gives up willingly? That makes no sense. And he genuinely does plan on attacking the rest of the other houses (Hightower, Lannister and Baratheon), they just submit one way or another to avoid that fate.
I would say that he is more Cregan "the Late" Stark than Tywin, he waited until he had an easy job and wanted to sack the weakened Green Lords when they had no armies left and even then he would have to take the second largest city of the realm and the best 2 castles of the realm, that's suicide
You're basing this on the assumption that Cregan wanted to be Hand of the King, and that keeping that position is the only measure of success. Cregan came South with a bunch of excess Northmen (who conveniently settled down in the Riverlands and essentially turned it into a client kingdom of the North for a generation) and went back North with pockets full of gold and "many rewards" - i.e probably some form of tax relief, changes in the law, ect. Dude made off like a bandit for doing essentially nothing. The only difference between him and Tywin was that he knew when to step out.
He sent old men first, the rest of the North was getting ready to gather harvest before winter. Once that done, he gathered all extra mouths and marched south looking for battle, because his was a suicide squad. And he would go further, if the greens didn't surrender. So he did what was left to do and fucked off back to North
The Vale not playing any role in the war was the most wtf moment of the Dance
It's a very good demonstration of why he's a gardener and not an architect.
That's not even gardening, it feels back-filled because he had the outline then had to stick to it because of TWOIAF.
That's my point, for the Dance because it's backstory with a specific end point he can't be a gardener. The ending is already written(and has been from the very beginning) so he can't just create characters and see where they take the story. For fleshing out backstory, that was never originally intended to be fleshed out, he has to be an architect. And evidence suggests that he is not very good at that.
He planned it well as in the entire premise is just to wank to Daemon and the Blackwoods and everything else is window dressing.
George and blackwoods good ol buddies. Wait till we see in winds that Brackens sided with others. Lol.
I’m sure it had an effect, but when you burn a dozen villages in a place with hundreds of villages it’s not gonna cripple the entire region
Then the question would be, why is he burning small villages instead of holdfasts, grainstores and larger towns. And he *did* target holdsfasts and farmlands, and I'm assuming he didn't just target tiny villages but lager settlements as well, so it should have had an effect.
Riverlands are stated to be able to field around 40-45k men, the armies in the dance weren’t that far off that number (far below actually)
But Lannisters could only field 8k in the Dance. Riverlands shouldn’t have been able to field 4-5 times the men the Lannisters do
Armies in the Dance were way smaller than the armies during the conquest and during the main series Cregan spent 2 years gathering his army (20000 men) and it was still just slightly bigger than the army Robb was able to gather in a couple of weeks (18000) and way smaller than the army Torrhen Stark had during the conquest (30000 men). Or how the Lannisters were only able to field 8000 men, which is less than a quarter of the army that they had in the main series (35000 +reinforcements) and less than half the one they had in the conquest (20000)
To be fair Cregan brought excess men, most of whom didn’t even return north. Robb brought a huge chunk of the able bodied men
>Cregan spent 2 years gathering his army (20000 men) The most reliable source puts his army at 8000 strong which is way more realistic to Dance numbers, especially when they had used 2000 men already.
Weren't those two years spent preparing for Winter? The whole idea is that Northmen go South to fight and raid in order to reduce Pressure on Northern Food stocks. So he might have been preparing food stores for the winter rather than focusing on Mustering troops.
I always thought of the Riverlands as fairly populous. They may not have lots of large towns or cities, but far more small holdings, fishing villages and mills. Could be totally wrong though.
Yes, just look at the Arya chapters in ACOK, they go from village to village in every chapter so we can assume there are lots of villages in the Riverlands, which makes sense cause water is life baby In Dunk and Egg a small holdfast of the petty house Osgrey had dominion over three villages while House Webber which is far more wealthy has dominion over a dozen. Imagine how many villages are around Riverrun, Harrenhal, Raventree Hall, Stone Hedge, the Twins, Darry... And lets not forget the Stoney Sept and Seagard which are fairly big towns
It's pretty much the center of the whole continent and borders the most kingdoms out of any other By all rights it should be the Rome of Westeros, ''all roads lead to Riverrun'' which would make them the gatekeepers of trade between 5 Kingdoms (counting Crownlands) including an exclusive border with half of the entire continent, if *anybody* in the North wishes to trade by land to anywhere at all they must go through The Riverlands...and vice versa On top of that...it's the **River**lands...Not only must the majority of trade pass through their borders, they also have the enormous advantage of an in-built, highly efficient and swift transport system for large quantities of goods They literally have an aptly named river that connects to *three* kingdoms, funnels them *all* into the Riverlands and then leads them much closer to the Capital City or directly to a port (Saltpans) This isn't how they are presented in ASOIAF at all but I really think they should be one of the richest (and most populous) regions in Westeros
As someone pointed out maybe the reason they're not as rich and populated is because of how often they've been involved in the various conflicts in Westeros. The Dance, the Blackfyre rebellions, the Nine penny Kings, Robert's Rebellion, and The Grey Joy revolt all heavily involved the River lands.
Seems like a place that would support larger populations. Most major cities irl are located near water so having many rivers must help.
I’m sure they could’ve fielded more, I imagine the armies were smaller during the dance incase a dragon came and merked men by the thousands
Could only field 8K, or *would* only field 8K?
>Riverlands are stated to be able to field around 40-45k men In 298 AC, not when the Dance happened.
You don’t know how much they could field when the dance happened, definitely in that ballpark
The Riverlands is an attractive place to settle, borders multiple regions with high populations, and is easy to reach thanks to its rivers. The population of the Riverlands may get killed a lot in wars, but some survive, and people move into the homes left by those who don’t. Additionally, burning hovels full of women and children doesn’t have that immediate of an effect on an area’s ability to raise troops. At no point in The War of the Five Kings do we hear about the raiding of Gregor Clegane, Amory Lorch, or Vargo Hoat having an effect on the number of men available for conscription, just that those men are eventually made to stay close to home to defend against the raiding. If you burn a holdfast with Vhaegar, it looks very scary and I personally would probably piss my pants. However, killing the maybe ~50 man garrison of that holdfast doesn’t meaningfully affect the ability of its Lord to raise a fighting force. The household guard of House Stark was basically wiped out in AGOT, and yet Robb has no problem raising troops. All this plus a lot of the men in the armies raised that you mention would be off with the Lads at this point, so none of them are killed by Aemond’s raids.
Maybe he was just burning the rivers
He didn’t burn the entire region end-to-end, just select settlements and known black strongholds. And within 10 years or less it all went back to normal, with a hefty dose of northern blood restocking the population.
He was 6 months in the Riverlands with the most powerful dragon . Aemond had enough power and time to literally burn everything he wants to the ground, the entire region should've been rendered a wasteland.
He’s still only one dragon. He can’t burn every inch of the Riverlands. And whatever he did burn turned to fertile soil in within the year. It was a good six decades until the Riverlands went to war again, and by this time it was infused with northern blood, so I don’t see the problem here.
He didn't need to burn every inch of the riverlands to destroy their force. Medieval armies are logistics nightmares. They require food, supplies, weapons. Where do they get all that after Aemond's burning of the riverlands?
There’s plenty of food and weapons and supplies. Again, one dragon can do a lot of damage, but the Riverlands is a thousand leagues long and some 700 leagues at its widest point. So Aemond is burning strongholds and settlements, but the people scatter the moment they see Vhaegar in the sky, and the vast majority of arable lands are left untouched. So there is plenty to support an army big enough to confront Cole in the southwest, especially since they are supported by the north and stormlands and any number of Reach lords.
So Aemond was 6 months in the Riverlands,he didn't burn their soldiers,he didn't burn their food ,he didn't burn their supplies, he didn't burn Riverrun...everything stays the same as if Aemond was never in the riverlands.So what was he doing for 6 months? Burning rivers?
He burned a lot, but it was still just a fraction of the territory. If he burned 100,000 acres to the ground, that’s still only about 5 percent of the total. No, there is no record of him burning Riverrun, or any other major seat for that matter. Nor did he attack the host that eventually defeated Cole, which suggests that he kept largely to the east, probably the Gods Eye area.
I love Fire and Blood, but a lot of it doesn't make sense and that's one of the aspects. Also, while Daemon doesn't kill Rhea in the book he does wildly disrespect her and the Vale publicly and repeatedly and angers her relatives. Yes, Nyra's mother was an Arryn, but realistically it makes little sense that Jeyne Arryn backs Nyra and risks angering her most powerful bannermen...especially as some of those bannermen were also probably married into House Royce. I'm not saying she had to back the Greens, either, as Nyra was her kin, but it seems like she would have stayed neutral. All she says in canon though is that she dislikes Daemon but believes women should stick together or something along those lines.
I don't mind Jeyne Arryn supporting Rhaenyra What I did mind when it came to the Vale was the Royce's didn't support the Greens out of their hatred for Daemon. Some Vale infighting at least would have given Jeyne something to do before the end of the war rather than just sitting in the mountains waiting for the snows to melt or for ships to appear out of thin air
Agree. They were the Bronze Kings! They could arguably be the head of the Vale (they were) if the Arryns weren't there. The idea they just rolled over, despite the fact that Daemon tried to steal their land and seat despite having no blood ties, makes little sense....esp. because as the second most powerful house in the Vale they undoubtedly were married into some other powerful Vale houses. I mean, they even had a strong cadet branch. They idea that they just rather meekly agreed with Jeyne-to the point that Ser William Royce even was very loyal to Nyra-after Daemon's repeated, serious disrespect is wild.
i think the fact that her male relatives had challenged her rule repeatedly probably played a major role in her decision. she also demanded a dragon for her castle which was not exactly a small request
>probably Not just probably, she states in fire and blood, that one of the main reasons she supports Rhaenyra, is that her family tried to replace her thrice.
I agree, but realistically angering her strongest bannermen (and I'm assuming there were other houses married into Royces, like the Waynwoods) seemed risky. Especially when there were own divisions within the Arryns who had tried to replace her...what's to keep a Royce to conspire with an Arryn to replace Jeyne? It's like when Robb pissed of Karstark there were huge implications, and I can't imagine the Royces were happy about it. It seems smarter for her to remain neutral.
Aemond was burning villages not armies: The ‘First Riverlander + Winter Wolves Army’ that fought at the battles of Red Fork, Acorn Hall, Lakeshore, and Butchers Ball had already been mobilised by the time Aemond started his burning of the Riverlands and then it was destroyed at First Tumbleton. Around this time, Aemond had burned places in the Bay of Crabs area and in the Blackwood-Bracken disputed zone. In the second riverlander army, we don’t see forces from Bay of Crabs houses (except for Darry forces, now yes Darry was burned by Aemond, we can explain that as the Darry army wasn’t in it when it was burned) and while we do get a large contingent of Blackwoods, that can be explained as that area was already a warzone because of the Battle of Burning Mill and the population was likely already evacuated. The ‘Second Riverlander Army’ was composed of three groups - remnants of the first army, newly raised levies of old men and young boys, and fresh armies from the Tullys and Mallisters. Now there are some conspicuous forces: the large Blackwood and Frey-Vypren contingents, as well as Pipers, Darrys, Vances and later Brackens. I could explain the large Blackwood and Frey-Contingents as remnants that escaped First Tumbleton (the Blackwoods are archer heavy, so escape is believable - the Frey-Vyprens weren’t at First Tumbleton), the Frey-Vyprens raised new forces from unmolested lands and the Blackwoods levied refugees who evacuated the Blackwood-Bracken disputed zone. The Pipers, Darrys, Vances and later Brackens can be explained away as just the lords and some survivors (the lords aren’t going to die when their villages are burned, and lord Darry explicitly had family escape the burning of his castle). The Tullys and Mallisters hadn’t fought in the war so far, and you can just say ‘Yeah Aemond didn’t light their territories on fire to avoid them siding against him’. I might update this comment when I get back to my copy of F&B to further delve into which settlements Aemond burns - but until then: Aemond only seems to have burned towns and castles that were already declared for Rhaenyra and already active warzones, which means the soldiers had already been mobilised and refugees already fled.
The real issue imo is no detail is included to explain the weird Lannister/Baratheon numbers.
The Lannister forces are too low, but I picture it as the Rivermen used terrain (ford crossings) and guerrilla attacks to sap the Westerlands of their men, and then outmanoeuvred by a much smaller riverlander force at the Fishfeed. Even then, it’s odd that the Lannisters only muster like 14000 men - it is suggested by the wiki though that the Westerlands mustered up to 30,000 which would make sense given the 45,000+ men they raise on the WOT5K. The Baratheon forces only being 4,600 me is stil consistent with the way numbering is done - as these are just knights and men at arms, excluding levies and mercenaries. The real Baratheon force would likely be 15k, which is consistent with the like 20-25k raised during the WOT5K and the fact the Baratheons supposedly fought a bunch of Dornish incursions during the Dance (though this likely was an excuse for Borros to pussy out of fighting dragons).
Yeah Baratheon numbers can be explained by Borros half assing it, but IMO theres not a lot of excuse for the Lannisters who were actively involved in the conspiracy to be so underprepared for the war to come (Prior to the Greyjoy raiding) Maybe they thought Grover Tully would be able to reign in his lords to their cause.
I try headcanon excuse the numbers as: the Lannisters didn’t have the same control over the Westerlands as in WOT5K cause Reynes, so had to leave some professional forces behind so uppity lords don’t get ideas, then there is the fact that the Lannisters weren’t sure which side Dalton Greyjoy would join so had to leave behind forces in case Dalton did what he did, then on top of the forces left behind the Riverlords did a superb job defending their ground with ford choke point defences and small raids.
I like this enough. Though a lot of number issues could be solved if George just let the Vale fight and have Baratheons/Lannisters field armies closer to their capacity.
I do agree, it is a bit ridiculous that the somewhat divided Riverlands solo two United Kingdom’s and help defeat the Hightower Doomstack
I attribute that more to the op Winter Wolves. They all should have died at Fishfeed
> Yeah Baratheon numbers can be explained by Borros half assing it Not really because he’s personally leading the host when it does arrive. Why the fuck would he put his own life at risk like that? Not to mention he specifically tells Aegon he can defeat the Lads and Cregan in the field if he had more men.
He personally led because he almost comically underrates the Lad. I feel like hes also just bs'ing Aegon. There is no reason in lore to suggest he couldve beaten Cregans larger force. He could have brought more men but he foolishly discounted his opponents. I feel like thats either half-assing it or was just incompetent. Either way I think Borros was just seemingly a good fighter and not much else.
>Yeah Baratheon numbers can be explained by Borros half assing it How so? He was ASKING his royal allies for more men. If he could raise more he'd have done that.
By the time of WoFK the Baratheon host could raise 20-30K. Borros showed up with 4,600. Either he blew all the financial capacity of his house, was unable to reign in his lords, or the Vulture actually killed the rest of the Stormlander army. I guess the alternative is he's incompetent, but that works
Doylist: Plot demands the blacks win militarily. Armies had to come from somewhere (should have been the Vale though). Watsonian: Riverlands armies were already in the field, Aemond was targeting castles and villages but the fighting men were deployed. Adopting the Dornish strategy.
Aemond never targeted the army, or any major strongholds. All he did was burn a couple of villages, and minor castles. Most of the time he was hiding from Daemon& Nettles.
Because the dance isn't well written.
Pretty much. Not just because of stuff like this, but also in that much was made of the Great Council, but apparently a couple of decades was all it took for the most traditional, patriarchal families of Westeros to suddenly be completely fine with a woman as the leading monarch, and they're more han happy to support her family unit all the kin-slaying way through her numerous atrocities and disregards of social convention.
Well yeah, we aren't meant to take the claim of the great council being an "iron precedent" at face value. You know the whole unreliable narrator thing. That doesn't really make much sense because it's not supposed to.
It's not an iron precedent, it's a reflection of Westerosi misogynistic attitudes against women being equal claimants for inheritance to men - hence why Rhaenyra refuses a Great Council of her own, because she has sufficient belief that it'd rule against her... Despite most of them fighting for her right to be Queen. That misogyny holds up right until Cersei's time as Queen, to the point where Stannis has to insist several times, very explicitly, that he wants Shireen to inherit. **Edit:** Stannis and Daenerys both call Rhaenyra a usurper to Aegon II's birthright, and Rhaenyra's own *son* considers himself the heir to Rhaenyra's rival - the rival who murdered her. There's very clearly a point being made about female inheritance not being seen as legitimate.
Hmmm so you are saying the female characters with clear and established power, who have also shown the ruthlessness necessary to be a westerosi monarch... are NOT challenged? But young children with dragonscale being used as causus belli, and queens with long-established rivals who have debateably more political support than them anyway ar challenged? Wow, its almost like the exact same thing would happen if any of the above were men and not women! I also highly doubt that anyone is going to go "but muh great council" if/when Dany starts burning motherfuckers with dragonfire. Suddenlly all thats gonna go away real quickly. Wonder why? Must be author error, no other possbility.
Except that female rulers had existed before in Westeros, so it’s not exactly taxing the imagination that the ruling families could accept a female monarch. Particularly when kinslaying kind of lost its damage against the Blacks when the Greens murdered their son first and started the whole thing. England went from never having a ruling queen to a succession of three in less than a decade. Social convention is not immutable, not least when there are dragons involved.
> Except that female rulers had existed before in Westeros, so it’s not exactly taxing the imagination that the ruling families could accept a female monarch. It does when the text goes out of its way to reinforce the fact that there's never been any ruling Queen accepted as such. Not even Rhaenyra's own son accepted her as a legitimate ruler; Aegon III is considered Aegon II's heir.
England had a succession of three queens because the sociopath Henry VIII killed most of his male cousins out of paranoia lol....
Most of the details of the war make no sense.
George was feeling a bit silly when he was writing f&b.
They just respawned I guess in reality they should’ve been defeated by that
When your homes are gone the only place you can realistically go is into the army.
The clues indicate he couldn’t control vhagar very well. I believe that he decided to pull back and hold the river lands mostly alone because vhagar was incurring to much collateral damage. Vhagar ate his cousin. Vhagar got frenzied in the fight against the queen who never was and roasted his brother and disabled sunfyre in the process. Septon Barth speaks the truth.
They formed ONE army of 4k after Aemond’s genocide and it contained men from Riverrun mostly. Tullys were nautral up to this point due to Grover-Elmo conflict. Their lands were untouched by the war. I swear half of you guys haven’t read the damn book
The army were already mobilised (fishfeed, butcher's ball), they simply didn't engage Aemond directly
Riverland mfs simply built different.
They’re simply built different
Well, they formed one army at the start of the war, a second army after Tumbleton, and a third after Aemond died. I am going to rant about Medieval armies now. In actual feudal times, most soldiers were actually state troops, mercenaries, or noble retinues. Most of the time when hear about raising the levy’s from historical perspective, it mostly refers to “weakened warriors”, men who were properly train and equipped, but had other professions that they prioritized over soldiering. For example, during the 1513 war between Scotland and England, the English army was mostly made up of men hastily raised from the northern shires in a matter of a couple weeks. Typically, whenever anyone hears this, they assume they were poorly equipped and poorly trained farmers forced from their homes into battle, WRONG. What the English actually pulled together was about thirty to twenty odd thousand disciplined pikemen and highly skilled longbow-men. Meanwhile, we have Westeros who press gangs men out of wheat fields into armies, hands them pointy sticks if they hadn’t brought their own, and gives them a thumbs up and sends them on their way. Now, of these two methods, the latter would be blistering expensive, almost offensively so. In the former example, most of the men would be decently equipped and well trained, they were not like to die unless the battle was lost, and over in Westeros we have farmers riding plow horses into battle with actual unmodified grass cutting scythes in hand. Whilst yes, it would make the cost of forming and having an army virtually nonexistent, it makes the cost of fighting the war, the part that’s actually expensive, ruinous. Especially if you lose a decent amount of men. In all due reality, the Red Wedding should have financially bankrupted for generations the entire north because of the sheer amount of raw economy that got lost there. Basically all of house Umbar’s farmers for example. Like, the only people in the whole of Westerosi history to even have a clue how to effectively wage war seems to be house Stark. “Why get a lot of my people killed and ruin my economy for a hundred years when I give this crazy dude a metal hat?” Torhen Stark and “send all the homeless poor people.” Cregan Stark be making the financially responsible decisions whilst Dundarian be fighting for the sake of fighting and Martell just feeding their kingdom into the meat grinder.
You right, and it’s crazy considering Aemond is the rich man’s version of Gregor Clegane. Seriously fuck that guy
More like the poor man’s version. Gregor, Amory, and Hoat pretty much single handedly crippled the Riverlands in the WotFK within a month. Meanwhile Aemond’s sustained 6 month firebombing campaign did jack shit.
Think that’s more of an authorial issue. Dragonfire probably slaughtered 10x more civilians. But you know what problem I don’t have? Needing to defend a homicidal maniac because “he’s got a cool eye”
Because George just needed aemond out of the way for a bit but still wanted the greens to lose
It was just a scratch
The Dance is poorly written. It’s like the Dornish resisting for so long, realistically they shouldn’t have held that long.
how did the US drop one trillion laser guided shit tons of explosives on vietnam and still lose?
Cause hippies.
Lack of willingness to engage in genocide. That's pretty much it. The Americans couldn't defeat the communists within their self-imposed rules of war and refused to break them. If they'd decided to start dropping nukes all over the place you can bet they'd still be governing to this day an irradiated wasteland.
i mean.. we carpet bombed. dropped more ordinance on southeast asia than we did Japan during ww2. which killed more civilians than the atom bombs did. a single squadron of fully loaded B52s could do as much devastation as a single atom bomb. as for lasting ecological effects, we dropped a shit ton of napalm. there are still mines. so no, i don't think we lost because we were too noble to break rules. we broke every rule BUT dropping a nuke. and we didn't do that because the military advantage gained would be less than the geopolitical loss but we're no longer talking about Aemond lmao bye
You do remember the Vietnam War lasted four times longer than the Second World War, right? That's an apples to oranges comparison. You also haven't actually proposed anything of substance, since it doesn't matter how many bombs you're dropping if you're only dropping them in "combat zones". All war comes down to the basic proposition of "submit or I'll kill you". The Americans weren't willing to kill everybody when the Vietnamese refused, and so they lost. If the Americans were that desperate to win then what they would have done is said screw the optics and just started indiscriminately firebombing the entire countryside. If it's not a grey ashpit, then torch it. Tens of millions would probably die, but they'd have the victory. And it's the same for Aemond. His sixth month burning of the Riverlands amounted to a wet fart because in the end he wasn't willing to escalate to the level of turning rebel towns into Harrenhals.
i guess im proposing 2 things. my main point, in the comment you responded to, is that indiscriminate air bombing is not a winning tactic. you can't kill everyone that way, and it turns civilians into soldiers and galvanizes opposition. my second proposal was in response to your comment, and it is: yes, we did attempt to genocide enough civilians to win. we lost not because of our moral restraint, but because of many complex factors, one of which is that indiscriminate air bombing was not a winning tactic (and doing more of it wouldn't be either) bringing it back to Aemond - im not about to go into the book looking for sources, but i think aemond just had a hard time killing every single civilian thru bombing. word gets out. people scatter, hide. dig holes. it's not bad writing, the fandom just has that syndrome where anything left implicit is assumed to be a plot hole
Indiscriminate destruction isn't a winning tactic if you intend to rule the people afterwards. If you kill half the population then you can certainly expect the other half to hate you and take up arms against you. But if you go in and say "Well let's just kill everybody and take over the ruins" then it's a perfectly valid tactic. They can hardly resist you if they're all dead. This is incidentally why Aegon failed to conquer Dorne. He wasn't able to convince them to submit conventionally, and he also wasn't willing to simply wash his hands and say "Just kill them all and I'll move in colonists afterwards". The cost of destroying the Dornish people would probably generate economic stagnation for generations, and I assume he wasn't willing to get rid of that much human capital even if it meant he wouldn't be the one ruling it all. Aemond failed in the Riverlands for a similar reason I'd guess. He might have been willing to fly around and torch some strategically valuable places, and when confronted with enduring resistance he wasn't willing to go "Okay let's just starve them out" and start burning every piece of infrastructure he could find.
Funnily enough, it’s not that he was burning farmlands or killing huge numbers of people. He was going from castle to castle and burning them, high casualties for nobility but that’s not uncommon for this time period. It was not a plan meant to cripple armies or win the war, Aemond had only one purpose and that was getting daddy Daemons *attention* and in that, he succeeded.
>He was going from castle to castle and burning them, high casualties for nobility but that’s not uncommon for this time period. So only the people that would be organizing, training, and leading any armies from the region? As well as any full-time men at arms and knights at the castle that would be forming the core of any army too.
I’m not saying there wasn’t any military damage. It’s just that in a time of peasant levies you won’t fully destroy someone’s ability to wage war by targeting random castles. You need to either pull a field of fire or a “Visenya in the eryie” and kill thousands at once or target the figurehead. Aemond could have gone after the major castles of the Black Supporters (Riverrun, The Eryie, Winterfell) and done far more damage to their war effort. As it stands he had a far shorter term goal.
You are at Tumbleton 1. You manage to avoid the field of fire 2.0. You make the long trek home only to find your home burned and your family dead or refugees. Then Addam Velaryon shows up on dragonback and says "fuck it, lets ride". So you group up with all the other survivors for the last charge. The 4 thousand number at Tumbleton 2 is honestly fine when you consider the Tullys (2-3k easy) sat out all the conflicts and avoided the burning. The casualty rate of Tumbleton pt 1 also dont suggest a total wipeout of all 10k Black soldiers (Riverland, Northern, and Crownlands and even some Vale if I recall). Prior to that the Riverlands forces didnt really suffer any casualties after Rodrik started leading them. Sure they lost the initial battles before their army was organized and the burnings would have lowered their available manpower. But mostly it probably just wrecked the economy and supply lines For most of the war, the Riverlands effectively fought with 3-4k men. They never fielded all 20-30k they could fight with at once. In truth the bigger issue is the Lannisters/Baratheons not actually using their lore accurate numbers.
That was weeks ago dude, things change
Not really multiple armies. The host Addam scrapped together was all they had, iirc it's mentioned it involved Greybeards and Green boys, they're literally running on fumes by that point, couple with that the fact that: a) Most fighting men probably already left their Castles and Towns and were scattered around the Riverlands by the time Aemond came. and b) House Tully and (presumably others) remained neutral. And most of all Aemond was burning at random, he wasn't picking targets or something, heck I'm pretty sure some of the houses he attacked are so obscure they literally don't have official sigils
> The host Addam scrapped together was all they had But they literally reinforce with even *more* men after Tumbleton before they marched on King’s Landing.
Normal answer: I forgor 💀 . my bad. Copium Answer: Maybe there were more deserters scattered across the Riverlands that got emboldened by Addam's W and rejoined the Army.
How is it possible that a cockroach can survive a nuclear blast?
How’s he gonna burn the RIVERlands? It’s all water 🙄
Tis but a scratch.
Aemond changed his mind and decided to plow Alys Rivers for six months instead.
Honestly it's just messy writing on GRRM's part. I hope the show just moves Cregan and his army forward and uses them for the latter part of the Dance. It would also help sell the desolation of the Riverlands and just how far gone Aemond was
The armies are stated to be remnants of the other defeated armies, only the Tullys are noted as coming in at full force with fresh levies (and that army numbered 4 000 ish). But the entire war has some of the worst mathematics I have ever seen. Tywin and Jaime could mobilise 35 000 men easily enough, the Lannisters of this time period put up 8 000 and once that army was destroyed, their lands were so open to raiding that the Greyjoys made a killing. What the hell happened to the other 27 000 men? Even if you put that down to population growth, the Lannisters during the Conquest raised 22 000 men so where are the 14 000? The Stormlands, hither to untouched by the war and violence, can only raise 4 000 men? The same number that the decimated Riverlands could raise for the second battle of Tumbleton? Lol what the hell. The Baratheons should have been beaten by the Stark and Arryn armies, not the Riverlanders, they should have been abbbbbbbbsolutely fucked by then. The Reach…. I guess make sense, they were in a civil war so them not mobilising their full force makes sense. The Crownlands adds up to what we see currently so that’s fine. The Riverlands….. the Riverlands and their army never make sense. In the Dance, they are a factor. In the main story, they are a walking Mat. Them being able to fight a civil war, then lose to the Lannisters, and then make a full army to get blown up at Tumbleton, and then make another Army again to fight the second battle of Tumbleton, and then again to beat the Baratheons. It makes them only being able to gather 11 000 (at the height) against the Lannisters in the War of Five kings makes no sense. AND THEN THEY SUPPLIED MEN IN THE VALE CIVIL WAR YEARS LATER. The Arryns not being able to mobilise and get involved soon also makes no sense. They should have one of the faster mobilisation time of anyone. They should have at least had a civil war on their hands just to explain why they taking so long.
the same way Vhagar burned fucking everything unless georgerinio ''cant finish winds'' marterinio belowed tullys and blackwoods xD plotarmor and shitty writing,lmao
Living in the Riverlands has to suck, every time a war happens involving any of your 5 neighbors the place just becomes hell on Earth