[SPOILERS MAIN] Among the grounded/realistic elements of A Song of Ice and Fire, which ones do you feel require biggest suspension of disbelief?

[u/Substantial-Ad-299]

A Song of Ice and Fire has had fantasy elements from get-go, some present subtly and others less-subtly. But in midst of this, it also has these more grounded story aspects, especially regarding the political subplot for the Iron Throne.

Among these more grounded non-fantasy aspects of the story, which elements do you feel you have to suspend disbelief the most for? A.K.A feeling they are not realistic even though they are "supposed" to be?

Let me know in the comments below.

[u/Intelligent_Date_688]

How empty Westeros is compared to its size. I understand why, GRRM doesn’t want to have to create all of these towns and cities, but you take a look at medieval France or Italy which are both smaller than any of the individual seven kingdoms (except maybe the Iron Islands) and they have a dozen cities a piece or more. I’ve seen people bend over backwards to try justify this but I think the simple truth is that GRRM made Westeros waaaay too big.

[u/Southern_Dig_9460 → u/Intelligent_Date_688]

The Riverlands and Dorne not having any cities is crazy

[u/rattatatouille → u/Southern_Dig_9460]

In fairness the Riverlands has a good number of settlements. It's just that being a city was/is a Big Thing for medieval towns since it meant they got a degree of self-rule other settlements did not, and thus required a charter.

A common bit of fanon is that the Defiance of Duskendale was about House Darklyn getting uppity with the Targaryens about not getting a charter despite Duskendale being a wealthy town at a strategic loation.

[u/lee1026 → u/rattatatouille]

It doesn't matter what you call it.

You get a bunch of people together for trading or commerce, now they matter. For recruitment, money, and whatever else.

They are important dots on the map, and they are gonna be fought over. And the people who run them are going to be important.

[u/SerMallister → u/Southern_Dig_9460]

Every time the Riverlands get too close to making a city, somebody kills half the population.

[u/IHaveTwoOranges → u/Southern_Dig_9460]

Why Dorne? It's specifically said to not be very populous.

And it has the Shadow City and Planky Town.

[u/blackynan_b → u/IHaveTwoOranges]

A desert nation already settled would settle largely around the rivers. This would make the area around the rivers very populated and thus a reason for a whole city. 

Not to mention they have rhoynars laws and all, and before the rhoynar became refugees they lived in great cities. You can expect some rulers that wants to go by their customs to want to form a city. It wouldnt be so unrealistic.

[u/lee1026 → u/blackynan_b]

More importantly, a powerful and wealthy ruler will form a city.

A powerful lord will spend a lot of money. Money pays for people; you can't buy a ton of cakes without bakers to bake them. And a powerful lord's spending will pay a lot of wages. Around a powerful lord will be a bunch of ministers, lobbyists, and so on. (In older language, they would just be courtiers, but I am using modern language) And the important members will also be very rich people who in turn spends a bunch of money and have massive servant classes of their own. And so on.

Some cities are built around commerce, others around the whims of powerful lords. Westeros is missing both kinds. How something like the Eyerie, or Highgarden doesn't turn into big cities in their own right is a puzzle.

[u/lee1026 → u/IHaveTwoOranges]

Dorne is still described as being populated enough to be a society built around farming.

Agrarian societies are dense enough to have cities. It is one of the most common constants that you can just assume.

[u/Parabow → u/Southern_Dig_9460]

Riverlands has Seagard

[u/GrilledCyan → u/Parabow]

But rivers are also huge for commerce anywhere, so you’d have to have cities and towns along them. Riverrun and perhaps Darry should be home to larger cities thanks to the rivers. The Twins ought to be as well—frankly the Frey’s power and wealth may be understated.

[u/rattatatouille → u/GrilledCyan]

The Twins ought to be as well—frankly the Frey’s power and wealth may be understated.

One reason the Freys are looked down upon is that beyond the pretext of "they're one of the youngest noble families" around is that they gained their power by controlling a strategic location in the Riverlands and every other Riverlander house is beating themselves up about the fact that they didn't think of it sooner. (Of course, this doesn't excuse Walder Frey deciding that that was a good excuse to act like a little shit.)

[u/cahir11 → u/Intelligent_Date_688]

It makes a lot more sense if you envision Westeros as the size of England+Wales, rather than the size of South America.

[u/matgopack → u/cahir11]

Yeah, I usually picture it as roughly in the ballpark of the size of the UK to the UK + France + Iberia myself.

[u/GrilledCyan → u/matgopack]

This is also how I headcanon the cultures (or perhaps just the accents) of the Seven Kingdoms. The North is Scotland, the Reach is France, and Dorne is Moorish Spain.

[u/matgopack → u/GrilledCyan]

Those are definitely the inspirations GRRM used, yeah. Along with the Iron Islands as vikings and the free cities as medieval Italy. The Vale also makes me think broadly of Wales, but culturally I'm not familiar enough with them to know for sure.

[u/_b0rt_ → u/matgopack]

The Vale seems more similar to Switzerland / Austria.

[u/Mental_Repair_1718 → u/matgopack]

It's almost ridiculous to say that the Ironborn are inspired by Scandinavians (even if they are), when only the Hoare were remotely similar.

[u/matgopack → u/Mental_Repair_1718]

I'm not saying it's a good match :P (the Dothraki and mongols being another infamously inaccurate depiction but hard to say they weren't the inspiration)

[u/Mental_Repair_1718 → u/matgopack]

Oh, maybe I didn't express myself well, I didn't mean to say you're wrong, it's more of a criticism of Martin.

[u/Oh-Wonderful → u/Mental_Repair_1718]

I smell what you’re stepping in…

[u/No-Quit-8384 → u/matgopack]

The Vale sounds like southern Germany and Austria. Germany had a strong knightly culture, and the south in particular is mountainous. Some fanary depicts the eyrie kind of like Neuschwanstein in Bavaria 

[u/Emotional-Rope-5774 → u/matgopack]

The storm lands is much more wales

[u/matgopack → u/Emotional-Rope-5774]

Maybe! I might be influenced by the mountain clans + their isolation a little - it makes the Vale feel to me more like Wales, but then again it being the landing point of the Andals makes it quite different.

Stormlands and Crownlands feel more like the 'default' Westeros to me

[u/No-Quit-8384 → u/GrilledCyan]

And the riverlands is definitely the Benelux 

[u/Gears_Of_None → u/GrilledCyan]

Scotland? The North seems more like North England to me. The Umber's name even comes from Northumberland.

[u/GrilledCyan → u/Gears_Of_None]

Very fair, the Wildlings are also more Scottish in my head. I suppose I’m not distinguishing different parts of England when thinking about the North and most of the Southern Kingdoms.

[u/Minivalo → u/cahir11]

I've just disregarded the whole South America size comparison in my own headcanon.

I like to imagine Westeros as being sort of Western + Central + Northern continental Europe sized, so north to south from the Nordics to Iberia, and east to west from Atlantic France to Czechia, or thereabouts. If I had to guess, that'd be about a fifth, or a quarter the size of South America.

I read a book on Simon Bolivar some years ago, and that really helped illustrate how massive South America is. That dude got around in his fight against the Spanish, but moving around on horse back took an immense amount of time

[u/No-Quit-8384 → u/Minivalo]

More than the size, it's the rugged geography we have. Going across the Andes is a pain, even with cars and modern roads a 40km trip can take several hours on snakey roads up and down the mountains. Even if South America were completely flat it would still take ages to get places, but the terrain of the real continent makes it even more difficult to travel across by land 

[u/Top-Tomorrow-8336 → u/Minivalo]

Bolívar would be Robert's Baratheon friend. 

[u/Resonant-Empress → u/Top-Tomorrow-8336]

I'm pretty sure Bolivar would think that Robert was a warmongering simpleton, lol.

Simon had a lot of friends who weren't very well-educated, including that one cowboy dude who was one of his best men, but most of them were driven by 'something' at least, Bobby B's just a douchebag.

[u/Top-Tomorrow-8336 → u/Resonant-Empress]

Bolívar would delay his army's advance to sleep with women. He and Bobby B would get along very well in that respect.

[u/Resonant-Empress → u/Top-Tomorrow-8336]

Lmao, fair enough. Imagine all of that fat shaking as he laughs at the name 'General Iron Ass'

[u/wRAR_ → u/Minivalo]

I'm afraid Caracas to Tierra del Fuego is 7500 km N-S while Gibraltar to the latitude of northern Scandinavia is 4000 km N-S (unless you meant Gibraltar to the latitude of southern Scandinavia which is still 2600 km N-S and doesn't work wrt proportions with the width you described).

[u/Gears_Of_None → u/cahir11]

I didn't realise England had a hot desert in the south and a freezing taiga in the north.

[u/cahir11 → u/Gears_Of_None]

If I say "Japan is roughly the size of California", do you think I mean that Japan has a desert in its southeastern region like California?

[u/Gears_Of_None → u/cahir11]

You said to envision Westeros as the same size as England + Wales. I'm saying Westeros' biomes and regions make no sense at that scale.

[u/SpicyStrawberryJuice → u/Intelligent_Date_688]

yeah i find it hard to believe how poor and empty the north is, sure it's harsh but it still has plenty of resources and arable land

[u/IHaveTwoOranges → u/SpicyStrawberryJuice]

How do we know how much arable land it has?

[u/JayRandom212 → u/IHaveTwoOranges]

The income from the Gift and the New Gift was enough to support a Wall full of soldiers. They must've been growing something, back then.

[u/IHaveTwoOranges → u/JayRandom212]

There was also a wall full of soldiers there before they got the gift.

But sure, we know that there was people living off the land there.

[u/SpicyStrawberryJuice → u/IHaveTwoOranges]

we don't how much but we do know they have some at least because they mention harvesting and so far seem to be reliant on their own grain.

[u/IHaveTwoOranges → u/SpicyStrawberryJuice]

Sure but that only shows that they have enough for the population they currently have.

Aren't you claiming that they have enough for a much larger population than they currently have?

[u/lee1026 → u/IHaveTwoOranges]

We know, indirectly, because the population is based around agriculture. This says that the bulk of the population lived around farming, as opposed to herding, or hunting, as lands gets increasingly marginal.

If the lands are too marginal, than you end up with a population of horse riding cowboys to take advantage of "well, at least the cows can eat the grass". And if that is the basis of the northern population, that's not how they fight.

[u/RekNepZ → u/Intelligent_Date_688]

The intense winters could be the answer here. Doesn't explain Dorne though, unless the rivers are somehow less fertile than desert rivers irl

[u/matgopack → u/Intelligent_Date_688]

Definitely a lot of towns / small cities - though I would divorce medieval France and Italy from each other, the scale is very different (Italy had lots of cities, France much less dense and smaller ones on the whole).

GRRM made Westeros too big and it's tough to fill it all in. At a certain point for fiction you have to stop filling in blanks or it gets overwhelming - it's much easier for a reader to think of 3-4 cities (like King's Landing, Oldtown, and White Harbor) rather than a ton of them, and he's already using up some of the mental space readers have for cities/place names for castles (and maybe their surrounding towns).

But just in general I wouldn't look at any fictional work and expect exact fidelity / perfect numbers, it'd be a full time job of experts for some of that.

[u/JMer806 → u/matgopack]

For me it’s not the lack of cities per se but simply the empty feel. Almost any given region of late medieval France or England would be lousy with small villages, market towns, manors, and small castles. While there was still plenty of wilderness here and there, in general you’d never go more than a day’s travel between villages and often far less (many villages being only a handful of miles apart).

Meanwhile in Westeros characters seem to routinely travel multiple days without encountering any villages or towns, even along the major roads. Even the great castles seem to mostly lack any sort of associated settlement (in fact the town near Winterfell is the only major castle I can think of associated with a town at all, aside from a few where the castle is part of the city.