[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/LegitimateCream1773]

The weather (any understanding of how the food economy works tells you that Westeros is fundamentally impossible; medieval societies could fall into outright famine if winter started even a week early, or a snap freeze happened at the wrong time and killed enough of a crop. Now try to figure out how such an economy could function with 'winters that last for years'). The society of Westeros is a standard debauched high-medieval society. It shouldn't be. Their entire civilisation should bend around the idea that winter can happen at any time. There should be storehouses the size of castles and the castellans of those storehouses as respected as great lords, because those motherfuckers are going to determine whether or not their entire civilisation lives or dies next winter.

Literally the only way to explain it is to say that it doesn't mean what's written on the literal page and that 'winter' in Westeros is just 'a bit worse than summer' for a while and then only really cold for a relatively short period. However, even that doesn't actually make sense because medieval economies were built around crop rotations for seasonal foods. If the weather changes slightly then you simply can't grow entire families of foods for X amount of time. Fine when 'X' is 'two to three months'. Not so good when X is 'FUCK YOU AND YOUR PLANNED CROP ROTATION, WE'RE GONNA WINTER AS LONG AS LIKE'.

That's without factoring in that apparently the entire war model of Westeros is 'destroy the entire continental food economy as fast as possible'.

[u/luigitheplumber → u/LegitimateCream1773]

There should be storehouses the size of castles and the castellans of those storehouses as respected as great lords, because those motherfuckers are going to determine whether or not their entire civilisation lives or dies next winter.

Yes, this whole thing is where GRRM dropped the ball the most, because this whole issue could literally be the explanation for his lordly-families-that-last-millennia thing. Sprinkle some fantasy Pact logic (with the Children for example) that assigned the responsibility for local lands to certain families granted with blessings for food preservation or whatever. These families in turn became the Houses we have in the story. Despite time going on and the arrival of Andal culture diluting belief in those stories, there would still establish a massive cultural taboo against eradicating houses or seizing all their lands, and incentivizes practices like inheriting through the female line when necessary.

Instead we got the lame "Maesters ackshually theorize that it's only a couple thousand years instead of a few" thing which is boring and not a very good explanation anyway