madeinmyr:
racefortheironthrone:
[snip]
More Darkness than Light
We’d like to thank Steven Atwell for his response, seeing as how he’s been doing this for years and we’ve only just started. We’ve been holding off on our reply until he finished the World of Ice and Fire book. Now that that’s done we can continue our discussion.
Our argument concerning the Iron Bank’s malevolence rests upon our understanding of conditions in Westeros prior to the credit crisis. We believe Steven’s notion of these conditions as of the end of A Dance with Dragons is far too conservative and that his idea of the Westerosi economy is too delineated and static. He describes the crisis as mere “hardship” for the smallfolk when it is actually an impending societal collapse. Economically he essentially posits the existence of two separate worlds: that of the artisans and merchants within the cities and that of the peasants who live and toil in the countryside. Debt and credit, according to Steven, play a crucial role in the economy of the former and make no real difference in that of the latter. The Iron Bank’s decision would thus only impact the population in the cities.
In our rather lengthy response we hope to show that the crisis is extremely severe, that the only way out of it was to use credit to purchase food from abroad, and that this could and would be done if not for the intrinsic malevolence of the Iron Bank.
General Rather than Localized Famine
No character provides a viewpoint of all of Westeros. Through various POV characters we see only the North, Far North, Crownlands, and Riverlands. In addition, much of what we encounter isn’t seen directly by the POV characters but told to them by spies, witnesses, informants, gossipers, seen in dreams or visions, and so forth. By design the local picture is always extremely vivid, the general picture quite uncertain. When it comes to the food situation we must extrapolate, within the bounds of common sense, general conditions from a mosaic of particular ones. What we see is that the food shortfalls caused by the war are not limited to any particular region; rather they are realm wide. We further see writ small the precise causes for this state of affairs. Winter granaries and food stores have been negatively impacted by following factors: outright destruction of stores and agricultural resources, utilization of stores to support armies in the field, disruption of harvests by prolonged military mobilization, and heavy rains/severe floods.
Most of the outright destruction takes place in the Riverlands. There is no need to recount the long list of burnings, massacres, sacks, despoliations, and sieges and their local results. We will merely point to the testimony of two Freys. The first, Ser Aenys Frey, on the condition of the lands surrounding Harrenhall, ground zero of the Lannister occupation:
“The country is ash, the villages given over to wolves, the harvest burnt or stolen. Autumn is on us, yet there is no food in store and none being planted” (CoK Arya X).
Second, Merrett Frey, who testifies to the dismal condition of the Riverlands overall:
“An early winter would mean famine all across the riverlands. A great many people would go hungry, and some of them would starve” (SoS Epilogue).
Westeros is an economically integrated continent and the Riverlands are at the center of a major transport hub. In Summer, Autumn, and Winter, surplus food can be transported by land and sea to the other kingdoms. Grain can be charted north or south along the Kings Road and west via the River Road or alternatively shipped via the Trident or the Gods Eye to the waiting merchant marine of the Narrow Sea. A starving and unsafe Riverlands can no longer export food and therefore can no longer assist other regions in supplementing any shortfalls. The devastation of the Riverlands would therefore dramatically reduce overall food security even if the rest of Westeros were completely untouched by war.
But outright destruction of croplands and food stores is not limited to the Riverlands. The Ironborn invasion and civil war causes some destruction in the North. The Hornwood estates are the sight of a nasty war between House Bolton and House Manderly. The fishing villages of the Stony Shore are put to the torch and the crops in Deepwood Motte were tramped in the process of taking the fort. Winterfell and its stores are laid to waste by Ramsay Snow. We don’t know how much damage was done the fields of Torren’s Square, but it could have been similar to Deepwood Motte as it was the sight of two battles.
The northern Crownlands also get their share of damage. Whilst on his way to reinforce the Lannister armies besieging Riverrun, Jaime encounters Ser Roger Hogg, whose lands have been ravaged by Ser Armory Lorch and a plague of wolves. The man asks for help and all Jaime can do is recommend he try for one last harvest, a slim hope that quickly proves futile and a further waste of grain. While questing through Duskendale, Brienne of Tarth finds the villages and fields around the port town to have been the sight of a great battle. This likely means many crops were trampled.
The Westerlands are not spared either and have to suffer a month’s long invasion by Robb Stark. The extent of the damage is unknown but Ser Wendel’s report gives us some idea:
[Ser Wendel] went on to tell how the remnants of Ser Stafford’s host had fallen back on Lannisport. Without siege engines there was no way to storm Casterly Rock, so the Young Wolf was paying the Lannisters back in kind for the devastation they’d inflicted on the riverlands. Lords Karstark and Glover were raiding along the coast, Lady Mormont had captured thousands of cattle and was driving them back toward Riverrun, while the Greatjon had seized the gold mines at Castamere, Nunn’s Deep, and the Pendric Hills. Ser Wendel laughed. “Nothing’s more like to bring a Lannister running than a threat to his gold.” (CoK Catelyn V)
From this it appears that the Young Wolf had the chance to inflict considerable damage on the lands North of Casterly Rock and happily did so. Payback in kind implies that the scenes of burned fields and orchards encountered in the Riverlands come to have counterparts in the Westerlands.
When Euron Greyjoy invades the Reach he wages a war much like the one Tywin wages in the Riverlands. When Sam passes through the Sound on the way to Oldtown he sees “Scorched fields and burned villages appeared on the banks, and the shallows and sandbars were strewn with shattered ships. Merchanters and fishing boats were the most common” (FfC Sam V) Similar scenes of destruction are no doubt increasingly common along the banks of the Mander, which the Ironborn have been “raiding up…in strength,” though just how far we do not know (FfC Cersei VIII). As this great river and its tributaries branch through the very heart of the Reach, the Ironborn could use it to do considerable damage to the Reach’s subsistence. As in the case of the Riverlands, this would mean that food that could have been exported by land and sea would instead remain at home.
The Stormlands have yet to become a serious battleground, but with the landing of the Golden Company the fighting will spread there too. There will likely be no small number of pitched battles, sacks, and atrocities as the Cloth Dragon makes war upon the Lions.
After damage directly inflicted by the rampaging armies comes the costs of putting them in the field and keeping them there. Whenever armies are on the move the local food supply is diminished by increased consumption and the back home food supply by decreased labor. Armies mobilized and on the move consume far more calories than stay at home peasants and demobilized soldiers. The food to support them comes from home stores and from local appropriation. These local appropriations, even when unaccompanied by deliberate destruction, can be very capricious, arbitrary, and cruel, taking far more then is actually necessary. In the North we get a clear look at one such incident of appropriation courtesy of Ramsay Snow:
The riders had been sixteen days on the hunt, with only hard bread and salt beef to eat, aside from the occasional stolen kid, so that night Lord Ramsay commanded that a feast be laid to celebrate his return to Barrow-ton. Their host, a grizzled one-armed petty lord by the name of Harwood Stout, knew better than to refuse him, though by now his larders must be well nigh exhausted. Reek had heard Stout’s servants muttering at how the Bastard and his men were eating through the winter stores. “He’ll bed Lord Eddard’s little girl, they say,” Stout’s cook complained when she did not know that Reek was listening, “but we’re the ones who’ll be fucked when the snows come, you mark my words.” (DwD Reek III)
We also see Asha Greyjoy cheerfully (and rather nihilistically) help herself to the Glover food stores in Deepwood Motte after getting drunk.
The impact of labor shortages can be just as bad. Every mobilized soldier is also one less man to bring in the autumn harvests necessary to top off the Winter stores. Labor shortages mean crops left to rot in the fields. The result of this will naturally be food shortfalls come Winter. We have one clear picture of this from the testimony of Alys Karstark:
“My father took so many of our men south with him that only the women and young boys were left to bring the harvest in. Them, and the men too old or crippled to go off to war. Crops withered in the fields or were pounded into the mud by autumn rains. And now the snows are come. This winter will be hard. Few of the old people will survive it, and many children will perish as well.” (DwD Jon X)
Although the Karhold would normally survive this, it will not have any extra food to spare for neighboring communities. Communities like the Karhold we would classify as stressed, hungry as opposed to famished. There would of course be communities that suffer labor shortfalls and appropriations without becoming famished or stressed, but they would have less food then they otherwise would to give out in charity or take to market.
The lords of the North, Westerlands, Reach, and Crownlands all mobilized and deployed as many men as they possibly could for one side or another in a war that has lasted at least a year. A simple account of these armies and their movements gives us an idea of the concurrent appropriations and labor shortages that resulted, which has likely added up to a very sizable decrease in the autumn harvests. In the North, a large host was sent down with Robb and those men who were left behind were promptly mobilized to fight the Ironborn or wage civil war. It was these wars and mobilizations that have taxed the Karhold harvests, among others (the Umbers complain about the detrimental impact of labor shortages to Robb’s regents). Deepwood Motte and Torren’s Square are forced to support Ironborn hosts. In the Westerlands the Lannister mobilize three armies over the course of the war, Jaime, Tywins, and Staffords. Renly’s hundred thousand host of Reacher and Stormlander men spent the first months of autumn marching up the Rose Road, stopping for many an elaborate feast, celebration, and tourney. They ate quite a lot as part of a deliberate political strategy to attract supporters and cow opposition with a massive show of Reacher wealth. Renly’s 20,000 horse also journeyed through the Stormlands to confront King Stannis. When King Stannis put down Renly’s usurpation he took possession of these 20,000 men. Then the royal army marched north through the Stormlands and southern Crownlands to conquer the rebel regime in Kings Landing. Presumably his army ate a lot as well. Then there was the Lannister-Tyrell host that combined and relieved Kings Landing. Fast marches and battles give armies an appetite and a lot of Stormlanders and Crownlanders are killed in this battle. After the Blackwater, many Stormlanders are pressed into the regime’s armies and fight off an invasion of Northmen outside Duskendale. Later the Stormlands have to suffer the support Mace Tyrell’s siege of Storms End and the Crownlands/Riverlands have to support Randle Tarly’s host encamped around Maidenpool. Some of Tywin’s former army is sent to impose order in the Riverlands, some to attack Dragonstone, and the rest are demobilized and sent home but arrive too late to plant and bring in another harvest. After Queen Cersei’s falls, both the Tyrell armies end up encamped around Kings Landing, further taxing the Crownlands. The Stormlands meanwhile are not relieved as they are promptly invaded by the Golden Company.
From the above one can reasonably conclude two things. First, that the granaries of the Crownlands, Stormlands, and Reach have suffered from having to support the passing of numerous armies, much as the Stouts have to support the Bastard’s Boys. Second, the harvests in the Crownlands, Stormlands, Westerlands, and Reach have all been lessened by the war mobilization in the very same way the Karstark harvests have.
The final factor is the absolutely atrocious autumn weather that accompanies the later war in the North and Riverlands and which combines with the labor shortages to wreck havoc on the crops. From Merrett Frey we know the rains and floods in the Riverlands played a part alongside fire and war in destroying two of their harvests and most of a third. In Deepwood , when the Ironborn plant another harvest to make up for the one they trampled the rains promptly arrive and flatten it. Alys Karstark informs Jon that much of the Karhold’s harvests were “pounded into the mud by autumn rains” (DwD Jon X). Ser Jaime informs us that the Riverlands, Westerlands, and Crownlands have similar climatic conditions. When he sees it snowing outside Darry, the Kingslayer thinks “If it was snowing here, it could well be snowing on Lannisport as well, and on King’s Landing” (FfC Jaime VII). The night of Ser Kevan’s assassination, it does indeed snow in Kings Landing. This indicates that the Westerland harvests might have had an overly wet autumn as well. If so the later Western harvests would have suffered the same dismal fate as the later Riverlander and Northern harvests (drowned in the fields by the rains). This is admittedly a big unknown.
Whenever a community with fertile and productive lands or good stores suffers destruction and loss this harms Westeros as a whole. Collective redundancy allows for significant risk reduction, with local surpluses in one part of the country helping insure against or alleviate local shortfalls in another part. If, say, the Stormlands suffers from some shortfalls in its autumn harvests or mistakes in its store calculations then it can import the necessary food by land and sea from more fortunate paramouncies. A whole region laid to waste and a general state of distress or bare necessity in the rest of the Kingdom thoroughly eliminates that redundancy. The food situation in Westeros tears the communities apart from each other. Every place is now on its own as the others can offer (or will offer) nothing.
What brings these extrapolations together is that well informed viewpoint characters explicitly highlight that there is indeed a realm wide subsistence crisis. Jaime Lannister believes the Southron Kingdoms as a whole are generally unprepared for the onset of Winter:
Snow in the riverlands. If it was snowing here, it could well be snowing on Lannisport as well, and on King’s Landing. Winter is marching south, and half our granaries are empty. Any crops still in the fields were doomed. There would be no more plantings, no more hopes of one last harvest. He found himself wondering what his father would do to feed the realm, before he remembered that Tywin Lannister was dead. (FfC Jaime VII)
Jaime’s off the cuff estimate that “half the granaries are empty” points to a rather huge shortfall in the harvests, as is his train of thought that something extraordinary will have to be done.
Magister Illyrio, who is well informed of Westerosi affairs curtsy of Varys, informs Tyrion that they are banking on a general famine that affects the entire country and brings widespread discontent to a boil:
“Are your Seven Kingdoms so different? There is no peace in Westeros, no justice, no faith … and soon enough, no food. When men are starving and sick of fear, they look for a savior.” (DwD Tyrion I)
Tyrion later echoes Jaime and Magister Illyrio with his play suggestion that the pretender Aegon immediately invade Westeros:
“If I were you? I would go west instead of east. Land in Dorne and raise my banners. The Seven Kingdoms will never be more ripe for conquest than they are right now. A boy king sits the Iron Throne. The north is in chaos, the riverlands a devastation, a rebel holds Storm’s End and Dragonstone. When winter comes, the realm will starve.” (DwD Tyrion VI)
Furthermore, all these assessments are made by men who have no knowledge of the Ironborn invasion of the Reach (which has either not happened yet or not reached them). So conditions are actually far worse then they realize.
The Refugee Crisis
One of the iconic features of the War of Five Kings has been the internal displacement of numerous common people. As the war has expanded into the Reach and the Stormlands we should look at what happened in the Riverlands as an indication of what the future likely holds. What is presently centered in the Riverlands will soon become a general state of affairs.
The refugee crisis is present from the outset of the war. When they leave Kings Landing Yoren’s band finds itself moving against an ever expanding tide of peasants fleeing war, forced labor, and indiscriminate sexual violence. This stream of refugees floods Kings Landing and makes the food situation there far more precarious then it would otherwise have been. It is these rural refugees that Littlefinger fleeces to pay for the city’s defenses. It is a mixture of deprived rural peasants and strained urban proletarians who repeatedly riot for bread. It is an artificially swollen urban population that the Tyrells win to their side with high profile charity after the Battle of the Blackwater.
During Queen Cersei’s Second Regency this displaced population is still present in the city (after all, what have they to return to?) and is further swelled by the Sparrow movement, which first topples the corrupt rule of the Most Devote, and then the Queen-Regent herself. The rise of the High Sparrow is not a purely urban event. Before becoming High Septon the High Sparrow was a traveling rural priest much like Septan Meribald, his core followers are rural refugees who have mobilized and taken up arms, and the martyrs bones they bring to Kings Landing and bury King Baelor’s statue in are those of slain rural priests. Their anger at the violations the Faith has undergone is not merely spiritual. The violence against the Septs in the Riverlands accompanied the destruction of their food stores and homes and would have completely destroyed the rudimentary social safety net which the humblest of the rural population absolutely depended upon (a class which has swelled in the wake of the war). The Sparrow coup against the old Faith hierarchy is essentially an attempt by desperate, immiserated, and hungry rural people to secure protection and sustenance for themselves. In this they are somewhat successful. One of the first things the High Sparrow does is liquidate the Faith’s movable wealth in order to feed the very poor who propelled him into power:
“By rights you should have met me on the steps in your finest robes, with the crystal crown upon your head.”
“We have no crown, Your Grace.”
[Cersei’s] frown deepened. “My lord father gave your predecessor a crown of rare beauty, wrought in crystal and spun gold.”
“And for that gift we honor him in our prayers,” the High Septon said, “but the poor need food in their bellies more than we need gold and crystal on our head. That crown has been sold. So have the others in our vaults, and all our rings, and our robes of cloth-of-gold and cloth-of-silver. Wool will keep a man as warm. That is why the Seven gave us sheep.” (FfC Cersei VI)
The second thing the High Sparrow does is secure a royal decree legalizing his up to now unofficial Sparrow army, allowing the sparrows to protect themselves and the Faith (along with their newly won gains). Religious and material motivations come together perfectly. The third thing the High Septon does is cement his own personal power. In arresting Lady Margaery, the High Sparrow is striking at a rival for the hearts and minds of the swollen urban population, whose political sentiments are increasingly important as the institutional power and authority of the state comes crashing down (in part owing to its own actions, it part to the actions of the High Sparrow).
In Kings Landing there is no clean separation between the world of the countryside and the world of the city. Through the refugee the violence and privation of the former repeatedly invades and suffuses the latter. The reverse could easily happen. If a city were to be completely deprived of food or is sacked then frightened and deprived urban refugees would flood out and further upset the countryside. This has yet to happen, but it very well might. Obara Sand and Euron Greyjoy have both shown interest in sacking Oldtown…
The refugees who do not make it out of the Riverlands transform the war there. The desperate flood of displaced peasants is one of the things that transforms the Brotherhood Without Banners from a quirky fellowship of “Kings Men” into a serious social movement bent on protecting the peasantry and, then, into an army of nightmarish, vengeance driven partisans.
“There was some wanted to yield then, but Lord Beric wouldn’t hear of it. We were still king’s men, he said, and these were the king’s people the lions were savaging. If we could not fight for Robert, we would fight for them, until every man of us was dead. And so we did, but as we fought something queer happened. For every man we lost, two showed up to take his place. A few were knights or squires, of gentle birth, but most were common men fieldhands and fiddlers and innkeeps, servants and shoemakers, even two septons. Men of all sorts, and women too, children, dogs…” (SoS Arya III)
A few knights and squires, field hands, inn keepers and inn dwellers, rural craftsmen, servants, and priests – exactly the sort of people who were fleeing the violence of the Lannisters, Bloody Mummers, Boltons, Karstarks, and various broken men. On the whole these are also the same sorts of people who later become Sparrows. Lest not forget, there are “true knights” among the Sparrow movement just as there are among the Brotherhood. Both movements have violently turned against the existing social system and the culture of the upper class. In the Brotherhood this is expressed in the worship of R’hllor whilst among the Sparrows it manifests in a fundamentalist interpretation of the dominant faith. They even possess food politics in common, with the Brotherhood fighting appropriations by marauding armies and providing relief effort. It is also worth remembering that Riverrun, which the Brotherhood might have plans to take (given the presence of Tom of Sevenstrings), has a significant store of food. When the Blackfish prepared Riverun for siege he devastated the countryside and amassed a store capable of supporting his garrison for two years. Now this store won’t last nearly that long feeding a host of smallfolk, but it’s better than nothing.
When the fighting dies down in the Riverlands, peasant refugees come out of hiding to overflow whatever relatively “safe” places remain. One of these places is the Inn of the Crossroads, which becomes a hangout for countless war orphans, some of who are touting crossbows:
[Willow] whistled, and more children appeared as if by magic; ragged boys with unshorn locks crept from under the porch, and furtive girls appeared in the windows overlooking the yard. Some clutched crossbows, wound and loaded.
“They could call it Crossbow Inn,” Ser Hyle suggested.
Orphan Inn would be more apt, thought Brienne. (FfC Brienne VII)
***
“’Tis that,” Hunt agreed, “but who is to say that they were the first to die here… or that they’ll be the last.”
“Are you afraid of a few children?”
“Four would be a few. Ten would be a surfeit. This is a cacophony. Children should be wrapped in swaddling clothes and hung upon the wall until the girls grow breasts and the boys are old enough to shave.”
“I feel sorry for them. All of them have lost their mothers and fathers. Some have seen them slain.” (FfC Brianne VII)
It would actually be very sensible to be afraid of these children, for much the same reason Brianne feels sorry for them. They are desensitized with nothing to lose. Later Brianne discovers that Willow, the girl who leads the orphans, is an ally of the Brotherhood and rather blasé about hanging her guests.
Another safe refugee becomes the reconstructed Castle Darry, which is shortly swamped by Sparrows and Frays after Lord (soon to be ex-lord) Lancel takes up residence:
Men were eating in the yard as well. The sparrows had gathered round a dozen cookfires to warm their hands against the chill of dusk and watch fat sausages spit and sizzle above the flames. There had to be a hundred of them. Useless mouths. Jaime wondered how many sausages his cousin had laid by and how he intended to feed the sparrows once they were gone. They will be eating rats by winter, unless they can get a harvest in. This late in autumn, the chances of another harvest were not good. (FfC Jaime IV)
Both the Crossroads Inn and Castle Darry do not have the stores to support these people.
What makes these refugees so frightening is the absolute moral collapse they have undergone in the face of worsening hardships, atrocities, and reprisals. In its quest to get at one its enemies the Brotherhood gleefully throws the sacred laws of hospitality out the window (with big hints that this is not the first time it has done this):
“Bread and salt,” Brienne gasped. “The inn… Septon Meribald fed the children… we broke bread with your sister…”
“Guest right don’t mean so much as it used to,” said the girl. “Not since m’lady come back from the wedding. Some o’ them swinging down by the river figured they was guests too.”
“We figured different,” said the Hound. “They wanted beds. We gave ’em trees.”
“We got more trees, though,” put in another shadow, one-eyed beneath a rusty pothelm. “We always got more trees.” (FfC Brienne VIII)
***
“My lady,” Thoros said, “I do not doubt that kindness and mercy and forgiveness can still be found somewhere in these Seven Kingdoms, but do not look for them here. This is a cave, not a temple. When men must live like rats in the dark beneath the earth, they soon run out of pity, as they do of milk and honey.” (FfC Brienne VIII)
If the Brotherhood is increasingly contemptuous of mercy and sacred law, the Sparrows are violently hostile to all forms of secular authority (that this is for a very good reason makes it no less menacing):
“Do you know who I am?” [Jaime asked]
“Some lord,” said the big man with the starry eye.
“Some cripple,” said the small one with the big beard.
“The Kingslayer,” said the woman, “but we’re no kings, just Poor Fellows, and you can’t go in unless his lordship says you can.” She hefted a spiked club, and the small man raised an axe. (FfC Jaime IV)
There is good reason to expect that worse is yet to come when the little food remaining in the devastated parts of the Riverlands runs out completely. These people will not wait around to die. They are camped alongside good roads over which thousands of their fellows have already fled. They will move. The swords and torches of the marauders have cut and burned away every tie holding them to their homes. War, moral collapse, and scarcity have desensitized them to violence, diminished their compassion, and destroyed all respect for lordly authority. Infighting and invasions will draw away the regime soldiers who might otherwise check their activities, while local leaders will look to their own power struggles and best advantage. And these desperate people, the Brotherhood in its caves, the orphans at the Crossbow Inn, the Sparrows at Darry, they are all armed.
The Situation at the Wall
Lord Commander Jon Snow is confronted with a subsistence and refugee crisis not dissimilar from those in the South. There are of course significant differences in detail. The refugees are fleeing an army of undead and elemental horrors rather than purely human marauders and they are free folk rather than smallfolk (which is to say, none of them are subjects of the King and have never known any law but brute force). Yet the situation is fundamentally identical to what is happening in the South. The Watch has to bear the various appropriations of an on the move royal army whose demands cannot be refused (and which promises to return as a permanent, occupying force). Then they have to deal with a large group of desperate, warlike, and heavily armed refugees, the Wildlings. Most of the Wildlings desire safety and food, but there are also many who desire to use their defacto armies for revenge and personal power. Although their first attack on the Wall fails they are still out there, just out of sight, and cannot be ignored. The Chief Stewart points out that the ongoing war means that the Watch cannot depend on food shipments from more prosperous regions to support them as has happened in the past: “In winters past, food could be brought up the kingsroad from the south, but with the war …” (DwD Jon IV). So the Wall is on its own.
The Lord Commander and the King reject leaving the Wildlings to die and allow conditional immigration. For Jon at least it is a purely moral decision (Stannis is more ambiguous), but there are plenty of pragmatic reasons to let them in. Reconcilable Wildlings who remain outside the Watch and King’s protection will only return as enemies (either as desperate invaders or as undead wights) while those who sincerely give allegiance bolster the forces of the Watch and King. Food is central to keeping control of them. Adequate rations keep the Wildlings pacified (though not remotely content) in Mole Town, while better rations convince many to fight for the Watch, there hereto hereditary enemy. But the Watch does not have enough food in its stores and freezers to support itself, the King’s army, and the Wildlings for very long. Without food everyone will starve, the Watch will likely mutiny (as it did at Craster’s Keep), and the Wildlings will rebel. When discussing their insufficient stores with the Lord Commander, the Chief Stewart bemoans the Watch’s lack of coin, which prevents them from purchasing food through Eastwatch:
“If we had sufficient coin, we could buy food from the south and bring it in by ship,” the Lord Steward said.
We could, thought Jon, if we had the gold, and someone willing to sell us food. Both of those were lacking. Our best hope may be the Eyrie. The Vale of Arryn was famously fertile and had gone untouched during the fighting. (DwD Jon IV)
The Lord Commander does further thinking on this issue and decides it would be wise to create additional infrastructure in the form of greenhouses that would make the Watch as self sufficient as Winterfell:
Glass, Jon mused, might be of use here. Castle Black needs its own glass gardens, like the ones at Winterfell. We could grow vegetables even in the deep of winter. The best glass came from Myr, but a good clear pane was worth its weight in spice, and green and yellow glass would not work as well. What we need is gold. With enough coin, we could buy ’prentice glass-blowers and glaziers in Myr, bring them north, offer them their freedom for teaching their art to some of our recruits. That would be the way to go about it. If we had the gold. Which we do not. (DwD Jon VII)
However, in both cases the Watch simply does not have coin to pay for these imports, nor does it have excess movable property that can be bartered or turned into coin. Jon decides a loan is the only way out and has the fortune of being the gatekeeper to King Stannis when an envoy from the Iron Bank comes a calling with very urgent business that he simply must discuss with the King himself. The Lord Commander is able to use his favorable position to extract a fairly decent, open ended loan in exchange for his assistance. This loan promises to provide the Watch with all the coin it will need:
Braavosi coin would allow the Night’s Watch to buy food from the south when their own stores ran short, food enough to see them through the winter, however long it might prove to be. A long hard winter will leave the Watch so deep in debt that we will never climb out, Jon reminded himself, but when the choice is debt or death, best borrow. (DwD Jon IX)
With this loan Jon plans to secure food from wherever it can be bought:
“Through Eastwatch. We will bring in food by ship, as much as might be required. From the riverlands and the stormlands and the Vale of Arryn, from Dorne and the Reach, across the narrow sea from the Free Cities.” (DwD Jon XI)
Jon is being over optimistic here. The only places where food can still be imported from are the Vale of Arryn (by Gulltown) and the Free Cities. Every other region is (or will soon be) too war torn and wanting or will soon be that way. It’s the Vale and the Free Cities or nothing, which means a premium will be paid for their meat, grain, and fruit, but it’s better than nothing. With what he believes to be a secure food supply, Jon Snow can let Tormund’s Wildlings through the Wall and provide limited assistance to the neighboring Karhold by offering to take their old folks off their hands.
A Viable and Necessary Response
Now we believe that Jon Snow’s solution to the Night Watch’s crisis provides a model, the only model, for how Southern communities could deal with theirs. If anything this solution is even more suited to the rest of Westeros. The Wall is on the economic margins of the world system so credit is naturally very difficult for them to acquire. They really luck out when the Iron Bank’s envoy passes through and can be blackmailed (so the misfortune of Westeros is to the advantage of the Watch as it brings the Iron Bank to them hat in hand). In contrast, loans and credit are a regular part of Southron aristocratic life. One finds faint traces of its presence all around. The Lannisters are big on loaning out money and the Tyrells are apparently involved in it as well. There are moneychangers and moneylenders in Oldtown, Gulltown, and Kings Landing. Across the Narrow Sea one encounters a host of moneylenders, merchant bankers, speculators, and large banking establishments who are all heavily involved in Westeros. The greatest of these are indisputably Braavosi. The best evidence of the Braavosi reach is Genna Lannister’s remark that “the Braavosi [are] calling in loans all over Westeros” (FfC Jaime V). Calling in loans all over Westeros, this is not simply something that is happening in Kings Landing but across the entire continent, in the cities and the countryside.
There are two notable examples of rural highborn families taking on loans from Narrow Sea financers. Jorah Mormont went heavily into debt to the Braavosi in order to try and please Lynesse Hightower:
“Bear Island is rich in bears and trees, and poor in aught else. I built a fine ship for her and we sailed to Lannisport and Oldtown for festivals and fairs, and once even to Braavos, where I borrowed heavily from the money-lenders.” (CoK Dany I)
Next are the Waynwoods, who were in debt to various unnamed creditors (could be anyone from Gulltown merchants to Braavosi moneylenders) before said debt was bought up by Littlefinger, who then cheerfully confides to Sansa:
"The Waynwoods are very old and very proud, but not as rich as one might think, as I discovered when I began buying up their debt." (FfC Alayne II)
The Waynwood and Mormont debts are very similar to King Roberts (or Marie Antoinette’s). These are loans taken so that the families in question can engage in greater conspicuous consumption then they otherwise would be able to. Mormont wants to please his wife while the main branch of the Waynwoods wants to maintain their status. These loans are fundamentally short sighted as they do not actually solve the underlying shortfalls in income and so will only make things tighter in the future, but this is not uncommon behavior (Mormont tried to make ends meet by gambling at tourneys but only dug himself deeper and its probable the Waynwoods always intended to sell the hand of Harry the Heir, just not to Littlefinger). In both cases the amount of money borrowed is fairly significant. House Mormont essentially goes bankrupt while House Waynwood’s debts are so large that they can be used to blackmail them into very significant political concessions.
Now, money that is borrowed and wasted is money that could be borrowed and used productively or humanely. What if instead of using the money to attend fairs and tourneys and hire servants Lord Jorah had instead filled his ship with grain and limes and taken it home to Bear Island to supplement his Winter stores? So the option of taking out loans to buy food in order to refurbish and supplement depleted stores was always there. If it could be done and is the only thing that can be done it would be done. After all, with Westeros on the verge of a Winter famine, what would the ordinary lords and merchants be taking out loans or using their spare coin for? More tournaments and Myrish lace? Necessities have to come before luxuries. Keeping one’s workforce alive and preventing social upheaval (and all the risks that come with that) are clear necessities. Food shortages mean there will be a big rise in the prices of agricultural commodities which means there is potentially big money in acquiring surplus grain stores. Lords and merchants would take out loans to buy grain, fodder, cattle, and limes for their own consumption, investment in the future, and speculatively for resale. That is what all free capital would logically be going towards if the Iron Bank had not called in all its loans and engineered a credit freeze.
Why the Only Door is Closed
When the Iron Bank reacts to Cersei’s default everything Jon Snow did at the Wall becomes impossible for the rest of Westeros. Coin that goes to paying off debt is coin that cannot be used for famine relief. Credit that is unavailable is credit that cannot be used for famine relief. In demanding debt repayment and freezing general credit the Iron Bank is actively making the Westerosi famines and shortfalls worse and closing the one door that could prevent the refugee crisis from spiraling out of control. In weighing their moral culpability it is important to realize just how powerful the bank is and why it reacts the way it does.
The Iron Bank is not a normal bank by anyone’s standards. Every Free City has an established bank, some have more than one, but the Iron Bank is larger than all the other FC banks combined. The Iron Bank therefore has the capital of more than 13 to 15 major banks. So when you think of the Iron Bank you should think at least 51% of all Narrow Sea banking capital (probably more). This would allow them to wield a great deal of power over the rest of the Narrow Sea’s financial system and commercial institutions (say one of their customers is another bank, a merchant house that loans money, or a small time moneylender, the Iron Bank would have considerable pull with them which they could be utilize in, say, squeezing Westerosi debtors in order to squeeze the Iron Throne). It also means their money would be directly involved a lot of everyday commerce.
Then there is the power of the Iron Bank’s reputation. The Iron Bank obviously makes a practice of taking on loans that lesser banks would consider too risky. Its combination of abundant capital and fearsome recovery practices means the Iron Bank can bear any setback that would bankrupt lesser institutions and take very severe measures to recover its money. No moneylender in their right mind would lend money to the Iron Throne or a Westerosi lord with the Iron Bank going after them (if they’re defaulting on the Iron Bank then they certainly aren’t paying back the Lace Bank of Myr or whatever it’s called – and any country that has displeased the bank is in for quite a bit of turmoil that makes loaning money there a bad idea).
It is important to realize that the Iron Bank is not faced with an all or nothing choice. When Noho Dimittis comes before the Iron Throne the Queen-Regent says to him “The Iron Bank will have its gold when this rebellion has been put down” (FfC Cersei V). Queen Cersei’s default is not a cancelation of the Iron Throne’s debt or an attempt to change the interest rate. Rather, she has decided there will be a change in the date and rate of repayment. Now, there are quite a few of things about Cersei’s decision and behavior that would justifiably infuriate the Iron Bank (we have an article planned that will look at those), but given that Westeros is beset with civil war and economic difficulties a renegotiation of this sort is not in itself outrageous. Given how thoroughly and maliciously Littlefinger cooked the books it is probably only way the Crown could actually repay its debts without its creditors taking a haircut (although no one is aware of this at the present time). The Iron Bank would still be getting all the money it is owed, not a cent less, so the Iron Throne’s debt to the Iron Bank is still an asset. If the bank were to adjust its balances to take into account the slower rate of repayment the impact on its books would be relatively mild. So the Iron Bank always had the choice of compromising with Queen Cersei. Noho Dimittis could have used the seventh meeting with Lord Gyles to hammer out a new agreement, as the Queen-Regent demanded. Alternatively, they might have refused to compromise but reacted in a much less severe way. Instead the Iron Bank launches an economic war against all of Westeros. They choose the course of action that will result of maximum suffering because this is what they always do.
When the symbolism of iron has been mentioned in the story it has been associated with violence (pay the Iron Price) and inflexibility (brittle iron will break before it bends) and danger (sitting on the Iron Throne). The Iron Bank is all three. The essential character of the Iron Bank is that it is inflexibly violent and dangerous when it comes to collecting its debts. The Iron Bank does not react to Cersei’s default from financial necessity but from political necessity. The Iron Bank does not bend. The Iron Bank has won its position as the world’s largest bank from a combination of well planned investments and very violent tactics. If ordinary debtors do not repay on the terms the Iron Bank demands then the bank comes after them (legally or otherwise). If rulers do not repay then the Iron Bank sends armies and assassins and makes new rulers who will pay back the debts and the costs of their installation (with interest). The Iron Bank’s unofficial motto, “the Iron Bank will have its due,” essentially says to its investors and depositors “your money is safe here and will earn a good return, we guarantee it.” Without this duel guarantee the bank would never have become so large and powerful. It has to maintain its fearsome reputation for collecting debts because these are the practices that has made it the institution that it is today. What has earned the bank its power requires this power to be used in ways that are potentially very destructive. When we say the Iron Bank is evil we mean it in the sense that it behaves in a manner that is immoral, harmful and outright calamitous to the people of Westeros because this behavior is fundamental to its business model. This is a deeply malevolent institution. It is also the most powerful institution in Braavos, one that has played a leading role in the city’s economic rise, so its malevolence is clearly sanctioned and supported by the city’s ruling class and to the benefit of its commerce. Therefore the bank’s modus operandi does in fact reflect very darkly upon Braavosi, as darkly as slavery does in the other Free Cities. With both slavery and the Iron Bank there is predation by powerful urban elites upon the peripheral peoples of the world. And if the Iron Bank is successful in Westeros it will become larger still…
* There are refugees in the North as well, people from Winterfell, the Stoney Shore, and the Hornwood lands. King Stannis encounters them hiding in the Wolfswood and Davos sees them crowding a Sept at White Harbor. One might also consider the Freys to be refugees or close enough, as they expect Lord Walter to die soon and to be rendered homeless or worse in the resulting power struggle and so are trying to find a safe berth for themselves and their families while they still can.