Why during the Starks rein is the Wall so poorly manned and poorly maintained? Why are the Starks content with a recruitment policy that uses “dregs from the cells” and a few traitorous or semi-retired knights?

I’ll take this further. As well as the Starks failing to man the Wall, or supporting it, bar lending a Benjen and a Bastard, they were equally culpable on every other border. We don’t see much of White Harbour (I’ve only read until Book III, pt 2 – perhaps FFC goes there?) but nowhere is it suggested that the Northern coastal towns were well defended, and the lack of a navy to defend the northern coastline was made explicit around the time of Theon’s Landing.

So that’s three of four sides poorly defended. Well at least they would have control of the Neck, at least, or have their most loyal lords there? That would be sensible, you would think. Nope – the Freys don’t seem very trustworthy ever, and we know how that goes later on. The marshmen are pals, but seem to be easily by-passable. For sure the Tullys at Riverrun are allies, but Riverrun seems to be a very defensible fort in itself but not positioned well to block the Neck and difficult to send forces out from it.

So, of course, the Starks would man and support Moat Cailin, correct? Just out of a sense of tradition of the Starks “protecting the North”. Nope, deserted, and easily occupied and defended by dudes in ships who rebelled recently, and had reason to hate the Starks. Bizarre. We never get the impression that the North wants for fighting men or martial spirit in the early books, so why these ridiculous oversights? It undermines Martin’s assertion of tough, hard northerners.

As with any other reader, I read the books hoping for good things to happen to the Starks – they never do. But perhaps they deserve all they get. On my first ever read through, I stopped reading and threw the book across the room in disgust when Robb gets Frey-ed. But this time around I’m less Stark-tolerant.

You shouldn’t be too hard on Ned Re: The Wall.

The thing is, the North is poor. When the Starks go to war, they’re hard pressed to field twenty thousand soldiers, and that’s after taking men away from farming their fields.

Ned does recognise the usefulness of the Wall, he doesn’t believe that it protects against The Others, but he does believe that it stops the Wildlings from razing the North. That’s why he’s willing to call the banners and fight Mance Rayder. But, so long as the Wildlings don’t come in force against the Wall, there’s no real impetus for him to send men to the Wall, and, there’s a real incentive for him not to, since it would take away useful farmhands.

The southron kingdoms view the Wall as a place exclusively for outcasts and criminals. The North and the few southron houses closely associated with the North seems to have that view along with the view that it can be a noble and honorable calling. We have Benjen Stark, Jeor Mormont, and Waymar Royce as examples of that. Granted Mormont and Royce (perhaps Stark too, though we don’t know enough about that) had reasons in addition to it being an honorable path but I’m willing to bet that a Florent faced with similar circumstances wouldn’t choose that path.

a Thief is probably just about as good, a trained tracker of men. The wall takes outcasts, plain and simple. The fact that Starks see the wall as an honorable place for Benjen is a big abberation.

Crap.. I’m going to have to go read that part again.

*spoilers*

Yeah, when Arya spies on Varys and Illyrio plotting down in the basement, Varys complains that he needs more little birds, and they mention how hard it is to train them to write at that age.

There’s also Varys’s short speech about his backstory, and his absolute hatred of magic, which Tyrion thought seemed honest, and certainly seemed sincere.

I think the interesting thing about Tyrion is that as objective an observer as he is about most things, when he DOES have bias, he gets it BAD. Especially in his relations with his dad and his little girlfriend later on.

Oh yes, but he’s in King’s Landing begging for men from the dungeons and other criminals.

I’m just saying that Ned doesn’t seem to be really pushing to send honorable, trained knights to the wall.

Maybe I’m remembering wrong, but isn’t Yoren sent to King’s Landing to get recruits and is helped by Ned? I’m pretty sure that’s how Yoren was able to recognize Arya and save her towards the end of the novel…

Thanks!

Ya know I just re-read the passage where Dany first sees the Unsullied in the third novel, and yea Varys doesn’t fit that description at all but there is a passage where the slaver mentions that unsullied have been known to “forget what they are” blah bitty blah. i know its really out there and probably untrue but i have a need to connect events in Westeros with events in Essos.

And.. I’d always just imagined the Others as the same as the wights, they just have blue eyes and dissolve when you stab ’em with dragon glass.

Also, people who are killed by Others get brought back as wights– but people who are killed by wights stay dead, so it’s not the contagious kind of zombie.

1. Glad to see you joining this series! I’ve been really enjoying your Dune reread.

2. Can’t imagine Varys being an Unsullied. He clearly has mummer skills, and I don’t think there’s much performing arts training going on in Slaver Bay. And he’s not described as looking like he was ever particularly buff. And Unsullied aren’t just raised to be “dedicated”, they’re raised to blindly follow orders, pretty much the opposite of Varys.

3. Wights vs. Others: basically zombies vs. witchy demony zombie-makers.

Others are the dudes Waymar Royce tried to have a swordfight with in the prologue. From that brief description and Sam’s encounter with them later, they seem to look sort of like goth elves, not really anything you’d mistake for a human being, with armor and weapons made out of unearthly materials. If you kill them, they dissolve into nothing. They’re intelligent, they talk, they have a Plan.

Wights are dead people/animals that the Others have brought back to life. They just look like corpses with black hands. You can only kill them by chopping them or burning them. They don’t talk, they don’t do anything except try to kill you with their bare hands.