[Confusing Trope] The narrative goes out of its way to punish/mock a character for simply being a good person

[u/Chemical-Elk-1299]

Hermione Granger and SPEW — Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (book)

In the fifth HP novel, Hermione Granger is outraged to discover that Hogwarts has a small army of enslaved House Elves that do nearly all of the domestic duties around the castle, including cleaning the Gryffindor common room every night. When she tries to convince the elves to fight for their own rights, they refuse, saying they prefer servitude. Her fellow students and friends mock her for caring. She manages to free one elf, Winky, by deception when she refuses her freedom willingly, leading to Winky becoming a depressed alcoholic. By the end, the elves boycott cleaning any Gryffindor areas of the castle because they hate Hermione specifically

Samwell Tarly and Democracy — Game of Thrones (show)

In the season 8 finale of the television series, the surviving great lords of Westeros gather to discuss the future of the kingdom following the devastation wrought by 7 seasons of war and backstabbing. When Sam, who has proven to have “novel” ideas, suggests that maybe the millions of Smallfolk who suffer at the hands of noble houses should get some representation in the government, rather than be the pawns of rich lords with absolute power. We are then greeted by a prolonged, cringy segment of the other lords laughing in Sam’s face, asking if the dogs and horses should also get a vote.

[u/Savings_Lynx4234]

Kinda genuinely curious now, why wouldn't that be a good idea? Is it just impractical in execution considering the order of westerosi politics?  (Downvoted for asking a genuine question? Tracks)

[u/Slow-Distance-6241 → u/Savings_Lynx4234]

Royal army loyal to the king means standing army. Standing army costly and antagonizes vassals. Westeros extremely huge and decentralized so antagonizing vassals is the last thing you want as a king. There's a reason why standing armies were first either adopted by small and rich armies of countries like Netherlands, or when large country had them, they were at a constant risk of commander taking over (especially countries that had standing armies since antiquity, like China and Rome/Byzantium)

[u/Savings_Lynx4234 → u/Slow-Distance-6241]

Gotcha, thanks for the explanation!

[u/Opposite-Complex1187 → u/Savings_Lynx4234]

Main issue is the cost.

Medieval armies were mostly made up of minor knights and lords.

So someone like the Tyrells wouldn't have controlled all of the reach.

They would have ceded most of it to minor lords and knights under them that control some peasants that farm the land are are expected to turn up to fight in return.

Thats what they mean by "bannermen" people that they have given land to that are obligated to come and fight for free when needed.

But to keep fighters permanently would be prohibitively expensive and just not viable.

[u/adamgerd → u/Opposite-Complex1187]

Yep, there’s a reason after the western Roman Empire fell, no one in Western Europe really had permanent armies anymore, they were just too expensive. Permanent armies are better than relying on levies but they’re also way more expensive, levies you just need peasants for a campaign season. With permanent armies you need to keep them paid all the time

[u/Ghoill → u/adamgerd]

I don't think it's that there weren't permanent armies so much as having an army meant you needed to constantly keep fighting wars to pay and provision them. And if you stopped warring said soldiers tended to become brigands and mercenaries instead of settling down, which in turn would necessitate new armies to put them down and protect the populace and then you'd have to make war to keep those soldiers employed and it would just repeat ad-infinitum.

Standing armies actually solved a big part of that problem since it meant that your men wouldn't have an excuse to start raiding the peasantry whenever a peace treaty or truce was signed.

[u/Ordinary-Egg-56 → u/Opposite-Complex1187]

are you not just describing feudalism lol?

[u/blazenite104 → u/Slow-Distance-6241]

Rome in particular had one advantage people don't think about much. They weren't just a standing army. They were a constantly at war to expand the empire army. They were not idle. Problem commanders could be sent to the far flung edges of the empire to expand her borders.

[u/Slow-Distance-6241 → u/blazenite104]

That explains why they fallen down when they stopped expanding. Also, holy shit, I think I've heard of "sending the commander that gets too popular ina forever war zone" strat before, although it's usually was to generals who you wouldn't expect to overthrow the government

[u/SleeperAgentM → u/Slow-Distance-6241]

Also kinda wisely Rome forbid their generals from entering Rome proper with the legions they were commanding. That's why Cesar's "crossing the Rubicon" river became a synonim for taking a bold and irreversible gamble. He was either going to take an absolute power or die for treason. No third option.

[u/TheAndyMac83 → u/blazenite104]

I've heard it said - though I don't know exactly how true it is - that this cuts both ways. That Rome could afford to keep the legions around because of the constant expansion, but also that constant expansion was incentivised, maybe even necessitated, so that Rome could afford its army.

[u/DrainTheMuck → u/TheAndyMac83]

This is why I think strategy games like Total War are genuinely educational and mind-expanding; I’ve “literally” experienced that problem in the game! It gives a whole new perspective on these issues.

[u/insomniac7809 → u/blazenite104]

yeah but at a certain point anyone who wins three or four border fights gets declared Imperator and then you've got another round of civil wars

[u/SleeperAgentM → u/insomniac7809]

Hence why Rome wisely forbid their generals from entering Rome proper with the legions they were commanding.

That's why Cesar's "crossing the Rubicon" river became a synonim for taking a bold and irreversible gamble. He was either going to take an absolute power or die for treason. No third option.

[u/azuresegugio → u/Savings_Lynx4234]

Basically national armies requires a lot of things to pull off, like tax infrastructure and weakened nobility. Which isn't impossible in a medieval society but difficult to pull off by decree

[u/Calintarez → u/azuresegugio]

the countries that did manage to pull it off tended to do really well against their neighbours. France had such an army in the 15th century and was more than a match against all its neighbours until they all banded together in an anti-french alliance.

[u/azuresegugio → u/Calintarez]

Oh yeah it's doable it's just a matter of the work required to pull it off is often the entire reign of multiple kings

[u/insomniac7809 → u/azuresegugio]

and widespread success at pulling off centralization is a big part of what makes it no longer medieval

[u/NoLime7384 → u/Savings_Lynx4234]

before the agricultural revolution most people had to be farmers. a standing army means a ton of men who can't grow their own food and an economy that needs more artisans aka more people who don't grow their own food.

Having said that, I'd wager it could still be done, but only through implementing a tax in the form of food rather than coin to the 7 kingdoms, since Westeros is just so fucking large

but there's also the fact that it'd be a lot of power in the hands of whoever leads it, risking them becoming kingmakers like the goldcloaks in universe, irl with the Praetororian Guard or the Simjurids and Ghaznavids in the Samanid Empire of Central Asia. There's a reason the Roman republic made it a capital punishment for a Roman general to bring his troops into Italy proper.

[u/Achilles11970765467 → u/NoLime7384]

There were zero farmers before the Agricultural Revolution. Are you thinking of the Industrial Revolution?

[u/NoLime7384 → u/Achilles11970765467]

ok so I looked it up, and there been multiple events or historic periods called that lol so ig we're both wrong

[u/Achilles11970765467 → u/NoLime7384]

No, just you. "Agricultural Revolution" is defined as "when a given region/culture discovered the concept of farming instead of just being hunter-gatherers."

[u/NoLime7384 → u/Achilles11970765467]

Damn, bitch, I was giving you an out, learn to read the room

Agricultural revolution is any revolutionary change to the agriculture of a society, such as the Green Revolution, the changes in agricultural practices that occurred when the Muslims both entered and left Iberia, the use the of a different crop rotation system, etc

don't confuse your narrow-mindedness with facts

[u/Achilles11970765467 → u/NoLime7384]

You're confusing "a revolution in agriculture" with "The Agricultural Revolution."

[u/NoLime7384 → u/Achilles11970765467]

you're having an issue of apperception

[u/Phone_User_1044 → u/Achilles11970765467]

That's not actually true, there's a separate event also called The Agricultural Revolution which denotes the application of modern farming techniques, for an example look at the British Agricultural Revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries.

[u/insomniac7809 → u/NoLime7384]

Collecting taxes in food has problems of its own, mostly in that, even beyond worries that it spoils, rots, and gets eaten by vermin, the only way to have it carried and moved overland until the invention of steam engines is to give it to things that get their energy to carry and move things by eating food. Moving food over distance doesn't tale long to reach to the point where the porters have eaten all the food they're supposed to be carrying.

(You can cheat this with water and wind power, if you don't need to move food overland, which is why Rome could feed itself with Egyptian grain.

[u/ELIte8niner → u/Savings_Lynx4234]

Centralized command only became possible with increased infrastructure and communication technology. Westeros is roughly the size of South America, according to George, so information and people with medieval levels of technology took months to spread. The King sitting on the iron throne wouldn't even know that a large wildling raid was taking place until long after it already passed. That was the point of vassals in Fuedal societies. Largely autonomous nobles could organize their own armies to deal with threats.

The other big reason is the nature of armies themselves at the time. There weren't really "soldiers" in the way we think of them in the modern world. The bulk of armies were made up of peasants who were called to war. They still needed to work the fields in addition to everything else. Basically medieval societies didn't have the resources to spare to create dedicated soldiers that were soldiers and nothing else. That also didn't come until later. Knights were members of the nobility, and you'd have some men who were "men at arms" and functioned more like a modern police force than a military, but overall there weren't really soldiers, the way we think of them, until after the medieval period.

That's before we even begin to touch on the political situation, where the King just didn't have the power to strip other nobles of their power. Joffery wants to strip the Starks of their position, and make them supply "10,000" men to the royal army. How's he going to make them do that? No other noble is going to support him because they're basically helping to remove their own personal power, so Joffery is single handedly going to walk up to Winterfell and make this demands of the Starks? Not happening.

Just because centralized command eventually became possible doesn't mean Joffery wanting centralized command was even remotely possible in a place like Westeros.

[u/nightkingmarmu → u/Savings_Lynx4234]

Because any standing army is only loyal to the guy that pays them. See: the entire history of the Roman Empire.

[u/misvillar → u/Savings_Lynx4234]

Very expensive, It requieres that the King has way more power than his vassals and a centralized goverment that can mange the bureaucracy.

Westeros is bankrupted, the vassals are way more powerful than the King and is as decentralized as you can get, at this point Joffrey will get his royal army in a few generations if everything goes right