what do you think are the reasons that the seven kingdoms never centralized? do you think that maesters were in any way responsible?
No, I don’t think the maesters were responsible, nor do I think it was anything sinister. The reason Westeros never became a single entity is much more simplistic…logistics.
Moving around takes time, and a central authority needs to project a certain amount of power to be considered a central authority. Laws need to be set and enforced for a citizenry to have faith in a central authority, and regulations need to be disseminated and enforced from the central capital (where they are enacted) to the distant provinces where they still hold effect. When travel time is limited by animal power or river power, eventually something is going to be too large to govern effectively. Taxes will be difficult to collect, authority will be difficult to enforce, corruption will run rampant with little oversight, all these things lead to the decline of large kingdoms and empires.
In that sense, once Aegon’s dragons were gone, the Seven Kingdoms lost their ability to project authority (and overwhelming force) and thus, the central authority of the Throne became crippled. Couple that with weak leaders like Aerys I and leaders perceived to be threatening, like Aegon V, and separatism starts to breed.
Westeros could possibly be unified in the age of the telegraph, and almost assuredly could be centralized in the era of the railroad, but the medieval era means the kingdoms are just too big. Westeros is bigger than Rome was at it’s heyday by an order of magnitude, and that means a decentralized authority is a necessity, and in an era where politics is so wrapped up in the individual as it is in feudalism, the king simply can’t be everywhere at once. Now, Westeros does have a lot of things going for it. A common language, for one, and a (mostly) common religion go a long way in creating smooth social interactions between kingdoms, but ultimately, Westeros is just too vast a place.
Thanks for the question, Anon.
SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King
