One criticism I recently received was that Aurion is a bit too moral about slavery considering he is from Valyria where slavery was very normalized, and while I can brush away this specific concern by just citing how there is a sizable chunk of the populace that is against eating meat today (something far more normalized in society), it did make me reconsider what I was doing in my fic. Valyria was comically evil. Honestly, almost all of Essos is comically evil. This is a pretty big problem with GRRM's relatively shallow worldbuilding in the east imo, but it's the world I'm working with.
So... Aurion frees the slaves, but honestly, I did not delve too deep into it. I didn't want to get bogged down and repeat Dany's plot in this cause of emancipation when I have other things I want him to get bogged down in already. But realistically, Volantis is almost as bad as Slaver's Bay in canon and he would get bogged down and I admit I do brush over it a bit too much.
Full disclosure- I am completely opposed to slavery in all forms. I don't think this needs to be said, but just in case. But Aurion grew up in Valyria, where slavery was as normalized as can be.
HISTORY PORTION:
In the days of the Roman Empire, there was never an abolitionist movement because slavery was so ingrained in the economy. The institution of slavery was so ubiquitous that it was essentially unquestioned. As an example, neither of the two famous Roman authors who had been slaves themselves - the playwright Terrence and the philosopher Epictetus- ever issued condemnations of slavery. There was a well-developed discourse on the morality of different ways of treating slaves — polite society disapproved of the legally-allowable extremes of violence and ill-treatment — but that didn't extend to the idea of abolishing the institution of slavery.
Even the most far-reaching attack on the institution of slavery, the revolt of Spartacus, did not advocate the abolition of slavery itself. The slaves in Spartacus's army wanted freedom for themselves and other slaves, but they never questioned the legitimacy of slavery as an idea and a state of being that could exist in other contexts outside their own circumstances. Abolitionism as we think of it today does not seem to have existed in the ancient Mediterranean world.
The first Roman to advocate for the end of slavery was probably the 4th-century Christian bishop St. John Chrysostom. He articulated the theory that humans that slavery was at best a necessary evil and at worst a sin. However Chrysostom did not advocate for political change; like earlier Romans addressing slavery, he saw individual behavior and not the institution itself as the problem. His departure from traditional Roman moralism, though, was to say that the moral problems of slavery were so vexing that the institution itself should be voluntarily abandoned. As a churchman speaking to his congregants, he was interested in encouraging them to personal virtue — not so much in changing existing laws.
Even this mild view remained pretty far out of the mainstream. Under Antoninus Pius, a slave could claim his freedom if treated cruelly, and a master who killed his slave without just cause could go on trial for homicide. Christian influence was eventually felt in the 5th and 6th centuries with progressive limitations on the power of masters — Under Nero, slaves gained the right to complain against their masters in court. After the fifth century, the Christian emperors progressively limited the rights of slave owners over slaves, particularly their use for forced sex, which up until that time was entirely routine. They also abolished the right of masters to kill altogether. However they never seriously considered abolishing the institution as such.
Roman slavery never needed to be abolished because it naturally faded away. Over the course of Rome's latter years, the dominant slave system of the late Republic and early Empire became increasingly irrelevant and incompatible with the changing economic realities. As foreign invaders disturbed the peace of the Roman trade economy, markets contracted and commercial volume decreased. It became less viable to deal in massive quantities of cash crops as demand fell and investments became riskier, and new slaves stopped coming in.
As we can see just from Dany's chapters, abolishing slavery is a lot harder than just coming in and saying they're free, and she eventually makes compromises to the point where people are allowed to sell themselves back into slavery (and have to due to the economic crisis brought about). Abolishing slavery would be a whole story in itself, and I do want to move forward with the plot.
As someone explained to me, 90% of all the main characters in ASOIAF are already part of a parasitic class that partakes in and exacerbates a grossly unfair system that treats the majority of human beings as commodities at best instead of people with real dignity and agency. Feudalism is not to be equivocated with slavery, in most respects, but it does show that readers can get behind characters — even if they do live and profit indirectly from reprehensible formations of society.
So before I made any major edits to this fic, I wanted to ask you guys. At the end of the day, this fic is not about exploring the societal impact of slavery and its abolition, and the lack of focus on it could be seen as trivializing a very real, complex issue.
1. Should I retroactively remove Aurion's slave emancipation, restricting the granted freedoms only to the houses he purged (such as Vhassar), and eventually creating laws such as those by later Roman Emperors to ensure better treatment for slaves (it would not take long for me to edit this). This would make the most sense for Aurion's backstory, even if he does have a moral opposition to the brutal treatment of slaves.
2. Should I preserve the emancipation, but have him go more purge-happy on the aristocracy than he already is? This could explain his lack of resistance compared to Dany. However, it would lead to far more chaos and I would need to explain how he has these educated court officials who can do things competently despite not being from the original slaving aristocracy. This would probably take a bit longer to edit than 1, but not too long. It would require a bit more explanation for why he would be willing to go so far and cripple his administrative capabilities for emancipation, however.
3. Should I continue the current, less ruthless emancipation I currently have. This would require a bit of mental gymnastics, but it could be explained by the nobles being sufficiently cowed by Aegarax and the fanaticism from the many followers of R'hllor. I will certainly make this come up again later though
