…What was discussed between Aegon the Conqueror and Torrhen Stark atop the Wall will likely never be known. What is known is that after the king returned to the capital he immediately secluded himself with his sister-wives for a day before emerging. While Visenya left for Dragonstone and then vanished northward, not seen for a month, Aegon proclaimed that the Citadel would be unable to produce enough maesters to fulfil the needs of his kingdom, and that each kingdom was required to establish their own center of learning.
This, obviously, angered both the Citadel and the Reach, though when they protested Aegon pointed out that many keeps, and not small ones, did not have a maester and hadn't seen one in decades, and that many of the larger settlements needed more than one to deal with the sheer work generated, yet only had one very overworked maester.
Most of the Lords Paramount's efforts in following this directed were half-hearted at best, the colleges established clearly inferior to the Citadel, with the exception of Winterfell University which made a credible, though doomed, attempt to achieve parity…
-Founding of the United Kingdoms of Westeros, 0-10AC, by Maester Stockland, written 109AC
"Let the Maesters cling to their laurels and entitlement. They have little else. When was the last time a Maester invented something that measurably improved people's lives? We do that regularly here."
-Nory Liddle, Fifth headmaster of Winterfell University.
Be careful in Dorne, a dragon will fall if you are reckless. Nothing is invulnerable.
-Raven from Torrhen to Aegon shortly before the ill-fated attempted conquest of Dorne resulting in the death of Meraxes and Rhaenys.
"The Starks did warn me, but I was expecting treachery towards us riders, not that Meraxes would fall in battle."
Aegon to Visenya after Rhaenys' death.
…Torrhen Stark decided to abdicate his position as Head of House Stark and Warden of the North in 20AC in favor of his son and heir Brandon. His reasons for this were to ensure a smooth transfer of power and more time to transcribe Idgra's divinely-granted knowledge, though he later admitted that not wanting to deal with the chronic headaches involved in ruling the North played a part. While he did function as an advisor to Brandon, more of his time and effort was spent in ensuring the Winterfell University was properly established...
…In 34AC, Torrhen's health started to deteriorate, and crashed in late 35AC. He died on the third day of the second moon of 36AC, his family in attendance, and was mourned across the North, then Crown Prince Aenys attending his funeral to pay his respects on behalf of House Targaryen as Aegon was in too poor of health to attend himself.
After his death Idgra slowly wasted away despite the North's best efforts, something that was sadly expected and predicted by Torrhen before his death, dying a bit over a year later. The pair are entombed side by side in Winterfell's crypts.
Thus ended the life of Torrhen Stark, Blessed of the Old Gods, The King who Knelt, Last King of Winter.
-Biography of Torrhen Stark by Master Historian Torrhen Whitesmith, 102AC
…Given the legends around the Starks of old, no one was particularly surprised when Torrhen's children bonded with the pups Idgra whelped and revealed themselves to be wargs, though it wasn't until the First Expedition brought back wargs that they could actually begin their training in earnest.
This resulted in problems with the southern kingdoms. In 12 AC Ronnel Arryn accused his wife, Serena Stark, of devilry and witchcraft and attempted to have her killed. This failed due to Serena somehow knowing his intentions – some say she received a warning from her father who had a greendream, had a greendream herself, or was warned by a loyal servant – and escaped the Eyrie on the back of her direwolf Astral Lights, disappearing into the mountains.
While Serena and her direwolf would eventually be safely returned to the North with her marriage annulled thanks to the direct – and furious – intervention of Aegon the Conqueror, relations between the North and the rest of Westeros became noticeably strained, especially with the highly pious Reach.
It was due to this, and other exploits by the Starks, that the then Lord Karstark decided to wed his second son to a spearwife warg he had inadvertently "stolen" on the Third Expedition and was smitten with, banking on the close bloodline ties the Karstarks had with the Starks. His gamble paid off when she bore two wargs and a greenseer.
By 40AC, being a warg changed from something to be persecuted for to being highly coveted by the North's nobility, who were eager to add the ability to their bloodlines, and didn't particularly care if the warg was of smallfolk or Wildling descent.
A conservative faction, led by the Boltons, loudly railed against this "dirtying of noble blood", but were largely ignored by those not sworn to them, and as their liege lords were wargs themselves they couldn't protesttooloudly.
By 80AC, there were enough nascent wargs that Winterfell University opened dedicated classes to train wargs in their powers, under the instruction of aging Elder Singer Vine…
-Wargs of the North, by Historian Brendan Snow, 203AC
…Wargs are another superstition of the North and are as real as grumpkins, snarks, giants, and Children of the Forest, which is to say not at all. These supposed "wargs" are merely men capable of training their animals very well…
-Superstitions of the North, Maester Mallister, 111AC
…The 6AC reformation of the Night's Watch was one of its most significant, as for the first time it allowed Black Brothers to retire. Black Brothers still forsake any and all prior allegiances upon taking the Black and that isnotreversed upon retiring, instead after twenty years of service a volunteer may choose to retire to settle a small farmstead in the Gift, and later the New Gift, or receive a small amount of coin to set up a trade in the same.
Noticeably, this is not offered to those sent to the Wall in lieu of execution for capital crimes, such as rape, murder, banditry, etcetera. However, those sent to the Wall for political reasons are in a purposefully vague area, as they generally don't fall under either criminal or volunteer and no category is established for them, meaning in practice it's often the Lord Commander who gets to decide where they fall on an individual basis.
The objective of the reformation was to halt the slow but steady decline of the Night's Watch by both attracting more volunteers and improving the order's economic health by increasing the prosperity of the Gift. In this, it succeeded, as at the time this is written over half the castles are manned and the remainder can be brought to full readiness in under a year should it be needed, and the Gift, while not the most prosperous region in the North, is still considered to be a peer to the like of The Barrowlands, Deepwood Motte, or the Dreadfort.
The Night's Watch Rebellion in 50AC that led to the death of Lord Walton Stark resulted in further reforms in regards to how political dissidents were integrated into the Watch…
-The Shield that Guards the Ream of Men, by Eddard Woodstark, Historian and retired First Ranger, 231AC
…Durning the reign of Aenys I the North sent a volunteer force to assist in putting down the rebellion in the Riverlands that arose after the death of the Conqueror, though no assistance was given to the Vale, the North having neither forgotten nor forgiven Ronnel Arryn for his treatment of their once-princess Serena Stark.
Despite Maegor initially being skeptical of the force due to it mostly consisting of aging veterans and whitebeards when he visited it before going to deal with the situation in the Vale, undoubtedly men who would have "gone hunting" during the winter, he was extremely pleased by the Northmen's performance and counted the force among his most elite formations, much to the ire of the Faith Militant as the Northerners cheerfully distained the Seven and loudly proclaimed their faith in the Old Gods…
…Maegor's first act when he returned to the Seven Kingdoms was to send a letter to the Starks requesting another volunteer force to help deal with the Faith Militant. This resulted in a much larger volunteer force coming south compared to the last one, surprising many. When asked, Gallart Glover, uncle to the then Lord Glover, who led the force, said
"We were told we could crack Andal skulls and be thanked for the privilege. Why wouldn't we come?"
As those who worshiped the Seven often were reluctant to engage the Faith Militant, the Northerners became Maegor's preferred option to break the order wherever he became aware of them, turning a blind eye to how the Old Gods worshipers left many septs in ruins, further straining relations between the North and the other kingdoms.
This meant the Northerners also had a front row seat to Maegor's increasing madness as they spent the rest of his rule in the south, hunting the Faith Militant…
-The Southern Expeditions, Historian Joer Ravenshield
…In 48AC Aegon's Contingency, the method Aegon the Conqueror left to remove an unworthy king peacefully, was invoked for the first time. The only reason it took so long was that the lords didn't know how Maegor would react, and no one wanted to risk facing Balerion.
The four Lord Paramounts of the south called for the Contingency to be invoked simultaneously, which instantly destroyed Maegor's legitimacy as that was the number needed to remove a king from the throne – Aegon had planned for Dorne to bring the number of Lord Paramounts to seven when he set it up – even as Jaehaerys put forward his candidacy.
As expected, Maegor was furious, raging through the Red Keep, before grabbing Blackfyre and flying to Winterfell, which was not expected.
The Northmen like to claim that Lord Walton Stark, who ascended when his father Brandon retired in 40AC, would have joined the other Lords in denouncing Maegor had he known the Contingency was being invoked, but considering how the North had been Maegor's staunchest supporters that reeks of revisionist history.
Regardless, upon arriving at Winterfell Maegor, Lord Stark, and a supposed greenseer sequestered themselves in the godswood for a full day.
What transpired there is not known, even in the North, but the next day a subdued Maegor left for Skagos, where he spent a week before returning south.
He then spent two months rampaging through Westeros, destroying every trace of the Faith Militant with dragonfire, allowing Jaehaerys to seize the reins of power mostly uncontested, but when Jaehaerys went to seize the Iron Throne Maegor returned and challenged him to a duel, man to man, no dragons involved. The new king accepted, and slew Maegor the Cruel after a short yet vicious fight, cementing his rule with a storied triumph of Good over Evil.
-Maegor's Reign and Fall, Maester Cressard, 77AC
"Maegor let me kill him. He declined all offers of armor or even a shield, determined to face me in nothing but his riding leathers while I was in full plate. At the end, he knew what had to happen for the good of the realm, and made certain it would come to pass."
-King Jaehaerys I Targaryen to Alysanne Targaryen.
…The relation between the North and the Iron Throne during the reign of Jaehaerys was defined by two events. The first was the Night's Watch Rebellion, where Jaehaerys exiled so many supporters of the Faith Militant and Maegor that they raised their banners in revolt, resulting in the death of Lord Walton Stark.
Aleric Stark blamed the king for sending so many men to the Wall that the Night's Watch's loyal men couldn't keep them under control, even with the 6AC reforms increasing the Watch's numbers of volunteers.
The second was the forced donation of the New Gift to the Watch. Under pressure from the Southern lords who still held a grudge from when the North answered Maegor's call for men, even though Maegor was the undisputed King at the time and the order was lawful, and reactionary alarm to the North reaching equal prosperity to the Stormlands and looking to surpass them, King Jaehaerys forced the New Gift to be given to the Night's Watch, Lord Aleric Stark vehement protests falling on deaf ears.
The first event left the North angry at the Iron Throne's negligence. The second left them feeling betrayed.
Towards the end of his life Jaehaerys would privately admit that the New Gift was one of the biggest mistakes he made in his reign.
The king realized the problem he had caused when many Northern traders decided that they would rather trade with the Free Cities rather than the rest of Westeros, even with lower profits and higher risks. Contrary to popular folklore most merchants didn't do this, it wasn't even half, but when over a third of a kingdom's trade abruptly stopped doing business with the rest of Westeros it sent shockwaves through the kingdoms' economies.
This unrest combined with the fear that the North would cut off trade entirely – many debate how likely that would happen, but none can dispute there was a real fear of it at the time – gave Jaehaerys the political capital and leeway with the southern lords to try and make amends to the North, ignoring the calls from his less intelligent lords to simply force the North to trade with the other kingdoms. He managed to appease the North with tax breaks, a lessening of tariffs on trade between the North and the other kingdoms, and financing the Eighth, and final, Expedition beyond the Wall.
But the North never forgot the slight. Half a century after Torrhen Stark bent the knee, the honeymoon between the North and the Iron Throne was over.
For the rest of King Jaehaerys' reign, and that of Viserys', the North largely kept to itself, as it had before the Conquest, having little political impact or influence on the rest of Westeros. That changed in the last stages of the Dance…
-The North and the Iron Throne, by Historian Gerrart Forrester, 256AC
For the first half-century after the founding of Winterfell University the gods-given knowledge from Idgra largely remained unsolved as the University was set up. True, Torrhen Stark implemented many of the policies the Gods showed him, such as crop rotation, replacing trees that were cut down to prevent deforestation, ringing new farms with trees to prevent wind from blowing away topsoil, etcetera.
But the world changing parts of Idgra's knowledge, the inventions… almost no work had been done on them by the time Jaehaerys took the throne. The reason it took so long was that the Citadel absolutely refused to provide any assistance with establishing the University, not even sending a single book. To be fair, the Citadel refused to help establish any of the centers of learning Aegon the Conqueror ordered established, but it meant the North had to build things from scratch, and that took time.
There were some early successes though. Concrete, for instance, was discovered in 19AC, though mass production wasn't set up until 31AC. The printing press was another, Torrhen Stark himself having been the driving force behind that one, invented in 9AC though only a handful of presses were built – mainly due to a lack of demand for books that wouldn't significantly change until after the Dance of Dragons.
Quite a few prototypes were made during this time, but most fell by the wayside due to issues in design, construction, and/or excessive cost, save for a small handful that fulfilled niche roles. If looked at as proofs of concepts then they could be considered successes, but it was generally agreed that the underlying sciences and manufacturing infrastructure needed to be developed before the designs could be made viable.
The first hints of the coming renaissance appeared in the eighth decade, when several innovations combined with newly developed infrastructure to revolutionize shipbuilding…
-A History of Innovation, Historian Jerrard Wull, 201AC
…In 82AC the North revolutionized naval warfare when the first galleon,White Harbor's Wrath, hit the water from its slipway. At 152ft at the waterline, and with a beam of 33ft, it was half again larger than the largest ship in either Westeros' or Braavos' navies… and there were another five ships of equal size under construction in White Harbor and another three laid down at the still newly founded Dragon Harbor on the west coast.
The size alone would have been shock enough, but it was the other inventions that caused the true revolution, mainly the compact ballistae in a battery deck and full-rigged sail plan the galleons mounted. Compared to previous ballistae designs the compact ballistae featured a bow made of a special spring steel alloy and dual cams, allowing it to be significantly smaller horizontally than non-compact ballistae while matching them in power and range. The main trade off was in cost, complexity, and increased maintenance.
There had been attempts to mount artillery on ships before, but other than scorpions, which were more anti-personnel than anti-ship, no previous attempts were successful. The inaccuracy of catapults meant that they were never truly considered, while the size of ballistae meant that only the largest of war galleys (which were less than half the size of the average galleon) could take them, and even then only one or two situated in the fore and/or aft castles. That much weight high up in the ship caused stability and seakeeping problems however, and thus were extremely unpopular among captains and ship designers.
So the knowledge that theWrath-class galleon carriedtwentyballistae (eight on the broadside, two pointing fore/aft) with another twenty scorpions on the main deck and upperworks was terrifying. As was proven during the Dance of Dragons, your average war galley could take between seven and ten hits from a ballistae before being left combat ineffective, while a longship, being much more lightly built, could only take two or three hits, and would likely founder afterwards.
In comparison, southern-built galleons (once they built them) could take several dozen hits from ballistae and northern-built ones, with their thicker hulls and stronger frames, could take significantly more.
The galleon wasn't a perfect ship however. It was a bit too large for oars to be effective, which made docking at piers a long, stressful, and somewhat dangerous affair, even after major ports built deepwater docks to service them. They were also expensive to build and run, not ruinously so, but enough that between the cost and difficulty in operating them the North never had more than twenty galleons at any one time, and other navies had similar numbers.
As such production shifted to producing light galleons, or started with light galleons for everyone other than the North, which were galleon-style ships of less than 100ft in length at the waterline and six-and-ten ballistae or fewer. The North'sWolf-class, while not the first light galleon to hit the water, quickly became the standard everyone compared to. At 82ft in length, 21 ft in width, twelve compact ballistae (five a side, plus one fore and aft) and eight scorpions (four on the one-deck high forecastle and aftcastle), its signature feature was that the battery deck was also the main deck through the midships section, and that the broadside ballistae were offset to allow sufficient room to maneuver around them. Light galleons, while also being cheaper and easier to run than full galleons, were also small enough that they could reasonably row themselves into port and dock at piers, which resulted in many living a double life as merchantmen while the galleons became the symbol of the military fleets….
…There has long been a persistent rumor in the North that the reason the southern kingdoms didn't produce a full galleon until 102AC, the same year the North's prestige ship, the grand galleonPride of the North,was launched, was because they couldn't see how superior galleons were over the ships that came before them (reasons why vary depending on the telling).
This is patently untrue.
The southerners and Free cities instantly recognized that the galleon represented a paradigm shift the moment they saw it, and would have immediately started construction of their own had they been able.
But they were not able.
Even if one ignores that they had to invent their own versions of the compact ballistae, which are, to this day, inferior to the North's versions due to the North's consistent lead in metallurgy, the largest slipways and drydocks, owned by the Redwynes, could only accommodate vessels up to 127ft in length and 30 ft in width, and there were only three of such slipways and docks.
They also knew that they could not wait until they could produce galleons of their own, indeed it wouldn't be until 94AC that the southern kingdoms could begin to produce light galleons, four years after the North, and their first attempts had such significant problems in construction and performance that they didn't shift to sole production until 100AC.
Enter the galleyass as an interim solution. Built as an oversized war galley with four (non-compact) ballistae mounted along the centerline between the mast and fore/aft castles on mounts that allowed them to fire over either broadside, the southern kingdoms and Free Cities began to produce them in mass as while they couldn't stand up to a galleon, or a light galleon, in a one-on-one fight, it was still heavily armed enough to pose a threat to the new warships. Their shallower draft also meant they could go places galleons couldn't, and is the reason Braavos still produces galleyasses given the shallow waters of and around their lagoon…
…As with many naval matters, the introduction of prestige ships, ships that are much larger and more powerful than their contemporaries to demonstrate their builder's industrial and technological might, is the fault of the North.
The grand galleonPride of the Northwas, and remains to this day, the largest and most powerful ship ever built, 300ft at the waterline, a 59ft beam, two battery decks with two-and-thirty compact ballistae a side (six-and-ten per deck), thirty scorpions, and a thick hull that is impervious to ballistae shots at long range.
The other kingdoms tried to build similar or even larger prestige ships, but without Idgra's insights none lasted longer than twenty years before they worked themselves apart and had to be scrapped. Even with Idgra's insights thePridehas to be drydocked every few decades for repairs. There is universal consensus that the North's flagship is at the absolute limit as to how big it is possible to build a ship.
Unable to match thePride, other navies settled for demonstrating their wealth through the use of rare and expensive materials for their prestige ships…
-History of Naval Development, Master Historian Willias Manderly, 268AC
…The North hoards its innovations like a miser does coin. Despite our best efforts, we have not been able to find any information of this Idgra, much less her supposed innovations. She is supposedly a contemporary of Torrhen Stark, yet the only Idgra from that time period that we can find is the man's pet direwolf.
That's not to say we have had no success. The concrete that was used to build the North's road network has proven to be of immense use, as well as their methods of crop rotation, accounting, stellar navigation, semaphore towers, and more.
Unfortunately even the Master of Whispers has no idea as to how the North keeps catching our and his spies…
-Letter from Grand Maester Elysar to the Conclave of the Citadel, 83AC.
All those accomplishments you listed were achieved by your predecessors or others. The Lords are demanding answers from us and we cannot give them nothing. Find out how the North managed to build such things….
-Letter from the Conclave to Grand Maester Elysar in response to his previous letter.