Game of Thrones [Potential Book Spoilers]

They've been trained, presumably intensively, sinche childhood. You can't replicate that kind of discipline unless you wanted to rob entire armies of young boys of potentially happy and fufilling childhoods.

The Unsullied are infantryman, whereas Knights are mounted and armoured. So most likely the Unsullied train and discipline the peasantry into a Royal Dragon Army.

I think I would have liked this scene in Dragon Age 2 a lot more if Anders had calmly sipped wine afterwards.

edited 30th Jun '16 11:49:05 AM by lrrose

What make the Unsullied effective is their discipline. Westeros has a tradition of using heavy cavalry mixed with peasant conscripts. They don't seem to have much experience at training large numbers of heavy infantry. Every man you have training at the barracks is one fewer you have to run the farms. Also in a feudal society, you really only want the elite to have access to the knowledge and equipment to fight effectively.

Plus, you know.

It's not like they weren't taken down in droved by random dudes with knives.

That was Informed Ability in one of the worst ways.

About the only excuse I can think of is that Unsullied are only trained in how to fight as a group against a clear opponent. Apparently they're not very well trained in guerrilla tactics or urban fighting. And their training renders them obedient, but also makes them inflexible and uncreative. It will be pretty cool to finally see Unsullied fight as an army.

I can't believe people are still upset about that. "Disciplined" means "less likely to panic and rout" not "resilient to going down after knife between ribs".

Not so much that, as it is disappointment in their fighting abilities, i.e. not getting the knife in the ribs in the first place. But any occupying army, no matter how well trained is going to be at a disadvantage if the locals resist. The locals know the land and people and are fighting for their homes. Waging war and policing are very different things.

I wasn't that bothered by the Unsullied being taken down by the Sons of the Harpy.

They are trained as infantrymen afterall. Presumably, they fight by using a phalanx or maniple formation on an open field against an enemy army. Those stragegies are useless when trying to keep the peace in the twisting alleyways of Mereen.

Dany had them patrolling a large city in small squads so that they could cover more ground.

Of course they are going to get picked off by guerilla fighters in an urban setting. They were never meant to be a peace-keeping force.

And yeah, it's true that some of the Unsullied commanders could probably help train a standing army for Dany's post-war regime, but they won't be anywhere as disciplined as Unsullied.

Wich is a good thing, because otherwise that would require the aforementionned child abduction and cruelty.

edited 30th Jun '16 1:02:11 PM by GutstheBerserker

The whole The Spartan Way thing never really impressed me. Creating an Unsullied requires taking a child, castrating them at a certain age, training them for at least 16-17 years, all the while feeding them a chemical that dulls their pain sensation.

Sure it sounds badass, but it's ludicrously impractical. You're having to house and feed thousands of people, many of whom probably won't survive training, and then hoping that somebody will want to pay an enormous amount of money for them. Plus an Unsullied army is just that; an army, nothing more. You can't disband them because they have no job skills. They're likely not even trained in non-combat roles, so you still need the logistics to house and feed them, and combat engineers and smiths to build stuff.

Whereas today, modern volunteer militaries take adult men and women and turn them into effective soldiers in a couple of months. If a ruler had enough money to buy Unsullied, they would have more than enough money to train some of their own people as soldiers.

edited 30th Jun '16 1:09:23 PM by Lawyerdude

I imagine that there must be a certain prestige associated with owning an army of Unsullied. That would explain why some cities would rather buy them. Kind of like a luxury good. One that shows the strength and wealth of your city.

Wether or not the Spartan Way actually results in better armies (it doesn't) is irrelevant: the Unsullied training regimen is all part of their reputation and feeds into their prestige.

Also, you might be overestimating the cost it takes to train Unsullied, especially in a place like Slaver's Bay where human life is cheap. It probably is cheaper to buy Unsullied then to put in a place your personal standing army.

edited 30th Jun '16 1:19:05 PM by GutstheBerserker

As implausible as it is for the setting a Royal Army would probably be good for Westeros.

Very likely. Although the Iron Throne would need to have a lot more power than it actually does. Historically, the evolution of the French Monarchy vs. the British Monarchy is a useful example. The French Kings spent the late middle ages dismantling the elements of feudalism, centralizing all power at Versailles, and enforcing uniform laws on the entire country, becoming an Absolute Monarchy. Whereas Britain was racked with civil wars and usurpations among multiple competing noble houses, eventually culminating in the Glorious Revolution and a vastly weakened Monarchy, but with a strong Parliament.

The Seven Kingdoms is some sort of cross between The Federation and The Empire. The King can't really get anything done without the consent of the Great Houses, and as noted in the Skeleton Government entry, there doesn't seem to be any sort of functioning bureaucracy. As a practical matter, whoever sits on the Iron Throne is really just Lord of the Crownlands.

About the Unsullied: I don't remember if's been mentioned in the series, but you don't have to buy Unsullied "in bulk", especially not in such extraordinary numbers as Daenerys did. What she did seems to be rather the exception.

It seem far more common to buy smaller contingents to either bolster your city guard (see Qohor) or use them as bodyguards. The guys guarding Illyrio Mopatis' palace in Pentos in Season 1 are supposedly Unsullied, if I remember correctly.

The show mentions that, insofar as Dany saying "give me all of them" was considered patently ridiculous.

But yes. I know they're out of their element. That doesn't change the fact that they should at least, when not completely ambushed, at least be able to take down the Harpies on a 1-1 basis. They should still be at least as capable as a regular soldier in standard combat. Instead they go down like chumps.

Now, the S6 reveal that the Harpies are funded by an outside power and thus presumably at least sellswords rather than simply "Masters who picked up a knife" helps that a lot. But it doesn't change the fact the Unsullied went down like bitches.

So with the only proper heir being Daenerys, if she does get the throne do you think she might try to legitimize Jon Snow? If she finds out he's her bastard nephew, that is. They are pretty low on heirs to the throne after all, and it's not made clear whether or not she's still fertile, so she might have no choice. It'd be an interesting reversal of the Blackfyre rebellions

I'm trying to recall, has it ever been explained why Daenerys named Viserion after Viserys in the series? I know in the books she says she wants the him to be the better version of her brother (and the more sympathetic aspects of Viserys' backstory are mentioned there), but show wise it seems odd that the abusive brother she insulted moments after his death was somehow honored with via one of her dragons.

I don't know if its supposed to be fridge heartwarming that she still held enough affection to make that gesture, that its a deliberate Take That! to him, or if she simply had a theme of naming dragons after prominent dead people she remembered, and with Drogo and Rhaegar already used, Viserys was the only other major name she could think of.

edited 30th Jun '16 6:00:29 PM by BorneAgain

the other two dragons weren't named on screen iirc at least until season 4. definitely a while after they were all hatched

@RJ Jon has already been legitimized by the north in the show and Robb in the books.

If Jon becomes Dany's heir, he'll rule as King Jon Stark.

Jon is never going to take the Targaryen name. Rhaegar is a rapist that kidnapped his mom and Aerys burned his other grandfather.

Ned was the one who raised him.

edited 30th Jun '16 8:52:00 PM by MadSkillz

Fair enough, but from everything we know it's most likely he didn't rape her. Robert Baratheon states otherwise, and most people have a good image of Rhaegar. It makes me think of "the rape of Persephone", where it was actually a willing kidnapping.

Also, Jon may have to reconsider if Daenerys is unable to produce an heir. After all, she's the only legitimate person with Targaryen blood. So far in the show, we have only three confirmed, still living as of now people with royal blood; Daenerys(who's likely going to be queen soon), Jon Snow(who's an unconfirmed Targaryen child, and is likely still a bastard) and Gendry(who a bastard and hasn't been seen since Season 3). It might be a necessity to make him a possible heir at one point

edited 30th Jun '16 10:12:50 PM by RJ-19-CLOVIS-93

When did Robert say Rhaegar wasn't a rapist.

What RJ meant was that Robert was stating that Lyanna was raped by Rhaegar - which would be very out of character based on what we know about him.

edited 30th Jun '16 10:10:26 PM by DrunkenNordmann

Roberts biased. I agree with that. It was probably consensual.

On the Unsullied, I wouldn't say that the Spartan Way doesn't work. There are examples in history where it does. There's also a great deal of prestige in having unsullied that comes with their reputations as soldiers.

Robert's certainly biased and it probably was consensual but let's take a moment and play devil's advocate here.

Why would it be out of character for Rhaegar to rape her? He's a guy who is drunk on his own special status and who thinks a prophecy is demanding that he sire a child that will save the world. Why on earth would a guy with that for a motivation be concerned about a little thing like consent? Why would it matter to him? If a girl must be raped to save the world, then she will be raped, and damn the morality of it.

Rhaegar was prepared to burn down a kingdom in the name of prophecy. Why not rape a fourteen year old while he was at it?