The Legal Customs of the Seven Kingdoms
Concerning the King’s Peace
The first decree issued by King Aegon I upon the unification of the Seven Kingdoms was that which became known as the King’s Peace. By this edict, all petty disputes between landed knights and lesser lords were to be submitted to their lawful liege, whose judgement was to be regarded as final. Matters rising between the Great Houses themselves were reserved for the Crown alone.
In this way did the Conqueror seek to quell the ancient, ruinous feuds that had so long weakened the realms of men.
On the Matter of the Rule of Six
During the early years of Targaryen dominion, Queen Rhaenys adjudicated a case that would thereafter shape common law. A husband, having slain his wife after discovering her in adultery, claimed protection beneath the old rule of thumb, by which a man might chastise an unfaithful spouse with a rod no thicker than his own thumb. The woman’s brothers held that he had struck her not a handful of times, but a full hundred.
After consultation with her maesters, the queen decreed that only six blows could be deemed lawful one for each of the Seven save the Stranger, for the wife’s sin already placed her beneath that god’s shadow. The remaining ninety-four she named murder.
Thus arose the Rule of Six, thereafter cited in courts across the realm.
Pertaining to the Rule of Thumb
The Rule of Thumb, an ancient custom predating the Conquest, permitted husbands to inflict limited corporal punishment upon adulterous wives, using no rod thicker than a thumb. Though still known in legal discourse, its practical application waned after Queen Rhaenys’s ruling refined its boundaries.
Of Taxes and Their Administration
In the Seven Kingdoms, taxation is first levied at the local level, each lord gathering the revenues owed from his own lands. These sums are then remitted to the liege lord or great house of the region, who in turn convey the appropriate portion to the Iron Throne.
Most noble houses retain treasurers or stewards trained in letters to manage such accounts.
On Thievery and the Severance of Digits
Custom holds that thieves suffer the loss of a finger or hand, and in harsher jurisdictions the slitting of the nose, marking them forever as breakers of the peace. Those who steal from a Sept are judged to have stolen from the gods themselves, and accordingly face sterner penalties
Concerning Poaching
To hunt unlawfully upon a lord’s land is to challenge both his authority and his livelihood. Punishments for poaching are typically severe: loss of a hand, enforced service upon the galleys, or conscription into the Night’s Watch. Few lords regard poaching with leniency, especially in lean years.
Of Outlaws and Their Fate
Those placed beyond the king’s law, outlaws, are seldom long suffered to live. The customary sentence for such men is hanging, a punishment regarded as swift, sure, and within the means of even the humblest lord.
On Crimes of Forced Lust
The crime of rape is considered grievous in every kingdom. Rapists may be gelded, hanged, beheaded, or offered in lieu of death the chance to take the black. Sentences vary according to the disposition of the ruling lord and the station of the victim, yet the crime is consistently treated as an affront to both law and the gods.
Regarding The Prohibition of Slavery
Both the old gods and the Faith of the Seven hold slavery to be an abomination. No lawful man or woman may be held as chattel within the Seven Kingdoms, nor has such bondage been practiced for thousands of years.
To sell a person into slavery is a capital crime, punishable by death.
On the Taking of the Black as Judicial Remedy
In many cases; debt, theft, poaching, rape, or lesser acts of violence, a man may forgo corporal or capital punishment by joining the Night’s Watch. Upon swearing the ancient vows, all prior crimes and debts are set aside.
Yet to break that vow, desert one’s post, or defy the Lord Commander is to forfeit one’s life.
It must be noted that women are forbidden from the order by law, custom, and the Watch’s own needs.
Of Execution and the Crow Cage
The greatest crimes, treason chief among them, are punished by death. Means include beheading, hanging, or, in especially dire cases, confinement within crow cages: narrow iron cages wherein the condemned are left exposed to wind, rain, and sun without sustenance until death by thirst or exposure claims them.
Crimes meriting such punishment have included theft, rape, murder, and in times of famine, even the stealing of bread or unlawful hunting.