A Maester’s Consideration of Law, Custom, and Social Order in the Seven Kingdoms
On Royal Authority
Within the realm of the Seven Kingdoms, all lawful power is held to flow from the person of the King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men. The King’s writ sanctifies governance at every tier, while his chief minister, the Hand of the King, acts in his stead when the monarch is indisposed, even to the extent of sitting the Iron Throne and dispensing royal justice.
Lords and landed knights, as the king’s sworn vassals, are charged with keeping the King’s Peace within their own domains. In his name they may arrest and punish malefactors, though the crown retains the unquestioned right to overrule, pardon, or punish as it sees fit. The redistribution of lands, the creation or extinction of noble titles, and the issuance of bills of attainder are all royal prerogatives.
Disputes of land and title are commonly decided by the appropriate liege lord, though the King or his Hand may intervene when necessary, at the petition of disputants. On the rarest of occasions, when the succession is uncertain or the matter grave enough that the Crown seeks the assent of the Realm, the lords may be summoned to a Great Council.
On the Stratification of Society
The Seven Kingdoms maintain a plainly feudal order. Beneath the King stand the Great Houses, followed by the high nobility, lesser houses, sworn knights, and finally the smallfolk, who constitute the vast majority of the realm. Forms of address, heraldry, and the customs of ransom all reinforce this hierarchy. It is expected that noble prisoners be held honorably according to their station, though this privilege may be rescinded if offense is given.
Ceremonial precedence plays a significant role in noble life. At feasts, the dais marks honor, with the place to the host’s right considered preeminent. The dispensation of favored dishes or wine is likewise an age-old sign of esteem.
On Inheritance and the Transmission of Titles
The laws of inheritance in Westeros are neither uniformly codified nor consistently observed. As Archmaester Vaeron wrote, “Where custom rules, contradiction is ever the law’s companion.” Male-preference primogeniture is the norm for most of the realm, with daughters inheriting only when no males of the line exist, though Dorne alone follows the Rhoynish tradition by which the firstborn inherits regardless of gender. Dorne and their custom are in general frowned upon by the Seven Kingdoms
Exceptions abound: lords may choose to name a younger son or even a distant cousin as heir, and wills with unusual provisions are known to provoke litigation or bloodshed. Widows may in some cases hold lands in regency, naming their own successors if a lord dies without clear issue.
The legitimization of bastards, once granted, is permanent and creates notable instabilities and is rarely done. Yet unacknowledged bastards, though without legal claim, may still threaten succession by their mere existence. Only the King may legitimize a bastard.
Children who inherit titles from a different house than the one into which they were born customarily take the name of the estate they inherit. Thus do noble lines merge, shift, and occasionally vanish.
On Majority, Marriage, and Gender
Eighteen is held throughout Westeros to mark the age of majority. Girls, however, enter a liminal state upon their first flowering, sometimes deemed “women grown” before their Eighteenth year and thereby eligible for betrothal and marriage.. Boys of noble birth may be fostered in foreign households until manhood, their education shaped by the customs of their hosts.
Marriages vary across regions and faiths, but nearly all involve the exchange of cloaks before a sacred witness, followed by celebratory feast and bedding. Some ancient customs, such as the right of the first night are practiced. First Night is a custom, largely practiced in the North, in which the Lord of the Land may claim a brides First Night once she is wed.
Polygamy survives in a unique form, among followers of the Drowned God, where Salt Wives are permitted though their issue are of lesser station they are not however considered bastards. They are always considered behind the birth children of a Rock Wife.
On Death and Funeral Rites
Funerary practice differs by region and faith. Northern houses often inter their dead in crypts or barrows. Followers of the Seven favor burial beneath stone markers, sometimes adorned with crystal. House Targaryen alone, descending from Valyria’s dragonlords, cremates its dead, traditionally upon pyres lit by dragons. House Velaryon buries their dead at sea with some who hold Targaryen blood being lit aflame while on their funerary barges. House Tully similarly sets their dead afloat in rivers.
Among noble houses, considerable weight is placed upon the return of a lord’s body to his kin, and funerary processions may include sworn swords, family, and Silent Sisters.
Mourning attire throughout the realm is typically black.
On Names and Naming Customs
Children receive names at birth in Westeros. In most regions, a married woman takes her husband’s name, save in cases where she rules in her own right or in Dorne where succession differs widely from Andal tradition.
Bastards of noble blood (who have been acknowledged by their noble parent) often bear regional surnames such as Snow, Rivers, or Waters, though exceptions occur. Upon receiving lands or knighthood, some men adopt new surnames reflective of their station.
On Holy Days, Guest Right, and Sacrifice
The Faith of the Seven maintains holy days for each of the Seven, with Maiden’s Day and the Father’s Feast Day being the most widely observed.
Guest right is among the oldest and most sacrosanct customs of the realms of men, inviolate under pain of both law and the censure of gods.
Blood sacrifice persists though it is spoken of only in whispers and is greatly frowned upon by the Seven.
On Bastardry
The Proper Address and Polite Euphemisms
Though the condition of illegitimacy is a matter of birth and not of fault, the people of Westeros have developed a variety of polite forms by which to refer to those born outside of lawful wedlock. Among the most common and courteous are “natural son” or “natural daughter”, employed particularly within noble circles to soften what may otherwise be a harsh truth. Others speak of a child as “bastard-born”, a plainer term but not overtly unkind.
Less gentle is “baseborn,” generally reserved for a child whose parentage includes one of the smallfolk. A long standing euphemism “born on the wrong side of the blanket” appears in many Septon’s sermons and the writings of certain Andal Lords though many find it needlessly arch.
On the Social Stigma of Bastardry
Despite its prevalence, bastardry bears an enduring stain in the eyes of many Westerosi. Septs teach that such children are “born of lust, of lies and of weakness”.
Bastards often grow up quicker and harder than their trueborn siblings
Even after legitimization the shadow of bastardry may linger.
To some Lords, the mere presence of bastards is offensive, to others their inclusion in marriage proposals is considered improper and dishonorable.
On the Rise of Bastards and Their Prospects
The Citadel accepts any male child of keen mind, regardless of birth.
The Faith of the Seven allows female bastards to don the robes of a Septa.
Knighthood is open to all men of sufficient valor including bastards.
Upon the Wall past sins are washed away, bastards are always accepted.
Bastard Surnames
Of note: Smallfolk do not have surnames by and large. Some who are particularly skilled in a craft may be known by said skill “Mella the Baker” or “Robin the Smith”
Crownlands – Waters
Dorne – Sand
Iron Islands – Pyke
North – Snow
Reach – Flowers
Riverlands – Rivers
Stormlands – Storm
Vale – Stone
Westerlands – Hill
On the Acknowledgement of Bastards by Their Fathers
It is neither rare nor scandalous for noblemen to father bastards. Even so, it is considered discourteous to inquire after the circumstances of their conception, a matter that is understood to be both private and delicate.
Noble differ widely in how they treat their natural children:
Some choose to foster such a child in a trusted Lord’s household
Others keep their child within their own hall, though often in the role of page, cupbearer, or maidservant rather than as a member of the family proper.
A noble wife may take grave offense at the presence of her husband’s bastards, especially if they are raised near her own trueborn heirs.
Even when unacknowledged a noble father is expected by custom to see that their natural children do not want for basic care.
To note: A noblewoman who bears a bastard is met with ridicule and shame.
A noble father may at any time acknowledge his natural child granting the youth a place within their household. Such acknowledged bastards may even inherit if no trueborn heirs exist, though this requires royal legitimization.
On Legitimization
Only the Iron Throne may legitimize a bastard. On rare, exceptionally rare, occasions the High Septon has done so in conjunction with a marriage or special dispensation.
Once granted legitimacy cannot be undone.
On Kinslaying and the Curse Thereof
Of all transgressions known to the realm, be they theft, treason or the breaking of sacred guist right, none is spoken of with deeper dread or darker superstition than kinslaying. The slaying of one’s own blood is held across the Seven Kingdoms to be a crime not merely against King or Lord but against the very order of creation and thus is punished as harshly by the judgement of men as by the wrath of the Old Gods and the New.
Among the smallfolk it is said “No man is so accursed as the kinslayer”. A sentiment echoed in Sept and Godswood alike. Though the Faith of the Seven and the Old Gods of the First Men and even the harsh creed of the Drowned God differ widely in dogma, all hold this singular concord: Blood must not be turned against blood.
Those who worship the Seven claim that the Seven turn their faces away from kinslayers, leaving them to wander the world bereft of divine favor. Those who follow the Old Gods warn that the weirwoods remember such crimes and their red sap runs black for a generation. Amongst the worshippers of the Drowned God, who hold death as a holy sacrament, they mutter that the Drowned God casts kinslayers to the Storm God’s keeping there to drown and rise no more.