Writer: Fischer Work
Editor: Andrew Ho
As the titular description suggests, Game of Thrones is, at its heart, a story about power. In the zero-sum game of politics, there are losers and there are winners, and the winners understand that careful resource allocation wins more battles than dragons. In a world where Gold Dragons (the currency of Westeros) can change the tide of war, many major events of the story lend themselves to economic analysis. Did the Rulers of the Seven Kingdoms make the best decisions, or should the royal economic advisors have stayed in school longer to forge a couple more links for their maester chains?
An example of a moment where economic prudence could have averted disastrous effects for the Realm is the decisions made regarding the Night’s Watch. The Night’s Watch, the military order founded to protect the Realm from threats north of the Wall, fell into disarray over the centuries. Service was once seen as both an honor and a necessity, with knights, nobles, and highborn men volunteering to serve. However, the Others (the primary threat from the north) have not been seen for thousands of years; this decreased the perceived threat of a northern invasion and resulted in subsequent record-low recruitment. When the events of Game of Thrones begin, recruitment has reached less than one thousand men serving three of the nineteen castles along the Wall. The pitiful state of the Night’s Watch is made clear from the beginning, when Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, carries out capital punishment against a deserter who claims to have been attacked by Others. Believing the chance is slim that the Others have returned, and with more urgent considerations in mind, Stark (and by extension, the Realm) chose to ignore the dire state of the Night’s Watch. This decision, organized from an uninformed belief set and a serious discounting of an improbable future, ultimately cost the Realm severely.
Graphic By: Sharvani Andurlekar
Could careful economic planning have saved the Realm from its disastrous fate? Consider the fictitious realm of Westeros; to perform our analysis, we need to determine the likelihood that an Other attack will occur in the future, the amount of damage an Other attack might incur, the cost to man the Wall to adequate capacity, and how effective the Night’s Watch would be at reducing potential damages caused by the Others. We will assume that there is a minuscule but non-zero chance of an Other attack. If an Other attack occurs, it’s fair to assume that it will devastate the Realm. For funding the Wall to be an advisable reality, providing the Watch with resources for the foreseeable future must cost less than the damages and loss of life incurred by an Other attack. If not, it would be more cost-effective to let the Others attack and rebuild. Likewise, we must assume that the Night’s Watch will be effective at decreasing the costs incurred by an Other attack; if not, it again would be better to spend the resources on rebuilding.
With these assumptions in mind, the Realm has two primary strategies: To support the Watch or to abandon it. These two choices lead to four possible outcomes:
- Supporting the Watch and the Others attack: High reward, the Realm is protected, and the Night’s Watch fulfills its duty.
- Supporting the Watch and the Others no longer exist: A waste of resources, but at a low cost.
- Abandoning the Watch and the Others no longer exist: Low reward, equal to the small but continuous amount that would have been spent to support the Watch.
- Abandoning the Watch and the Others attack: Catastrophic outcome. The Night’s Watch is left unprepared, the Realm devastated by an Other invasion.
It is important to note that the option to continue the current level of support is tantamount to abandoning the Watch since the Night’s Watch, in its current state, is unprepared to fend off an Other invasion. Therefore, the payoff matrix for these options is as follows:
| The Others attack | The Others no longer exist | |
| Support the Wall | 10 (High Reward) | -2 (Low Relative cost) |
| Abandon the Wall | -10 (Catastrophic Loss) | 2 (Low Reward) |
The dominant strategy is the one that results in a higher payoff regardless of the resulting state of the world. In this case, supporting the Watch is the dominant strategy. The realm receives a high reward for a low relative cost, as opposed to risking a catastrophic loss for a low relative reward. However, critics of the Night’s Watch could argue that after a thousand years, the net cost of supplying the Wall might be higher than the catastrophic loss incurred by an Other attack. While true, this argument places little value on the lives of the current citizens of the Seven Kingdoms. The small but continuous cost to uphold the Night’s Watch is analogous to insurance; a nuisance, but if the Others attack, a worthwhile expense for citizens whose lives were saved. The increased royal government spending will also have the added benefit of expanding the economy by creating jobs in the North. Overall, supporting the Watch is the option with the greatest positive impact on overall social welfare.
This cost-benefit analysis is the same approach taken with real-world problems involving similar threats, even if not as fantastical. For example, a cost-benefit analysis to decide whether to build seawalls in Japan to mitigate damage from natural disasters follows the same basic steps: outlining the parameters of the situation, defining the possible courses of action, and analyzing the resulting outcomes of each. In the Japanese seawall example, economic researchers at the University of Hawaii calculated the likelihood of future seismic activity, the expected cost of damages, and the anticipated dollar amount a seawall would reduce those damages. By comparing these values, the researchers determined that the net value of the seawall was positive when the wall reduced damages, and the value of expected damages was high. The researchers concluded that the overall social welfare would be improved if the government developed and invested in disaster adaptation strategies, the same conclusion reached above in our cost-benefit analysis of the fictional Night’s Watch.
Princely Policy-Making
With your maesters’ economic analysis laid out before you on a sheaf of parchment, what is your next move as Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms? The Master of Coin gives you a brief rundown of your royal options:
The Night’s Watch receives goods from two primary sources. The first is the great tract of land donated by Brandon Stark of Winterfell, known as “the Gift.” Orchards, crops, and livestock from this land serve the Wall, and the towns pay a tax with goods and corvée labor. This arrangement is supposed to benefit both parties; the Gift provides the Watch resources, and the Watch provides protection. However, the Watch’s decreased manpower has led to complications involving the wildlings, the group of free people living beyond the Wall. With the Watch unable to man patrols, wilding raiders are free to scale the Wall and terrorize the people of the Gift, leading to a massive depopulation as people migrate south out of fear. Due to this migration, the stream of goods and services from the Gift has all but evaporated.
The second source of income comes via donations from the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms. These donations consist of armor, shields, weapons, tools, food, roughspun cloth, and various other supplies and commodities. These are picked up by recruiters, the “wandering crows,” on their trips south of the Wall. These donations come from all Great Houses, despite any adverse political tensions on the continent, thanks to the Night’s Watch’s unique status as an impartial apolitical group. As the Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, you have the most direct control over the Great Houses. By leveraging your power as King, you could increase the amount each Great House is expected to pay, thereby increasing the resources available to the Night’s Watch. This would, in turn, allow the Night’s Watch to protect against wildlings again, promoting a repopulation of the Gift. With the Gift protected and thriving, resources supplied to the Watch would further increase. However, the cooperation of the Great Houses will be tied to your royal power, since extra taxes are an economic burden. If (the Seven forbid) you should be dethroned, the payment of taxes would cease, unless you can create a lasting change in the minds of the people.
A lasting change could be brought about by appealing to the pride of the Seven Kingdoms. It was once considered an honor to serve as part of the Night’s Watch; if this popularity could be regained, support would be ensured for years to come. As Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, you can host tourneys, commission grand spectacles, and send out minstrels to tell tales of the glory found beyond the Wall. Set a precedent by sending off virtuous knights to take the black. Anything to help shift the public image of the Watch back to its former glory. In short, a medieval propaganda campaign might be the best shot at saving the Realm.
In Game of Thrones, the neglect of the Night’s Watch wasn’t a result of careful decision-making. It was a decision made for the Realm through negligence and apathy. The cost to supply the Watch was not weighed against the value of human life; the Realm grew accustomed to the status quo, and in its lethargic indifference, minimized the threats of the North. As Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, you cannot afford to grow complacent and forget the past. So, pay heed to your Master of Coin, and I wish you good fortune in the wars to come.
Featured Image by Ben den Engelsen on Unsplash
