That was the best episode of anything I have ever seen in my entire life!
Brilliant!
Agreed. That was simply AWESOME. I have never seen a sword and cavalry battle so realistically captured on film. It rivaled Saving Private Ryan for making you feel like you were there. Not a big fan of Khaleesi and her dragons, but she was great. Tyrion was splendid as usual
Someone at io9 or a similar publication said the world of ice and fire had a 7-10 thousand year recorded history. It had been medieval longer than some of the oldest cities were cities, though villages probably go back 10-12,000 years.
They have been stuck at the medieval stage for millennia - why not progress?
One theory was the dragons, a major military advance that prevented larger armies and the larger nation states required to raise them from forming. However, dragons have been a factor in Westeros 300ish years - small relative to the time of civilization.
The current season of Game of Thrones said the Faceless Men were slaves in Valeryia, until they rose up as worshipers of death and there were no more masters. Then they founded Bravos.
The good news is Bravos minus slavery has a strong mercantile economy and banking, so it should be the start of a Renaissance of innovation, where commerce and trade spread while slavery dies.
I wondered why not - then realized it is the Faceless Men. Don’t honor contracts or have someone think you haven’t, dead. Be too good an actress, rivals kill you. Those were examples in the show.
Let’s take it farther. Get too rich or invent things others are jealous of or become too successful in some regard, others have assassins take you out. The 1% or elite that leads innovation is killed off, leaving a base population with little to no ambition. Lady Crane, I think was foreign, while the insurance agent was just greedy.
But if the Faceless Men take any request, anyone who isn’t anonymous or blandly average is killed by others with discretion. So your solution is not to exceed safe norms, not to excel, never to do more ... so the same reason Bravos has commerce and no slavery is the same reason it hasn’t sparked a revolution in that world to move past the feudal stage.