Introduction

For his second foray into electioneering in AFFC, George R.R Martin clearly decided to go with a simpler model that would (among other things) require less math than the repeated ballots of the Night’s Watch, one that harkens back to the elections and democratic processes of the (early) Middle Ages.

As I talked about in Part I, the Althing of Iceland dates back to the 10th century as an example of medieval popular assemblies, but the althing was but one of a number of assemblies that existed across a wide swathe of Europe, from the British Isles (both by way of the Anglo-Saxons who brought the folkmoots over from Saxony in the 5th century, becoming the Witenaġemots of the 7th through 11th centuries, and by way of the Danes who brought the thing to Scotland, the Danelaw, and even the Isle of Man) to the veches of Novgorod.

But by whatever name they were called, these assemblies had certain features in common. First, emerging out of their initial purpose as a common venue for addressing inter- and intra-tribal feuds that would otherwise lead to blood feuds, they were judicial bodies. Second, they had the authority to “ceosan to cynige” (choose the king) and depose them, as happened to Sigeberht of Wessex and Alhred of Northumbria, for example. Third, the assemblies acted as the assembled political class who were there to advise the monarch and lend their blessings to his decrees.

And most importantly for the subject of this essay, at least in the beginning – before the rise of feudalism gave more authority to the leading thanes, earls, and ealdormen, and the coming of Christianity meant that the bishops, archbishops, and abbots joined the assemblies – they consisted of the entire free population of the hundred, province, or kingdom, who were (at least in Scandinavia) advised by the lawspeakers, the wise men who memorized and recited the previous laws decided by the things of ages past.

So how does the Kingsmoot stack up to these real-world moots?

Eligibility

As someone who’s been interested in critiquing Ironborn political culture for some time, who can speak and vote at the Kingsmoot reveals a lot about the tension at the heart of the Ironborn philosophy of herrenvolk equality. On the one hand, eligibility for participation seems to extend to (almost) all the Ironborn:

“Whenever a king died, the priests of the Drowned God would call a kingsmoot to choose his successor. Every man who owned and captained a boat was allowed a voice at these unruly gatherings…” (WOIAF) “Beneath the bones of Nagga every captain stands as equal…” “All have come?” he asked his priestly brother. “All who matter. The captains and the kings.” On the Iron Islands they were one and the same, for every captain was a king on his own deck, and every king must be a captain. (AFFC)

Here, ownership of a ship works like a property requirement (as was quite common in many parliamentary systems throughout the 19th and the early 20th century) for voting, although in an island-based society it’s not a particularly high bar to clear. As with a lot about Ironborn tradition, it’s not entirely clear how ancient or recent this practice is. WOIAF tells us that “each of the Iron Islands was once a separate kingdom, ruled by not one but two kings, a rock king and a salt king,” and Rodrik Harlaw in AFFC describes long-ago electorates as far more restrictive: “when last the salt kings and the rock kings met in kingsmoot” suggests that captians did not originally hold the franchise. What this practice does, however, is to separate out the lower middle of Ironborn society from the rest of the lower orders (more on this in a second) and giving them a common interest with their warrior aristocracy, by symbolically equating the owner of a fishing boat with the owner of a longship.[1]

However, underneath this promise of equality is a deep structure of inequality running throughout Ironborn society, as we can see from this description of the Kingsmoot:

“Men left their fires to make their way toward the bones of the Grey King’s Hall; oarsmen, steersmen, sailmakers, shipwrights, the warriors with their axes and the fishermen with their nets. Some had thralls to serve them; some had salt wives. Others, who had sailed too often to the green lands, were attended by maesters and singers and knights. The common men crowded together in a crescent around the base of the knoll, with the thralls, children, and women toward the rear. The captains and the kings made their way up the slopes.” (AFFC)

This is a clear visual explanation of the social hierarchy that truly exemplifies Ironborn culture, with the “captains and the kings” on top of the hill, the “common men” at the bottom, and the “thralls, children, and women” pushed to the back. If we look in closer, we see whole categories of occupations which are absolutely necessary for Ironborn society to function – “oarsmen, steersmen, sailmakers, shipwrights” – who don’t quite fit into the categories of “reaving and fishing” as “considered worthy for free men.” Any sting that might come from their exclusion from the political class due to lack of boat-ownership is smoothed over by the crumbs of conquest, “thralls to serve them” and “salt wives” as the Ironborn equivalent of bread and circuses.[2]

If the kingsmoot has any connection to the customs and traditions of the things and moots described above, there’s a sense that something has rotted it from within, while keeping the outward symbolism and language. Much more on this when we get to the Outcome section.

Process: Balloting and Margin

In terms of how Kingsmoots play out, the process is something a lot closer to Calvinball than GRRM’s recitation of ballots and vote counts from ASOS. I had to change the name of this section from balloting and margin because there aren’t good parallels: the Ironborn don’t use paper ballots but rather voice votes, and there is no clear method of assessing who has the most (as opposed to the loudest) voices behind them, and no clear standard for how many voices one needs to be declared king. The process we see in the Kingsmoot of 300 AC bears almost no resemblance to how voice votes usually work: there’s no calling of the roll, no recording of “ayes” or “nays,” there’s not even a chair whose ruling as to who won can be appealed. As electoral rigor goes, this is somewhere south of the applause-o meter.

As we might expect from such a chaotic affair, the electioneering starts well before the Kingsmoot gets started, with an informal process of coalition-building:

“So long as I have my nuncle of Ten Towers, I have Harlaw.” Harlaw was not the largest of the Iron Islands, but it was the richest and most populous, and Lord Rodrik’s power was not to be despised. On Harlaw, Harlaw had no rival. The Volmarks and Stonetrees had large holdings on the isle and boasted famous captains and fierce warriors of their own, but even the fiercest bent beneath the scythe. The Kennings and the Myres, once bitter foes, had long ago been beaten down to vassals…” “By now her crew would be eating in the hall. Asha knew she ought to join them, to speak of this gathering on Old Wyk and what it meant for them. Her own men would be solidly behind her, but she would need the rest as well, her Harlaw cousins, the Volmarks, and the Stonetrees. Those are the ones I must win.” (AFFC)

This process of assembling a sufficient coalition of noble families into a majority coalition is relatively straightforward, and probably similar to how the Great Councils of the mainland work. (Apparently Fire and Blood, Volume 1 has an expanded section on the Great Council of 101, so we may well be getting some answers on that.) However, the rhetoric and ideology of Ironborn independence complicates this process – “My cousins do me fealty, and in war I should command their swords and sails. In kingsmoot, though…Beneath the bones of Nagga every captain stands as equal. Some may shout your name, I do not doubt it. But not enough.” – although the fact that Rodrik Harlaw is trying to dissuade Asha from participating in the Kingsmoot may mean he’s a bit of an unreliable narrator on this point of election law.

To bridge the gap, the coalition-building process employs a good bit of schmoozing in order to gin up enthusiasm amongst one’s supporters and grow one’s political base:

“A crowd had gathered round to wish him well and seek his favor. Victarion saw men from every isle: Blacktydes, Tawneys, Orkwoods, Stonetrees, Wynches, and many more. The Goodbrothers of Old Wyk, the Goodbrothers of Great Wyk, and the Goodbrothers of Orkmont all had come. The Codds were there, though every decent man despised them. Humble Shepherds, Weavers, and Netleys rubbed shoulders with men from Houses ancient and proud; even humble Humbles, the blood of thralls and salt wives. A Volmark clapped Victarion on the back; two Sparrs pressed a wineskin into his hands. He drank deep, wiped his mouth, and let them bear him off to their cookfires, to listen to their talk of war and crowns and plunder, and the glory and the freedom of his reign.” “That night the men of the Iron Fleet raised a huge sailcloth tent above the tideline, so Victarion might feast half a hundred famous captains on roast kid, salted cod, and lobster.” (AFFC)

This pre-moot feasting, combining liberal amounts of seafood, booze, and spreading the word about the candidate’s biography and accomplishments, resembles nothing so much as to how campaigns and interest groups put on lavish events for convention delegates at political conventions. But it also points to the lie of Ironborn equality; any fisherman might theoretically be able to stand for election, but in order to be a viable candidate, you need a good deal of money to mount this kind of lobbying campaign. It is not an accident that, immediately before the passage above, Aeron Damphair of all people divides the world into “all who matter” and those who do not.

But once the shells have been shucked and the horns quaffed, the Kingsmoot proper begins. Despite the lack of a well-defined process, there clearly are informal rules about how to go about campaigning for the driftwood crown:

“Each man looked at his neighbors, to see which of them might presume to claim a crown. The Crow’s Eye was never patient, Aeron Damphair told himself. Mayhaps he will speak first. If so, it would be his undoing. The captains and the kings had come a long way to this feast and would not choose the first dish set before them. They will want to taste and sample, a bite of him, a nibble of the other, until they find the one that suits them best.” (AFFC)

This too, has a parallel in the history of American political conventions. Just as front-runners tended to bleed delegates on successive ballots, so too did candidates who were introduced first at conventions tended to fare poorly compared to those who came later; this is likely due to a combination of the process that GRRM describes above negating the primacy effect and the impact of the recency effect. Spoiling the psycho-mathematical neatness was the ability of oratory and the ability of convention “demonstrations” and shouting from the non-voting galleries to snowball delegates into an avalanche behind a well-organized and charismatic candidate. William Jennings Bryan, best known to non-Americans for his role in the Scopes Monkey Trial depicted in “Inherit the Wind,” was a largely unknown Congressman from Nebraska, when his “Cross of Gold” speech delivered at the Democratic National Convention in 1896 stampeded the delegates into nominating a populist neophyte. Later candidates thus needed to hedge against the possibility by keeping close tabs on their delegates and supporting convention rules that allowed for delegation leaders to cast votes as a bloc.

Making the situation even more fraught, unlike in convention speeches where the candidate is given the floor and heckling is strongly discouraged, no such presumption applies to the Kingsmoot. Heckling abounds and rival candidates are free to engage the current speaker in extended debate:

“Aye, me!” the man roared from where he sat, in a voice as huge as he was. “Why not? Who better? I am Erik Ironmaker, for them who’s blind. Erik the Just. Erik Anvil-Breaker. Show them my hammer, Thormor.” One of his champions lifted it up for all to see; a monstrous thing it was, its haft wrapped in old leather, its head a brick of steel as large as a loaf of bread. “I can’t count how many hands I’ve smashed to pulp with that hammer,” Erik said, “but might be some thief could tell you. I can’t say how many heads I’ve crushed against my anvil neither, but there’s some widows could. I could tell you all the deeds I’ve done in battle, but I’m eight-and-eighty and won’t live long enough to finish. If old is wise, no one is wiser than me. If big is strong, no one’s stronger. You want a king with heirs? I’ve more’n I can count. King Erik, aye, I like the sound o’ that. Come, say it with me. ERIK! ERIK ANVIL-BREAKER! ERIK KING!” …But no sooner had the cry begun to build than a woman’s voice cut through it. “Erik!” Men moved aside to let her through. With one foot on the lowest step, she said, “Erik, stand up.” A hush fell. The wind blew, waves broke against the shore, men murmured in each other’s ears. Erik Ironmaker stared down at Asha Greyjoy. “Girl. Thrice-damned girl. What did you say?” “Stand up, Erik,” she called. “Stand up and I’ll shout your name with all the rest. Stand up and I’ll be the first to follow you. You want a crown, aye. Stand up and take it.” (AFFC)

Given the relatively loose control that Kingsmoot candidates have over their voters, getting verbally humiliated by a rival can (and does) lose them an election. Thus, having good speaking skills is important to a candidate, as we see when Lord Dunstan Drumm squanders a promising beginning by speaking too much until “he spoke and spoke, and then he spoke still more [and] the crowd grew restive.”

Even more important than debate skills, however, is money. It’s hardly a novelty that money plays a significant role in politics, but the Ironborn are more blatant than most, with the candidates openly buying votes en masse:

“As his grandsons took up the cry, their own sons came forward with chests upon their shoulders. When they upended them at the base of the stone steps, a torrent of silver, bronze, and steel spilled forth; arm rings, collars, daggers, dirks, and throwing axes. A few captains snatched up the choicest items and added their voices to the swelling chant.” (AFFC)

This process, too, has a historical parallel. Especially in the early Middle Ages, when feudalism was less firmly established and elective monarchies were more common, kings were supposed to be ring-givers who gained the fealty of warriors by being open-handed with plunder, which in turn allowed them to assemble larger warbands which in turn allowed for greater opportunities for plunder. As far as I’m aware, though, the ring-giving and the election of kings was not explicitly connected.

As with our discussion in the Eligibility section, the practice of bribery in the kingsmoot acts to magnify the effects of inequality. Just as a poor fisherman can’t afford to feast the “kings and captains,” he definitely can’t afford to bribe the electorate. Bribery works in a more complex fashion than simply locking out those who cannot afford to pay, reaching all the way up and down the social hierarchy:

The offerings that his men spilled out before the kingsmoot included sealskins and walrus tusks, arm rings made of whalebone, warhorns banded in bronze. The captains looked and turned away, leaving lesser men to help themselves to the gifts… And when Drumm’s chests were thrown open, the captains saw the niggard’s gifts he’d brought them. No throne was ever bought with bronze, the Damphair thought. The truth of that was plain to hear, as the cries of “Drumm! Drumm! Dunstan King!” died away… Below, his men were spilling out his chests, a cascade of silver, gold, and gems, a wealth of plunder. Captains scrambled to seize the richest pieces, shouting as they did so. The mutes and mongrels from the Silence threw open Euron’s chests and spilled out his gifts before the captains and the kings. Then it was Hotho Harlaw the priest heard, as he filled his hands with gold. (AFFC)

Class is implicated in both sides of the custom of gift-giving. Because the “kings and captains” stand closest to the chests, they get first pick of the gifts and monopolize the best and richest goods; “lesser men” have to wait for them to have their fill or turn their noses up at the offerings before they can “help themselves to the gifts.” At the same time, the elite of Ironborn society judge the viability of candidates on the quality of their gifts, with Gylbert Farwynd’s simple and practical goods made out of natural materials like “sealskins and walrus tusks” marking him out as a marginal candidate, and Dunston Drumm squandering his moment as much by offering bronze instead of gold as by his long-winded speaking style. By contrast, candidates who offer “a wealth of plunder” are marked out as serious candidates within striking distance of the crown.

Outcome

I don’t want to get into too much of the content of the Kingsmoot debates – I have to leave something for the chapter-by-chapter essays when I get to AFFC, after all – but the outcome of the kingsmoot is still worth talking about.

At its core, the Kingsmoot of 300 AC is a story of the failure of traditional conservatives (in the person of Victarion Greyjoy) and elite reformers (in the person of Asha Greyjoy) to compromise and form a political alliance against the radical populism of Euron Greyjoy:

“Nuncle, it grieves me to say so, but you may be right. For four days and four nights, I have been drinking with the captains and the kings, listening to what they say . . . and what they will not say. Mine own are with me, and many Harlaws. I have Tris Botley too, and some few others. Not enough.” She kicked a rock, and sent it splashing into the water between two longships. “I am of a mind to shout my nuncle’s name.” “…Nuncle, hear me. I will place the driftwood crown upon your brow myself . . . if you will agree to share the rule.” “Share the rule? How could that be?” “…Then let my nuncle sit,” Asha said. “I will stand behind you, to guard your back and whisper in your ear. No king can rule alone. Even when the dragons sat the Iron Throne, they had men to help them. The King’s Hands. Let me be your Hand, Nuncle.” No King of the Isles had ever needed a Hand, much less one who was a woman. The captains and the kings would mock me in their cups. (AFFC)

While GRRM deigns to offer any hard vote counts, it seems clear that neither Victarion nor Asha quite have enough votes to win on their own, with Asha outperforming her small base thanks to a last-minute change of heart from Rodrik Harlaw and an excellent debate performance (“Tristifer Botley was shouting for her, with many Harlaws, some Goodbrothers, red-faced Lord Merlyn, more men than the priest would ever have believed.”) and Victarion slightly underperforming thanks to Asha’s interruption of his speech and “demonstration.” With Victarion refusing Asha’s offer over their disagreements over foreign policy, the Kingsmoot is momentarily deadlocked:

But others were holding their tongues, or muttering asides to their neighbors. “No craven’s peace!” Ralf the Limper roared. Red Ralf Stonehouse swirled the Greyjoy banner and bellowed, “Victarion! VICTARION! VICTARION!” Men began to shove at one another. Someone flung a pinecone at Asha’s head. When she ducked, her makeshift crown fell off. For a moment it seemed to the priest as if he stood atop a giant anthill, with a thousand ants in a boil at his feet. Shouts of “Asha!” and “Victarion!” surged back and forth, and it seemed as though some savage storm was about to engulf them all. The Storm God is amongst us, the priest thought, sowing fury and discord. (AFFC)

Into this savage storm swaggers Euron Crowseye, the outsider candidate who upends the normal rules of politics. Leading up to the Kingsmoot, Euron is described as “gathering men…of small account;” sons of thralls like Rodrik Freeborn, bastards like Kemmett Pyke, the men of House Codd who are despised for being descended from thralls and salt wives (so much for the idea that all Ironborn are equal), and non-noble raiders like Harren Half-Hoare, the Red Oarsman, and Torwold Browntooth, although there are a few noble houses who back the outsider candidate. While Victarion and Asha have been playing by the old top-down rules where only noble Houses matter, Euron sees the ressentiment and frustrated ambitions of “lesser men” as the soft underbelly of the political system and makes the most of the opening.

But rather than aiming to transform the Iron Islands into a more egalitarian society – a true left-populist would look to the liberation of the thralls and the redistribution of the wealth of the Ironborn elite – Euron instead points his supporters towards an outwards enemy and a heroic narrative in which their personal shortcomings can be exorcised by violence and the restoration of Ironborn supremacy. Using his outsider’s insight into Ironborn political culture with a scalpel’s precision, Euron gives a messianic address that is 100% black-tar heroin revanchism:

“We are the ironborn, and once we were conquerors. Our writ ran everywhere the sound of the waves was heard. My brother would have you be content with the cold and dismal north, my niece with even less . . . but I shall give you Lannisport. Highgarden. The Arbor. Oldtown. The riverlands and the Reach, the kingswood and the rainwood, Dorne and the marches, the Mountains of the Moon and the Vale of Arryn, Tarth and the Stepstones. I say we take it all! I say, we take Westeros.” He glanced at the priest. “All for the greater glory of our Drowned God, to be sure.” For half a heartbeat even Aeron was swept away by the boldness of his words. The priest had dreamed the same dream, when first he’d seen the red comet in the sky. We shall sweep over the green lands with fire and sword, root out the seven gods of the septons and the white trees of the northmen… (AFFC)

As we’ll learn later, this speech is entirely insincere, but so well-calculated is it that even Aeron, who has more reason than any man living to hate and fear the Crowseye, can’t help but fall under its spell of Manifest Destiny and cultural chauvinism. Ever “open-handed” with poisoned gifts, Euron then gives away a lifetime’s worth of plunder from the east, which begins the stampede as “Hotho Harlaw…filled his hands with gold.”

Say what you will about Euron, he won his election by playing by the rules. I don’t think that will be much comfort when the Ironborn burn in their ships as sacrifices to his altar.

Conclusion:

One of the more frustrating aspects of modern political culture is that formal structures and institutions – especially political parties – are widely distrusted in favor of more open, spontaneous, and horizontal expressions of the popular will. But as we see from the example of the Kingsmoot, there are evils particular to structureless politics.

However appealing the freewheeling nature of the Kingsmoot might seem at first glance, the lack of structure has contributed to its instability as an institution. Immediately after the death of the first High King of the Iron Islands, Erich the Ugly tried to declare himself king and had to be overthrown by Galon Whitestaff; the election and then deposition of Urrathon Badbrother allowed Torgon the Latecomer to rule without being elected by kingsmoot, and to hand his crown to Urragon IV without convening a kingsmoot; and once Urron Redhand appealed from the ballot to the axe, there was no going back for four thousand or more years.

The only surprising thing about the election of Euron Crowseye, in the end, is that it hasn’t happened before now.

[1] Following my analogy of the Iron Islands to the Antebellum South, this is quite reminiscent of the South’s embrace of the “mudsill theory” to sell poor whites on the need to defend slavery (and accept the economic, political, and sociocultural domination of the planter class) above all else, especially the way in which the Jacksonian Democratic Party combined white supremacy and (not-quite) universal white male suffrage in the 1820-1840s.

[2] See above.