Tv journal: game of thrones season 1 - 6

The price of honour

Middle Ages being a cold weapon world, battles are won and lost based on size of your army primarily. Number of Calvary as well almost as important, as men on horses seems to able to cut down foot soldiers like piss through fresh snow in medieval combat. A salient and interesting aspect of medieval conduct is the concept of oath and honour to me. It's the world where social fabric of the land is weaved by houses pledging allegiance to others purely by words, a verbal lifetime contract has extremely high social recognition and responsibility that comes with it. It's certainly more formal and serious than a modern day code of conduct. You just have to look at Lady Brienne of Tarth to get a glimpse of the purest form in which oath should be carried out. 

Although the exchanges of oath and marriages are serious, I'm not sure it serves as the most optimal form of getting the best shared interest at lowest cost. Note that I'm switching the scenario from an honest/high social standard based one to an self interest maximisation based one. It would be curious to discover how the bannerman / pledge ones life / knighthood systems came about and evolved. I suspect it might well be the optimal social system during the dark ages anyway. 

Assume you are a medieval knight who kicks ass at swordplay and confident your martial artistry could earn yourself a decent living, your option the is to live and die for the lord you are attached to. Do behave otherwise would put you in a treasonous light if there's such a word. However one could argue that if a choice is clearly between death and re-attach oneself to another master, then surely how "honourable" the knight is will determine the immediate lifespan of this certain knight. I guess this is why mutiny occurs and how sellswords are always the first to desert forces in adversity. 

Therefore, I would certainly be in the camp of freely changing pledges in light of the context. To pay the ultimate price would not advance my or my masters causes. Because if I'm dead I can't do shit and my master is dead anyway. So the return for my honour is a sudden and complete stop to my and my masters ability to do ANYTHING. so why honour? The sole effect of such behaviour is to impact upon the bystanders and hear-Sayers of how honourable I am (they the bystanders care to notice such honour) or just that this warring house and its knights are dead and they move on to spectate on another living house. Witness and death of Robb Stark. 

Of course if the choice presented are you die fighting or you die even if surrendered/yielded, then the outcome is most likely fighting to death because of sheer spite. Because in this scenario you agitate the raw instinct of fight or flight and flight isn't an option so fight it is. 

Now going back to where I raised this question. I think there's another layer for this choice of honour. And that is that of peer pressure and social norm. Our protagonist is in reality faced with: 1, probable death of stick with current master, 2. Forever social and peer mockery of being oathbreaker I.e., kingslayer, which would also reduce his ability to seek further non-sellsword employment. 

So that why honour is somehow important. 

I guess these days it's a form of nationalistic brainwash where fighting for ones motherland is honourable and not doing so is   looked down upon. Because the opposite of not doing so is an incohesive population askin to liberal versus religious population.  

On the khaleesi the dragon mother

The key attribute that determined her success to me are: 3 fucking fire breathing dragons, unburnability, determination and charisma. She is certainly smart, but most high level lords in the show are except the laughably old fashioned Starks.