My stance on various ASOIAF conspiracy theories, Part 29

Thursday is theory day.

This is the twenty-ninth article of the series. Since there are a lot of theories floating out there and I'm asked often enough what I think of them, I thought I write it down. You can then laugh about me when I am totally proven wrong by "The Winds of Winter" or something like that. Rules are as follows: you put a question about any theory or plot element (really, let's stress "theory" a bit for the sake of interesting questions) either in the comments of any theory post or by mail (stefan_sasse@gmx.de) and I will answer them in an upcoming post. And if you now ask "Stefan, isn't this a shameless rip-off of Sean T. Collin's "Ask me anything"?", I would tell you to shut up, because you are right.

Prepare for part 29. Spoilers for "A Song of Ice and Fire", obviously.

Why doesn't the Night's Watch tattoo its members?

That's an interesting question, not because it startles me as it does you, but because it allows us to compare important elements of Westerosi and Essosi culture. If you imagine the Night's Watch to tattoo its members like the Volantene slave holders do, it would get rid of a major problem: desertion. You would be able to spot a brother of the Night's Watch the moment you lay eyes on him. So why not do it? The answer lies in what the Watch once was, and what it is still pretending to be: a brotherhood. Back in its old days, it was comprised of a near ridiculous number of knights. Those guys are supposed to swear oaths and to keep them, so putting a tattoo on their face is one big stinky finger saying "we think your honor is worth shit". So, that way isn't feasible if you don't want no knight to go to the Wall, like, ever. But why not do it for those who aren't there voluntarily, the poachers and thiefs and murderers and rapers? Surely no one would attribute them any honor, would they? But yes, they do, as I argued in my essay about honor a while back. The Night's Watch attributes honor to all its members, the honor of being a sworn brother. Tattoo these guys, and you take that away from them, and the last reason to feel any loyalty to an institution they were forced into. So, while the tattoos would certainly get rid of a big problem, they would create an even bigger one: incesting a giant revolt. And in contrast to Essos, no one thinks that tattooing a knight is a thing you just let happen and shrug because the guy will have deserved it somehow. You don't do this to people of stature.

Why aren't there lawyers?
For the same reason why there aren't courts: where there is no law, there is no need for either. In Westeros, the lords are at the same time the judges of every problem big enough to be laid before them. All other problems are handled by the communities involved, most like by someone in a mayor like capactiy or a council of elders or such. There are pretty primal mechanisms of social ostracism involved in order to punish someone and settle an affair without involving a lord. And you don't want to get a lord involved, because lords settle all affairs only one way: by punishing the perpetrator. That requires a world view in which there are crimes that need to be punished, and the "judging" part of the lord is to determine the punishment. Look at Randyl Tarly in "A Feast for Crows" to see this at work. Since there is no written law that you could use for orientation, but only the "right of pits and gallows" for a lord and elsewise his own wisdom to decide, this makes lawyers a profession without a ground to stand on. Westeros would certainly profit from lawyers and courts, but since for both you need a law (else, what to judge?), and there is no canonical law in Westeros, there are no lawyers. 

What will happen to Slaver's Bay?

It depends wildly on the manner of Danaerys' return with Drogon. I'd guess that there's a lot of blood involved in some battle that she will win, and the will get her stuff and make for Westeros. Whether she'll bother to order her affairs in Slaver's Bay at all remains to be seen. Since it's likely that she'll hit Volantis on the way to Westeros, and Yunkai will be defeated, it may be that her new order takes control, but the more realistic option is a stalemate between the new elites and those parts of the old ones that survive the initial purge. What then happens is up for debate, of course. Suffice to say, I don't see a sunny future for Slaver's Bay, where the freed slaves live happily ever after. I guess it's much more likely that they're going to see kind of a Reconstruction like it hit the freed slaves of the American South, with the old elites regaining power and enforcing the old order in all but name.