GRRM has never been clear on exactly how large Westeros is, or exactly how long it takes to travel between places. What we do know, is that Westeros is massive. For example, it takes a few weeks to travel between Winterfell and King's Landing on horseback.
This is why the raven is so important. It is the only reliable way the Lords of Westeros can communicate relatively quickly. Now I know they aren't perfect, but ravens seemly can travel hundreds of miles in a day for people to receive news as quickly as they do.
This is why ravens are the single most important thing keeping the Seven Kingdoms together. Without them, it would be impossible to know the state of affairs throughout the realm. It would be much too easy for people to rebel and you not know until they show up at your gates. These creatures are what makes the Iron Throne so far ahead of its time as a form of government.
The medieval system was always a form of decentralized government. While smaller lords could declare fealty to a greater lord(the king), the small lords still pretty much had total authority over their lands most of the time. One of the few times one saw the King exercising his power, was during a war when he called his vassals to help him.
In a medieval system it was hard to have common law across the entire kingdom. Lesser lords could pretty much do as they please. It wasn't even a guarantee that most people could speak the same language in the same kingdom. In France for example, what we know as modern french didn't become widespread until after the French revolution. Before that, French citizens all spoke their own regional dialects of the language.
One of the reasons we didn't see centralized governments arise in our world until the last 200 years was due to a lack of quick and reliable mode of communication. After the invention of the locomotive and the telegraph, we started to see governments evolve into the centralized modern nation estates of today.
The telegraph and locomotive are also what allowed the United States to expand west. Without these two key forms of communication and transportation, the US would have never been able to take and hold the lands west of the Appalachians.
Now don't get me wrong, the Iron Throne is very much a feudal monarchy; but it shares some things in common with modern centralized nation estates. It has a common currency used by all, as well as a common language. The king seems to have broad authority to dictate law across the whole realm. An example of this would be when king Jaehaerys I Targaryen banned the first night tradition, or when Tommen decided to ban trial by combat.
The raven is the glue that holds these kingdoms together in times of peace. So forget dragons. If it wasn't for the ravens, Aegon the Conqueror would have never been able to keep control of the Seven Kingdoms. No matter how many times he reconquered them.
Submitted April 27, 2017 at 11:39PM by SouthernWilding http://ift.tt/2pt20oL
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