#half-maesters

[racefortheironthrone]

Hi, diferent anon here. Once you said that the Iron Throne should create a system of itinerary judges who would travel all the country and enforce the king's law over the lords', but I have a few questions: from where would this judges come from, who would they be and how would they get to know the king's law? Would they come from the same regions they would oversee (like a northman for the North, for exemple) or from different regions? Would they be lords, maesters or common man? Would women be allowed to be judges?

Those are good questions!

When it comes to staffing a system of justices in eyre, there are competing imperatives: on the one hand, the judges have to be figures of prestige in order to gain compliance from local lords and commoners alike. This is one of the reasons why, for example, the "great eyres" of the justices started with a massive public ceremony that local nobles and royal officials would be summoned to in which they would offer up their insignia of offices and do homage to the judge in his full regalia, as if to the King in person, because the justice was considered to be a kind of avatar of the King. For this reason, you want someone of equal social rank to the nobility - if not a lord themselves, then the younger son of a lord, for example.

On the other hand, you also want the judge to have (or at least have access to) legal expertise so that they can apply the royal legal code and the relevant legal precedents correctly, read and understand the legal documents brought before the court by both parties, and follow the arguments put forward by the lawyers. This is why I have suggested that Westerosi justices and sheriffs be either accompanied by a maester or half-maester or have undergone training as a half-maester in law themselves. While we certainly have examples of nobility studying at the Citadel and gaining links with and without becoming maesters, I imagine it would be more common for half-maester justices to come from burgher families who have the money to send their children to school and who need education in order to achieve upwards economic mobility.

However, I would imagine that it would be much harder for a justice from even a wealthy smallfolk background to gain compliance from the local nobility. So I imagine you would also need the sheriffs with their more paramilitary responsibilities to be knights at the very least, and to accompany the justices on their circuits to ensure that the judges' decisions were being upheld and their writs honored, as well as delivering accused criminals and outlaws to the justices for trial.

[racefortheironthrone]

About 8 months ago, SLAL mentioned you had an idea of 'link schools' throughout Westeros, where the sciences are taught to a larger public. Can you elaborate on that? Like, where would you get the funds? Who's your target for this increased education? Where would these schools be built?

Well, they weren’t purely for the sciences, but the idea I had as part of my economic development series was that, rather than having a system in which graduates of higher education were required to be polymaths (i.e, you need enough links on your chain to go around your neck and become a maester), you have schools set up where the objective is to train someone to competence in only one or two areas, and essentially create a new category of half-maester as credentialed specialists. 

So for example, if you need more doctors, it makes sense to have schools where students go only to train to get silver links; or if you want to expand the communication network of the ravens out further, have people who only study to get black iron links; or if you need more accountants, have people who only study to get yellow gold links, and so on. 

In terms of financing and location, my original idea was that a Lord Paramount would essentially subsidize the construction and operation of these schools by way of a payment to the Citadel, with schools located in cities/towns/major castles, in return for having their people educated at a reasonable price. And the target is essentially to build up the human capital of a given region, so that I have more literate people, more specialists in needed areas (not just doctors, but also lawyers, accountants, metallurgists, communications experts, teachers, etc.), and thus a more productive economy, although I imagine these halfmaester positions would probably be more attractive to the merchant, artisan, and wealthy peasant classes as a way to get their children a respected trade than to the nobility per se.