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The Iron Bank's masterplan | In Deep Geek | YouTubeToText
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The Iron Bank of Braavos, a powerful financial institution, actively manipulates Westerosi politics and succession to ensure the repayment of its debts, demonstrating its significant influence beyond mere lending.
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What is the Iron Bank's plan and
strategy in A Song of Ice and Fire?
They're clearly important to the plot,
but how? What are they planning? Hi
everyone, this is Robert. Welcome to
InDeep Geek. On this channel, we cover A
Song of Ice and Fire in nerdy detail, as
well as the Lord of the Rings, The
Witcher, and much more. Welcome. It is
said that the Iron Bank always gets its
due, which is a good reputation for a
bank to have. But what does it mean for
the story? Because the Iron Throne owes
the Iron Bank a lot of money. Let's
start by being clear on how much is
owed. We know it is a lot, but how much?
In book one, Littlefinger tells Ned
Stark that the crown is more than 6
million gold pieces in debt. 3 million
of that is apparently to the Lannisters.
And we find out later that exactly 900,674
900,674
is owed to the Faith of the Seven,
though that was forgiven when Cersei
allowed the reestablishment of the faith
militant. And the balance is to the
Tyrells, several Tyroi trading cartels,
and the Iron Bank of Braavos. So,
anything up to about 2 million gold
pieces accumulated over years and in the
form of lots of smaller loans, each
presumably needing repayment at
different times, but each very much
there. It's a lot, and the Iron Bank
will have been nervous. To be honest,
it's hard to conceptualize the exact
amount in today's monetary terms because
the prices of things seem to fluctuate a
lot in Westeros depending on whether
they are at war and so on and as it's
obviously a very different world to our
modern one. As a few random examples
though to give you an idea, in the hedge
knight, Duncs a horse for three and a
bit gold coins. Horse ownership is the
privilege of the rich, however, and
we're told that a member of the small
folk could live for a year on those
three gold pieces. Whereas in A Song of
Ice and Fire, Brienne thinks that one
gold is a good price for a horse. And at
the other extreme end of things, Celidor
son wants 30,000 gold crowns per month
to hire his two dozen ships, crews, and
so on for a probably very dangerous
assignment. So exact comparisons to
today's money would be a fool's game,
but we're talking billions, probably
tens or hundreds of billions. And it was
acred mostly during Robert Baratheon's
rule to pay for the lavish lifestyle he
enjoyed feasts and turns and the like.
The hands turn held during book one had
a prize pool of 90,000 gold alone. Plus
there was also the cost of setting up
and hosting such attorney. Some debts
may also have carried over from the mad
king. We read that he got into a dispute
with the Iron Bank over debts left over
from his father Jiharis II. Anyway, the
first sign of trouble in the main story
is quite low-key. Tyrion, as acting hand
of the king, is told that a money lender
from Braavos has arrived seeking payment
on some loans. Tyrion hands that problem
over to Littlefinger as master of coin.
We then hear nothing until partway
through A Feast for Crows. Then Cersei
is in charge as Queen Regent. She wants
to rebuild the Royal Navy after much of
it had been lost in the Battle of the
Blackwater. But she has a problem.
Money, or lack of money. She says this
to the small council. Though large, the
crown incomes are not large enough to
keep a breast of Robert's debts.
Accordingly, I have decided to defer our
repayment of the sums owed the Holy
Faith and the Iron Bank of Braavos until
wars end. The new High Septton would
doubtless ring his holy hands, and the
Bravosi would squeak and squawk at her.
But what of it? The monies saved will be
used for the building of our new fleet.
Only Pycel objects, saying that the
decision not to pay the Iron Bank will
cause trouble, and trouble does come.
The Iron Bank's response is to call in
the debts owed to them across Westeros,
not just with the Iron Throne, but with
merchants and the like, and they refuse
any new loans. Cersei doesn't take this
very seriously, but it's clear that
economic warfare is now being waged on
the Iron Throne, and it will have no
doubt angered the rich middle classes of
the Seven Kingdoms. When Kevin Lannister
takes the reigns of power in King's
Landing, he ever practical tries to work
his way through the issue by seeking
loans from Pentos and Mia so he can pay
back what is owed to the Iron Bank. That
doesn't work. So he sends Harris Swift,
the Master of Coin, to Braavos to see
whether he can come to a negotiated
settlement of some kind. We don't know
yet how that meeting went, but I think
we can guess. Arya is our only PIV
character in Braavos at the moment and
she happens to stumble across Harris
Swift and his guards attending a
performance of a new play. She's
undercover as one of the actors in that
play. I say happens to stumble upon, but
this seems far from random. If Harris
Swift were an honored guest in Braavos,
would he really be sent to the opening
act of a play seemingly making fun of
Robert Baratheon and the Lannisters?
That seems unlikely. And Arya being
there also seems deliberate. The
faceless men know that she is finding it
hard to leave her stark identity behind.
Are they really going to send her to a
mummer's group where she will have to
literally act out some of the most
traumatic moments to happen to her
family? And they know the names on her
list and that one of Harris Swift's gods
is on there. The more you look at it,
the more this feels like the faceless
men hoping or expecting her to kill Raph
the Sweetling, that guard. Why? Not for
themselves, but because their closest
customer and ally, the Iron Bank, want
to send a message to the Lannisters. The
Iron Bank does have a history of this
with the Faceless Men. In Fire and
Blood, you can read of the time the
Rogair Bank of Lease briefly eclipsed
the power and wealth of the Iron Bank.
And then a series of unfortunate
accidents happened to their senior
members, one after another,
destabilizing that bank and allowing the
Iron Bank to regain its primacy. No
prizes for guessing who orchestrated the
accidents. But perhaps even more
significantly, the Iron Bank seems to
have shifted its position. Seemingly
well before Harris Swift set foot in
Braavos, they had shifted to a new
strategy. Taiko Nestois, one of their
senior envoys, took a boat up from
Braavos to the wall, seeking an audience
with Stannis. After the deaths of Rob
Renley and Balong Greyjoy, as well as
Joffrey, of course, Stannis is the last
man standing in the War of the Five
Kings. And as young Griff's invasion was
yet to happen, Stannis is seemingly the
only possible candidate to challenge the
Lannisters. Of course, Stannis was low
on coin and soldiers, but the Iron Bank
could help with that if he were
interested. Again, this is not a new
strategy, but something they had been
doing for centuries. No doubt Pycel had
been aware of this before his objections
were swiftly silenced by Cersei. We
actually get a good summary of this
strategy from Jon Snow's thoughts as he
also considered getting a loan for the
Night's Watch from Tyonosaurus and the
Iron Bank as they happened to be there.
That was for ships and provisions to
last the winter though. This is what Jon
thinks about the Iron Bank strategy. The
Iron Bank of Braavos had a fearsome
reputation when collecting debts. When
princes defaulted on their debts to
lesser banks, ruined bankers sold their
wives and children into slavery and
opened their own veins. When princes
failed to repay the Iron Bank, new
princes sprang up from nowhere and took
their thrones. As poor Plump Tommen may
be about to learn, no doubt the
Lannisters had good reason for refusing
to honor King Robert's debts, but it was
folly all the same. If Stannis was not
too stiff- necked to accept their terms,
the Braavosi would give him all the gold
and silver he required, coin enough to
buy a dozen Cells sword companies to
bribe a h 100red lords to keep his men
paid, fed, clothed, and armed.
And Stannis does take them up on their
offer, at least according to the
pre-release chapter from the Winds of
Winter from Theon's point of view. In
that, Stannis says to Justin Massie, who
he entrusts with getting and spending
the gold from the loan, "The Iron Bank
has opened its coffers to me. You will
collect their coin and hire ships and
sell swords, a company of good repute,
if you can find one. The Golden Company
would be my first choice, if they are
not already under contract. Seek for
them in the Disputed Lands if need be.
But first, hire as many swords as you
can find in Braavos, and send them to me
by way of East Watch. Archers as well.
We need more bows.
Sir Justin's hair had fallen down across
one eye. He pushed it back and said,
"The captains of the free companies will
join a lord more readily than a mere
knight." "Your grace, I hold neither
lands nor title. Why should they sell
their swords to me? Go to them with both
fists full of golden dragons," the king
said in an acid tone. "That should prove
persuasive. 20,000 men should suffice.
Do not return with fewer."
So Stannis has taken on a huge loan,
enough to hire 20,000 men. That's a
sizable army. And in case you were
wondering, this doesn't mean that the
Iron Bank have now written off what the
Iron Throne owes them. Stannis has
signed up to repaying when he becomes
king, not only his loan, but also take
on the debt that the Iron Throne already
had. The Iron Bank always gets its due.
So what does this all add up to? The
Iron Throne owes a huge debt to the Iron
Bank, and Cersei has decided to stop
their repayments on that debt until the
war is over in Westeros. But the Iron
Bank aren't happy and respond with some
economic sanctions against not just the
Lannisters, but merchants, hoping that
they will put pressure on the Iron
Throne to deal with it. Cersei doesn't
care. When he gets into power, however,
Kevin realizes the seriousness of the
situation and tries to work out a way to
pay what is owed to the Iron Bank. He
first tries getting loans from some
other bank so he can pay the Iron Bank,
but they refuse that. It's
understandable. The Iron Throne's credit
rating probably isn't that good at this
time with them hugely in debt and unable
to make the payments. So, he sends an
envoy to Braavos to negotiate some kind
of deal. All very sensible. But the Iron
Bank have run out of patience. They are
sending a message to Cersei by
economically attacking business in the
seven kingdoms, having a member of her
envoy's delegation accidentally murdered
in Braavos, and lending Stannis all the
money he needs to launch another bid for
the Iron Throne himself. Yes, this is
the Iron Bank acting as a major player
on the world stage, toppling regimes and
installing their own candidates. They
are more powerful than many citystates
or even nations in the world of ice and
fire. But what does this mean for the
story going forward? Well, first Arya,
if I'm right that the Faceless Men set
her up to kill Rath the Sweeting for the
Iron Bank, then we have to consider the
possibility that they might use her to
get at more of their enemies. They know
who is on Ya's kill list. Might they be
okay with her leaving her training to
head back to Westeros, knowing she will
at some point almost certainly try to
kill Cersei? I think so. It makes sense
of why they keep training her despite
her never really using her Starkish
identity inside.
Second, Stannis. He now has the
resources he needs to launch another
attempt to claim the Iron Throne. But
he's not really in a position to do that
right now. He wants to claim Winterfell
first, then the North, then save the
Seven Kingdoms from the others. Added to
which it will take time for his army to
arrive. Justin Massie has to get to
Castle Black, then Eastw Watch, then
over to Braavos to collect the money,
then over into Deeper Essos to hire some
Cell Sword companies. Stannis even
suggests he heads all the way down to
the disputed lands, which is a long way
away. Then he needs to get back.
Stannis's new army is not going to
appear for a long time, and the
otherwise relatively obscure Justin
Massie suddenly becomes an extremely
important person. Stannis says to him
that if he hears Stannis is dead, he is
to carry on with his mission and bring
the army for Shireen. But what if he
hears that Stannis and Shireen are both
dead? We know he's a very ambitious man
and he'll have a lot of money in his
pockets or a large army at his back.
It's one to keep an eye on. Third,
there's Young Griff or Aegon the Sixth
if you prefer. He has burst onto the
scene after the Iron Bank decided to
back Stannis, but looks much more likely
than him to actually win the Iron
Throne. How will the Iron Bank respond
to him if he wins King's Landing? Expect
an envoy from the Iron Bank to be one of
the first to visit the new boy king. And
finally, Daenerys and her dragons. It
looks like she won't need anything from
the Iron Bank to pay for her to have an
army capable of invading Westeros. She
may well have the Unsullied, Second
Sons, Dothraki, the Iron Fleet, support
from the faith of Ror, and some dragons,
of course. How will the Iron Bank react
to her? Well, there's a blink and you'll
miss it reference when Jon Snow is
talking to Tao Nesto that I think might
be quite suggestive. Jon makes a
flippant comment about it being so cold
at the wall they could do with the
dragon to warm them up. And Tao, who had
happily been drinking and bantering with
Jon before, suddenly gets all serious.
One hears queer talk of dragons, says
Tao. Would that we had one here?
Responds John. A dragon might warm
things up a bit. My lord gests. You will
forgive me if I do not laugh. We Bravosi
are descended from those who fled
Valyria and the wroth of its dragon
lords. We do not jape of dragons.
No, I suppose not. My apologies, Lord
Tao. It's a slightly awkward exchange,
but I think shows how the Bravosi and
the Iron Bank view the potential return
of dragons. They don't like the idea,
and that's putting it lightly. Perhaps
it might also explain why there's a
faceless man down in Oldtown seemingly
hunting for information in the secret
parts of the Citadel. But all of that
seems like another video in waiting, so
I'll talk about that more there. For
now, the strategy is clear. If Cersei
won't pay her debts, the Iron Bank will
get rid of her by any means possible.
Economic pressure, assassination,
backing a rival, anything. In the
absence of any better options, they've
thrown their support behind Stannis, but
only in terms of loans. Remember, they
will get that money back somehow from
someone. And if young Griff sits on the
Iron Throne, they will try to get their
money back from him. And if Danny does,
the same. Though they could probably do
without her having dragons. Dragons are
not good for business.
If you'd like to see more videos diving
deep into the world of A Song of Ice and
Fire, there's a link to my playlist
appearing now on the left of your
screen. Or to support this channel,
thank you. There's a link appearing now
on the right of your screen. That's all
for this time. Thanks for watching. I'll
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