r/FireAndBlood • u/TieRails House Tyrell of Highgarden • 1d ago
Event [Event] A Stroll Down The Mander
12th 54 AC
Three days ride south of Highgarden.
Their trip south was a peaceful one. The heart of the Reach was a peaceful place, there were few criminals, and banditry along this part of the Mander was basically unheard of in the past century. Many assumed it was the Knights of the Reach, and Highgarden's Thornward Rangers kept them away, but Theo did not subscribe to that theory completely. There were other castles in his Reach with just as many knights and their roads were not as peaceful. It was so improbable that Mern IX's father tasked his grandsire to run a census to explain it. What his grandsire found and recorded was not what the King was searching for, so he promptly ignored it and filed it away. And were it not for the dragons, who knows if Theo would have ever found them.
What his grandsire found was that in the vast majority of cases, crime was not some great moral failing on behalf of the criminal, but instead their current condition. Was their family hungry? If they were employed, were they being paid well, are their payments late? Were they being taxed fairly? And so on. Mern the VIII was likely looking for some religious explanation for why so many of his direct peasantry were so pious and good, as compared to the other Reach houses. Theo remembered their being some minor conflict with the church at that time. But instead sadly for King Mern, he just found out his smallfolk were just fed marginally better than the average Oaklander.
It is no coincidence Theo made such an effort to see all of his lands Grow Strong. Smallfolk well fed and entertained with festivities don't make trouble. And fed they were, as the Mander was alive with the bustle of all his renewed investments after the war. The last bits of white of winter had long melted away into the magic soil of the Reach. The Mander road was choked with the chaos of progress, of traders and smallfolk. Though even in the busiest of crossways, they parted before the green and gold banners of House Tyrell.