Hello, here is a question that has been bothering me for some time watching Game of Thrones. How does the pre-industrial economy of Westeros support the warfare and the opulent ruling class we've witnessed? It seems anything can be bought with enough gold... Every episode we see castles, knights and soldiers, plenty of gold, silks and wealth... but hardly a mention of the huge peasant class that must exist to support them all. Where are the farmers growing the food to feed all these armies and princes, let alone a five years of surplus grain? Every farm we've seen is a single family dwelling and usually slaughtered and pillaged. Who is baking all the bread now that the baker's son is dead? Hot Pie? Who is raising and training the dozens of horses that fall slaughtered every season? Who is mining the steel for armor and arrowheads. Who is chopping and seasoning all the wood for funeral pyres? If every town has a smith than he must be working 24/7 producing chainmail and shields. Perhaps the land is resource-rich... perhaps the growing seasons are particularly short. I have not read the books, is there any more details about this feudal society?
Questions about GOT pre-industrial economy
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Basically you've hit upon one of the key factors leading into the second half of the story. No one is thinking about crop surpluses or long term in general and the small folk (as the westerosi call them) are suffering the worst of the war and will suffer the worst of winter when it comes. It has been "summer" for over a decade and the last long winter was a lifetime ago. Everyone is underestimating how quickly winter is coming and how little they have prepared for it. What little world building we get on the lower social classes of westerosi society are considered the slow and boring parts of the books by most, so I doubt the show is going to go into it very much.
Westeros is a huge continent. The main rural scenes are in the Riverlands, which is where most of the war is being fought, or parts of the North, which has vast stretches of largely uninhabited land.
Budget kind of restricts what we see on the show, as well. The Reach (where the Tyrells are from) and the Vale are the other major agricultural areas of Westeros.
