Older cities than that have supported significantly more people. Rome, for one.
London wasn’t much of a metropolis back then, though. Paris in 1328 had about a quarter million inhabitants, so that’s probably a better comparison.
Granted, current (more or less) research indicates that the city of Ancient Rome apparently housed about 450,000 inhabitants. On the other hand, Rome was the capital of a huge empire, and had technology that was later lost in the subsequent dark ages, like aqueducts, sewers, and concrete. Medieval London seems like a closer analogue to what we’ve seen on the show for King’s Landing.
I should have thought to check population stats for Paris in the Middle Ages – so that raises my upper bound for the population of King’s Landing.
King’s Landing is the capital of a huge empire, far larger than England. Westeros has sewers. No concrete, but I’m unsure of aqueducts. Constantinople also had significantly more people than 100k pre-middle ages.
I just think it’s weird to say the population has to be small based on HBO not rendering in herds of sheep outside the walls.
I think I recall reading that Westeros is comparable in size to the entirety of South America.
One thing to note, the War of the Five Kings killed huge numbers of people, emptying out Westeros. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s half the population it was in King Robert’s day. Or less.
I don’t know if that helps the Night King or hurts him. Probably helps, considering southerners don’t seem to burn their dead. Though I’m not sure how easy it is to raise an army if they have to be dug out of the ground first. NK seems to draft most of his recruits from recently felled battlefield casualties.
I don’t know if it’s been settled or not, but I’m assuming that a Wight killed by Dragonglass is dead dead. No coming back again.
Right, so in the hypothetical battle envisioned by Sam Stone, both armies lose half of their combatants. The NK’s army of wights goes from 50K to 25K. The 25,000 wights that are “killed” by dragonglass, Valyrian steel, or fire stay dead.
However, the army of the living also sees its numbers reduced from 50K to 25K, and the 25K that are killed are immediately raised as wights, so it’s actually now 50K wights against the remaining 25K living.
Regardless, in such a battle, there’s really no way for the living to prevail in a normal straight-up fight. The only way to win is to take out the Night King and the other White Walkers.
That’s not really how battles work. If the army of the dead loses the NK wouldn’t be free to just keep raising the dead, he is either fled or most likely finished.
Nobody said anything about the army of the dead losing. We’re talking about something more like a battle of attrition – on both sides.
In the hypothetical battle that we are discussing, as Sam Stone put it: “Let’s say two armies are equal, at 50,000 each. They fight to a standstill, and each lose half.”
Not if they kill each other at the same rate, but if humans are better than killing wights than wights are at killing humans, then humans could win.
Not if the NK turns the humans he kills into wights. In that case, the humans will have to kill twice as many wights just to keep things even.
Yes, even if the Night King turns the humans he kills into wights. You even said so yourself. If the humans are twice as efficient, they keep even, and if they’re more than twice as efficient…
If a wight is on a train heading west…
This seems to be getting recursive… :dubious:
In any event, for the hypothetical battle that was being discussed, it was posited that they were killing each other at the same rate (at least initially).
Getting away from the hypothetical, it is an interesting question as to which side would be more likely to kill at the faster rate.
Wights (like White Walkers) seem to go down immediately when struck by dragonglass or Valyrian steel. Fire appears to take only a little longer. On the other hand, they can take a lot more damage and keep fighting if stuck by any other weapon.
For the living, on the other hand, how many of them are actually soldiers who know how to fight? (This was specifically mentioned in the last episode.) Also, living people are more fragile than we like to think. For example, unlike a wight, a living person will likely be unable to continue fighting if they lose a limb in the course of the battle.
The former is when the wights are slightly more than half as efficient as humans and the latter is the opposite. Humans in blue, wights in orange.
The defenders of winterfell are armed with dragonglass weapons and are behind fortifications. Their kill rate will almost certainly be significantly higher than that of the wights.
The biggest problem is that they are massively outnumbered. If the initial strength is such that there are twice as many wights than humans, humans need to kill ~6 times as efficiently. If there are 10x wights, humans need to kill ~114 times as efficiently.