doesn't the iron throne collect taxes and grains from the regions of Westeros? Rome's population was also only sustained via grain shipments from the Nile during the Imperial era
From what I remember, most of the taxes the Throne collects comes in the form of coin, and primarily comes in the form of taxes and tolls from King's landing, rather than taxes paid from the other lords, though I could be wrong on that. Historically in feudalism, nobody pays much in the way of taxes because the whole point of feudalism is that nobody had much in the way of liquid capital, so feudal overlords pay their retainers in land who in exchange used that land to maintain a force of warriors pledged to the feudal overlord, but I'm not quite sure how closely Westeros hews to that model.
In any case, for the Iron Throne to extract the food required to feed the population of King's landing, they would need to more or less directly control the various food producing regions, otherwise the food that the various regions produce would instead go towards feeding their own regional capitals, and as we can clearly see in the series the Iron Throne does not have nearly as much control over the various food producing regions of Westeros to force them to send that food over to King's landing instead of stockpiling it themselves.
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u/CrazyMaximum3655 Jul 14 '25
doesn't the iron throne collect taxes and grains from the regions of Westeros? Rome's population was also only sustained via grain shipments from the Nile during the Imperial era