Work Text:
The Early Parliament: 356-374
Professor Davos O’Harrowton
University of Oldtown at Hightower Press, © 912 AC
When the Dance of Dragons ended in 356, the country was at the brink of collapse. Lords, knights, and peasants alike had died in the hundreds of thousands, and lawlessness was the standard in nearly every part of Westeros.
Amid the chaos, the word of law fell apart, and with it, the feudal model. Prior to the Dance, people had (in general) trusted their overlords to dispense justice and make laws. But the number of lords that were left following the war was so few that there was a pressing need for a new system of law making.
To answer the peasant revolts of 355, Parliament was formed.
Advisory Board
For the first 18 years of its existence, Parliament had no real authority to write laws, despite what the lower class was led to believe. Rather, the chambers acted as “advisory boards” to the monarch. Ultimately, the monarch was still the arbiter of all legal writing and questions, and no law was passed without first going through the Red Keep. A relic of this system, of course, still exists today in that the Protector of the Realm still signs every Parliamentary bill. Now, though, this is just a formality.
Act One, Scene One
The first decision Parliament made was to pass the Existence of Parliament Act. Essentially, the Act affirmed the existence of Parliament and the powers that it had over the lords and the King. Interestingly though, the EPA does have one provision in Article 6 that states the following:
“No King, Queen, or Prince of the Blood shall serve as a member of Parliament or as Speaker of the Chamber of Folk.”
The decision to keep royalty out of Parliament was perhaps a decision made by King Aerion, or his Hand, Lord Ellard Stark. The reason for the inclusion of this clause is unknown, but the clause’s effect has certainly been visible, such as when King Aerys II, when still a prince, was denied the ability to join the Chamber of Lords.
Even more powerful than the Royalty clause is the non-dissolution clause, which states:
“No King, Queen, Prince or Princess of the Blood, Lord, Lady, Warden, or Foreign Power may dissolve the Parliament of Westeros under any circumstances.”
This clause did not, however, stop Aerys II from preventing the Parliament to meet by blocking off the entrance to the Chambers. The non-dissolution clause is interesting though, in that it, for the first time, implied that there was something higher than even the monarch in terms of power. While the legislature itself remained powerless for nearly 2 decades, the mere fact that there was something the monarch was now not allowed to do set the precedent for more damning laws such as the Constitutional Monarchy Act of 656.
Initial Meetings of Parliament before construction of the Chambers
Despite the popular story, King Aerion didn’t truly call a Parliament into session in 356. Rather, he summoned a Great Council to temporarily help him make and enforce laws post-Dance of Dragons. It was only after the Council gathered in King’s Landing that its members realized that it would have to be more than just a thatch-board to piece the Realm together following the Dance.
How exactly Parliament got its name is unclear, though. A popular rumour has it that one of the Council’s attendees, Lord William Manderly, remarked that the ad-hoc governance council had become a “Parliament of fowls.”(1) Regardless of how the name came to be, it was made official with the previously mentioned Existence of Parliament Act.
Because the Dance of Dragons had left large parts of the Realm leaderless, the earliest Parliament had not only a legislative function, but a judicial one as well. Even though the monarch remained the sole arbiter of all judicial rulings, Parliament was temporarily allowed to function as a community court, delivering verdicts by means of majority vote. The only one of the first Parliament’s verdicts that still serves as legal precedent today was its decision to entrust several local mints with minting silver coinage, such as moons and dimes.
For the first 18 years, Parliament didn’t have a real or stable meeting place. Sometimes, it met in the Throne Room in the Red Keep. Other times, it met in the Great Sept. Once, Parliament even met in the tournament grounds in the capital. While King Aerion meant to address this, it didn’t occur for nearly two decades. In the beginning, it was because cleaning up the effects of Dance were time consuming. Then, it was because Lord Elmar Baratheon’s revolt tied up any spare resources the Crown may have had. After the first 6 years of war though, Aerion didn’t make an effort to build a meeting hall for Parliament for a variety of reasons, notwithstanding the corruption accusations against Justin Shallow, the first Speaker of the House of Folk. In 373, however, construction on Council Hall began, and was completed the following year. In that year too, Parliament was granted relative lawmaking authority.
Power? Laws? Power and Laws?
King Aerion Targaryen’s decision to grant Parliament real legislative authority was met with stiff opposition. Ser Edwyle Tully, the then heir to Riverrun, declared that Aerion had gone “mad as his father and aunt,” referring to Prince Baelon and Princess Daenerys, the main claimants during the Dance of Dragons (2). Lord Ronnel Arryn, the then Lord of the Eyrie, said that Aerion had become “a blustering fool trying to please the smallfolk,” and Maester Alester Tyrell, brother of the then Lord of Highgarden, wrote that “The King has forgotten how to rule, giving over power to peasants.”(3) In spite of this opposition, King Aerion signed the True Law Act of 374.
The fallout and implications of this will be saved for a future essay, but it is important to remember that even though we refer to King Aerion as Aerion the Magnificent , his contemporaries, at least those from 4th century (if not the 5th), did not approve of Parliament or many other of the Aerionic Reforms.
Footnotes
1 : The legitimacy of this quote is disputed by scholars. The Official Biography of Lord Ellard Stark claims that the man in question said the quote during the first session of Parliament. Other sources, including Maester Rendall Antler’s Fowls, claim that Lord William Manderly did not say such a thing at all, instead attributing the quote to a mistake in translation performed by the Daily Braavos.
2 : Lord Edwyle II Tully, A Biography, by Maester Jonas Osgood
3 : These quotes first appeared in On the Nature of Parliamentary Behavior , a paper produced by the Citadel-of-Oldtown in 357 AC.
Further Reading
The Official Biography of Lord Ellard Stark, by Maester Beron Snow
The Treatise of Dragonstone, by Davos O’Harrowton
“The Aerionic Reforms” in the Encyclopedia of the 4th Century
About the author: Professor Davos O’Harrowton has spent nearly 32 years in the field of Targaryen history and political science. He has published several best selling books in those fields, including The Three Good Queens, Sons of the Conqueror, and The Treatise of Dragonstone. He lives in Duskendale with his wife and two children.