i think that Bret is overly generous about Martin's intent. i don't think that GRRM meant anything so deep as "showing what might happen if the moderating power of the church is removed".. i think it far more likely, given the many other analysis's into the historicity of ASOI&F, that GRRM legitimately just is clueless about the actual historical realities, and actually thinks he has written a historically accurate depiction, derived from the stereotypes people hold about the Middle Ages and the society that existed.Given that he has gone so far to maintain his claim about historical accuracy, while also stating that he avoids reading actual historical research, i don't think any other interpretation fits.
GRRM claims to write the medieval world, yet he ends up writing the modern world with a medieval veneer, which has the same relationship to its model as bardcore does to medieval European music.
One of the interesting things revealed in Fire & Blood is how the state defanged the faith. The current era has a very weak faith. I think the story partially depicts religious revival.
From what I understand, there used to be a lot more fire to the Faith of the Seven Early on. There were some NASTY rebellions after the death of Aegon I based on religious conviction when people realized the Targs really were going to keep going with the incest. The problem was they just kept being set on fire by their Dragons. Eventually, the rebellions ended with a peaceful accord between the Targaryens and the Faith and I think that one-two punch of DRAGON FIRE and meekly accepting the Monarchs to do as they would, BROKE something in the Faith and which cascaded down to the rest of society.
...And you'd expect that to lead to the Church schism-ing like crazy, shattering like glass into a hundred splinter sects. If you undermine religious authority that hard, people are going to start looking for some other cosmic truth to cling to. I'm a secular humanist, but even I can acknowledge that there's a comfort to the certainty of religion. And if one's existing religion becomes uncertain, people are going to start grasping for anything else. Hell, it's weird that the people didn't just start worshipping the Targaeryens, or even their dragons. As Bret mentions in his polytheism essays, worshipping one's rulers was fairly common, since so much of paganism revolved around bargaining with or appeasing powerful overlord-beings in the first place.
Re: Walder Frey's divorces- I'm a book-only fan, so I don't know if the show addressed this, but my understanding from the books is that all of Walder's wives died, presumably in childbirth, thus freeing him to marry a younger wife. It's also not clear that the Faith of the Seven had the same prohibitions on remarriage after divorce that the medieval/early modern Catholic church did. There was apparently a plot afoot in the first book to get Robert to "set aside" Cersei and marry Margaery Tyrell. It doesn't seen from the text that Renly and the Tyrells were working in collusion with Stannis and Jon Arryn's plot to prove all Cersei's children were bastards, because Renly mocked Stannis's contention that the fact Joffrey took after his mother proved he was a bastard, which was actually a valid point.
I agree. I picked up on the level of atheism and felt it may be anachronistic. Tyrion, Jaime and Cersei all express something atheistic. Maybe you could say that’s Tywins influence. However, there is much piety amongst the characters. Catelyn and Brienne stand out as faith of the 7 believing POVs. Sansa a little bit. Arya promptly forgets religion , or at least it morphs into a vague death worship. The tyrells are pious. Ned did take his culture, Infused with old god worship, seriously. Jon’s choice to swear his oath before a weirwood is a form of piety. The iron born refer to their drowned god often. Melisandre’s followers are very pious. Most significantly, we have the Sparrows. Showing that most of the small folk do indeed take their religion seriously. So I think genuine religious belief is omnipresent in asoiaf. However I take your point that in kings landing, many main characters seem not to care about religion. The show however, added many many more anti-religion moments. Little fingers ‘we both peddle in fantasies’. Septon maribald not knowing the names of the gods. The smal folk not caring about the destruction of the sept. There are many.
You should've read Devereux's article more closely, because it puts the lie to everything that came your after "However". The very idea that what GRRM showed was 'them taking their religion seriously' only reinforces the observation that neither GRRM nor his modern audience actually know a damn thing about what that really entailed - and they don't care to find out, either, because they would find the result corny and alien and unflattering to their own egos.
15:25 observation: There are more devout characters than Catelyn. Ser Davos, for example, often expressed concern that he may be offending the gods (the seven). Even though he serves Stannis who follows The Lord of Light
The relationship between The Faith and The Order of Masters (the scholars of Westeros) has never been clarified by GRRM. Many fans have speculated that The Maesters are a branch of The Faith (like an order of friars) but this is not canon.
