(Spoilers Extended) How many people are there in Westeros?

You’re looking at the wrong cities for your comparison. Ancient Rome was a city with over a million people, Constantinople a city of 800k in the 9th, Baghdad had over a million and a half in its golden age, Alexandria 500k, Córdoba 400k, etc. Ancient or Medieval cities could absolutely become massive, the biggest among them actually an order of a magnitude bigger than anything seen in the books, but only if the right conditions were met. Those conditions usually concerned food imports from an empire’s breadbasket, which in this case is most obviously exemplified by the Reach and to a lesser extent the Stormland, Riverlands, and the Crownlands. Don’t forget that they’re also coming off a period of almost untouched peace and an extremely long summer, something we’re told swells food surpluses. KL, being the center of a massive empire, does conform pretty well with what we know about populations irl.

/r/asoiaf Thread Parent