In 'Game of Thrones' and its sequels, George R R Martin refers to places as being hundreds or even thousands of leagues apart. I thought a league was three miles, but if so, his characters are travelling around really fast. Is he using 'league' for 'mile'?
asked Dec 7, 2011 at 15:40
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The Roman league was just under a mile and a half, which may be more applicable. I'm not familiar with the context.– Travis ChristianCommented Dec 7, 2011 at 17:49
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2how long do they supposedly take to get places, say 100 leagues away?– KevinCommented Dec 7, 2011 at 18:05
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I've read the first two volumes on audiobooks, so it's a bit hard for me to go back and get specifics. However, I've been struck by mentions of "thousands of leagues", journeys that should take months on horseback, so I wondered if "league" meant something smaller.– Charles AndersonCommented Dec 8, 2011 at 8:30
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Characters don't travel that fast - its just that describing three weeks of travel isn't very interesting, either on the page or on TV. They skip the travel time unless lots of things happen on the way. Compare how long it takes for Arya to travel from Winterfell to King's Landing. It was virtually instant compared to the whole second book to return.– Michael D WilliamsCommented Apr 8, 2013 at 9:13
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1Having read all the replies, I think it's reasonable to say that a league is indeed three miles, but that some people in Westeros have woolly conceptions of geography, and "a thousand leagues" is a generic term to refer to "a long, long way away".– Charles AndersonCommented Jul 16, 2014 at 6:57
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8 Answers
Yes, a league is three miles.
And on the issue of distances and inconsistencies:
I have deliberately tried to be vague about such things, so I don't have obsessive fans with rulers measuring distances on the map and telling me Ned couldn't get from X to Y in the time I say he did.
However, if you really must know, you can figure out the distances for yourself. The Wall is a hundred leagues long. A league is three miles. Go from there.
But if you turn up any mistakes in travel times by using that measure, let it be your secret.
Shhh! We won't tell if you don't!
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1It is nice to note too that they would most likely think of distances as less "point A is x distance from point B" but more, how long it takes to get from point A to B. A day's march, a month's journey, etc.– NominSimCommented Apr 18, 2012 at 13:28
George R. R. Martin says that events aren't written chronologically and the chapters happen in a day or a month or a year... So it's not that these characters are all over the place in a short time frame because you never really know how long journeys take unless the author flat out tells you. Also, sometimes the characters back track or have to deal with some sort of issue so they might take longer to get from point A to point B.
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1That's an added benefit of the seasons being so steeply mismatched from the year cycle, you just accept that the time flow is imprecise and enjoy the story.– DacioCommented Dec 17, 2013 at 20:54
On page 605 of a Dance with Dragons, Stannis is 100 leagues from Winterfell, or "Three hundred miles as the crow flies."
So it sounds as if GRRM is using something close to the standard 3.48 miles definition of a league.
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1A league is, in general, 3 miles. A nautical league is ~3.45 statute miles only because a nautical mile is ~1.15 statute miles.– EmmetCommented Jan 15, 2017 at 3:46
In addition to Gilles' answer; there is proof in the books that a league is roughly equal to three miles.
From A Dance With Dragons:
“One hundred leagues from Deepwood Motte to Winterfell,” said Artos Flint, the night the argument boiled to a head in Galbart Glover’s longhall. “Three hundred miles as the raven flies.”
-A Song of Ice and Fire: A Dance With Dragons, Part One - Dreams and Dust, Chapter Fourty-Two (The King's Prize).
The league originally referred to the distance that a person could walk in one hour. The English league is indeed 3 miles, but there was no global standard and as such the league has fallen out of use as a unit of measurement. As far as I know, no definitive standard has been set for what a league actually is so I would personally go with the simplest which is the distance a person can walk in one hour.
Jon Snow says the distance from the wilding camp to Dorne is 10,000 leagues. At 30,000 miles, that's longer than the earth's circumference. If this is really the War of the Roses and set in England (Yorks v Lancasters), then it's more like 1/10 mile per league, but then that doesn't work for the wall which should be hundreds of miles long. So I take the answer to be that GoT is 8,000 pages and keeping the distances correct was out of our league....
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As noted elsewhere, ASoIaF / GoT is set in Westeros and not in England. I doubt that Westeros's planet's circumfrence is identical to Earth's. Commented Aug 20, 2014 at 16:13
A league is 3 miles as many posts have pointed out in ADWD Stannis is 100 leagues or 300 miles from Winterfell. The understanding of that distance is how far the average person walks in an hour (humans average 3 miles per hour)
We don't really know how fast characters are traveling though it may be safe to say that the most anyone travels in a day is about 10 leagues (30 miles). A horse on a flat or gently rolling terrain has a max of 40 miles in a day and well most terrain isn't ideal and most of our characters tend to be moving around on foot a lot.
As for some of the "thousands of leagues" that get mentioned those could be an expression for "really F###ing far" or it could be that the distances aren't surveyed measured out but are rather given in terms of travel time. A really steep hill that is only a mile in true distance might be given a greater distance in the way that characters perceive the distance.
answered Jan 30, 2015 at 5:10
if 1000 leagues =3452 miles. there is no way you can do that in a week. Hell you'd have a hard timed doing that today, horses cannot maintain full speed for 8 hrs. 4 mph for 8 hours is better bet. even then, lost shoes, coming up lame, broken wagon wheels, and everything else that can go wrong. but just for the sake of argument lets say they make an average of 4 mph per day and have a 12 hr day each day. 3452/4= 863 hours travel. 863/12= 72 days on the road. thats a best case scenario it will probably get stretched out a 4 to 6 months.
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This doesn't seem to really answer the question of how long a league is in GoT; would you like it converted to a comment instead of an answer?– Rand al'Thor ♦Commented Apr 25, 2016 at 0:13