You can't judge every man by the same standard.
Take Joffrey, for example. Zero battlefield experience, and on his very first command he gets handed an army of more than ten thousand.
Luckily Robert wasn't completely insane—he left Barristan Selmy with him.
"I'll need your guidance on this campaign, ser," Joffrey said.
He had dropped the arrogant mask he once wore for show. These days he asked questions openly and listened carefully.
"You honor me, Your Grace," Barristan replied. "It is my privilege to ride with the future king."
They were riding west of Rosby to the main muster grounds where the nearer crownlands lords had gathered their men.
Joffrey wasn't riding out alone like some fool. He brought over a hundred retainers.
Twenty of them were Lannister elite from Casterly Rock—red-cloaked veterans Tywin had sent to King's Landing to guard Cersei.
When Cersei learned her son was being sent to war, she had protested. But Robert insisted and Joffrey himself wanted to go, so she settled for giving him twenty of her best.
They wore matching crimson steel plate—pauldrons, gorget, gauntlets, greaves, the whole set. Lion-crested helms with nasal and cheek guards, topped with a curved crest. Their longswords and lion-emblazoned shields were custom-made, and bright red cloaks streamed from their shoulders.
Everyone called them the Red Cloaks.
A full harness like that cost at least ten gold dragons, yet the Lannisters issued them for free. No soldier paid a single copper.
The rest of Joffrey's escort were Gold Cloaks.
Technically the City Watch wasn't supposed to march to war.
But when Cersei sent men, Robert refused to look stingy. The problem was he had almost no Baratheon household guards left in the capital—those few dozen Storm's End men belonged to Renly.
Still, Robert could command the City Watch.
So he simply wrote an order releasing one hundred spots and told Joffrey to pick whoever he wanted.
Free meat on the table. Joffrey immediately chose the more honest, reliable sons of good families. He would train them personally, then promote them later when he started replacing the Gold Cloaks' officers.
Compared to the gleaming Lannister red-cloaks, the Gold Cloaks looked shabby.
Two thousand men needed a lot of gear, and their main job was keeping order in the city, so the crown had never bothered with quality. Corruption had done the rest.
Most wore only a black knee-length mail shirt over padded gambesons. A few had scrounged extra iron plates for their chests. Their helmets were plain black pots, and almost none had proper gauntlets—just leather gloves.
The only thing that looked uniform was the cheap mustard-yellow cloak on every back.
All one hundred-plus of Joffrey's men were mounted, but most were still mounted infantry. Even so, the column moved quickly.
They left at first light and reached the camp before the sun was high.
"Your Grace, that's Lord Gyles's camp ahead," Barristan said, pointing at the sprawl of tents. "Lady Tanda Stokeworth's men are camped beside them. The two houses have always been close."
Barristan spent the rest of the ride quietly explaining the tangled web of marriages, grudges, and blood ties among the local lords.
Joffrey had read the books and listened to Pycelle, but hearing it all at once still made his head spin.
Barristan really was a living legend. The man could talk for miles without running out of breath.
They reined in on a low hill and looked down at the so-called royal army.
Plenty of banners, at least.
A white lamb clutching a golden cup on green hung limp on its pole like it had already been slaughtered.
Next to it, three red chevrons on ermine leaned crookedly in the dirt, looking as sickly as their lord.
Farther on were crossed black warhammers on blue-and-white, green fret on gold… seven or eight different house flags jammed together in a riot of clashing colors.
Not counting the Crackclaw Point levies, this camp held roughly half the fighting strength the crownlands could raise.
"They each pitched their own camps?" Joffrey asked.
Barristan nodded. "That's how the crownlands lords have always done it. Their houses are too weak to dominate one another, and none of them has the prestige to command the rest."
Joffrey nudged his horse down the slope, his hundred armored riders following in a tight, disciplined column.
No one challenged them. A servant boy emptying a chamber pot barely glanced up.
Gods, the royal army really has fallen this far.
Joffrey had the Hound give a loud bark. The royal banner snapped open in the wind—the crowned stag roaring overhead.
That finally got a reaction.
Lord Gyles Rosby came stumbling out of his tent, doublet half-buttoned, coughing.
"Your Grace!" The old man hunched forward, wheezing between words. "Cough… we have been waiting… cough… for you!"
He tried a bow and nearly toppled. "Is His Grace in good health? Cough-cough… this campaign will be… arduous…"
Joffrey ignored the babble and looked past him at the troops slowly forming up.
At the front stood a small knot of knights in polished plate, clean surcoats, and well-fed horses.
Lord Rosby and his vassal barons had brought maybe two hundred men. Slightly more than half wore mail; only a few had battered plate. The rest made do with plain leather.
Behind them the five or six hundred levied smallfolk looked even worse.
The ones with armor stood in the front rank—mostly blackened leather. The middle ranks wore filthy padded jacks. The back half looked like they had simply walked off the farm in their everyday clothes.
Helmets? A few iron pots counted as elite. Most wore nothing but a soft leather cap or went bare-headed, hair sticking out in every direction.
Every man carried a spear, but the shafts were a comedy of different lengths and thicknesses. A couple looked more like boat poles than weapons.
Joffrey turned and studied the rest of the camp.
Tents leaned at drunken angles. Some were nothing but rags draped over sticks. Cook-fires burned in a dozen different places with no order. Horses and nags were picketed everywhere, mixed together. Somewhere a nag screamed; a knight cursed and ran over swinging a whip.
A few levies were wrestling in an open space while spectators cheered. In another corner men gambled, copper pennies flashing between dirty hands.
No one was keeping order.
No one even seemed to think it was a problem.
Joffrey drew a slow breath.
No wonder, when King's Landing was besieged, the crown preferred to recruit cutpurses and cutthroats rather than call this rabble back to defend the city.
He glanced at Barristan.
The old knight's face stayed carefully blank, but the slight downward tilt of his eyes said everything.
"You get used to it, Your Grace," he murmured.
This will not do.
One day Joffrey planned to build a real standing army, and these were the men he would have to start with.