> Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?”
And even more, he's writing a series that's exclusively POV but he nonetheless spills pages of ink on world-building exposition no character in the world would discuss with themselves.
«The answer to the first is something that we’ve rehearsed a number of times, but bears restating: for most of its readers (and the watchers of A Game of Thrones), A Song of Ice and Fire will be their primary exposure to the idea of the Middle Ages. This is particularly true because of the reputation that the series has for being ‘how it really was,’ a reputation that George R.R. Martin has consciously cultivated (as with his classic complaint of ‘what was Aragorn’s tax policy’ – there is a rich irony that, had Martin understood rulership in the Middle Ages better, he would have understood why Aragorn’s tax policy was less important). Martin has been quite open that he “draw[s] inspiration from history” and that fact has long been a selling point of the series over more obviously fantastical kinds of medieval-themed high fantasy as well as a response to some of the series’ more controversial moments.»
[1] https://acoup.blog/2020/12/04/collections-that-dothraki-hord...
https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-wa...
The third part in particular talks about geography and logistics of governance in Westeros.