Onward, through our fire and blood journey, we continue.
Aegon's conquest took a lot of preparation, though perhaps less
than one would normally guess at for an endeavor of this
magnitude. Perhaps surprisingly as well, he
announced his claim on the Seven Kingdoms before making the vast
majority of those preparations. He didn't even give himself time
to gear up before putting everyone on notice.
Was that a mistake? If so, not one that made a lot
of difference. It still all worked out pretty
well, but I do rather believe it to be consistent with his
actions throughout both the conquest and his reign.
He always projects an era, an aura, an era.
That's an era too, an aura of superiority.
He never treats anyone like an equal, even those who may appear
to be stronger. He just sets about proving that
no, they were not in fact stronger.
He was the one that was stronger.
And this isn't comes up in a lot of different ways.
Not just militaristically, politically intrigue,
everything, Just everything about Aegon suggests
superiority. You won't be his ally, you will
bend the knee, or else he doesn't use a lot of deception
or cunning. He uses some, but mostly he just
comes right at you. There's definitely a method to
this boss attitude, which is that no one afterwards can claim
that he isn't the strongest. He leaves no doubt, and it
worked. He intended for everyone to be
in awe of what he and his family and their Dragons could do,
which is a testament to holding peace for the long term.
No one's going to challenge that.
Well, then, things are going to stay peaceful throughout this
episode, and going forward we'll see just how Agon does it.
We'll keep an eye on his strategy and all the nuances
within, because it sounds very straightforward, but it's an
intelligent thing. It's an intelligent plan.
It. It's almost ironic, actually.
The nuance and subtlety present in this extremely direct
approach. It's remarkably foresighted to
right conquer in a way that leaves no doubt to how your rain
will be carried out. Face every challenge head on so
that the realm doesn't see it as a close one thing.
There's no ifs, ands or buts. It was pretty definitive.
Make sure everyone knows that and make it.
If it had been a much bigger challenge, a gun still would
have won. So there's not a lot of room
there. Win by a long, you know, win by
a mile. And what's anyone going to do
about it? Well, they're going to be cowed,
probably. All that and more on this
episode of History of Westeros podcast.
You say 6 out of seven were cowed, 6 out of seven were cow.
That's right. Hello and welcome everybody.
This our live streams for Fire and Blood, as all of our live
streams are except during TV season, are at 3:00 PM on
Eastern on YouTube. Every video is on YouTube and
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on Spotify. All the fire for at least for
the run of Fire and Blood, every episode is posted as a video.
Audio only episodes are available everywhere you find
podcasts, and they're ad free if you listen to them on Patriot.
There's no ad free videos on Patreon, though unfortunately,
there's just too much bandwidth. Videos are much, much much much,
much, much, much, much much larger than audio files.
It's hard for us to have multiple copies of those.
But anyway, we give you lots of choices, different ways to
experience our show. How's it going, Shawn?
Looks like you got some red and black there.
You're very Targaryen looking. Yeah, it might be hard to see
the detail, but these are intertwined. 3 intertwined
Dragons very appropriate. My shirt also a little hard to
see, but I got Dragonstone on my shirt.
Also I got similar colors. I got a little yellow in mind
for the for the clouds and sun, but the red of the mountains.
And I got this plant dangling here in front of me to to make
it even harder to see my shirt, you know?
Whose shirt is hardest to see? Yours.
Yeah. Well, what is it?
Though I'm wearing a Game of Owns shirt.
Nice shout out to Game of Owns Yeah I.
Am I also have a cat in my lap under a blank?
No. Very warm cat.
Fire and cuddles. Yeah, fire and purrs.
I don't know. We'll work on that workshop,
that one. Don't think there's no blood
cats. Claws are sharp.
They are, yes. Even when they're being cuddly,
they cut you. And what about that drink that
is bright red, sharp? Yeah, I was going to say I got a
blood red drink here. It's it's a little diluted from
ice, but it's just blood. Yeah.
So it's fire. It's blood and ice.
So fire and blood. Fire.
You got blood and ice? Yeah.
There you can hear the ice clinking.
I, of course, just have coffee in a mug instead of a
thermostat. Very different.
This is the Rainbow machine naked drink.
I mean, I've also have like a bang and a Mountain Dew and
sparked my ice mixed in there, but.
Of course, of course, of course, Yeah, of course, yes.
Everyone is with you on that. The The Rainbow Machine naked
drink is thick blood red. Shout out to our good friend
Nina. Check her out at
goodqueenalley.tumblr.com. That's 1L1, Ellen Alley.
Two Ends though. And Allison.
But it's good Queen Alley. So there's no.
Elves and good and queen? None.
Actually. It's not glued Queenal Alley.
The latest blog post is regarding a question she
received about Catlin and approving of Aria's interests in
swords and horses. And the question is basically,
if Aria had done well at courtesy and etiquette, would
Catlin have been more forgiving about her taking on quote, UN
quote, you know, man's tasks? Aria was clearly into the
patriarchy. She looked horses as soon as
she's learned the patriarchy wasn't just about horses.
This is terrible. So yeah, Throughout this
episode, we'll encounter topics that we've done full episodes on
already, and we'll point them out as we go along.
So at the end, we'll list some of those off, and you can check
them out if you haven't already or have a long ago and are
thinking of staying immersed in Westeros and the wonderful world
of a song by fire. If you want more, we've got you
covered. The list of episodes we have
that are connected to these topics today, as I said last
week, is long. A lot of O's in long a couple of
ends, maybe a couple of G's. Yeah, all that.
I wanted to make a quick note about your intro.
I mean, there's a lot of notes to make and Aaron will go on
about a lot. But but just going back to
something we talked about last week, is it, I think Aegon might
have planned this better than it seems on the surface, like you
said, some of this coming at you straight on.
It seems that way because he chose the moment when he was
able to come at you straight on. That makes sense, like.
And and to be fair, he didn't come at everyone straight on,
right. Yeah, I think that he knew he
needed to go after Heron straight on and it by doing that
other people would count, they would be happy he did it would
realize that they couldn't beat him if Heron couldn't and
etcetera, etcetera. So I think that that I just want
to give him a little bit more credit for.
Not just being like I'm stronger than you bow to me, I I think
there are. Even though on the surface it
seems like that. I think there was a lot of
strategy behind the moments and that he chose in the order that
he chose to of his battles, I agree, allowed for that
superficial impression. It wasn't like his only move or
that his ego drove him or pride to do that.
It was calculated like this is how King should behave.
I'm going to do fall, fall within these lines of what I
think the right attitude to project is.
And he was naturally pretty good at it.
On top of all that, I think, And that maybe is what makes it seem
like it was just his only his only gear that happened to work.
But no, I agree with you. I think there was a lot of
method to that socalled madness. The Targaryen coin flip.
There's a lot of genius, and this was a genius flip, not a
madness flip that happened to work out.
And that is another dynamic of worst strategy I guess, is it?
There's a lot of value to winning overwhelmingly.
Not only the stability that you get after the fact, but there's
just less casualties. You have a close pitch battle
that stretches out for a long time.
So many more people die, but when you win decisively, there's
less casualties and there's less strife after the and you're with
that boss attitude as well. Or if you intend to continue
conquering, after you know what stepping stones you take one foe
down, you move on to the next one.
You want to add as many of their soldiers to your army as
possible, so you also don't want to kill them all.
And you know also don't want to kill a lot of them.
But if it's a close run thing, that's that tends to be the
result. When two sides are evenly
matched, they have to wear each other down.
But if one can just dominate the other one right away, then it's
just over and they and fewer things are destroyed like.
And whether that's going to be used for future conquest or just
people are still alive, that's a good thing in and of itself.
Right. Even what you want to rule, like
beyond just the the winning of the battles at the initiation of
the conquer. But the thing you conquer, you
don't want to be ashes. You don't want to be a bunch of,
like, orphans and people mad at you.
You know, you'd rather it be a land that's still stable and
intact, that had minimal casualties.
That that is thankful for you having gotten rid of the
villain, Heron or whoever and is trusting of your decisions to
manage things well. Because like you said to his
boss, attitude wasn't total arrogance or or a bully, right?
He he, he wasn't just there to like push everyone around.
He was there to unite the realm so that there would be peace and
stability. And, you know, maybe he had some
personal ulterior motives, but whatever they were, they didn't
seem to be, so he could. Rape all the women, or take all
the gold back to Valeri or whatever else?
He seemed to just rule calculatedly.
Well, I'll say, you know, for an extended period of time to be
fair, a lot of these things fall off when we get to Dorn, like he
did just kind of destroy it all because they didn't tend to need
it, just it was like, well, if I'm going to destroy, I have to
destroy now that. So he was willing to do that if
it came to that, but it was definitely not plan A or
probably even Plan B. So there's definitely some
negative aspects to that. And but you know, that's all
part of the picture here. We'll be covering it all as we
move forward. Let's, let's do our trivia
question real quick. Who's the only person we know of
the strike egg on the Conqueror with a blade?
Now, there are probably some other cases, but we don't know
them or we don't know them by name.
We know that there were assassination attempts, things
like that. But there's only one that I
could find where someone actually cut him.
So who was that that did that? Let's start with the claim
claiming Westeros that started with sending out a bunch of
Ravens. It's a status parallel sending
out Ravens to the entire realm claiming to be king, only to be
met with scorns. To be fair, Stannis was met with
more scoring than this, though. Also to be fair, we don't
exactly know the level of scoring he's gone.
Egg on here. Either way, here's the quote.
On the 7th day, a cloud of Ravens burst from the towers of
Dragonstone to bring Lord Agon's word to the Seven Kingdoms of
Westeros to the Seven Kings. They flew to the citadel of Old
Town to Lord both great and small.
All carried the same message. From this day forth there would
be but one king in Westeros. Those who bent the knee to Agon
of House Targaryen would keep their lands and titles.
Those who took up arms against him would be thrown down,
humbled, and destroyed. Cue the little man from O
brother, Where art thou saying he ain't lying?
Now, of course, it turns out that candidate that.
The dragon this little man was stamping standing for turned out
to be a white supremacist, a KKK member.
So we'll forget that part. But hey, these are the TARG
Aryans, right? So hey, it kind of kind of
works, right? But that is exactly what
happened. Those who took up arms against
him were thrown down, humbled and destroyed for the most part.
There may be an exception or two, but yeah, that was what a
message to receive. You're like, imagine you're like
the Lord of Catholic Rock, which is this time was Lauren the
first Lannister and later Lauren the last?
Because we know how that went. What do you do if you're him?
You're like, this guy just claims to be king of us all.
Now you've been king of a line that's been in place for like
8000 years. Who is this guy?
Like he's saying he's king of all of us now.
Like they've all been squabbling with each other.
It's said that there's been there's hardly a year goes by
where one Kingdom doesn't fight another and the kingdoms are
largely have the same borders they've had for a long time like
maybe here and there border gets pushed inward a bit but then he
gets pushed back and then a little way or the other not
large changes other than what was happening in the Riverlands
which was pretty substantial but that has state of affairs had
been going for hundreds of years too So what a thing to react to.
It's hard to put yourself in those heads of these very proud,
long, longstanding families like the Gardeners.
Even more so would have been prouder than the Lannisters.
And because their family is like perhaps the most celebrated
family in Western maybe not even perhaps because of all the
different families that believe their family traces to Garth
Greenhand and the gardeners like at the top of that family tree
them most of all, perhaps would be like This is particular.
Of course we're not going to what a what a jerk.
We're not going to stand for this.
Of course we'll face this man and set him back and and show
him what for or whatever they whatever language they used.
So that would be Merlin the 9th who would be saying that and his
family would be probably pumping him up like yeah, that those
that silly island Targaryen guy. What's he thinking?
You know this is this is a huge insult.
We'll show him, you know. You know, from a from from
several different angles, I suppose even if someone did
realize if this guy is really coming after us with Dragons, I
don't think we can beat him there.
There were probably at least a few people that had that
insight. Maybe not the Kings, but some
people, yes, yeah. And but they probably still
knew. The king can't just be like, all
right, sure, you know they have to make a show of force.
They have to at least superficially call the banners,
say, who do you think you are? You know any guy probably had
to. He probably knew they wouldn't
just be like okay, Sure you know.
He knew that there would have to be some show of force, some
battles, some blood's going to have to be shed.
But, but again, I've he, and probably the wiser of the
rulers, wanted to keep it to a minimum.
Yeah, I agree. I agree.
For example, Torrance Stark, he did exactly what you said he did
down the knee what he marked. He gathered his army in March S
1st and it was after he saw Heron Hall was like, Oh my God,
look at that. He burned Heron Hall.
It's melting, that thing. Like his Lords and soldiers all
saw that too. So they had the visual evidence
and that maybe would enable him to bend the knee with fewer
people complaining about it because they all saw what he
saw. And we're like, yeah, we don't,
we don't want to fight that. That said, several people were
still willing to fight that, as we're saying, but we'll get to
that later. So instead of the little man
from O Brother, where art thou, We have Lord Monkeyface to utter
the line in Westeros. Lord Monkeyface is not a little
person. He is her suit and hunchback,
though. A court fool.
Vasenia's fool, and not little as far as we know, called Lord
Monkey Face because of all his hairiness, I think.
And maybe a little more about Lord Monkey Face later.
That's again Vesenia's. And we're not sure when Lord
Monkey Face died, but sometime before Vesenia.
So that's all we know. Vesenia lives for quite a while
after this. The seven Kings weren't of
course all kings. There was King Ronald Aaron, but
Ronald was a boy. So effectively in charge was
Queen Regent Shara Aaron, Princess Maria Martel, the
Yellow Toad. Also not a king, but the
equivalent of a king. King Lauren, the Lannister, we
said. Lauren the first King Marin, 9th
Gardner, King Heron, whore, the Black King Torrent Stark, the
King of Nel and King Argalac turned.
And now King Argalac, surely one of those who was like, I'm not
bending the knee like you don't get a name like arrogant for and
just bend the knee without a fight.
This guy went down swinging as much as anyone.
But again, we're not quite there yet.
Even he though going down swinging, prideful and arrogant
as he may have been, didn't ruin his troops.
He didn't ruin his land. He didn't send everyone else
into the suicide mission. That's true one.
Unsurprisingly, no. As Sean said, no one actually
bent the knee. Some definitely held back,
though not everyone rushed to fight him.
It was not like they were all eager to get him.
They may have wanted to get him, but they weren't eager to do it
for obvious reasons. Just to clarify, no one
immediately bent the knee, right?
No one immediately bent the knee other than, I suppose, his
existing vassals. But they were already his
existing. They'd already bent the knee.
Now they were re bending the knee to a king instead of a
Lord. Not a big difference given it's
the same person, although a big difference in terms of what they
were about to be asked to do like oh boy, here we go.
Valerian and Celtic are and all them are like here we go.
Now one famous and important example of holding back entirely
and not fighting at all is the High Septon and thus Lord
Manfred Hightower, the Lord of the Hightower at the time,
something we cover in our Under the Dragons episodes there for
House Hightower. So that's a pretty big deal to
have the High Septon say, let's not do that, which immediately
pulled a lot of troops back from, Well, from death because
they probably would have just been burned on the field of
fire. I don't think they would have
made any difference. So it was a good thing the High
Septon did, whether it was truly a vision or just something he
played off to for maximum effect, which I definitely
leaned towards that because it was exactly 7 days and it just
so could be everything was very convenient about it, but it's
the good kind of convenience. This is not the kind of
politicking I'm cynical about. Like, yes, this guy used
politics to save lives. Good for him.
He may have been thinking of his own life, but he certainly did
it in a way that saved a lot of people's lives.
And Lord Manford Hightower as well.
On the other hand, there was an exception to them not working
together. That's an interesting point
here, is that if they wanted to take on Aegon, why didn't they
team up? Why didn't they gang up on him?
Why didn't they work together to fight him?
Well, in part because they had rarely done so in the past.
They don't get along very well. They don't have strong
relationships. They don't probably talk that
often anyway. So it they're very proud people.
It's hard for them to work together.
How do they even? Meet where do they even meet?
Like, where is the neutral, center, central location for
them to meet? And if they do that, are they
risking some sort of attack by gathering in a place where
someone could get them all at once but one?
And how long would it take to get there and how long would it
take to get there? How much time do they have?
With the agreement made while they were there still be in
place, given all the other changing factors by the time
they got back. So on the other hand, there was
an exception to them not working together.
There were a few offers to work with Agon, we'll get to those in
a minute. King Merne rode to meet with
King Lauren, so they had a meeting, apparently in Castley
Rock. So that's that's a safe place to
have a meeting. Castley Rock, one of the safest
places there as well. At least if you're a Lannister.
Although there's exceptions to that too.
Like if you're a casterly and land, the clever's coming for
you. But hey, King Merne and King
Lauren clearly had a discussion that eventually led to them
uniting their armies, which battle is still a ways away.
It's a big old matter point though, isn't it?
The fact that they couldn't unite against a common enemy is
a reason why Westeros needed to be united, if Agon's dream was
driving him at all here. It's just driving that point
home. Like when when it comes look at
these people, they just fight each other.
You know, like that's not going to work in the long term.
You got to be united for the real threatening common enemy.
If you can't unite now, you won't unite later.
So this is a way that he can justify it.
That's the argument. Anyway.
The conquest is justified because it unites the realm for
the coming darkness, and it created so much peace before
that. Like fewer lives were lost per
year after the conquest than before, I think by a lot.
So it's one of those things where sometimes, you know, if
you prefer peace in the real world, it's like, well, there
are times like this where strength creates peace, but
people die. And to set that up.
And that's where the moral conundrums come in.
Why do some people have to die for other people's peace?
There's other yeah, too deep for us to get into problem, but
probably. You know, well, I don't know
big. But there's other sacrifices to
be made, right? So for the sake of peace, you
might sacrifice independence and liberty and tax money and so on.
Else, you know, yes. And if we're being fair to date,
who's wrought more destruction on the Seven Kingdoms?
Dragons or the others? Probably Dragons.
Almost certainly Dragons. But give it time, give it time.
We'll see. We'll we'll revisit that
question at the end of it all. It still might be Dragons,
especially if you could include metaphorical Dragons like the
Targaryens, but that's a conversation for later.
Very good question, though, to think about.
Put that in the back of your mind.
Marinate on it for a minute or for a longer time, and Nina
adds, it's not like the various native rulers of Westeros were
all evil oppressive overlords who enjoyed making people
suffer. Her and whore being an exception
to that rule, he definitely made people suffer.
I don't know if he enjoyed it, but he definitely did it, so it
doesn't really matter if he enjoyed it or not.
If presented the choice, would they have refused to fight the
others if they had actually come with?
These Lords have just refused to unite against that common enemy.
If it was actually presented to them, we don't know.
Well, we'll probably find that out in A Song of Ice and Fire,
because some of them probably won't, but a lot of them
probably will, and it'll be really interesting to see where
those chips fall. Here's the thing.
Even if they did agree to work together because this real
threat was coming, wouldn't it be nice to have already been
working together? So we'll.
Probably have a structure in place and a system of chain of
command and everything else. Even if they did at the last
minute realize they need to work together, it might be too late
because they don't have enough organization and trust and
everything else. That's a good point, yeah.
If they Westeros needed also said, hey, whatever might happen
in the future, Westeros did unite back in the day during the
Long Night to repel the Others. Now maybe not everyone was on
board, we don't know. But it was enough.
Whatever happened, humanity, enough people fought the Others
during the Long Night to be successful.
So there was some united. Well, there was some unity.
There was no united government that we know of.
No. Whatever united the Mall is, is
it Bazora High? Is it Brandon the Builder, who
we don't know, Is it some other person, some figure that's
referred to as under one of those names?
It was actually some different individual.
We don't know, but it doesn't appear to have been some person
that became king of everyone to lead this effort.
It seems to have been a united group.
Perhaps individuals in the heat of the moment pulled people
together and emerged as leaders among these disparate
organizations and kingdoms. But yeah, there wasn't one
central leader that we know of. I mean, maybe Zora High was
exactly that, but I don't think he was like the king of Westeros
temporarily. There's no the legends don't
really speak to that so or or she maybe.
Even Even so it. It may be that there was an
amount of unity, but it's still also might be that some magical
force defeated the others that made the unity irrelevant.
Yeah, OK, that's a good point. Yes, that's a very good point if
there was. And maybe that magical force
isn't around anymore, that sword is lost, the Dragons are dead on
and on. So we need the realm of men to
come together unified. Otherwise you won't be able to
defeat the others like we did before because we don't have
that same magic power, good, said Sean.
Because we can't be assuming all the same pieces are in place.
There's a lot of differences. You know that George isn't doing
a Onetoone relationship here. He's he's giving us
similarities, not exact history repeating itself.
When history repeats itself, it's it's not meant to be an
exact repetition, although I guess sometimes it's pretty darn
close. But generally, it's more of like
similar, similar patterns. Like fashion is cyclical, but
even when something comes back that has been out for 20 years,
it's not exactly the same as it was in the 2000s as it is in
2023. You know, there's some
modernization added to it, little tweaks here and there.
Same goes for much larger scale things like war against an
implacable, icy enemy. So there were people, even
though they didn't bend the knee, there were like, well,
let's negotiate. I'm not going to bend the knee,
but we could be allies, right? Of course, Agon would say no to
this, but the offers came. So let's, let's look at that.
Look at that briefly. We talked about last week the
marriage offers. There were several offers to be
Agon's third wife, so some of those actually haven't happened
yet. But we don't need to review that
the second time. This is an example of this, of
the alliances Princess Maria offers to help fight our girl
like the arrogant. She's like, well, I'll team up
with you against him, not. I won't bend the knee to you,
but I'm glad to do a pincer move.
He's between us and Queen Regent Shara.
In addition to her offer of marrying Agon, she also offers
to team up against King Heron. Same thing.
Sandwich. Move the Veil to the north,
Dragonstone to the South. They've got King Heron kind of
in a pincer there, but of course he's not like that.
He's not up to that either. He's like, no, I'm not no equals
here. Plenty were willing to be
equals. Plenty.
We're willing to see him as equals.
Which to them might be like they're making a concession.
Like he's not a king. I'm a king.
Who's he? You know, me offering an equal
alliance with him. He should be satisfied with that
because I'm already a higher rank.
I've got a whole Kingdom. My family's been here for
thousands of years. In place of this, he has hardly
any troops. Who the heck is he?
So some of them were like, well, he doesn't have the Dragons and
the Volauri. And so, yeah, we'll treat.
We'll, we'll give him this equality in negotiations.
And Heron sucks. We have this common enemy.
That's right. So there's all these factors
that would lead them to think okay.
Well, we've got some negotiating wiggle room here.
Let's let's try to. We understand him presenting
himself this way. That's probably what we would
do. We would probably puff ourselves
up. Maybe he's asking for a lot and
willing to accept less. He wasn't, but it's a reasonable
way to interpret his message. I think Nina says that.
This and it's. Go ahead.
Just we've said this before we'll probably say it again but
when they offered a team up and he's like, no, I can do it
myself And then he does it himself and and then he turns to
the now you're next. You know, like I should have
teamed up. I should have bet the knee
maybe. No, they can't say that out
loud. You know, like as you said, they
have to project strength and pride.
They can't act weak in front of their vassals, but inside
they're like, damn, I chose wrong, didn't I?
So Nina, yeah, Nina says. It's a sign that at this early
stage, the established dynasties of Westeros were treating the
Targaryens as no more than new players in what Steven Atwell
shout out to Race for. The Iron Throne, by the way,
calls the Great Game that is the scramble for power and dominion
in preconquest Westeros. Remember that this was not the
first time the Westeros Canyon tried to create a large empire
on the continent, The Gardner Kingdom under droughts, the
third stretch from Red Lake in the north to Sun House in the
South, and from the Shield Islands in the West to the
Narrow Sea and possibly even Tarth in the east.
So that's huge. I mean, that's like most of
southern Westeros mine is Dorn, but a lot and a lot of the
northern part of the continent, not the north, but the northern
part of the area, South of the north.
Worth noting that the southern part of the continent is like
the relevant part of the continent, like the fertile
land, the higher population you know it's it's 20 you if you
divide the land up in the North and South.
If you could choose which one you want to be the ruler of, you
choose the South. Yeah, definitely.
And another example need to give.
This is Arlen, the Third Durden Kingdoms, one of the Storm
Kings. His Kingdom stretched from the
neck in the north to the Darnish Marches in the South, and from
Iron Man's Bay all the way to the West of the Narrow Sea in
the east, all the way West to the Narrow Sea in the east
rather. But the central rule of the
Great Game was that no one could win permanently.
Great Game is capitalized, by the way, Just as the Gardner
Kingdom was eventually hacked away by various kings in the
West Riverlands and Thorne, you couldn't defend it all.
And the other kings took advantage of the size of this
new realm to take advantage of the fact that you can't defend
all that. Like you can't be everywhere at
once. You can't have border defenses
everywhere. It's too large of a border.
There's not a lot of natural defenses there, which is why the
borders often reset to their sort of, quote UN quote natural
ones, because those borders are somewhat reinforced by
geography. So once you move beyond the
geography, you no longer rely on those natural defenses.
You have to use manpower. And the larger your realm gets,
the more manpower you need to defend that against these other
kings and Queens who are quite capable of carving those chunks
back off and maybe taking some of yours in the process.
So there's several examples here of large kingdoms that just
didn't hold, and that might be what some of these the kings saw
they'd be like, OK, well, maybe Agon will be able to carve off a
lot of this chunk, but he'll never be able to hold it all,
especially not the whole Kingdom.
No one's ever done that. No one's even come close to
that. Even these large kingdoms that
we've described at most were 60%.
I don't even think that I'm not sure anyone ever ruled more than
half the Kingdom at once. It's they'd have to do a little
math and detail gathering on that one.
But let's just call it roughly that.
And so someone, this guy's going for all of it.
Yeah, that that's it just goes to show what a boss move it is
to say I don't have equals, nor do I require help, and I'm doing
something no one's even come close to doing before, or even
tried really. So we can understand why there
was a lot of just there's no way.
I don't care how big that dragon is, it's just not happening.
It just seems so ridiculous. 8000 years like this and you
could say that, well, the kingdoms have been getting
smaller and smaller. I mean, the number of kingdoms
has gotten smaller and smaller. Maybe eventually, historically
speaking, it just makes sense that would all come into one.
But this is pretty quick. It maybe would have taken more
of a gradual scenario than just all at once.
All seven of them united. But hey, this was a different
kind of leader. There's a lot of establishment
of symbols here. There's this.
The crown that he's eventually going to have when he lands, so
that's a pretty big deal. And the sword, black fire is a
bit of a symbol, much more of a symbol later, but for now it's
more about the Dragons. And I guess the biggest one is
they unfurled that big dragon banner.
There's a quote for that later I think we have, but the point is
that they weren't doing Westerosi cultural things.
Like apparently Agon was the first.
Agon the First was the first of his family to have A and all
oriented banner with words and of House motto and all that.
Like the Targaryens apparently just didn't do that for the 1st
90 years on Dragon Center, however long it was.
So this was part of adopting the culture that they were planning
to rule. Not only does he adopt the
seven, but he adopts this particular cultural tradition,
probably several others as well. Maybe you know things like
knighthood and other things. I'm not sure how much they had
embraced that. Certainly a lot of their
followers would have been knighted, but Aegon himself I
don't think was ever knighted, and a lot of his descendants
would be, but I doubt any of his forebears were.
So that's another thing that that as part of the setup, he
did that now. So when we talk about him
planning the conquest, these are the kind of plans he made.
It's not about his troops as much or making sure they have
the right weaponry. I mean, I'm sure there was some
of that going on, but his troops were such a small aspect to
this. He had so few of them.
At this point, it's like Stannis again, isn't that why Fitz with
Stannis so well, Stannis, when he's going north to the wall,
he's only got like 1500 men left.
It's probably about how many Aegon has here.
He's not going north. He's going to the mouth of the
Blackwater. So there's a lot of these
cultural preparation. Adopting the Seven, adopting
knighthood, adopting a banner, adopting house words.
I guess that was probably an easy one.
What are we going to do for our house words?
Fire and blood, man. That's easy.
Like, Oh yeah, that is easy. All right.
Fire and blood. Cool.
It does. It's kind of fit naturally, I
think. And it may have been enhanced by
dreams or not necessarily even dreams about the others.
Just a lot of Targaryen's have had dreams described that way.
I think it's fiery, bloody dreams.
Seems common. Maybe more fire than blood, but
still a lot of both. Coming out of the doom too would
maybe yeah it goes of that in their in their history.
So I want to emphasize a bit just how proud of themselves all
these kingdoms were, these kings and kingdoms and their families
that support that. They're very full of themselves
and they'd outlasted so many others, so many of these other
one, you could look back at how it had become seven kingdoms and
say it used to be 100 kingdoms, used to be 1000 kingdoms, and
our family emerged at the top of that heap, after all this fog of
history and violence, were standing tall in a land where so
many have died trying. So you know, that's another from
what you were saying before, Sean.
Of course. They're just not going to give
up on that. It's one thing to be proud of
your ancestry. It's another to fool yourself
into thinking that you're responsible as in responsible
for creating any of that. You inherited it, and maybe
you've managed it well, but you didn't.
You didn't build it right. To be fair, each successive
generation has a larger history to protect.
Their legacy gets larger and and more maybe more proud of and
their society puts a lot of pressure on them to protect that
and preserve that. So yeah, it's a very deep held
cultural belief, one that they would not let go of too easily.
You could say as much pride as there is, there's also a sense
of responsibility, essentially with a good leader, you know?
Yes, definitely. And that's not a bad thing, you
know? Well, no, this guy wants to come
conquer us. No, of course I'm.
It's my job to defend us from that.
I'm going to do it. So yeah, it's not like, a bad
thing that they didn't bend the knee.
If they knew about the supernatural future, maybe.
But there's no way they could know that.
There's no way to even convince them of that.
Like, why would they believe this crazy guy talking about,
like, in a couple, 100 years or so, there's gonna be it's like,
so we all need to prepare now, You know, like, so your
grandchildren's, grandchildren's,
grandchildren's, grandchildren's grandchildren will be prepared
for it. Like, what the hell is he
talking about? Like in modern times.
How much do we do to prepare for 200 years from now?
Not a lot, right? Yeah, like we have way more
knowledge and access to knowledge.
We have way better infrastructure, ostensibly
better leaders. I don't know.
And yet still we are not thinking past.
Nope. Maybe 2 generations.
You know we are not. You're right.
And some people do, but they don't.
Really, they don't. They can't convince the rest of
us to to go along with it. And there is a greater emphasis
on that society these days, but not maybe, maybe not much
greater progress in terms of actually doing that.
Because it's not something like without technology.
You wouldn't have thought of thinking ahead that far in
ancient times. Like, why would you what?
What reason would you have? You're not thinking about like,
oh, look at the look at what deforestation will cause.
I don't know if the ancients would have realized that.
Maybe they would have, and maybe they.
Weren't able to deforest this fast.
Yeah, they didn't know the consequences.
And they're like, we shouldn't have done that, but they may not
have even known what. And when you have less
resources. It makes more sense to worry
about your children, yourself first, your children next.
You know, when you start to get more and more resources, then
you worry about your neighbors and your grandchildren, you
know? And so people of Westeros
compared to, you know, people, most people in the modern world
have way more wealth and stability.
Food. You're not just worried about
food. Yeah.
Back then, most of the hours of most of the people is spent
trying to not start. That's the main endeavor of
everyone's life is to just create food.
What do you It makes sense that they're not all worried about
something 200 years. Yeah, they're they're like that.
The present is demanding enough, like who's going to worry about
the future? About the harvest in a couple
months, that's that's what dominates their lives.
There's really, you can't look ahead when the present is that
demanding. I think.
So what do you think, Sean? You think Ergon expected any of
them to bend the knee or do you think his their reaction was
pretty much what he expects? Like, yeah, none of them are
actually going to bend the knee. But I need to make claim and and
start off this way and and set that target and prove that I can
hit it. Yeah, I think that he expected
them to bend the knee after a couple battles, after he made it
clear, like, you can't beat me, sorry.
And not only can you not beat me, but I'm not that bad.
Also, I think that was part of it too.
He wasn't. He wasn't just ruthlessly,
unnecessarily slaughtering people.
Right, Right. He wasn't just burning down
random villages. He was only doing it in battle.
And he started with the worst leader.
So I think that I think he I I'm confident that he did expect.
At least some of them to bend the knee after the first couple
were conquered. I think he might have expected
or hoped for and it might have gotten, we don't necessarily
know it, some negotiation. He might have got a few people
say like look, you know I can't just randomly bend the knee, but
if you show up with 5000 troops and two Dragons, I'll I'll make
a show of force and my people will see I'm being reasonable by
bending the knee to you. You know, I think that.
He might have expected or hoped or even gotten that it's a
chance for them to show their bravery.
In a sense, it's almost like, well, if I can survive this
battle, I'll look really brave. I'll look like I did my duty.
But ultimately, I I plan to surrender.
We just have to. We can't surrender before
there's in any fighting. And then I'm then I'm going to
look like a coward. And that, you know, and that's
just one of the worst things you can look like in Westeros.
When you're in charge. And that's even better for Agon
too. If.
He doesn't want cowards following him, right?
If the person that bends the knee to him, he then puts them
in charge of the land that they're already in charge of.
They should do a decent job, right?
But if that person now looks like a coward to his people, it
won't be stable. That would be a problem for
Aegon. So he wants them to be able to
still look good at the end of the battle or the knee bending
or whatever happened. Yeah, he wants them to still
look good because they'll look good under him rather than,
yeah, like it's his. He's only as good as his
subordinate. So that's that's a great point
as well Sean because. Yeah, he doesn't want to be
surrounded by weaklings and Matt the strong people come along
later and go. He only conquered the realm
because everyone bent the knee. Like no one ever gave him a
fight. Let's give him a fight and see
what happens. But a gun was was determined to
make sure that if there were fights, he won them handily.
So that people would be like even in a scenario like that
where you know someone you know thinks that their ruler is a
coward and we could have beat the Targaryens and so there is a
civil war and Aegon can go and burn them all down with the
Dragons. But then what?
That's not, it's just so much worse, right?
It's so much worse to have that the destruction that civil war
would cause the the destruction that he will have to commit to
stop the civil war. And then what happens now?
Who's in charge like the the people who were in charge before
and you could trust to run it, They're all dead.
The the, the next strongest bravest people who are trying to
fight them, well, they're all dead.
So now you got to pick someone and you're it'll be just
constant issue, you know? Yeah, Good said.
Good said. So as far as the Dragons too, I
know we touched on this briefly last time, but Nina added a
point here. Dragons aren't an automatic win
button, and especially from the perspective of these kings and
Queens who haven't seen them in action, they don't know exactly
what they're capable of, so you have to put that to the test.
For all they know, the Dragons won't go where you want them to.
For all you know, the Dragons will turn on their own troops
sometimes. Now that's not what will happen.
But they don't know that, like can they really control them
that well, There's things they can say to themselves to maybe
pump themselves up. And this goes for the Lords and
the common men. Once the Dragons are in action
and once it's been seen what they can do, especially
Balerian, that's when people start to go, OK, we've you've
proven what they can do. It's more than we thought.
Now we'll definitely consider bending the knee like Torin.
That's that's pretty much the exactly the case of Torin.
Dragons are useful and powerful tools, no question.
But they don't replace strategies.
So if I have to use them properly.
And as we said, there's a little something to be said about
Valerian's enormous size that may have given Agon a weapon
that no one else before him really had.
It's entirely possible Valerian was the largest dragon in the
history of House Targaryen, maybe one of the largest scene,
and would have been one of the largest scene in Valeria.
And here's the thing. Here's the point from our
episode of Valerian that I want to remind you all of.
I think I've maybe said it a couple times before, but it
bears repeating here. Veigar, Moraxis, and Valerian
are named after Valerian gods. Veigar and Moraxis were named
after Valerian gods after all the Dragons were wiped out.
So that's like, it's not as you're not naming one, you're
not elevating one dragon to the status of a God name when
there's hundreds of them. Right, but Valerian was Valerian
was born in Valerian when there were hundreds of Dragons and got
the name of a Valerian God. How many Dragons got the name of
Valerian gods when there were hundreds of them?
How many Valerian gods are there?
Were there, like, dozens of Dragons named Valerian?
Were there lots of other vagars and Moraxis?
Fido. Fidax.
It's FYDO, yeah. The X is silent.
So that says something like, I don't know how they knew.
I mean, okay, let me use our black cat Jakin as an example
because when we saw this kitten, it was clear this kitten would
be huge as a cat. He already had huge paws, he
already had huge ears, huge whiskers, like he was going to
grow into that. So I wonder if it was a little
bit like, this is Balerian, this dragon hash, and like that is a
huge hatch. That's a fat baby.
You know the equivalent of that for a human and indeed.
Turned into an enormously unusually enormously large
dragon and that might have been I just think that's a big part
of the calculus here that may be kind of underrated just the the
pure size of Valerian change the calculus of everything.
And another thing mean adds is the Dragons have been sitting
there for a century. You know if they could have
conquered and we've we've come up with lots of reasons why they
wouldn't conquer and there's plenty right.
But. It's not the same logic that
these kings and Queens might use when considering that same
question. And we'd be like, well, if they
could have done it before, why didn't they?
It's just a reason for them to pump up their pride, especially
because they're not going to back.
They know they're not going to back down.
They know they have to put this to the test.
So they may as well pump themselves up with some
reasoning to be like, well, why might this go well?
Well, yeah, maybe they don't. Maybe those they're they're
bluffing a bit. So they would maybe be able to
talk themselves into some things, knowing that they're
going to be doing it anyway. It's one thing to convince
yourself of something that's not true before you've decided what
to do, but if you're already convinced you're going into this
fight, there's nothing wrong with some false bravado.
You know, it's like that Slim Charles line from The Wire that
I've quoted before. If we're going to fight, fight
on that lie. Don't break their morale by
telling them that the reason they're fighting is a lie.
Go ahead and let that inspire them if you're going to fight
anyway. It doesn't matter.
Inspiration better than not fight, but if you're going to at
least keep morale. Up.
Yes. Yes.
Don't undermine your troops on with with truth.
There's a time for everything, right.
I mean that's that's a true. That's the real thing.
Right. We've used that example before
you let's go around telling kids that certain beings don't.
I won't name it by certain holiday individuals don't
actually exist. Right.
That's not cool. So yeah, it's just an extension
of that in a in a way. Ashaya thinks it's very cool.
Meg or the cool it's it's a good thing you're muted for that
statement. Ashaya said she likes ruining
children's days. Really.
For shame. So despite how dominant Balerian
had proved to be, not to mention Vegar and Moraxis, it wouldn't
make a lot of sense to attack all the seven kingdoms at the
same time. So he had the choice of who to
target 1st and it seems like he went with prison rules of sorts,
what I'm referring to. Is relating to the idea of
demonstrating the power of the Dragons.
You go fight the strongest person and then no one messes
with you because you've already if you're not the weakest person
in the room, you won't be the first one picked on.
It's like it's like the old rules of poker.
If you can't spot the sucker at the table, it's probably you.
So by that same logic, it makes more sense to target the biggest
bully, assuming you have the ability to actually pull it off.
Because if you fail then, well, that kind of backfired didn't
it? So here we go quote.
North of the Blackwater, the river lands were ruled by the
Bloody Hand of Heron, the Black of House Whore, King of the
Isles, and the Rivers Heron's Ironborn, Gransire Harwin.
Hard hand had taken the Trident from Argalac's grandsire Eric,
whose own forebears had thrown down the last of the River
King's centuries earlier. Heron's father had extended his
domains E to Dunscandale and Rosby.
Heron himself had devoted most of his long reign, close on 40
years to building a gigantic castle beside the God's Eye.
But with Heron Hall at last nearing completion, the Ironborn
would soon be free to seek fresh conquests.
No king in Westeros was more feared than Black Heron, whose
cruelty had become legendary all through the Seven Kingdoms.
Shay is going to pull up a map here to remind us just how large
Heron's Kingdom was. He basically controlled the
entire center of Westeros all the way from roughly where not
exactly where King's Landing is, but Maiden Pool, all the River
Lands and Maiden. Where the River lands ends is a
little spotty, but it's roughly a little past Maiden Pool to the
east, but everything northwest of that all the way to the Iron
Islands. So what you're looking at is.
How does anyone trade with the veil or the north when the river
lands is controlled by this guy? Well, he would probably tax that
stuff pretty heavily. So it's another example of his
bullying, like economic bullying or dominance that may go
unnoticed by a lot of readers or analysts.
So this would be not just as breaking Heron would not just
end his threat, which is substantial, but it would open
up. A lot of trade and commercial
ventures for folks who would have been stymied and the River
Lands is known for trade. I mean that the rivers
themselves create a lot of opportunity for boats going back
and forth rapidly and to a lot of different places, somewhat
remote to somewhat central. So it's a very good place for
that, but it's been dominated by a tyrant who rather than.
Build on that natural prosperity.
He exploits it to build this giant awful castle that involves
basically enslaving people, working them to death, stripping
lots of regions of their natural resources.
Kind of the maybe the equivalent of like strip mining and
deforesting, including cutting down wherewoods.
Which, you know, wouldn't bother the followers of the seven all
that much, but might make a few people.
Nervous about what the old gods might do, but some superstitions
linger. A lot of people still respect
the old gods, even if their main prayer is to the new gods.
That's why they say that the new God, old God to the new, that
people still say that phrase because it still matters.
Even if you're Christian or Jewish or whatever.
You don't want all the old Greek pantheons destroyed because
they're not your religion. You know, if if someone just
starts wreaking havoc on on ancient sacred ground,
everyone's a little aghast. Even if you're not, yeah, it's
specifically connected to it. You know that means a.
Lot of ideas, Yeah. Yeah.
Or the first day, Yeah. First day came for their
religious landmarks. Next they'll come for ours.
Yeah. It's not hard to connect that
dot. I totally agree.
So. Given the size of Heron's Castle
and of his realm and how unpopular he was the religious
aspects as well. I mean, he's foisting the Iron
the Drowned God religion here. He's not a worshipper of the
Seven, he's not like a very religious guy, but certainly
wasn't following the Seven, so that's a problem.
Yet another reason why Aegon adopting the Seven was a really
smooth political move. Not only is it the dominant
majority religion. But it was very opposed to what
Heron was doing. So just really fits in line with
this plan of attacking Heron first, to adopt the religion of
people that really hate this guy.
Much easier to recruit them, much easier to win them over.
Yeah, taking down a tyrant, people will sign up for that,
including people within his own realm.
And I bet he predicted that. So this issue of timing is very
interesting. Legend tells us that Aegon's
landing occurred on the same day that Heron Hall was declared
complete. I don't know if it was the exact
same day. That seems like a little bit of,
you know, just storytelling adding to the myth.
Yeah, a little myth making there, but it's cool.
The point being though, it was pretty close together, which
that's enough to make the point. It doesn't have to be the exact
same day for it to be, by the way.
I can believe it's the same day because once again, I think that
I think Aegon had a lot of logistical planning behind us.
I think he understood the. He may have spy on them to find
out what day was going to be over.
Claire Dunn. Just like, yeah, it would have
been. It would have been a big event.
He's like celebrating the day the castle was completed.
And Aegon could have known about that, stealing his Thunder.
I like that. That's a great call.
Yeah. Again, like I think that he
understands the symbolic nature of of what what he's doing and
his actions going after here first in the first place.
I think that I, I and I don't think it would have been like
some secret that no one could possibly know.
I'd the more I think about it, the more I think it probably
was. It probably was calculated
specifically for that day. I like it, yeah.
I was a little skeptical, but you guys have made some really
good points there. I think I might have to change
my mind because of the symbolic relevance of it.
If he thought of that, it seems like he probably would have.
Then he would plan for that and it makes a lot of sense.
It's like putting starting a holiday on an existing holiday
to kind of erase it, which has happened before.
Like when you think about it, he probably could have done
whatever he's doing 2 weeks, two months sooner.
Yeah, two months later. But he chose this day.
I think he chose this day very specifically.
Yeah, I think you guys are right about that.
And if he. Yeah, because if he started a
few days early, like, it wouldn't matter.
It's like Heron Hall. It's like, oh, no, Baron Hall is
complete now. Now Balerian can't melt it, you
know, It's like, oh, you missed your chance.
It's like Star Wars. That thing's operational, you
know, like it was still very effective as a castle before
that final brick was put in. It's like, oh, now it all works,
you know? Now it's turn the whole castle
on now, like the switch works. You know Heron Hall isn't firing
the big blast of super hot. Plasma though.
That's Valerian. The castle isn't the Death Star.
Valerian's the Death Star, right.
So these are things that, like you said, Agon and his brain
trust would have figured out and and realized the value of of
stealing his Thunder and Heron. I wonder what he knew.
Like, we can see that Agon was probably keeping track of what
was going on. Was it?
Was Heron keeping track of Agon? Probably not.
He's probably too arrogant for that.
Probably didn't think they mattered what it is.
What's that little island? What do I care about that one
island One day they'll be mine, you know, or my my sons will
rule them someday. That's probably more online than
him. His thinking he probably was
that arrogant. Not.
Certainly his later and earlier actions do imply that as
arrogant as our Galac, perhaps her and horror needed to.
They should have fought over that nickname.
No, I'm more arrogant. No, I'm more arrogant.
Maybe he did some common sense things like.
Buy a few more crossbows, but they didn't know, like truly how
to fight Dragons. You know, maybe if there was a
way to like if he had some Valyrian text that showed what
Dragons did to each other, maybe.
But scorpions, that's what they needed were the scorpions and
the big bolt throwers. But I don't know if you knew
about that, but if he did, even that might have just, like,
slowed it down a little. And as we saw he, he, when he
does attack, which we'll get to later, he does it at night when
it's really hard to find your shoot him.
A gun has to be a little more careful, but it doesn't win the
battle. Like, where is he?
You know it's dark. You only ever see it when the
fire starts shooting out of his mouth.
And then it's like, well, where exactly is he in that, you know?
And yeah, just. Nina says there's also a point
to make here about timing with respect to both ideology and
power. If Aegon really did decide to
invade just at the moment Heron Hall was completed, then he was
attacking Heron Hall at the point where both native
Riverlands resentment against the horrors was at its peak,
while native Riverlands power and resources were at their
nadir. Also, it goes to that strength
and he's like, I'm not going to attack you before you're ready.
I'm going to wait till you're ready and then knock you down.
So everyone knows that you know you were ready for me and I
still beat you. Your castle was done.
You declared it so. And I still beat you, and I
still melted it, you know, like all that preparation.
So yeah, Nina says Heron had effectively enslaved the native
population of Riverland to build a monument to his own absolute
authority, the most crushing symbol of their lack of
political identity and a system which considered them subhuman
compared to the Ironborn. It's kind of hard to think of
that like the Ironborn are now like laughed at and thought of
as a backwards people, but at this point.
They were at a well, this was a high point at this point and you
couldn't look down on the Iron Born in the same way.
You might look down on them culturally, but you couldn't
look down on them as a power like they are not a backwater
reduced to the Iron Island situation.
Here they are arguably peaking and people didn't know that this
would be their peak. They thought it might go higher,
and they didn't know that Agon would set the whole peak of fire
and melt it down to nothing. So yeah, Riverlands resentment
would have also been peaking and Agon was counting on that and it
it worked. At the same time, however,
Riverlands resources were also at their most depleted, however,
because every year he was demanding more and more.
And it's not like it gets easier to find stone and trees when
you're cutting down so many and killing so many people in the
mines and and overworking them to death, you start to run thin
of these things, so. The River Lands was with the
thing, military investments. It could be complicated, but but
as a default military investment, it doesn't produce
new stuff, right? Like if you tax the people and
and you know, enslave the population in order to build
more farms, well, after that you have more of food.
And you know, maybe that's not the best way to do it, but
something got produced. But if you enslave the people
and pillage the land to build a big castle, okay, well, now you
got a big castle. No one's fed because you have a
big castle. There's not any extra wood
that's generated for the people or anything so.
Right on. Next up, let's talk about.
Oops. Aegon wasn't ready to introduce
the biggest bully in Westeros to Valerian, the biggest dragon in
the world, just yet. He had the plan, but as we said,
there were some things he had to do first.
He announced the claim before a lot of the preparations were
made, and that's probably in part because of what we just
sort of sussed out with the fact that he wanted to time things
for Heron's completion and maybe that.
Didn't give him enough time to do some of those other things
first, like, well, this is the the date we're working around.
So we got to get our claim forward and then start moving
our troops and then all this other stuff.
So let's take a few questions and then we'll come back with
the beginning of the actual landing.
Julie A, I wonder if Valerian was especially bred in Valeria
or if he just had a super large egg.
Oh, that's. Those are cool possibilities.
You're muted muted share. Thanks, Sean.
And then there was a continuation of that where
Dornish Dame added on to that and said, ooh, that dragon
breeding idea is interesting, actually, not something I
thought of before, but if Valyrians were as advanced as
we're told, surely they would have bred Dragons as Westerosi
do, horses to horse breeding. And then Christina Kay replied
and said I have a head cannon, that the Targaryens got to be
noble by being like really good dragon breeders.
Like a specialty, you know? Well, yeah.
They weren't like a particularly they weren't like the most
respected of the of the Valyrian houses.
So which makes seem like they were more of a stewardly class,
more of like the Tyrells to the Hightower as kind of classes.
Or maybe like the Clay Gaines. Yeah, more of that like the dog
breeder kind of thing. Yes, that that is a better
comparison. Something that wouldn't be
thought of is, is noble. Something you wouldn't be proud
of. Something like common people do,
but it might be unique and special enough, and they were
good enough at it, you know? It's protected to you the
secrets you need to. There's a lot of secrets behind
it. Whereas with horsemanship, I
don't know. If you was worried about people
finding out something, you still would because you you like.
Horse superiority is a thing, and there's been plenty of times
where army's ancient armies have clashed and the superiority of
horses. Has been the difference.
Like 1 group's horses are way bigger and stronger and that
makes a massive difference. Like we look at horses now, war
horses like look back. And like early medieval times
those horses were small people didn't fight from horseback.
They would ride to the battle, then get off the horse and then
fight because the horse wasn't really that well equipped for
it. They couldn't handle all this
armor and and let alone a rider wearing armor and all this
weaponry. But it took a lot of breeding to
get to that point. Yeah, that's that's a really
good point. Dragons may very well follow the
same umbrella. It's also the type of thing if
you think about it a little and there's, you know, all kinds of
research you can do on it. But there is a lot of difference
in types of forces, like some are bred to be bigger and
stronger so like haul more weight, but some are bred to be
more nimble and and to get up and down like you know,
mountains and cliffs and uneven terrains.
Some are built for endurance to travel long, long way on and on.
And so, you know, yeah, you can imagine both in general, like,
or in the real world or whatever, if you have some
horses that are big and strong and they have these mounted
Knights on them coming forward with lances, but you're on, you
know, uneavy rocking rocky terrain with a river to cross.
And these other horses have just like bareback riders, you know,
like on our Native Americans or something.
And they're quick and nimble, Can it cut really fast?
They might just run circles around the heavy armored horses.
But if they both had the same types of horses, and one is
trained for one thing and the other anyway, it wouldn't work
as well. You could easily see that with
Dragons. You could easily see some
Dragons. You might want to fly a longer
distance to have hotter breath to be tougher skinned.
You could see all these different traits that might be
bred and if the Targaryens made Balerian, right?
That wouldn't work out. Really.
The other, Yeah, the other, the other houses might have been
like, all right, fine. You can be noble, I guess you
know you're making better Dragons than our Dragons, so.
I do like the idea of, besides the breeding, the really large
egg, those two ideas go together.
If you're raising your dragon well, then it might produce
abnormally large eggs. Or maybe there's something you
can do with the egg after it's laid to make it stronger.
I know. What you could do what sit on
it? Sit on it, you've.
Seen it in all those tails. That's right.
Yeah, maybe if they're incubated at a certain temperature for a
certain time or or within a certain magical realm, you know,
a certain vicinity to a certain mountaintop or whatever.
You have Damon Targaryen singing to them, perhaps.
You know, I do think about things like the the singing and
stuff like that and the things Damon was kind of looking into
that he might just be tapping into his Targaryen roots.
And he doesn't. Realize how much his family was
really into that. Maybe he did read some random
book that that Sarah threw at him when they were nine years
old or something, you know? That's funny.
Did I ever mention the example of the Comanche and the Apaches
with regard to horses? I don't think so.
So shout out to the channel Dates and Dead Guys on YouTube,
which is a name that fits so well with the Song of Ice and
Fire naming conventions, because it reminds me of this horse
discussion we're having with that relates to Dragons.
In like the 1840s. So not that long ago we're
talking about horses and horse superiority mattering.
In ancient times. It mattered 180 years ago as
well. It's not that long in the past,
what happened with United States Army still had horse cavalry in
World War One, World War One riding into battle and.
Not just the US like the Germans had it too, I believe.
Well, I point out the US because we were relatively modern
compared to the other countries. You know, like we had, you know,
we we were making airplanes and stuff like that, but still had
horses. Here they're shipping horses
overseas to fight World War One. When there's planes and
battleships and guns, yeah, we use planes and tanks also, but.
So the example was that the Spanish, of course, for a long
time, obviously controlled a lot of what's now the United States
and they brought over there. But the point is, horses were
still part of, you know, Modern Warfare 100 years ago, not
ancient times. Super well bred Mustang horses.
At one point a large number of Mustang horses were lost and
they were taken by a group of Apache that became the Comanche.
Or maybe they were already the Comanche.
I forget what happened. What that part of it.
I don't quote me on that part, but the Comanche became like the
Ironborn slashed Athraki of that period because they were
Raiders. They were really good at it.
They knew the train better than anyone.
You would never chase after them because you would get counter
ambushed. And you couldn't chase after
them because their horses were faster.
So they would strike out of out of nowhere and get away out of
nowhere and you could never chase them.
So that's like the nature of raiding.
And this was because they had these Spanish bred horses where
the horses native to the US and well, there's no horses native
to the US. The horses that had started over
there were nothing like these exceptional top of the line
European war horses that once the Comanche got hold of them,
their advantage was just overwhelming to all the other
tribes in their area. As well as to the against the US
when the US came along and was fighting and were like, damn
these, this tribe has incredible horses crap.
Where did they get the And they're like, well, from the
Spanish, that's where they got them.
And you can, I wish I knew a little better.
But I can imagine the Mustangs maybe were bred for
maneuverability and quickness and not power and strength.
And so a lot of the horses coming across from the east to
the West were the big strong ones hauling carts.
They're not fast and nimble. Well, the Comanche also knew a
lot about horse breeding By that time they'd learned or cause.
Horses have been in America for a long time.
So they took those horses and then trained them a little
differently and bred them a little differently, a little
more suited to their needs than with the Spanish, but similar.
But what you're saying is still true, just they they branched
off into an all new direction for their own needs.
Couple other notes here. Matt Rees points out a small
error I made in my description of the Persians and the
Babylonians and the Assyrians. It wasn't the Assyrians that the
Cyrus the Great overthrew, it was the Meads.
The Assyrians had taken Babylon, the Meads took it from them and
then the Persians took it from the Meads.
So ultimately my example was the point I got across was still
accurate, but I want to be historically accurate.
So thanks for the correction there, Matt Rees.
Several people pointed out that we had a little feet yards goof
last week. When you talked about pay to
tail being 50 foot longer, like that's half a football field,
Like no, that's 50 yards, just three times longer.
So whoops. I feel similarly though, that
that I might have been off on the detail of the, you know, the
yard versus the feet, but it's still preposterous.
A50 foot table. It's also still crazy.
It is still. It is extreme, but not crazy,
not preposterous because we certainly have people link us to
examples and the Facebook group and whatnot of. 50 feet, 40 feet
tables that like there was that are be around today.
But not 150 feet. Yeah, you don't necessarily need
a soccer stadium to house them, but you still can't really.
Again, think of the idea of like looking at the map.
You're on one end of the table looking at corn.
You cannot see the wall. You cannot even see King's
Landing. It's too far away.
Across the table. So he stayed fit OK because he
had to walk around the. Table, he said.
Dog around the table. Run.
All over here, it's like I'm out of breath running.
From over here it's like. Check out every.
Hold on. OK, OK, look over here.
Oh yeah, 50 feet. Very possible.
Definitely unwieldy. Impressive all that.
But possible for sure. 50 yards as as I definitely also was
imagining. Not very possible.
Very difficult. Christina Kay made a great point
last week about how George uses mystery.
He does. He presents them in a variety of
ways. One of the ways he does it is
that. He doesn't make it.
He doesn't tell us it's a mystery, or he tells us it's a
resolved mystery, but it isn't. It's falsely resolved, like the
like the issue of maybe John's parentage, which a lot of people
in the world think they have the answer and the only reason.
But we have to ask ourselves that it's we have to realize
it's a mystery because people in the book aren't sitting there
wondering who is John's dad. John isn't wondering, or mom,
John's not well or both. John's not wondering that well.
He is about his mom, but only at the beginning.
He doesn't really think about it later, maybe only once at most.
So. Benita expands on that idea.
It's like George does this a lot of different ways.
That's one of them. But sometimes he does have the
mask. Sometimes they're very deep in
the mystery themselves, like John or like Ned trying to
figure out who killed John, Aaron or Ned trying to figure or
the the pink letters, one that the fandom invented as a mystery
that isn't necessarily one that was intended to be.
But. That's just that works out as an
example here too. Just something that becomes a
mystery because of the way we see it versus what people in
world see it as, like the identity of young Griff.
Tyrion does question it only a little bit, but he does question
it. So that is an example of like if
someone had sat there and go, I don't know about John, so I
don't know if I don't think Ned's his dad.
If someone had that thought which no one has had, not even
Ned, not John, then it that mystery would be framed a lot
differently. But so George is not going to
that same playbook every time. He uses a variety of ways to
frame mysteries, and that keeps us on our toes like, well, this
pattern is not the same pattern being followed here.
This is, he's just really good at it.
That's the bottom line, yeah. Sometimes they, you know, even
in the real world, even something that is known, there
is still a reason to question it, right?
Maybe there's some bias involved or some piece that doesn't add
up and and so that would happen in in George's world too.
Like even something that is factual there would still be
some people that have reason to question it and so that gives
the audience a reason to question and sometimes you
question it and and the audience even can have a better
perspective because we're reading different people's
perspective. We can have knowledge of 1.
Character doesn't have another but but the audience doesn't
always have all the knowledge either obviously.
So that, like you said, there's a lot of different ways for him
to come at us, like with these mysteries.
Like another good example is who's the Harpy?
Like we're wondering who the Harpy is.
So are the characters. We're all kind of together on
that and we kind of have the same information.
So, but that's completely different than the Jon Snow
example. So that's neat.
One of your greenstones asks, should we be reading Fire and
Blood with a gun stream in mind. Now we we briefly clarified this
at the beginning of the first episode, but let's let's clarify
it further. I think yes, but I think it's a
year mileage may vary thing. I think if you've already read
Fire and Blood Without it in Mind, which you probably
haven't, or probably have read it without it in mind, why not
read it within mind? This time it'll feel a little
different. It'll come off a little
different. Most of the information is the
same, but it'll be it's a little different.
Look at a book it's that you've already read.
So I think it's fun to read it with that in mind.
You don't have to take it as cannon because technically, yes,
George has said it probably applies to the books.
Well, he didn't say it probably applies to the books.
The way he's framed it, it almost certainly applies to the
books, but not necessarily the same way it applies to the show.
Like his take on it might be different than the way we were
presented in the show. So there's definitely some
wiggle room as to what George exactly intends for a guns dream
to have been. We have to keep that in mind.
But personally, absolutely yes, we're keeping it in mind.
I think it's more fun to do that, but we have to keep be
careful with. Reading too much into it and
being and not taking the show too directly in its
interpretation, just as a the show is like a guideline for us.
I think this is, you know, another angle to take.
Should you read A Game of Thrones with a clash of king in
mind? Like if you read them all and
you're rereading it, I think you should, right?
George didn't necessarily have everything and and that he ended
up writing in A Dance of Dragons.
He didn't have all that set in his brain when he started
reading game of. That's true, but he kept Game of
Thrones in mind when he wrote Dance of Dragons.
He wants those dots to connect still.
Yeah, right. So I think when he wrote Fire
and Blood, he wanted all the things to to to add up with what
he'd written so far. When he makes a statement to the
world about hey, there's this prophecy the a gun had I I think
that he is keeping it all tied together.
I don't think he's just saying it Willy nilly.
I think he intends he he wants at least for it to all drive
right. He's probably thought and made
sure that it does. Even if he didn't exactly have
the intention in the 1st place, I still think it's worth us at
least accounting for. Yeah, let's talk a little bit
about his writing style. I think it's just briefly.
I think that fits really well here.
For example, there's one one part from the books people cite
as something George set up way to advance.
But no, he didn't actually, he he realized it would fit later.
And then what I'm talking about is when Santa thinks about
Janice Lint that she wishes some hero would.
Throw him down and cut his head off, you know, And then Jon Snow
does that later. But people point out that in the
original draft of A Dance of Dragons, he's hanged not had his
head cut off. So George didn't plan all the
way back in The Clash of Kings for John to cut his head off.
But. Which is true, George didn't
plan all the way back into Clash of Kings for John to cut his
head off. Probably not.
But there's a couple of possibilities here.
Maybe he did and forgot about and then later realized like, Oh
yeah, actually I was going to have John cut his head off
because of that line I made back in Clash of King.
Maybe he just forgot that and editing he realized, Oh yeah, I
was going to do that. Or perhaps more likely, he
realized he could fit it to that point.
He made back things like, oh I can connect this to what Santa
said back then by making this a head, a head chopping instead of
a hanging. And that's totally valid.
Because of the way George writes in his gardener style, he leaves
room for this. It's one of the reasons the dots
connect so well is he doesn't write himself in the corners.
He leaves this option to connect the dots later.
He doesn't have to go. I don't know where this dots
going to. I know exactly where this dots
going to connect later. Sometimes he does do that, but
he doesn't always have to. He can go all right.
As long as I write this properly, I can connect
something to it later. Once I figure out what that is,
I don't have to decide right now.
And it'll work later, and it sets him up for success down the
road or for good storytelling down the road.
It's another value we talked a little about earlier, about how
broad his story has gotten, all the back story he's included.
When you do that, you give yourself more options and
inspiration to tie stuff in later.
I think about one time he when he was describing the idea of
his gardening style, he did say, you know, like I don't exactly
know what the garden's going to look like at the end, but I know
I planted tomatoes. I may choose to water them or
not, but I know I did plant tomatoes.
I didn't plant bananas. So it's not like a complete
mystery. He has an intention for the
garden might adjust it. It might come out a little
different than he thought. But he knows what he planted.
I think also about Better Call Saul.
The writers of that show said that they and and it's clear
when you watch it that they harvest what they've done so far
that as they write, they're constantly looking back at what
they've done, finding things to pull out from that, which I
imagine George has a certain amount of that that even using
the word harvest. Yeah, that metaphor we're
talking about, yeah. If you got to draw, get a good
harvest out of that good gardening, you know, and Better
Call Saul, for example. It's a prequel to Breaking Bad,
so they knew certain things had to happen.
Yeah, like, right over, right. What's already there.
Yeah, right. But despite.
So that's like their guidance, that's what they know is planted
in their garden. But they still their writing
style was generally more looking on, looking back to what they
had done so far and seeing what they could pull from it.
And so a lot of times when you're watching oh what a good
call back to this thing earlier, it doesn't mean when they did
that thing earlier, they plan for this thing happening now.
It means that they look to what happened earlier to decide what
to do now, you know, and I I bet George does a large amount of
that. So to wrap up points before we
start egg guns landing so to to finally finish Guinevere
Greenstone's point you should read it how you want to.
I recommend reading with egg on stream in mind.
You definitely don't have to. I think you should enjoy the
book the way you want to. But if you want to follow along
with us as well as you can then I do recommend that out of that
that having that point in your mind.
Another thing referring back to the discussion about breeding
and Dragons and and just breeding in general is.
The Valyrians were so big on just breeding in general.
I mean, they're big on breeding in humans, like they took it to
a creepy supernatural level. So yeah, it just fits in really
well with what we already know about what things they were
doing. Not necessarily how Targaryen,
but things that the Valyrians were doing, which the Targaryens
were very likely neck deep in as well given their relative
position in that society. So important to keep that in
mind, I'd say. But yes, the actual landing.
As I said at the beginning, setting out with a small army is
another Stannis parallel. Solis even mentioned that she's
like you're like AG on the Conqueror going and he's like I
don't have Dragons. It's like what the hell are you
talking about woman? You know Sanus is harsh way of
speaking. You know, melisange is like,
yes, but you do have this and so if you have this and that and
they're trying to pump him up and prepare him for.
Well, initial failure and then probably later failure, but
along the way lots of entertainment and setting things
up for other plot lines. We'll see, won't we though?
He likely already had Heron in mind to knock off 1st.
As we said, he had to establish himself on the mainland first,
which is this is amazing. He sets up and he's like, I
don't have a base, I don't have a lot of men, I dare you to come
attack me first before I get my conquest going.
And none of them did, which is probably just emboldened him and
it supported you more like we're just right here.
In between the Storm Lands and Herons Kingdom, we're not that
far from the West. Anyone, any of Y'all or the
gardeners, any of them could just March right to the mouth of
the Blackwater and attack him together or separately, and it
would have been interesting and they might have even pulled it
off, certainly working about a better chance, right?
Yeah, if they had worked together.
They come from different directions because the Dragons
aren't quite as good on defense, you know, like they're on the
ground and you're suddenly getting attacked from three
sides. I still might bet, especially
because the Dragons are good at scouting, so they might have
seen it coming, you know? But you're right.
It would have been interesting. Like you said, it would have
been interesting. It would have been hard for
Aegon's plan to have played out as well as it did.
They had. So it's funny, he says.
This began at the mouth of the Blackwater, a place that it
seems the ancients failed to capitalize on.
Aegon would literally capitalize on the place, making it his
capital. Not that other Lords and kings
hadn't tried to rule the place. It just.
It had never been developed for various reasons.
Here's a quote. In the days of the 100 kingdoms,
many petty kings had claimed dominion over the river mouth,
amongst them the Darklin Kings of Dunscandale, the masses of
Stone Dance, and the River Kings of old, be they muds, fishers,
brackens, blackwoods or hooks. Powers and forts had crowned the
Three hills at various times, only to be thrown down in one
war or another. Now only broken stones and
overgrown ruins remain to welcome the Targaryens.
Though claimed by both Storm's End and Heron Hall, the river
mouth was undefended and the closest castles were held by
lesser Lords of no great power or military prowess.
And Lords, moreover, who had little reason to love their
nominal overlord hair in the black Aegon Targaryen, quickly
threw up a log and earth palisade around the highest of
the three hills, and dispatched his sisters to secure the
submission of the nearest castles.
Let's consider some of those former claims briefly.
Bracken and Blackwood. That's pretty far away.
Those are eyebrow raising claims.
But no, we're talking about thousands of years of history,
of ins and outs and rises and falls and yeah, mud and Fisher
and hook don't even or hooks don't even exist anymore.
Those houses, they all sound like they belong in the
Riverlands River mud, river hooks for fishing, you know.
But the bracken Blackwood claims, Despite that might be
even older than these houses that are extinct.
Massey is a lowkey, interesting player here.
We'll have things to say about them on and off.
As we've talked about a lot of times, there's times when houses
find themselves within a sandwich and the masses are
example of that. They're pretty much sandwiched
between Dragonstone and Storm's End.
As we said, they started to show up at Aegon's councils more and
we're supposed to be vassals of Storm's End, but we're pretty
clearly on team Aegon here. So that's the side of the
sandwich they gravitated towards.
And what's what makes it difficult for them is, yeah,
they're actually physically closer to Dragonstone, but
there's a sea separating them from Dragonstone and the
mainland. Whereas our galactic conceivably
just March right up through the storm lands and just walk right
up to their door without any impediment and say you're on
whose team now you're like actually OK, we'll come back
because by themselves the masses would not be able to repel an
attack of the Storm Lands. Of course Heron Hall's claim to
the river mouth was the most recent and the most dangerous.
And as we saw the Storm lands claim was somewhat rooted in
creating a buffer. As we saw our galactic Ergon's
marriage offer was rooted in making egg on barrier between
his lands and Heron's expansions.
So the area clearly had a lot of potential.
I mean we're going to see Kingsland become the largest
city in the entire realm. So clearly the area has
potential and that's obvious even without seeing the final
result because it's a river mouth and there's just so much
possible trade there. When you're at a river mouth,
you've got the trade going up river and the trade coming from
the sea and you're at the Nexus of those two things.
Plus you've got land based trade as well.
And that's going to be part of why that area becomes so big,
Nina says. You might compare it to White
Harbor. The reason there had never been
a major city at that location isn't because it isn't
strategically or commercially useful.
It certainly is. But because cities cost a lot of
resources to build and maintain, upfront capital is required, an
amount that the Royal Stark simply didn't have.
They're too busy, for example, spending their money on
preparing for the next winter. They never have, like extra
enough amount of cash to build a whole city, right?
Like that's a lot of initial investment.
It takes a certain ambition. It takes a certain amount of, I
don't know, foundational wealth and an ambition and the the
clearly, the stark motto is when it's coming, you know they're
going to rather than if they ever have a surplus, rather than
investing in building a new city, they're going to set it
aside for the next winter. Yeah, and you might argue too,
some Starks might be like, why do we want to increase the
population of the North? That's just more mouths to feed,
especially in a city that doesn't produce.
Cities don't produce food. The lands around them might, but
cities produce like goods and wealth and and into linkage.
They could trade that for imported food.
It's I think it's a little shortsighted to not want the
city. I agree.
I agree because. It's understandable to be
shortsighted when you live in a desolate, frozen wasteland.
You might not see how that would work out to your benefit.
You might be like, yeah, no, just adding all these people.
That sounds like a terrible idea in the longterm.
Actually, it works out really well.
But getting over that hump of that longterm might cause a lot
of suffering until the man who's come in with their big amount of
extra cash, like, oh, now all of a sudden we do have that option.
And that was just credit to. I forget which Stark it was.
It was like, maybe now we can build that city because these
guys are coming in with all this cash.
Let's do it. Yeah.
So. Which also gives us a lesson
about the relative wealth of these different places and how
wealth can only go so far when it comes to military power.
It can help it, but it also can't overcome it sometimes.
Like the Mandarins would never have been able to defeat the
Starks, not in a million years, but they might have been able to
outspend them. Of course they were spending for
them instead of against them because they wanted to come live
in their land. But hey, same difference in
terms of possibilities. Let's talk about who I think.
At the go ahead, sorry it's a little bit of a tangent, but
just think about the nature of how resources would get used,
saved, accumulated, invested or whatever In the north and the
reach for example. So in the north, they would
constantly spend a lot of effort chopping down trees.
And then burning that wood just to stay warm in the South there
was been a lot of effort planting orchards and in
harvesting apples and Peaches to trade to the north for wood or
eat to stay on and on. Does that make sense?
Like the North just messed incinerate their work to to not
die in a winter where the South. Barely faces a winner and the
instead of incinerating their wealth, they have enough food
already and they trade it for more wealth.
And so they built cities and on and on they have that they can
make the initial investment. They've got enough money in the
bank for that. Yeah, like the Lannisters have.
That's why they have Landis Port and the reach has Old Town and
the Vale has Gull Town. Like these places all have a
city that represents where they were able to make that
investment. The closest in the north prior
to White Harbor was I guess Barrowton, which is a
substantial large town, but not not large enough to be a city.
Let's talk about who Agon had on his side, Team Agon we'll call
it. Obviously Visenia and Reinis are
well known and we'll expand on the on those two later as well
as on Agon. They're important full dive,
deep dive topics, but they obviously didn't do it alone.
Those 3. Apart from Oris Baratheon, who
we discussed last time a bit, and we'll have more to say about
him, let's consider who else they had, the ones who were
there with him from the beginning.
Some of these names you've heard before.
Because we've talked about these houses, we focused on them
individually. And of course their position
within Aegon's conquest and his reign thereafter was important
when we're focusing on those houses.
For example, House Belarion Lord Damon was his first Admiral.
Became his master of ships. Once the, you know, once these
things got settled, his sons, Lord Damon, Sons, Ethan would be
the next Master of ships. And Lord of Drift, Mark and
Corlise would be the first Lord Commander of the King's Guard.
Which doesn't come along for a little while yet, but still
these guys, before they had these roles.
Before Ethan was the Master of ships in place of his father,
and before Corlise became Lord Commander of the King's Guard.
Well, these guys weren't babies then.
We're only talking about 10 years later.
This guy didn't become Lord Commander of the King's Guard
when he was 20. Probably.
So. I mean, it's possible, but
probably. My point is probably.
These guys participated in the early wars at Aegon side as
warriors and commanders before they got these later, more fancy
titles when things were more established.
You talk about the Seltagars or Celtagars, if you prefer.
Lord Crispian or Kurt, I don't know.
You can't do that one with this. Hard to see, can you?
Crispian. Yeah, Sirspian.
Soon he was the Master of Coin or Master of Soyin.
And if you prefer, he would have already been funding weaponry,
ships, supplies, probably. I don't know if he would have
been in the battles, but maybe Quentin Coheris.
He probably fought because he was the Dragonstone master at
Arms. That guy was a warrior.
He's the one who taught Agon and Auris and Vasenia because
Vasenia's certainly very capable with dark sister.
So when we say those people trained together, especially
Agon and Auris, they they learned to sword fight together.
This was the guy teaching them. So he almost certainly marched
with them. Unless he was ancient by the
time, which is possible, but probably not.
He was probably appointed to this position of master at arms
by their father Lord Aryan. And if he's older than we we
think then he might have been appointed by Lord Aryan's father
Damien. So this this Co Harry's guy,
Quentin would have been around for at least one prior Lord, if
not more, and thus he would have had a lot of authority, social
authority over Agon and Ory's, even though they clearly are way
above him in rank. Just the fact that he had a
teaching position over them was able to tell them what to do.
It's kind of a different kind of relationship.
Most of these nobles, no one tells them what to do.
But you have an instructor that you're supposed to listen to,
kind of a different sort of pseudo version of of that,
where, yes, you're ultimately in charge of this guy giving you
orders, but you got to listen to him to learn the things he's
teaching you. So it's kind of a there's a
little more of a personal relationship involved there and
a little more back and forth. It's kind of an interesting
thing there. And in relevant to his age,
Quentin at this point had two sons and one grandson, so that's
why he might have been older. The sons almost certainly fought
in the war as well. The grandson's.
The grandson probably didn't, though.
Maybe he did. Maybe he was old enough.
The grandson's the one who's going to inherit Herrenhall
later. So it's possible the two sons
die during these wars. Or maybe one of them does and
then the other dies later before they can inherit Herrenhall
before the Quentin dies. Anyway, a lot of possibilities
there. It's Lord Tristan Massey who
comes over from Stone Dance and Lord Barr Emmon of Sharp Point.
So yeah, we can assume pretty much all these guys were
involved in the conquest in various ways whether swords in
hand or coins being spent and then afterwards towards these
building projects. For example, the Agon Fort we
talked about the large earthen wood palisade built around
Agon's High Hill. What it would that's what it
eventually became to be known as we don't know what it was called
at this point and a lot of that would have been paid for by
Celtic are and valerian and the manpower used to build it.
Same deal would have been a lot of their people doing it.
Not just aegons a lot of been his vassals.
So it's it's mentioned that his sisters were sent out to get the
submissions of some of the local Lords.
And this is almost an automatic. They're going to show up with a
big dragon and the ability to bring more men to the field.
And these are small petty Lords that we don't really have the
ability to stand up. These are the ones that would
have bent the knee right away had the letters been addressed
to them. But no, the letter just went to
the seven kings, slash Princess, queen, etcetera.
Not these lesser Lords, but they would have known about it.
Of course. They would have heard.
Everyone would have been talking about it.
So they've been like, yeah, when he comes, we'll bend the knee.
We're not going to fight that. I mean, come on, get get serious
here. We've got 300 men, You know,
what are we going to do? Like, Aegon doesn't have a lot
for a conquest, but he's got more than we do and he's got the
Dragons, so we're bending the knee.
So who is that? Eggon.
Eggon wanting to take conquest against the whole continent is
one thing. Eggon want to take conquest
against a village? Like, yeah, of course, yeah,
That part's easy. They're like, yeah, you got it.
That's one of those examples where whoever rides in and says
I'm in charge now, they're going to be like, okay, we're not
going to stop you. You're in charge now.
You you said so and we can't tell you otherwise.
So yeah, there would have been a a lot of smaller perhaps unnamed
lesser lordlings around here. Some that we know a little
better. Like we know Vicenia went to
crack claw point. They still consider themselves
quote good dragon man Dick Crabs said that exact thing.
We'll come back to this a little later because this might have
come a little bit later. I'm not sure when Crack Claw
Point submitted. There's not a lot of manpower
there. It wouldn't have been high on
the list and it's a little farther N so it's not that near
to the black water, but at some point that happened.
We're not exactly told which ones bend the knee immediately,
except for a couple of examples for which includes Rosby.
Rainey went there. There was no resistance.
Rosby just bent the knee. Visenya went to Stokeworth.
Nominal resistance at Stokeworth.
They fired a few crossbow bolts at her.
She burned their roof. They surrendered.
She was probably knew it would only take a little bit.
Like all they're firing is a few cross.
This is a very half hearted defense here.
I think they're ready to surrender.
I'm just gonna show them a little bit of what we're capable
of. One blast from beggar.
They're like, okay, that's enough.
We're done. We fought you though.
We can say we tried to resist. A little bit of bravery, but
that's it. I was gonna say that might be a
similar scenario to what we were talking about earlier, maybe on
a bigger scale, but maybe the Lords and leaders here know they
need to at least. Show some effort to whether it's
to make their people feel better about their identity or to make
their Liege Lord and not want revenge.
Later when the Dragon's not around whatever it is, I can and
I could see agon vissignia, whoever like understanding and
respecting that too. I think it was probably a
discussed part of the plan. I think that they as we said
earlier, I think the agon. Probably did have a little more
more foresight into how this is going to play all the if thens
of the scenario. I bet he did understand the idea
that we need to let them save face.
We can't just embarrass. Yes, right.
Yes, that's very true. Because it's absolutely ties.
What you said before about them looking like cowards, you can't
have, you can't embarrass them because that's part of what
enables them to rule their lands.
Well, is people believing that they will do what they say,
people believing that they're strong.
You don't want to piss off someone who's strong.
You might risk pissing off someone who's weak, yeah.
Like not being able to defeat a dragon isn't weak immediately.
Surrendering to someone's litter is weak, yes?
Right. Or let's recall that excellent
line from House the Dragon. A willing an unwillingness to
murder is not weakness, right? There's a lot of things that are
not cowardice that some people may call cowardice just because
they're trying to use the framing of cowardice as a
motivator against you. No, that's not me.
That doesn't make me coward. I think there's the iconic Back
to the Future through Line and all the movies.
That was Marty Mcfly's fatal weakness.
No one meat. Yellow No one calls me coward,
no matter what movie it was. Chicken.
That was the thing that just every time he shouldn't have
done something he shouldn't have, right.
And we use that. We talked about that with
Victorian and how that's all you're on had to do.
To get Victorian to sail across the globe was like, oh, you're
scared, huh? I'm not scared.
I'll sail anywhere. That's that was it.
He wasn't going to do it. He's like, I don't want to do
that. That's just like a lot of work.
What's the point? He's like, oh, you're scared.
He's like, oh, I'll do it. That's all.
And it's like the easiest thing ever.
It's like Jim toying with Dwight or something.
Yeah. It's like all you got to do is
bring up cowardice and it's like it's like they're the higher
thinking shuts off. DD toying with Mac.
Like, yeah, you probably can't even spend the bowling ball.
I can't. Oh, I can spend it, she said.
I couldn't spin it, though. She said it.
I have to do it. I have to prove her wrong.
There's no I must. She called me out.
I have to respond. That's I have to.
You have no choice. So interestingly, we talk about
manpower, talk about Aegon's little bit of manpower and we
look at what Stannis does eventually is he gets a hold of
some money and he's like, I'm hiring mercenaries.
I need manpower. Aegon had money, didn't hire
mercenaries. He now there's like I said
Shirley could have afforded them the Celtic cars, the Valorians
and the Targaryens combined. Surely they have plenty of cash.
We even hear that that they used their position in the Narrow sea
to get wealthy off of passing trade, so we know they had
plenty of cash, but it goes against this power, attitude
projection thing. He's like, I don't need help, I
don't need allies, I don't need hired hands.
Everyone who fights for me fights for me because they're
loyal to me, because they believe in my supremacy, not
because I paid them. So it doesn't really fit with
that. It's kind of looks bad to bring
in cell swords. It just Westerosi nobility and
cultural values. Yeah, they don't like cell
swords. They're kind of they look down
on like people don't like people.
Who they don't. Westerosi don't like people who
fight for gold, fighting for loyalty.
That's a virtue. Now obviously we can quibble
with that, but that's not the point.
The point of that is how Westerosi people tend to think,
especially the higher Lords. So this would look bad if he
used cell swords. The cell swords also bring
other. I don't know.
Unreliable dynamics in a play. What if the cell sorts do start
to pillage town that you didn't want, or turn against them, or
on and on so and even though they had enough money to hire
them, they're not the richest. What if the Gardeners or
Lannisters use their greater to suborn those units?
Not only the Gardeners and what and the Lannisters and folks
didn't appear to hire mercenaries of their own either,
but that's again because of these cultural values most
likely. So yeah, they didn't get they
didn't want to do it. The same reason they got doesn't
want to do it. They might have had less ability
to like they're. I don't know.
They're on the landlocked and or on the far side of that's like
what's the timing? How is someone reached the veil?
Could have, or the storm lands probably could have from
overseas. They might have had time and
maybe even the north. But you're right, the West and
the reach might have been more difficult for them to get people
over there in time for it to matter.
Because this day, yeah, this didn't exactly take a long time.
Even though Agon didn't rush to the conquest, he had things to
do first, like build the agon for it and get the submission of
nearby Lords and continue to equip these new people and get
them to fight his way and all that.
These things are slow marching from town to town and getting
everybody together. Yeah, there's there is a
substantial amount of time, but we're it's longer to bring
Mercenaries over from Essos by. Substantial amount of time to
find the sales or negotiate a contract, transport them over,
get them to your capital or whatever.
And in the meantime, a dragon might just go burn them.
And a smaller amount of troops does have some advantages to it
makes you leaner as a force. You need fewer supplies, you
need fewer commanders, you can move quicker.
Yeah, you don't have to like get everyone organ like marching a
large force takes like getting everybody up at a certain time
and then coordinating when they're going to leave.
You can't all just leave at the same time.
When there's like 10,000 of you like, the road isn't wide
enough, so you have to coordinate that and arrange for
that okay. This group goes first.
This group goes second. This group goes third.
The wagons have to be carried. Yeah, there's a lot, there's a
lot to it especially. I mean, let's keep in mind,
folks, no Kings Rd. no paved roads, hardly at all around
here. So these there's marching
through beaten paths. And that does make troop
movements a little bit harder. So again, smaller amount of
troops helps dodge some of these logistical problems.
It's easy to forget alongside those roads, that there's none
of the later institutions and power structures that will
eventually be around will be there.
Obviously no King's Landing, not even the start of a city at this
point. Perhaps some hubbles and fishing
villages, Maybe Aegon's Timber and Earth fortress was just
that. It wasn't a city yet.
It wasn't the start of a city, it was just a fortress.
It eventually becomes the Red Keep, but that area was low
population, so this is a portion of the mainland was not tightly
held, this entire area, even though it had been claimed by
Heron and Argyllac and some of their descent ancestors.
But if they waited, that might change, like Heron might start
to exert his authority more directly over this area.
So there were some independent sources of manpower the
Targaryens wanted to claim before it was too late, like if
those nearby Dunscandale or Rosby had been taken over by
Black Heron. Well, that's just another
obstacle for them that's very close to where they're
establishing their base. So even beyond the timing of
making stealing a heron's Thunder by landing the same day
he finishes his castle, there are other considerations as well
in terms of where Heron would go next.
Okay. He finished his castle.
What's he going to do after that?
Probably expand his territory, Okay.
So it's multiple reasons to stop him before he gets any farther,
because those soldiers become his.
If he takes those places, and if you get them first, those are
your soldiers. So that's a double, double
whammy. Like you don't have to face
those troops. They're fighting for you.
And it's not just the. Troops win.
Win money. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
So it's pretty smart. Let's talk about the Aegon Fort
again. Here's a map shot that shows us
the three major hills nicely aligned with the three heads of
the dragon. How convenient.
Rainy's Hill, Venus Hill, Agons High Hill, and you can see the
eventual If you're looking at the map, you can see eventually
where King's Landing was developed.
You can see how it formed, the walls, which of course weren't
there at this point, but these these denominations, these
markers might have been there, like proto structures would have
been built atop the senias and Rainys Hill would have been
watchtowers, smaller fortresses, things like that.
And the fishing villages would have started to been like, hey,
let's look to them for protection.
We'll definitely swear fealty to these people.
They've got Dragons, they're building stuff.
This looks good to us. They're not enslaving people
like Heron. So pardon me by if they're
choosing between the people that have claimed the territory and
the people who are actually present doing so, it's a pretty
much a nobrainer. Like you'd obviously rather
follow the Targaryens I think than Heron, that's easy.
Now Argalac is different because he's the follower of the seven.
But still I think you'd rather follow egg on because he just
seems more capable and Argalac is his Kingdom has been pushed
back for a while. So by from reputation, yes,
Argalac is dangerous and powerful, but his Kingdom has
been shrinking, so he might seem for his agons the the one on the
rise. He might seem like the better
alternative in terms of going forward, in addition to maybe
seeming more powerful even with fewer troops.
Also, you know if it's close. Even if it's not close, the
person standing in front of you is the one you're more likely to
follow, right? Whether they have 30,000 troops
or 3000 troops, when they're standing in front of you with
3000 troops like okay okay, what do what do you want us to do
now? Yeah, so nowadays the top of
those hills is the Red Keith, the Great Sept of Baylor, and
the ruins of the dragon pit. It.
For a while it had the actual dragon pit, but you kind of
wonder what was there first. It's interesting to think about
how like, let's frame it this way.
Imagine King Agon with his enormous dragon, his ancient
Valyrian heraldry. He's knelt to receive this.
He's already been crowned, by the way.
This is before the crowning at the Starry Sept.
Of course, that's the one that everyone remembers and the one
that Agon dates his reign for. But he was crowned as soon as he
landed by Vesenia that this Valyrian steel circlet that he
wears, the one that's worn by many kings after him, is placed
on his head at this point. Soon as he basically soon as he
makes landfall, which I believe is a parallel to William the
Conqueror. But think about this, this is
neat. Like all the Dragons, his
sisters, the heraldry, the sword barely matched anywhere in the
world. Black fire and all.
This is happening in a log Fort around a hill.
It's not quite as fancy as it will be later.
It's like all this really powerful heraldry, ancient stuff
in a log cabin. It's not a cabin, but you know,
it's funny, it's, it makes the example stand out a little more
if I call it a cabin, and at some point it probably was just
a little cabin before it expanded.
Call it a love shack. The love shack.
A three-way love. Shack, yes, you know that is
interesting to point out that it has create.
Look at some imagery you might not expect, right?
Like, I don't think anyone's made that art yet, right?
Oh. Yes, you would be.
Anyone listening is a here's a call but but it is it's neat to
think about how many you know great kingdoms started with
humble beginnings. You know like Genghis Khan
wasn't in some castle right. It was literally, yeah.
And you know, even the. You know, I don't know the
stories of like, you know, I don't know George Washington or
Abe Lincoln born in log cabins and and the riding of the
Constitution, You know, they're they.
It was hot when they were right in the Constitution.
It was so hot outside. They wanted to open new Windows,
but they didn't. They kept the windows closed
because there was so much horse manure outside.
It smelled so bad. They kept the windows closed and
just dealt with the heat. And in the meantime, they're
riding the Constitution of the United States of America.
That's like the conditions they were in, they were in some.
Fancy Castle. It's probably like you get to be
careful that their sweat doesn't drip on to the parchment.
Yeah, it wasn't. It was that some of the original
wording was lost because of sweat droplets.
It's like, I don't know, kind of fill that back.
And I don't know what they wrote.
We got to fill that back in. Yeah, it's it's neat to think
about that. And that is what King's Landing
becomes until like Jaharis and Barth install, like sewage
systems and and proper flowing water.
It is kind of nasty like you're describing me.
Paris was up till I want to say like the sixteen 1700s.
It was like unlivable, you know, like even in the modern time
even in like 1970 the the the river in Paris you couldn't swim
or drink and it was poisonous. The only in the past generation
as they that started to be dealt with some.
And yeah, you got to figure it's probably similar.
The mouth of Blackwater probably highly polluted is with less
with industrial waste. But there'd be some because they
would have logging operations and mining and stuff and they'd
be dumping wastewater in there Ancient the world could produce
some pretty severe waste even compared to modern times
probably because they didn't know what some of the
consequences were and we still don't.
So they knew even less. When you start to have city,
when you start to have populations of scores of
thousands of people, that's when human waste starts to matter.
Yeah. And of course, nowadays in
King's Landing, it's become a problem again because it's
outgrown some of its own sewages and people.
There's multiple characters to talk about.
King's Landing smells like, oh, I can smell it before I got
there. And someone like Davos says
every city has a distinct smell and King's Landings is the worst
of the five, you know, by far. So the landing was progressing
pretty well. But meanwhile, what was going on
elsewhere in the realm? We really focused just on this,
but there had to be a lot of back and forth discussions, a
lot of Ravens and horse messengers between the Lords and
ladies in the region as things progress like this.
A gun guy. He's he's built a castle.
Now he's claimed a few Lords. Like he's not doing what he said
he would do is is someone going to stop him?
Well, again, this was the time to maybe gang up on him and do
something. No one did it when he just has a
earthen castle. Not even a castle.
Still had a dragon sitting there.
Or three Dragons. That's not exactly as simple as
I might portray it. But again, it's still probably
their best chance to stop him. And they didn't they didn't do
that. No one else wanted to be the one
to well, let them do it. Let someone else stop him.
Let let our Galac do it. Let Heron do it.
Let the Westerlands do it. Let the yeah, no one wanted to
be the first except for maybe a few smaller scale people that
were really close by and the the people living in what's now the
Crownlands. As I said, it wasn't the
Crownlands then. It quickly did become that they
rarely have ever had strong leadership.
There's a long history of people being caught in the middle of
this region being like the neutral zone.
That's sort of quibbled over, occasionally fought over, and it
just had a rotating A revolving door of leadership.
They're probably pretty sick of it.
They're probably like, yeah, this puts us at risk.
Anyone can just come in here and shred us and take our stuff and
we'd be nothing we could do about it.
It'd be nice to have a strong leader to tie us all together
and protect us. Silly question for you.
What's that? So when some of the Crown lands
were. Owned by Like Heron where he
called them the Drown land. When the time when the I guess
it would have been. Gardeners had some of the Crown
lands. Was it the grown land they have
the groaning. At this joke had the Crown
lands. Anyway, that's turning into the
Frown lands. Yeah, it took.
All the Actually, it was. I was able.
Frown lands like they probably were frowning anyway, and when
all the human waste piles up, it's the brown land.
The brown land. That's hilarious.
I like that one best of all, I think.
Actually nice. Any other ideas folks?
What other rhymes can we fit in there?
If they had enough court gestures.
Oh, the Meowlands, I was thinking, if there were enough
court gestures, it could be the clown.
Clown. Nice.
The clown. God, I've, I've.
I accidentally said that once. The clown.
Yeah, you did. Now we believe that's what Patch
Face actually worships the Clown God.
That's why it's so creepy. Because clowns are creepy, man.
Yeah, I would rather live in the Crown lands than the clown lands
for sure. Yikes.
I would rather live in the clown lands.
Really, I don't. Have the same aversion to
clowns, but I think a lot of people do.
To me, they are a funny gesture. I like clowns.
Clowns are fun. Clowns are funny, as Homer would
say. So the fact that the people have
had a hard time in this area, and then it's never had
stability, or has rarely had stability or hasn't had
stability for long periods of time is why this next quote is
actually believable and maybe not just a rewriting of history
to make Agon seem a little better.
You know, history written by the winners kind of situation here.
Judge for yourself quote. Heraldick banners have long been
a tradition amongst the Lords of Westeros.
But such had never been used by the Dragon Lords of old Valyria.
When Aegon's Knights unfurled his great silken battle standard
with a red 3 headed dragon breeding fire upon a black
field, the Lords took it for a sign that he was now truly one
of them, a worthy high King for Westeros when Queen Vasenia
placed a Valyrian steel circlet studded with rubies on her
brother's head and Queen Rainey's hailed him as.
Aegon, first of his name, king of all Westeros, and shield of
his people, the Dragons roared and the Lords and Knights sent
up a cheer. But the small folk, the
fishermen and field hands and good wives, shouted loudest of
all. Yeah, when I first read that
quote I was like, did they really?
But the more we've delve into it, I'm like, yeah, I can maybe
kind of believe it, that they did want a strong leader and
this looked like it. And they were right.
So it's not a case of yay, someone new to boss us around.
It's a case of someone looking like they may actually be
capable of being a good leader, something this region lacked.
It looked like a reprieve from the inevitability of Heron, who
had not treated his subjects well, to put it mildly, and was
probably coming for them. They might have been like, oh,
how much longer do we have before this guy comes into our
region and enslaves us and makes us worship the drown God or cut
down wherewoods or whatever he's going to have us do?
And it also looked like Egan was going to build, was going to
create opportunities. He was going to build a city or
a castle or both. And that means infrastructure.
That means, in modern terms, that's like creating jobs and
creating work and creating stability.
Still, even with that, even with that point made, it's hard to
imagine there weren't plenty of doubters, malcontents, and
people who were strong worshippers of the Seven that
didn't really see this guy as as the answer because he was not
God, even if he was making some godly noises.
Still, there's some obvious violations of cultural
traditions laid down by the Seven, like multiple wives, like
Dragons, like their history, being disconnected from all
that, like they're not and all. There might have been some
racism or prejudice, whatever the Westeros equivalent is from
the fact that they're not like, like us or whatever.
Another thought. You know, depending on your
interpretation that that you know that this could all be
accurate, but it's being presented as kind of like we're
supposing here, like, oh, this hero has come to save us and so
we're going to cheer. But there could also have been.
Beer, they might have thought. He's about to burn us all to
death of the dragon so that other people from some other
land can move into our farms. Oh no, he wants to be our king.
Okay. Fine.
He's not burning us to Dragons. Yay, not bringing us to Dragons.
You know, that's enough to cheer for.
So yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah, it's.
And there's also a possibility, if we have to keep in mind, of
paid malcontents, that's always a possibility whenever you have
a crowd, whenever you have a riot break out, there's always a
possibility that someone incited it.
And that may have been intentional.
It may have not just been someone who's really mad.
Sometimes riot is incited by a person who's genuinely angry.
And that flame sort of catches and and goes to a lot of places
that are unpredictable. But sometimes, like the kings
were landing bread riot, there's suspicions that someone tried
to, you know, maybe add a little kindling to that or a little
spark to that fire and and maybe get that going.
So there's a ripe opportunity here for that.
I don't know if Heron or our Galac were the type to do this,
or maybe Shara, Erin or Princess Maria or anyone else.
And he doesn't have to be one of the great greater kings, sending
some agents there to maybe stir up the crowds against Agon and
be like no, you know, death to Dragon Lord.
Maybe not quite that blatant. But people who would Boo and
maybe encourage other people to Boo and go around and get the
vibe of of like are they happy about this or are the people
going along with this and then go report back to the kings, the
kings and Lords back in their native regions.
I mean, like, yeah, he's making progress.
The people are following him. They're they're accepting him as
their ruler. So this is progressing and it's
he is going to come for us eventually, you know, and they
might use that sort of intrigue to try to stop it.
Maybe. Maybe there were assassination
attempts earlier than this. We know that they happened from
the darnish, but maybe there were some earlier ones.
It's not super clear. But that would be a thing to do,
right? Like, rather than try to beat
the Dragon's head on. You wouldn't want to admit to
doing this, necessarily, because it's not honorable.
It's not noble to assassinate a foe.
You're supposed to beat them on the battlefield.
That's the Westerosi value. But if no one knows you did it,
you might still have a pragmatic reason to do it without other
people knowing. And if you're maybe you have to
have the ability to pull that off, You have to have a spy
network, or you have to have assassins.
I'm not sure that our Galac had that.
I'm not sure that hair and whore had that sort of thing.
But someone might. I'm going to suppose when I when
I think about this that is not likely.
Maybe from a smaller more local house.
But I think that the other Lords are too arrogant.
They're just not worried about them.
They're not scouting that like like we talked early.
He landed. They could have got him.
They just saw he landed all right.
Whatever they they were almost indifference.
May and maybe some that maybe would have cared or might would
have done something too far away like the North, too far away to
send a scout down there and get all the way back like it might
have been too difficult. And also the North maybe that's
doesn't seem like their their MO that kind of like.
Subversive. Sneaky kind of thing.
Not their kind of thing, you know.
But maybe, maybe Lannis Port. Maybe the Lannisters might have
sent some scouts over that they're the ones that might be
most likely to have had some spying or assassination
attempts. But but I they also are the type
to be so arrogant to not think it matters.
Like he's not really going to do this.
We've been here thousands of years.
We're also farther removed. Like physically, our land is
farther away from what's going on than, you know, the storm
lands, river lands, Right on. Well said.
Well, point. It's, let's talk about the
newness of the banner and the sigil itself, Nina says.
It's I think it was a conscious decision from the Preconquest
Targaryen to maintain a separate identity from continental
Westeros. Remember how even Elyria and the
Bruvosi Mumordana mocked the Westerosi fondness for sigils?
I don't think the Valyrians would have been any different.
And seeing sigils as a silly barbaric custom of the West,
proof of their lack of refinement compared to the
Dragon Lords of Valyria. Targaryen is the last of these.
Dragon Lords might have thought that if they stooped to this
level and adopted their own sigil, they would lose some of
that Valyrian distinction, but Agon apparently saw it
differently. He saw it being one of them was
necessary to rule them, and it seems that he may have been
right. This, this distance, this
separation is not a benefit to rulership.
In a lot of ways it might make them feel better about their
pride and their superiority as a culture, but it's not going to
win them friends and allies. You're not going to overall that
many people by being Snooty. And we've seen this in the real
world a lot. Like there were some of the
kings of England that also ruled kingdoms in France at the time.
When they were during the times like the the Anju Vin dynasty
and the some of the others that ruled that area, they would
there, there were multiple kings of England that didn't speak
English. You know, like that's a good
example of like, oh, I'm too good to speak English.
Well, if you had, you might not have lost England, you know,
that was a real point against you when things really came to a
head. Whereas Aegon's the opposite.
He's like, I'm going to be as much like them as I can to win
them over and make things go smoother.
I'm not going to force this change on them because it's too
big of a change. It sets up rebellions.
It sets up bad feelings, it sets up resentment.
William the Conqueror behaved similarly.
He now, they already shared a religion, France and England,
when he subjugated England, but still he adopted a lot of local
customs in some ways. Some things he changed
dramatically, which begon will do as well, and some of his
descendants will. But whenever possible, he tried
to make it easy so that things they wouldn't have as many
reasons to unite against these changes that they disagree with
because they're so deeply rooted, or they're so used to
it, or they just don't like they've been long disliked.
The values held by this other side, the predisposed towards
hating Targaryen beliefs or Valyrian religion, things like
that. They're never going to accept
that. So you know.
Another factor to consider here, probably the primary point or
origin of these banners is battlefield signaling.
Like, we're the good guys. This is home base.
That's the captain over there, right?
They're starting up a war with new armies, new soldiers from
new land. They might, it might have been a
practical thing that Agon realized beyond this sort of
symbolicness and incorporating the culture.
But also we need to know that those are our troops and those
the enemy troops and our troops need to know, like with
etcetera, etcetera. There's some.
Some some practical value to establishing a banner for the
soldiers on the field. That's a good point.
Yeah. You wonder if they used banners
and not heraldic banners in war for like that, like this was the
symbol of the first company. But they're not.
They're not tied to one house or one family.
They're tied to. They're just a unit of the
state, you know, something like that, which because you're right
like. Sometimes the idea that they
didn't have any banners in battle is weird, but but not
having a family, not having a family, so that's not weird.
You can imagine the Targaryens didn't have to fight many
battles and when they did, they're on Dragons.
They're not worried about whose troops are underground, they're
all bad guys, Just go burning with your dragon.
But now when you're trying to use troops and some of the
troops are new to your side and you don't have as many Dragons,
there's all these reasons sometimes banners on on a
battlefield 2 would be like, you know, there'd be banners of a
house, you know, signaling what faction you were in, some sub
houses and allies and all these different things.
But sometimes they would just be like color-coded stuff like you
know. I mean, the most obvious famous
is just a white flag is you know, peace or treat or
whatever. But, but there will be many
other ways to signal on a battlefield with the banner or
flame or whatever else. Yeah, and as well there would be
examples of this is how it's always been.
This is how Westerosi peasants have been trained to fight.
Why reinvent the wheel? They know to follow a banner.
They know that that's how they've been taught and trained.
Why reinvent warfare like that works well enough.
Yeah so why why change that Just just do the way it's always been
Again that simplify. You know there's no reason to do
reinvent the wheel there. It's also interesting to
consider that the weather the the Celtagars and Valerians.
When they when did they come up with a banner did they do it
when the Targaryens did like okay we'll also become part of
this or did they already do it have they already adopted some
of those customs Maybe that's part of why a guns like hey it
actually has worked out pretty well for these guys let's let's
do it also. But from a greater position of
strength, rather than just trying to fit in, we're trying
to fit in so that we can dominate.
Not just trying to fit in so we can be prosperous, which are not
the same approach. But also the symbol itself is
interesting. Like you can see why the
celtagars pick their symbol and cuz Kleil's full of crabs, you
know, I guess and the seahorse, they're a naval power.
But a three headed dragon? I mean, that seems to indicate
egg on Visanya and Rainey. Seems pretty straightforward.
But it might be related to a dream if if Aegon's dream
involved the three headed dragon doing these things.
Or symbolic 3 headed dragon uniting the realm, which may
come again with Danny and her three Dragons maybe uniting the
realm. Maybe that's what he actually
dreamed of and thought it was him.
Maybe it was both. Again, we have to keep a very
open mind, literally, for the conception and possibility of
what Aegon's dream or dreams told him and how he interpreted
them. There's two different things
there. There's what the dream actually
indicated and what he thought of it.
And actually, a possible third thing is when he's telling his
sisters and perhaps close friends about it with their
interpretation of it. And then?
Or when his sisters are telling him about the dream that they
have, Yeah, there's an entirely right there.
Or the dreams that they read about in signs and portents the
day, he said written down. They're corroborating these
different things and like it's just so wide open the possible
interpretations. By the way, aside from dream
interpretations, another angle to take on the reasoning of
their their sigil with the three dragon heads.
Is it could represent a family of Dragons not one dragon right.
Like we have a lot of Dragons. We're a family of Dragons you
know you you maybe you win one battle or you beat one dragon
but we're a whole family of Dragons.
It kind of going back to the just the overwhelming force here
you can't beat it. Sorry, we have a family of
Dragons. Not that a hydra exists in that
or in Westeros. Not that I know of, but it fits
that idea. You cut one head off and two
more just grow in its place. Yeah, you can't.
You can't beat it by just cutting one head off.
Nina wants to also bring up the title that Agon is claiming
because it's pretty interesting and this is a great catch by
her, A great subtopic to consider.
It is not the one Agon or any of the other Targaryen kings end up
adopting. It's distinctly non futile.
Agon is describing himself as king of all Westeros,
eliminating the political, political, political, cultural
borders which had divided Westeros for the better part of
8000 years. This is Agon is absolute
monarch, redefining the realm not just as a single political
entity, but a state which he controls totally and personally.
That absolutism extends to the second-half of the title.
Agon is personally pledging to defend, quote his people without
the intervention of their feudal or preconquest overlords.
Agon also does not put any emphasis on his familial name.
For all his willingness to adopt A sigil in the manner of
established Westerosi dynasties, he is ruling the realm as his
own person rather than as merely the representative of a new
dynasty. What Nina means by that?
That last part? Agon, first of his name, King of
all Westeros and shield of his people.
Not Aegon Targaryen, first of his name, King of all Westeros
and shield of his people, Not Aegon of House Targaryen, just
Aegon, First of his name, King of all.
They don't do not mention the word Targaryen, and that is a
quote that is not, that is what they're saying.
Queen Rainey's actually said those are apparently her exact
words. They don't say the word
Targaryen. Very interesting.
That's why I call this a very good catch, because I didn't
notice that the word Targaryen wasn't used in that declaration.
And it's very notable when you when you think about it.
I don't exactly know what they meant.
But I like, I like Nina's take on it that that's it's it's it's
another power move. It's like, yeah, me, I will
decide who my heir is, right. I will have kids and and that
won't necessarily be the way it goes.
But yeah, it's pretty interesting.
I welcome other interpretations and takes on the spot.
Speaking of a change of leadership, let's also remind
ourselves briefly what else was happening elsewhere in the world
as we make our way towards the end of this episode.
This was happening roughly coordinated with the end of the
era known as the Century of Blood.
I mean, Agon fought in the Century of Blood.
So did Argalak. They fought in some wars during
it and Argalak and Agon. Argalak may have fought in some
stuff before that too. We just know he fought against
Valantis and so did Agon. But there's lots of tumult and
chaos in the Century of Blood. It's a whole century.
We know a lot about it, but there's a hell of a lot we don't
know about it. There's a lot of room for more
things. So there was disruption
everywhere. But towards the end of the
Century of Blood, things were starting to settle down.
Things were starting to evolve. The New World, the new era was
starting to take shape. The Free Cities were a lot
closer to actually living up to their name.
They're still not free, but they were less.
They're more free than they were.
Slavers. Bay had been under Valyrian rule
for eons and was now free to be slavers independently instead of
slavers under Valyria. So the cities became self
governed and not free. That's that seems to be a better
way to phrase it. Self governed, yes.
Free from higher authority. Not that the people in it are
free, but the rulers are independent, more like other
rules. Yeah, they're more like city
states. Yes, it's a bit of a reversal on
a global scale. Valeria had left Westeros alone
other than, you know, the outpost and trading with it,
sending some Valerian steel in there now that they're gone.
All those former territories are various shades of independent.
And it's Westeros that's now set to be united under one new
dynasty instead of Valerian Freehold dominating Essos and so
much of it, and and dominating parts of the world that they
don't even rule because of their great wealth and power and no
one wants to mess with them and etcetera.
It's the fusil. The one surviving Dragon Lord
family is now repeating that on the one continent that Valeria
had left alone. So it's just like black and
white ASOS is getting freer. Westeros is getting more united
and less free in some ways, but more free in other ways.
Because yes, liberty isn't just telling you you can do whatever
you want. And being freedom is also
involves having the ability to be free, which you can't do if
the realm is chaotic and violent and brutal.
Which, to start off, the area that Egon was landing in was a
little chaotic and he was bringing peace and stability to
that region and intended to bring it to the rest of the
continent. So a lot of people's lives will
get a lot better under him. So in some ways they are more
free. Free to not be killed, or free
to be less likely to be killed. How are we going to friend?
Certainly not simple, but simpler.
Next time we'll get into the actual beginning of the
conquest, the formation of the Crown Lands, the early battles,
the early allies, and most certainly we'll get to the fight
with Heron. Maybe not much farther than
that, but we'll see. That's the fun extra part that
we're doing here with Valarridis for fire and Blood.
We don't exactly know where each end point will be.
We'll be going nice and thoroughly through everything
and seeing where it takes us. Question from Dornish Dame
Shield of his people that title interested me.
You can see the link to Lord Protector of the Seven Kingdom,
Slash Defender of the Realm, but also to shield that guard the
realms of men from the nice watch vows.
I like that. Very important.
Yeah, that's a good catch. Dornish Dame.
As usual, Dornish Dame has lots of good catches.
You can have especially thinking in terms of like the whatever
dream or vision you might have had that he might have been
careful with his language. Idea of children Yeah, that is a
good catch. Yes, Maybe something we should
think about more, marinate a little bit on that one, and
maybe bring it up again at a later date next week or at some
other time. Trivia answer the question was,
who has struck Hagon with a blade successfully?
Who's the only person we know how to do that?
My guess is Ori's Ori's breath in training, I think.
That was the most known trivia answer we've ever had.
Oh, really? And I don't know it you're
you're muted Jay, but. Oh, I said.
I think that was the most known trivia answer we've ever had.
I think, like everyone knew, it was like an instant cacophony of
the same answer. The Senia.
The Senia, Yeah. Oh yeah.
OK, the pretty, pretty notable tale about the Senia doing that.
It's pretty memorable. She tried to argue that he
needed a King's Guard, devoted King's Guard, something like it.
And he's like, I don't need a King's Guard, my guards are
fine. She's like cuts him in the face.
He's like, your guards are slow, like damn that's that's harsh.
Like you just cut the king in the face.
I mean, he is your younger brother, but still.
Your brother. Yeah.
Like whoa, with with dark sister.
So you know, it's like, that's cut me in the face, like made
point made. Yes.
Literally made on your face. Point made on your face.
Egg on your face. Oh, egg on.
Your face is bleeding. So yeah, next week we will pick
up where we left off live streams at 3:00 Eastern as
usual. Do that.
What if we don't pick up where we left off and we just pick up
somewhere else? Well, that would be a surprise.
I don't think we'll do that, but maybe we will.
You never know. Kick down your toes, yeah?
So I recommend Before the Dragons Under the Dragons
Valerian, the Doom Dragonstone. Like my shirt, Valeria One and
Valeria 2, we have two different Valeria episodes, The Wars of
Valeria and the Valerian Freehold House.
Valerian House Celtic are Century of Blood, our patron
episode on Mentaris. That's a really good one.
I probably mentioned some other ones that I don't recall.
I'll say. Don't even think about coming
back here, unless you've watched all of those episodes before
Sunday. Shay is becoming a bit of a
Vesenia herself here. She's projecting, yeah.
Yeah. Who is Am I the Vesenia and
Shawn's the Rainy Your Avon? Is that right?
I guess I. Don't know Shawn's older than
you, but he is. Maybe I don't.
Know, as long as I get to marry Zees, I'm happy.
Well, you know, that's. Terrible.
It rainy. So I'm going to spend 10 nights
with Sean for everyone I spend with you is yeah Sean you're
going to die over door you'll die first.
That's bad for you. All right folks thanks For all
those of you who subscribe to us voluntarily with a monthly
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Our Discord meeting, our next Discord hangout is August 24th.
We've been having a lot of fun with that.
Meeting. Yeah, meeting, meeting to play
games, meeting to play this again, we're going to do Jackbox
games. That won't be the case every
time, but it has been the first three times for these.
I say we had a request in the chat too.
There was a lot. There was a discussion about cat
pun names in the chat, and Lady Ray requested that we have that
little round table during the beginning of our Discord hangout
that we talk about cat pun names.
And that sounds good to me. So more incentive for the rest
of Y'all. You can participate in the
audience participation functions of the Discord Hangouts without
being a patron or Spotify subscriber.
But if you are, you can also directly play as one of the
competing members or writing answers or so.
There's a lot of ways to participate and.
That'll be August 24th at 9:00 PM Eastern again.
And we will do. We're doing these every month,
so if you missed this month, just keep keep your eye out for
next month. Yeah, and if you're hearing this
much later, you know. If you're not hearing this live,
you're hearing it months later, Weeks later.
Just check in with our Discord to Facebook group.
We keep the stuff updated so you can always find out when the
next one will be. Based on what?
When you find yourself time wise.
Thanks as well to Nina. Where are you?
When are you?
I'm the three eyed crow.
Seeing this from the future. Thanks as well to Nina for her
great notes, a lot of excellent discussion topics.
We appreciate them almost like she's able to.
We're able to get more out of less with these this style of
episode. We're we're really delving in
and discussing things a little more.
There's less overview, less just me telling you things, more
discussion. Which Nina's additions really,
really helped fuel that Joey, Jesse and Bran.
Thanks to Y'all as well for our music, our intro and outro
music, and to Michael Clarfeld for the video intro.
Thanks as well to our engineer and we'll see you all next time.
For more Valar, reread us.