November 20th, 2018, just under five years ago.
It's, you know, August as we're recording this, but yeah,
that'll be the five year anniversary of Fire and Blood.
George had so much fun riding the World of Ice and Fire that
he wrote way more than was necessary or even viable to put
in the book. You've seen it, it's pretty big,
but you know, there's a lot of art in there. full-sized art,
full page art, maps and things like that.
See, he wrote so much of the socalled extra stuff that the
extra stuff was more than what he wrote for The World of Ice
and Fire. Which is a little funny because
Fire and Blood is smaller physically, but longer in terms
of word count. And that's where fire and blood
came from. That extra material, all that
socalled extra stuff, became more than just extra stuff.
And of course he added a bit more to it and edited it.
But ultimately he unleashed himself on it, and it was
interesting because he held back for so many years.
A lot of authors have the attitude.
In fact, most authors, like the overwhelming majority of of
professional authors, have the attitude that back story and
history and world building should serve the story.
You shouldn't have much in the in the realm of extraneous.
Now I'm going to bring this up later because I think that might
be changing for modern audiences in some ways.
But regardless, this is the way George his career went.
It was the common attitude for authors, as I've said, not just
authors, but screenwriters, storytellers in general.
He had all these ideas though. Like he knew some of these
details. He just couldn't justify fitting
them all in. He's already fitting in a lot of
back story. I mean, he already had puts in
more than most authors would. I wouldn't say it's extreme.
He does it to serve the story he does.
It's not extraneous. He's not just throwing what he
can in there to fill it out just to add some more.
It's that's not how he operates. I want to interject real quick.
It's worth noting that all that extra quote, UN quote, extra
back story also allows him new directions to go in the future
and. Covers up potential mysteries or
whatever. Clouds the information that
we're getting to hide what he might really want us to key in
on. So there's some value to that
beyond just, I don't know, lack of discipline and writing or
what I agree. And part of what you're saying
is important because, and This is why I said we should talk
about a little more later, about serving the story and how much
back story put in, is because modern audiences are We're more
savvy. We're not necessarily smarter,
but we have more experience with stories because there's more
part of our life. We have so many stories to read
and enjoy and entertain ourselves more than other
generations that have ever lived on Earth.
And we're able to put a collective effort into that.
So in a past, you might have a book club with five or seven
people that would chat about it, but now we have a million people
instantly interacting. Every theory that anyone might
come up with is getting hashed out by people all over the
world, and it's not. And it's the reverse of the
crowd moves at the speed of its lowest members.
No crowd like that moves at the speed of its fastest members,
the people who figured things out and who's ideas take hold
within a community. Everybody vamps and explores and
plays with those ideas, not the ones that people suggest that no
one cares about. So.
Or the ones that came out a year later.
Right, right. And and to add to all that, A
Song of Ice and Fire became much bigger as a story and as a
phenomenon, as a cultural global phenomenon than George had ever
planned for or could have even expected or predicted.
We, the fans, demanded more on top of that.
Like, yeah, we do want more back story.
We want this world filled out more, even if it's not part of
the story. Not everyone wants that.
But if you're listening to this show, you're probably one of the
people that is in column A. It's like, yes, give us more.
We'll take as much as you got, George.
Got any more of that history, George?
You know, and we'll, we'll totally take it.
Whatever, you know, unrelated or not, we'll find ways to relate
it to the main story anyway, even if it's not what he
intended. We'll find those parallels and
it's fun even without that. So George's outlook changed.
He's like, actually, I should fill all this out because people
want it. I don't just have to serve the
story. We're creating a whole like
fandom here. It's not just a story anymore.
And so his perspective on that change, his attitude change, and
that's why he unleashed himself on fire and blood, because he
had been holding that back and all of a sudden he woke up one
day and was like, actually I should go full bore on this.
I should let the fire hose go and flood the flood the lands,
like flood the neck, right. So we'll be zooming in, reading
between the lines, extrapolating everything we can.
I'm so excited for this reread. We've had this five years almost
to think about it. You know, we had some great
ideas when it first came out. We were flooded with all the
newness of it. But having time to sit on it and
think about it, new ideas for sure.
We'll also be doing the opposite of reading between the lines and
extrapolating. We'll be looking at the big
picture, high level angles, trying to look at the whole
world, or at least all Westeros. Lots of different angles to
this. It's one of the challenges.
By the way, one of the things about rereads that really throws
me is there's just so many rabbit holes and topics and
everything else in between that we can dive into.
It's like, well, which one of these do we actually want to
focus on? We can't do them all.
Some of them we set aside to talk about later, sometimes some
of them we delve into now, well, whatever.
It's going to be a lot of fun regardless of which topics we've
actually picked. And let me tell you, we've
picked quite a few. I feel the need to point out
here. For me this is just a read
reread. I'm diving into it for the first
time, so hopefully there is a few people out there that can
relate to that experience and hopefully I'll maybe have some
new insights. Even if I have some ideas that
are just completely wrong and I get corrected, maybe it will
test why certain ideas are right or wrong and.
I don't know if that makes any sense, but I hope that I get to
bring a perspective to this that includes what you just said is
I'm overwhelmed with the rabbit hole just reading through this
almost every paragraph. I'm like, I could spend an hour
on just this, you know. And that's a good segue, by the
way. Yes, this is the last frontier
of Sean's unsullied status. If you've been around with us
for a while, you know that we started with Sean as a
completely unsullied show watcher.
He had not read any books he the show was new.
Ever. Not a single book.
Not a book. He had never read any books at
all. He was illiterate.
Illiteracy. What does that even mean?
I learned to read from A Song of Ice.
That's right. You started off right on the
advanced Davos. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly like Davos. You started with the song.
You started with Westeros history as your history of.
The sun egg. Egg on, yeah, egg on, Yeah.
Can Ioffer you an egg on in these trying times?
So you learned how to read through A Song of Ice and Fire
and no the but you read the book.
Since then, you've read The World of Ice and Fire, You've
watched the show and the original show, and you've
watched House of Dragon Season one, but you have not.
You don't know what's. Coming, I read.
I read Duncan Duncan also, so you've read everything Red
Duncan X2 or three times and so. So this last frontier of your
unsulliedness is the Dance of the Dragons, the immediate time
after it. But I didn't read all of World
of Ice and Fire, cuz I try to skip this Targaryen sections
that might spoil House of Dragon stuff.
And we're going to keep it that way.
So that's that's part of our goal here with this reread of
Fire and Blood, is we're going to go as far as the Dance of the
Dragons. We're going to stop with the
Cyrus's death, basically and then we'll come back to it after
season 2 and goes a little bit farther and then you know keep
going until we've we've finished it all and in the meantime other
things will happen. So that's gonna be great.
It's it's a kick off to our new Val Arboreta series.
We'll be dealing with how it's all going to work and of course
the start of the Targaryen dynasty that's going to mean egg
ONS conquest here in episode one.
All that and more on this episode of History of Westeros
podcast. And you know it's live because
I'm just now having a thought that I can't believe we we
didn't go over before. But there might be sometimes
when you guys want to talk about future stuff that might spoil
me. I could sign off early.
We could do a special episode, something like that.
There's enough demand. I don't know what you think
about that, but right on. Just occurred to me.
Hello, everybody. Yes, it's time to get started on
our reread adventure. Sean, what did you bring to
drink today? For this kickoff, you have a
Fire and Blood Kickoff beverage. You know, I wish it was a little
deeper red. There's one of the naked drinks.
It's called Rainbow Machine, which is a much bloodier red
looking color. But this is the Berry protein
mixed with wild and watermelon Bang, which is back on stock
now, and Kiwi watermelon. Sparkling ice and.
It's a good mix, fire and like old blood, it's kind of
valerian. It's purple with some silvery
white in it. My thermos is much purpleier
than yours. So yes, we have, we don't have
the fire and blood. We don't have the red and black,
but we do have the purple for their eyes.
That's right, Yes. Does your thermos bring all the
Dragons to the yard? Well, it is very.
Much purpleier than mine, it is very strong coffee, so I don't
know. I don't know how Dragons feel
about coffee or caffeine in general, but I feel like they.
Feel like a hot drink? If they did drink it, it would
wake them up. Sometimes you need that when
you're slumbering for months at a time like an old dragon might.
So yeah, this series has been planned for a while.
You already know it by name. We've been saying Valar.
We read it since before it was actually a podcast series.
It's just something we say to encourage it.
The the process of rereading is very rewarding in this world and
it helps you all enjoy our show more.
I'd say Throughout this episode we will encounter topics that
we've done full episodes on. Speaking of rabbit holes, some
of those rabbit holes have been covered.
We're obviously not going to overlap too much.
We may point you in that direction.
At the end of this episode, I will list episodes that were
relevant to this one. And this list will be long this
time, and probably a lot of times in fire and Blood because
we're going to touch on so many topics, which enables us to
revisit things we've talked about before, at least briefly
or at least point you in that direction.
Also at the end of the episode will be the answer to this
trivia question. What was and still is George R
Martin's nickname for Fire and Blood as inspired by JRR
Tokyian? By the way, we just saw a clip
of Brandon Sanderson, the author of Stormlight Archive, Missed
Born, and just staggering amounts of other things.
He's a real type, a writer where he and his podcast partner were
talking about. They made a four tiered system,
like one through 10 rating that each author has a rating for.
Like their impact, their ability to write different types of
stories, their just overall quality.
And I forget what the 4th category was, you have to be
living still. And George was there.
George was Brandon's #1 cuz he gets a 10 in every category and
just hearing him talk about why George is good an author talking
about why George is so good is really interesting so I posted
it in our discord. So I guess this is turning into
a little shout out for our discord.
But mostly I just wanted you all to appreciate another author
just glowing about Jordan saying George is the best like current
living author. No one affected fantasy the way
he did with one single book, since Tokyo.
So And Tokyo, of course is not living.
So that given the way they framed it, it makes a lot of
sense. Anyway, enough plugs for George.
You all already know he's great. You probably wouldn't be here
otherwise. So fire and blood?
Not as complex as A Song of Ice and Fire.
Let's start with that. Some setup.
It is complex in different ways. A good example is that we still
have unreliable narrators, but it's a different kind of
unreliable narrator. It's the same things that, like
a historian would put their own biases into something, or the
things that they aren't witness to.
Whereas when we're inside someone's head, we're subject to
their internal biases and things that have nothing to do with
writing a book, writing down an accurate take on what happened
in the past. It's just a different approach.
It's like the TV and radio have things in common, but there's
pretty huge differences ultimately in how they're
delivered and let alone the technology behind them.
And as long as Ice and Fire, we read between the lines a lot.
It's human Pov's, after all. They're fallible.
George is hiding things from us. He doesn't want to give
everything away at once. There's secrets he wants to hold
onto. He also wants to tease things,
so there is value in delving in and trying to see what he's
trying to tease to us. Likewise in terms of the world
of Ice and Fire, we have some overlap in the historical style,
but it isn't written with a narrative like Fire and Blood
is. That's like an evolution of
George's in world history. The world of Ice and Fire is, I
would say it's dry, but it's not written like a story at all.
Whereas Fire and Blood has a lot of story to it.
It is like half narrative, half story, half history book, which
I think is a good happy medium for George to have found.
I remember when this book came out that being a major point of
comparison. A lot of people said that that
was an immediate reaction, was like this book is actually
really fun to read. The World of Ice and Fire was
more like people enjoy the information in it, but it wasn't
as enjoyable. It wasn't a page Turner.
It was like something you read a little bit at a time, maybe
digest it, think about it, add it to your knowledge of the
world. But yeah, you're not just
sitting there. Most of us weren't poor.
I mean, I was, but a lot of people weren't out there just
pouring over it. Fire and Blood, though, it is a
page Turner. You've got dialogue and
narrative and characters and various storylines going at
once, which has a bit of A Song of Ice and Fire feel to it.
So yeah, and he didn't want to create an overview of the world
from an all seeing narrator's point of view.
He wanted to keep that realistic in world vibe going.
There's no one who knows everything, even George himself.
If you've read the beginning of it, see how it's dedicated, or
if you've listened to it, it says that the book is by
Archmaester Gildain, transcribed by George R Martin.
So he really is really leaning into this vibe, and I love it.
It's like George found these old texts and transcribed them for
us. Were they in English?
George what? What is Westeros?
Common tongue. Yeah, the common tongue.
So I think that's really neat. So it's like it's as if we're
maester so we would be the ones reading this cuz this book
wouldn't be widely distributed in world Cuz most people can't
even read in this world. Like what would they do with
this book? They wouldn't even know what
they had. They'd use it as like a weight.
They'd hold hold down something. Not paper though, because they
don't have that either. It's not a paper weight some.
Might use it as a fire starter. Yeah, Pages out the kindling.
Really. A kindling.
You're right. It's a tragic use of kids.
My stomach thinking about that. It says fire on it though.
If they recognize the word, they're like, well that's what
this is for. It's for making fire.
I don't know what that other word is for blood.
It's like Oh yeah, cuz the paper cuts.
That's right. Paper cuts, Yeah.
Paper cuts are now how to get you.
Yeah. Do you get paper cuts on
parchment? Is that what you call parchment
cuts or vellum cuts or? I don't know.
I don't know if it's jagged enough or thin.
Enough paper cuts on cardboard. So, I don't know.
I guess you're right. Gonna have to ask the Maesters
about that one. And this is true too, of the
real world. If you compare The World of Ice
and Fire to Fire and Blood. I've read a lot of history books
in my life. Some of them are more fun than
others, and that just comes down to the author.
I mean, yes, some, sometimes it comes down to the history
itself, like some parts of history are drier than others.
Some time periods have a lot more going on.
But you can do a lot by how you write it.
If you make it into, you can make things interesting more
interesting than they are, and you can also make things less
interesting than they are. But George, of course, that's
not a problem here. I just thought that was worth
mentioning. I mean, sometimes the audience
for a history book is other academics.
And so maybe you're not trying too hard to be interesting to be
engaging. Interesting, of course, is in
the eye of the beholder. But some historians are better
writers than other. It's just as simple as that,
right? That's just how it comes down to
it. So I I thought I view Fire and
Blood as the work of a stronger historian, someone who has maybe
not a better handle on the facts.
In this case, they do because it's George.
But someone who writes better, which of course they do.
It's George. Like, who's going to write in
this world better than George? I mean that's it doesn't need to
be said. So it's more focused than the
World of Ice and Fire too, though that's I mean, I love the
exotic locations in the World of Ice and Fire, the touring of all
these places. And I wish we had a version of
that in Fire and Blood style. Maybe one day we will.
But I do love the focus because it enables us to get really
detailed in ways that we sometimes can't.
So yeah, The World of Ice and Fire, Maestri Handel, Fire and
Blood Arch Maestri Gildain. In world Gil Dane gave Yandel
permission to use his work. So technically Fire and Blood
predates the world. Waste Fire in world even though
obviously in the real world when it's the opposite.
And George, one of the things we're going to get to do is take
a second look at this with a few things in in mind that weren't
there before. One of them is House of the
Dragon, which maybe doesn't have a lot of direct relevance cuz
that's the show cannon. It's not the same.
It will give us ideas here and there, things to vamp on and be
like, well, maybe this was similar.
We hadn't thought of that before.
It might fit. The big one though is is Agon's
dreams. This is not show Canon only,
though I know some people see it that way.
But let's set this. Let's set the record straight.
George himself brought up the idea of Agon's dreams during the
publication tour, the media tour.
Not for Fire and Blood. For The World of Ice and Fire,
he brought up the idea of Agon's dreams in public on like a
commercial or something, or like a short video clip.
In 2014 himself. He brought that up.
So at the time, some of us thought in the way he praised
it. Some of us thought he was
responding to a fan idea. But that was that was wrong.
I'm I'll take the L on that one. He absolutely was talking about
it as if as as a real thing. Like, yes, Agon had dreams.
He hadn't didn't bother to explain exactly because again
it's just a little teaser for the book and there's nothing in
the book to the points directly to it.
It's something we just have to think about that goes along it.
So again, not show cannon. You could call it semi cannon or
not confirm cannon because it even though it comes from
George, it's not in the book. I know some people you draw the
line as what's actually written in there.
What George says some people wouldn't go that far.
I do if George says it, I count it.
Unless he changes his mind. And of course that takes
precedence, so. You know, I was going to say
earlier talking about the idea of even George doesn't
necessarily know all the quote UN quote facts because he's he's
still writing it and he's sort of gardening it as he goes and
he's leaving himself openings and hasn't made certain
decisions. And so he could definitely have
had an idea about the, you know, Aegon's vision or whatever, but
not had it fleshed out enough to include in all his writings.
But it doesn't mean it wasn't there.
And it's an extra benefit of his writings coming from certain
perspectives, because those perspectives might have just not
known, even though certain Targaryens did.
And that's a way for George to wait to release this
information. Because he's releasing
information through certain perspectives that don't include
this knowledge. Yes, because he doesn't have it
yet. That's so when he figures out
the knowledge for himself, then he'll find a way to get that
perspective out to it. That's a great.
Question just to ask. Will Danny learn that these
dreams started with a gun? Or maybe even before him?
But that this person? Who's so important in her
history for founding the dynasty as it is today?
Will she learn about that? I don't know how she could, but
there it's not that difficult to.
He could have written it down. She could just.
Have a dream of her own about the past.
Yeah, why not? Yeah, I also want to point out,
I think you're talking about, I don't know, quote UN quote,
current Danny Targaryen, but Danny the dreamer, everything
you just said could apply to her too.
Right. Yeah.
And that's Aegon's like, great, great, great grandmother.
He would have heard of her, obviously.
Like, the reason they're all alive still is because of her.
And you wonder, like it's one of the many little rabbit holes.
Like, what does Aegon and Viscendian Rainy?
He's like, what were they told about Valeria, let alone what
were they told about their great, grand, great, great
grandmother who had all these visions?
And they have her book. But she wrote all that stuff
down, and that book is now lost. But it probably wasn't lost in
their time. They probably still had it, you
know? So they they were raised on
like, read, flipping through the page, Talk about a book to flip
through when you're a kid. Like, the more I think about it.
By the way, let me ask this, do we know?
Did she come to be known as Danny the Dreamer after the
fact, or was she called Danny the Dreamer all along?
I don't know. That's that's a good point.
I I'm guessing during because they followed her dreams during
her life. You know I was I'm guessing they
they left the Valyria because of one of her dreams and she was
still alive for that and lived on after that like she was
fairly young. Like her, her dad was still the
Lord when they moved. So my thought is if she had lots
of dreams and lots of visions been probably a few other had
come true before the The Doom, Absolutely.
And it would be trust enough came true that that's why they
were so worried about the Doom. But if she had enough to have a
book and to have convinced them before the Doom came, she might
have had a bunch after the Doom, also including whatever Agon's
vision was. I totally agree.
It's a it's a very compelling possibility.
What other dreams did she have? What other?
And in between them was Agon, the next dreamer.
Down the line. I mean, they're like we said
great, great, great grandmother. Assuming I'm remembering that
part right. But either way, there were
several generations of Targaryen's between Denise the
Dreamer and and Agon, so other dreamers potentially between
there as well. Seems not unlikely.
Maybe not to the level of Denise because she's such a famous
dreamer. It had her and it was in her
name and well. Dare on the dreamer kind of
became dare on the drunkard, but obviously we see how it's
possible. And I can.
I can come in in varying degrees of intensity.
Some dreamers have lots and lots of dreams.
Some of them might just have a couple here and there, and and
we aren't entirely sure which is which.
But yeah, I mean, then you have like, I guess with series in the
show, or you have the example of someone who like, maybe had one
good one dream their whole life and chased after that
forevermore, right? That's a really compelling idea
because you know how many Targaryens like Viscera's have
been like, well, they have a really vivid dream.
Like, am I a dreamer? Yeah.
Was that, is that going to happen?
Or like this in the back of your mind?
Like, yeah, it was just a dream. No, actually, that might have
been a real vision of something. You're like, well, every night
you go to bed like, am I going to see that again?
Am I, am I seeing it again because I'm thinking about it?
Or is it really like, like, you would really?
I don't know. You'd really get in your head
about that, I wonder? Spider Man will tell the
Targaryens. Everybody gets one.
Probably Spiderman is Spyder, Varis Varis the Spiderman.
Yeah, Varis the Spider Eunuch, a lot of universities say.
Yeah, and one fun thing about Agon 2 as well.
Not Agon 2. I mean Agon as well.
Agon one really specific. Is that he?
We mentioned that Danny Targaryen, I mean, Danny, Mother
of Dragons, not Danny. So that's an important one.
Sean. It's not Danny.
It's Danny's, not Danny. And they're similar, but not the
same. They.
We get to look at historical figures and compare them, like
Danny and Agon, a lot of comparisons, but also Stannis
and Agon and Stannis and Danny. It's like a triangle of
parallels there and we'll be going through a lot of those
today and probably in future episodes as well.
I just know for sure we have a lot of them today as as our
patterns going to be, we're going to have a little fun with
how we do these episodes in the in the past, including with
regular Val Arboretus for Songwise and Fire.
We've just had a certain amount we wanted to cover each time.
We don't have that restriction on us this time.
We're going to take as long as it takes to get through whatever
material we're dealing with. If it takes us a couple
episodes, it does. If it takes US1 episode, it does
so ahead of time. It won't be fully clear what
we're covering, but it'll be pretty clear because we'll know
where we're at. We're going to know Okay, we're
right at the beginning of that gun's conquest now, and we got
through this amount of it today. We'll be picking up where we
left off next time, which? Is also to say that the episodes
will be renamed to indicate. What we reach So when you listen
to the podcast and it won't just say fire and blood begins, it'll
be fire and blood through whatever we decide.
Yes, as I said before, we're going up to the death of viscera
the 1st in this reread of we. So we don't know how many
episodes that will take. Given when I just said that's
more than half the book, I'm I'm not sure y'all necessarily
realize that it's 14,000 words are in that book and 7700 of
them are are where we're covering through.
It's a little bit shorter than the book of Game of Thrones.
This book, it's a little over 26 hours.
Game of Thrones is about 28 hours.
We'll occasionally have an IRL historical diversion rooted in
some kind of parallels. Well, not as much as we did for
Val Arboretus for the World of Ice and Fire, but we do enjoy
doing that when it's appropriate.
Most of our real world parallels will revolve around Dragons.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. The conquest in the World of Ice
and Fire and Fire and Blood are almost the same, but we've
never. Directly covered the conquest
when we did Valerie's for the World of Ice and Fire, we we
skipped it. Aegon's Rain is barely covered
in the World of Ice and Fire and pretty heavily covered in Fire
and Blood. So when we get to that, which is
not too long after, we'll have that to talk about quite a bit
and of course we'll have the the dream mixed in.
So let's start our first quote. We're going to talk about what's
the the few years before the conquest, how it all got
started, and here we go, kick it off.
The maesters of the Citadel who keep the histories of Westeros.
Have used Aegon's Conquest as their touchstone for the past
300 years. Births, deaths, battles, and
other events are dated either A/C after the Conquest or BC
before the Conquest. True scholars know that such
dating is far from precise. Aegon's Aegon Targaryen's
conquest of the Seven Kingdoms did not take place in a single
day. More than two years passed
between Aegon's Landing and his Old Town coronation, and even
then the Conquest remained incomplete since Dorn remained
unsubdued. True scholars.
MMM, yeah, he's really drawn a line in the Sandy there.
Like, you're not a real scholar if you think this stuff is
simple these days. I like how it immediately nerds
out after this. Into the description of Doran's
resistance. It's like even then the conquest
remained incomplete since Doran remains like, even the book
can't help but go into Rabbit. Like we're trying to like deal
with those rabbit holes. The book itself is like, let's
briefly talk about how Doran remained them some dude.
We're trying to talk about the beginning of the Conquest and
the dating, and he's like. Martin is really hard to
conquer. A lot of different tries were
made and it's like, dude, stay on topic.
No, I'm kidding. Don't stand.
Go wherever you want. Actually, I like it.
I had a couple of thoughts here too.
One, I want to point out, I think that's the first line, the
first couple paragraphs of the book.
Yes, right. And and and I also very much
appreciate because that's how that's how I approach things
too. Like first let's define what
we're even talking about here. I have a tendency to like lay
the groundwork, you know. And and the fact is it a lot of
times historical events aren't so cut and dry.
There's not just like one obvious date like the difference
between like when we declared independence and when the 1st
shots were fired and you know, like in the American history and
and when the Constitution was written and when the 1st
president where those are all years and years of.
Course small On a smaller scale, I think about like in
relationships, like your romantic relationships.
A lot of like where you define when the relationship started.
Is it your first kiss? Your first date?
When you said your boyfriend? Girlfriend.
When is your anniversary? Facebook official.
Like a lot of people choose a day because they're like, well,
this is just maybe you could say that say, but this other month
is better for us. So let's choose.
This is our anniversary. So yeah.
It happens all the time. When Agon changed his status to
King of Westeros on Facebook, that was That's what it was.
It's like started rolling Westeros AC1 parentheses today.
Yeah, you know, Another thought I had was, I know this quote
pretty well and several others. As I was reading through this, I
was, I was pretty familiar with it because we've used so many of
these quotes and our other episodes.
Yeah, many, many times. I was recognizing very exact
lines that. Were different context.
I think the episode I said that I'll list the episodes that are
good rabbit holes to follow if you want to stay immersed at the
end of the episode. One that I need to stay right
from the beginning is before the Dragons.
We have one called before the Dragons and it really goes
through what was going on in each of the various kingdoms
right before the conquest. So that's super relevant to this
one and I'm trying to avoid. Overlap on that, but of course
there'll be a little bit, but not too much.
So that's a great one to go to if you wanna really get even
more basis for what was going on in this timeline.
Not only do they argue does the book argue with itself over the
definition of conquest, but it also points out the dating thing
like it says true scholars. Of course, no such dating is far
from precise. But this really factors into
what you were just saying of Shay.
This is dating is far from precise.
Like dating. Like, when does your
relationship to begin? Yeah, no other.
Ahaha. Yeah.
Anyway, so there's the discussion of a C versus
AL&ALAL&BC. So it's a C Agon's conquest, AL
Agon's landing and BC before the conquest.
BC is simple enough because it's all the time before that.
But even that is, even with that simplicity, It's like, well,
which is which? Aegon's a C&AL implies there's a
BC and a BL. Yeah, there was before the
landing. Yeah.
So officially the conquest is dated to have begun when he
knelt at the Starry Sept and was crowned by the High Septon.
But within the family, they also celebrate the day he set foot on
Westeros with intent to conquer. Very similar to Henry or.
William the Conqueror not Henry William the Conqueror who a lot
of Agon is based off of. And he landed and did a similar
thing of of, you know, first time landing on England and
beginning his conquest there. Even Can I say even the way you
phrased that when he landed on the Westeros continent with the
intent of conquest, because he had landed there before too,
without necessarily. He may have even had the intent
in conquest in those times, but had named hadn't announced it
yet. So there's still difficulties
and really exactly same with the data.
Yeah, like, and I really wonder about that.
When did the idea come to him? When was it, like, all right,
I'm going to conquer Westeros? When did he decide?
When was it just like? You know, I could do that or
maybe I could do that. When was it like, I'm going to
do that? When he had a dream.
Yeah, it might have been the dream.
That's a good question. What came first, his ambition or
his dream? Was he an ambitious guy that
realized it was all there? And then he had this dream and
he's like, now I also have a justification.
Or was it a little of both? Was it sort of coming, coming on
at the same time? Well, you ran a poll, right?
Is. He I did run a poll on our
YouTube page and most people think the dream came first.
It's hard to say. They came with the exact same
time. I didn't leave an option for
both because I started to say they would both be at the exact
same time. So I wanted people to decide.
It's too easy to say both. And yeah, it's it's a really
compelling question. Like, was he, was he when he was
a teenager? Was it an idea that within his
family prior, Like if other people had this dream, were they
like, yeah, but we just can't do it.
Like we don't have the ability means to pull it off.
Aagon may have realized finally the conditions were there.
Or maybe he's the one that finally just had the chutzpah
the the strength. The desire, the drive, the
bravery to actually do it. Or even maybe the, I don't know
what we're to use intellect, maybe to put a plan together.
The realization that the the the gathering of knowledge of like,
okay, these are the different kingdoms.
These are their leaders. This is what they need.
Here's where I should start. This is what I can expect from
the different ones. He might have, like, properly
plotted it all out beyond, just like let's attack everyone with
Dragons. He might have thought about how
the politics will play out, how religion will be a factor, that
the distances that people need to travel.
You know, he might have had a logistical mind to realize how
to enact this plan. You're right.
And we're going to see echoes of how that might have been part of
his planning as we deal with these individual Kingdom.
Because you're right, the political situation is very
interesting, the timing is very interesting and it might have
been like a Rhagar thing, like Rhagar.
Was like, seems I must be a warrior and he his whole life
changed like his life arc change.
He decided he put himself on a different path because he
thought he was some sort of prophetic chosen one.
And then later he's like, actually it's my kid.
All right well that changes things.
Like Aegon probably didn't think he was going to be the one to
face the coming darkness, because it seems like his dream,
the way it's framed it was coming, but it it was in the
future. And so his dream might have been
more like, get this whole ball rolling.
Not, you're not going to be the guy to face it, but you're a
crucial starting point. So is that what he dreamt, or
did he think that he was going to be the one to also do it?
I don't think his actions don't really.
His life actions don't really indicate he's the one who
thought he would be the one to face that winter.
Like he barely like he only went to Winterfell once.
He didn't go to the Wall even like personally, So it doesn't
really line up that way. So I think we have to assume the
dream. Told him it was coming, but
maybe somehow he was able to perceive that it would be a
while from now. You just started a new thought
of me. I was already thinking about the
potential Rhagar. Parallel, right?
Yeah, but then you made me start thinking about this.
Stand is parallel. He made a similar shift.
He was sort of content in his life station, but suddenly feel
like, no, I have to do something bigger.
And that also made me think well, but he didn't have a
dream. Melisandre.
Someone else is telling him this is your destiny.
Maybe that happened with a gone too.
Maybe some. Maybe Vicinia had a dream and
told him this is what you need to do and he didn't go to the
wall, but who did go to the wall?
Didn't one of his sisters fly to the wall and that wasn't able
to? No, that was, that was Alison.
That was a generation later. That was a few.
Generations later, but yeah, but that did happen.
And that's really interesting. Yeah.
So you're, I mean, you're not wrong.
That example still fits. Not quite as tightly, but it's
it's still really good. Yeah, and that's a good point.
And maybe Agon had the dream, but Vicinia interpreted like he
explained what happened. And then she's like, oh, that's
what this means, you know, He's like, oh, like something like
that, like, so he lays the dream out.
Other people help him interpret it and and encourage him a
certain way, which I and I You're totally right, Shawn.
Be like, yeah, Melisandre is the one that's pushing Stannis and
we should use that as a potential model for what might
happen. Yeah, maybe Agon was encouraged
by Vasenya Rainey, someone else or East Baratheon, other people,
his maester. I don't know, You know.
So it might have been pushing Rhagar too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it could be from within the
dreams, it could be from someone in person.
It could be multiple, multiple individuals.
It's interesting too, that with A/C and AL and BC, we have the
same thing in real life and with almost the same letters.
There's also BC, right? It's the same.
It's not before the conquest, It's before Christ.
And AD is an odominy right now. That's falling out of favor.
For a couple of reasons. You don't see BC and AD nearly
as much. One reason is modern historians
are trying to do something that's not religious.
It's like removing Christ from the equation, because not that
they're denying that there was a Christ, but obviously there's
lots of. Details about that being's life
that are disputed. Yeah, that's why they switched
to the Common Era. Yeah, so common era of the human
population. They have no idea of his
existence. Why are they basing their years?
Around exactly so. And even accepting that Jesus
was a person, which I certainly do, there's not much doubt that
he lived. We don't know when he was born,
like we don't actually know his birth date.
Like people have had fun with it, the way we read into.
A Song of Ice and Fire, looking at details.
People have done that with the Bibles like, well, this the red,
the star that was in the sky when Jesus was born.
Well, you can kind of extrapolate a little something
from that based on, like celestial events like that were
recorded in ancient times. People just like, oh, there's
another star going across. OK, no, that people would write
that down and like, oh, the star on this day.
So you can kind of tell, like, it helps narrow down like what
season it was and things like that.
You don't get a precise date, but that's the point, is they
don't know exactly. So yeah.
And now we have a whole new BC in modern times, which is before
COVID, which I say like when I put pieced it together, pieced
it together as if it was some trick.
Like how long ago was fire and blood?
Five years ago, right? Almost five years ago.
It seems like longer because of COVID, that's why.
It's not because of anything within the fandom that makes it
seem longer. It's just because of COVID.
So. Yeah, So something we're gonna
ask ourselves a lot about with Egg On and his sisters, his
retinue, all people around him is, did they see that coming
either because of dreams or did they predict it?
Or did they predict it because they they saw they understood
the personalities they're dealing with?
In other words, someone like Heron, whore, black Heron or
Argo, like the arrogant. Did they predict how some of
these? Kings and Queens would behave
based on what they were doing and did they use that to their
advantage. It's a it's going to be a common
question and I encourage you all to weigh in with your thoughts
and takes and if some of them will, will shout out.
So it takes a little while for the conquest to get started,
right? They can can't just wake up and
be like, well, we've got Dragons, we've got some money,
let's do it. No, it doesn't quite work that
way. They had to build up, you know.
Worry about logistics and get it all started.
And the book of course details some some back story before that
as well. It goes into the Targaryen
history family before the Doom, The ancestors.
Those ancestors are topic I'd love to cover.
We've talked about it for a while doing that.
There's not a lot there, but it's enough for us to do an
episode on for sure. Anar, Danny's Gaming, Damien,
all these cool names. It sounds fun.
It's even there's a little bit about Valeria in there.
I mean, as I say, it's not a lot, but.
Information on those topics is pretty scant in the 1st place.
One thing that's really neat is the Dragons.
Of course that's always neat before and after leaving Vayria.
As we know, Vega and Meraxis were born in Westeros, Valerian
was not. And I think there's a lot of
questions about Valerian and a lot of almost answers.
I think Valerian is one of the reasons why the conquest was
able to happen. I think prior Targaryen's could
have looked at their options for maybe conquering Westeros, if
they even had the idea in the 1st place.
And then like yeah, we've only got like 1000 troops.
Remember what Damon said? Damon Targaryen in House of the
Dragon. It's a direct quote from the
book, so that's why I can quote the show as well.
When he when they're analyzing their current situation vis A
vis their army, right after the Green sees the throne, Damon
says, well, on dragon sound we've got about 300 men in arms,
you know, 100 crossbow men, 20 Knights.
It's well enough to fortify this castle and protect it, but as an
instrument of conquest, it leaves much to be desired.
And he's saying that's including the Dragons.
Now, of course, in his case, their foes have Dragons too, so
it's not quite as simple. Still, we've talked about this a
lot of times in Modern Warfare, right, Sean, you can't conquer
territory was just an Air Force. You need those ground troops.
So, like, they got the Air Force covered and no one else even has
one. They've got a Navy too.
They have valerian. But this ground troops mean a
lot. You got to have that and they
didn't have that. And a lot of times you can
defeat an enemy, right? They can fly a dragon over High
Garden, burn it to the ground, Okay.
And now High Garden is yours. Good job.
Like what is it you're trying to conquer?
What do you you can't rule over ashes, right?
So I I was even thinking that a little bit too about the
especially because. We get some pretty detailed
battle descriptions right compared to a lot of battle
descriptions that elsewise in George's riding it's just like
this happened, this this battle was won.
We get some details about like how the army's met and flanking
on the field of fire and stuff like that.
And I was just thinking about the idea that, you know when
they have like 30,000 or 50,000 troops amass, even if the dragon
just flying back and forth strafing.
Eventually a random arrow is going to hit the rider like
that. Like happened, right?
And and eventually are the Dragons just infinitely?
Do they ever get tired? You need.
To sleep? Do they run out of fire breath
like even if they kill 10/20/30 thousand troops?
Finally, the dragon is tired, and Dragon Ryer took an arrow,
and it's so 20,000 more troops, you know so.
Even with the Dragons it blurry. Might change the equation
though, right? Yeah, yeah, Cuz blurry.
Is he might be big enough that you can't hit right?
You can't hit the dragon rider cuz Blarion's body is too big
underneath him. Blurion's dragon fire is so
powerful he can do it from higher up where he can't be hit.
He doesn't get as tired, so he can kill more and more troops at
once. Even still, you kill 50,000
troops and you burn down high guard.
And then why are you even trying to conquer this land?
There's nothing left to have. So that's.
I mean, gotta be. You're describing what happened
in Dorne. They're like, no, you didn't
beat us. You destroyed our castle.
But we're not surrendering. That's not defeat.
Now, in what? Most of Westeros, that is
defeat. They're like, OK, you won.
So we submit to the greater power.
It's kind of it's almost like that's their program to do that.
OK, you won. So you're in charge.
Doran doesn't work. It's not programmed that way.
Like that's not how it works. So, yeah, so I think Valerian is
pretty critical to the whole picture here.
You're like, why didn't the Targaryen to this earlier?
There was a lot of reasons why they might not have just
personality wise and not thinking they could do it.
Maybe they didn't have the motivation.
Maybe they didn't have the dreams.
Maybe that that was more crucial than we think for getting a gone
started. Yeah, I mean, I think.
That's a good point. Not just a dream part, but just.
How many I It's like once in a generation type of talent and
like ambition, right? Yeah, the but the combination of
all. Yeah.
I don't think that it's unusual for people, for many, for many
generations to be like, I have a castle, I have a great life.
Why do I need more? Why do I want to try to conquer
this entire continent? Like, yeah, that's a lot of
work. And then I'm have to rule it
all. Like you're never going to have
a break like Aegon did. He spent most of his reign,
which was long like going from castle to castle.
Just like trying to get everybody used to this new state
of affairs and being like don't remember and show and reminding
them of what's hold it, backing it all up.
That gigantic dragon. Yeah, you you cut.
You turn on me. You got to face this thing.
And a certain personality type would love that would eat it up
would it wouldn't wouldn't be difficult like it would be
difficult but challenging in a good way for them like.
But you have to want to do that in order to actually make it
happen. Yeah.
So I do think I probably had a some.
In terms of the ambition versus the dream, I feel like he had to
have the core of ambition in there.
The dreams not enough. I guess my question would be, I,
I mean we'll get into this a little bit later, but like you
know with a gone turning to Essos first, right?
I agree. Like the dream is not enough.
You're totally right. Like that's People don't act on
dreams alone. Like we.
If all of us acted on all our dreams, we'd all have.
I don't know. We'd all have accomplished a.
The question is whether he'd had that dream before he turned to
Essos or if that is what changed his perspective.
Cuz I feel like that speaks to him just kind of having war on
the brain. It may have also shown him or
like really nailed down what Valerian was capable of.
Like Valerian, they were like, damn, that dragon is huge, But
until you send him into battle, you don't exactly know.
You're not like Wow, that's just he incinerated an entire ship or
an entire fleet in seconds. And it's just like, until you
see that actually happen even as his rider.
Like the sheer power that you must feel being able to do that
versus just thinking you can do it, like actually setting all
these all these ships on fire and the the what would that do?
How would that go to your head? Be like, I can, I'm the king of
the world. You know.
Like no one can do this. No one can get on top of this
dragon and command it to do this.
But me, they, I am superior to everyone.
You know, like that's kind of stuff that might pop in your
head if you're literally in that position.
I got a couple thoughts stirred in me right now just and we've
made the parallel to drags the nuclear weapons a lot and
Oppenheimer just came out recently just scientists that
had this theoretical idea of the type of bomb you can make by
splitting an atom. It was different till they
actually did it till they actually sold that bomb.
That was a real significant difference, the reality of it
versus the idea of it and. Also just thinking about your
point of share that you had to have this once in a generation
moment of having someone with both the ambition and the dream
and the Balerian and I think even beyond that you still
needed to have. The the, the support of the
people around him. He had to have his sisters and
air Dragons and. Right.
So you needed to have, you know, even someone that has a lot of
drive and ambition sometimes. If the people around them aren't
helping out, they still can't quite or never mind working
against them or torn with other obligations.
What if he did still have to, like, pay some tribute to
malaria back home or something like that?
But he had the combination of the dream, the Dragons, the
ambition, the support, the the the the focus, et cetera.
So 4 unnamed Dragons died before Valerian that had come over from
Valeria, and clearly those Dragons didn't inspire a
conquest. Obviously we've as we've
hammered away at the a lot of things have to align for that.
But I wonder like, why didn't Vesenia claim Valerian?
Vesenia's only two years older than Aegon, So it's not like
there's this big gap of time where we say, Oh well, the rider
Balerian died in the meantime and and that's why she didn't
have access to to Vagar. But it does make sense that she
claimed Vagar. Very young, maybe, on the other
hand. Or that she had a dream that her
brother was supposed to get Balerian.
Never know. I mean, I just want to throw
out. Yeah, but it is.
It's a curiosity. There's some pretty
straightforward answers, but it could.
It definitely veers into some interesting territory.
There's possible that tonight you just have a.
Better bond with a you're just like you just vibe with that
dragon. You like the colors.
You like the sometimes there's just It's just that simple.
I don't know that you like one more.
That's a good point. Yeah.
I mean, like Vasceris from House of the Dragon.
He bonded with Valerian but wasn't really into riding.
And then his dragon died and he didn't really want to get
another one. He's like, yeah, I don't need
another dragon. He wasn't really into Dragons in
general, you know. You know I love Jakin.
Your cat. Your cat Jakin, to be clear.
And he didn't get casting over till a couple years later.
But I still bonded with casting over more than Jakins.
Yeah, yeah. You know, I think it is true
that, you know, Vicenia might have just seen Vega.
I might have seen the Dragons available to her and been like
this is the one for me. Those are pretty similar color
pairings too, Jake and our cat is black.
Yeah, I'm guessing it was Gray, like a Vigor.
Yeah, now we know that. Those four Dragons.
It was a compelling theory for a while that maybe there was a
miniature Dance of the Dragons amongst the Targarians.
Which would explain why in Aegon and Vissenia and Rainey this
time, there weren't any other branches of the house.
There weren't, like when Anar, the Exile, moved House Targaryen
to Dragonstone. It goes through this list of his
siblings, children, kin, household slaves, Dragons.
So, like, you can skip those last few because they're not
family members, but it was a big family, he said.
It's cousins, Siblings. Dragons are family, OK?
I guess they are when you're Targaryen, yeah, but not the
kind of family I'm speaking about here.
I'm talking about human family. So they just there were fewer of
them. So it was it was a theory.
You're. Talking about family you can
have sex with. We're talking about Targaryen
family, right? You can't bang it.
Well, can you actually, And so they, we know that they didn't
have any sort of internal struggle that involved Dragons
fighting each other. Maybe Targaryens fought each
other with swords and daggers and or poisoned each other.
We don't know about that. It's entirely possible because
there's some some oddities in the way these families, the way
it passed down, right? There are a lot of people who
just didn't have kids. And you have brother inheriting
from brother inheriting from brother, things like that, which
is, you know, it doesn't usually follow that pattern.
That's usually how it goes when you're not having a lot of kids
or when there's war when people have died first.
So yeah, we're, it's interesting to wonder about that.
And Valerian clearly wasn't ridden by their father either.
Aryan Targaryen, Damon Aegon and and Vicenia and Rainey's his
father because Aegon had Valerian well before he became
Lord as far as we can tell. So good questions there,
unknowns that one day we might get more information on.
It's interesting how few Dragons they had.
Remember that they were a low ranked Dragon Lord family and
it's interesting that they weren't hatching more.
They didn't. For some reason they weren't
able to press that event. Like now we're the only Dragon
Rider family in the world. There's no one else like
pressing us to keep on stay in our place.
And like the 38th ranked Dragon Lord family is trying to keep us
down, to keep us 40th. So, you know, in the the 10th
strongest Dragon Lord family, if they were to push on us, we'd be
in big trouble, you know. But there's no one, there's no
one pushing on them at all. They're only limited by their
own. Well, we don't know what the
limitations. Are how does dragon intensive
morality? Maybe.
Yeah, yeah. Besides, yeah, they may not even
be limited by that. I really like the idea that some
sort of dream convinced Agon that he needed to do this,
because I I want to think of him as being heroic, but I don't
think of people who start wars as being heroic.
So, yeah, I I like the idea that he didn't want to go to war, but
something made him believe it was important for the betterment
of humankind, you know? And that's again, our Stannis
parallel, right? And I think that's why Danis,
Danis, Stannis and Danny combined really fit Agon's
motivations here. Danny is the currently motivated
by the injustice to her family. She's like, I'm reclaiming what
was mine, right. That's not a great reason right?
To start a war on the entire continent.
If she arrives, finds out there's this great threat and
focuses on that, well that is a much better reason if she's
there to do that right, saving everybody.
So between these two ideas, Stannis, the car, the argument
or the point he makes is that oh, I'm not king cuz I want it.
It's my duty. I'm the king.
It's it passed to me. I got to do this.
Now obviously Agon can't claim that it passed to him, but if he
has this dream that it's his duty to do it.
It's very similar to Stannis thing.
It oh, it's my duty to save that.
What's one child against every child in Westeros?
Like these, these twisted, semantical, philosophical
arguments about what you're what's right and wrong when
you're dealing with this supernatural global scale and
prophecy and uncertainty. What if you're right?
What if you're wrong? I mean, I don't know, it's
really tricky, but but you can see how those things are
reflected in Agon. This the the desire, the
ambition that's in Danny that she doesn't call ambition, but
that's what it is when she just wants to get back what's hers.
I appreciate it. She's distracted from that
ambition by trying to stop slavery.
Yeah, like that's something I'm happy for.
I hope she never gets. Yeah.
Keep doing what you're doing, girl.
It shows that that's where her like ultimately that's what
like, she this this quest to regain the throne was something
was kind of passed down to her by her brother.
Her brother put that into her mind like this is great
injustice done to our family. If she had been raised
differently, she might not even care.
She might be like, yeah, whatever.
That's in the past now. Raised to think about other
injustices, like slavery, like slavery, where she's sort of
like becoming her own person and having her own ideas about about
the world, rather than being told that this is an injustice
you must address. You can't let this happen, you
know, just well, actually. Well, why not?
It didn't happen to me. It happened to my dad.
And my dad sucked to like, he kind of deserved that, right?
Like if she were to be more sober about it, she might Maybe
that'll happen one day. So of course Agon doesn't have
this. Oh, my family was overthrown.
We deserve this. There might be a little bit of,
well, my family and people like my family basically ruled the
whole world when we had the freehold.
And that was only 100 years ago. Y'all.
Why not? Like we deserve to be back on
top again. That's obviously pretty much
just ambition. But it it it's still fueled by,
it's fueled by pride in some ways.
By regaining loss status. Yeah, privilege of birth and
things like that of of of what your family had.
Privilege. Of Dragons.
Privilege of Dragons is some pretty big one, yeah.
Might makes right, you know, like you know once the whatever,
once the United States has a massive military that completes
the world. Well, do we now have an
obligation to police the world? That's a tricky question, but
it's a very tricky question, Yes.
And if they do, then when they do police the world, it's a
mixed bag. There's definitely some good
things that come out of it, but there's some awful things that
come out of it too. And it's a question of, well,
would it be worse if they weren't there?
It would be better if they were. I don't know, like these are we
only have a sample size of one. For these scenarios, we don't
get to look at what would have happened.
Until we have the multiverse device, that's true.
When the multiverse arrives, we'll have a lot more answers.
The multiverse of a song Nice and fired.
Fire and Blood. That's true too.
What would love it if they did one of those like they did for
Marvel? The What If series.
Like an animated series? I would love to see just some
alternate universe. Yeah, I know I could turn to fan
fiction, but yeah, true. Fanfiction.
I'm getting quite as high concept as some of those what
ifs too. I'm getting George's.
That's true. They go a little more low.
They do a little more like slight changes.
Yeah, yeah. So one of my favorites in terms
of the setup for Aegon's Conquest.
It's also potentially an answer to some of our questions, or at
least it gives us a milestone to play with The Painted Table.
It's really cool looking. The show's giving us different
versions of it, which is maybe a little odd, but I don't mind cuz
they're all awesome. We've seen live versions out of
like conventions, fan made ones and stuff.
I always gravitate towards it. I've got lots of pictures.
Of it I dream still. One day I get one for Aziz.
Yes, we we'll have to do a lot better with our show to be able
to afford that. But hey, goals.
Y'all goals. So, I mean, I love maps in
general, but this is more than a map.
It's like a it's a well, it's a table map.
And Agon, well, when he had it made, it was well in advance of
the conquest. So he had to have been thinking
about it. It was probably just one day he
woke up and like, you know what I want a whole map of of
Westeros. No, it's probably part of that
burgeoning ambition plan. Well, first I got to get an idea
what I'm dealing with. That's why he did a little bit
of traveling, went to different places.
We here he went to Atlantis port, the Arbor Old Town, and
obviously he'd been to Essos to fight against the pretensions of
Atlantis. So he'd been around a bit more
so than probably a lot of his ancestors had been for a while.
They may have been somewhat rooted in Dragonstone and like
you said, just enjoying their wealth and prestige and I'm not
doing much else about it. Yeah, you know, I find it a nice
comparison to Vissaris, actually.
Well, yeah. Yeah.
I feel that they both have kind of a hobby.
I mean, you know, I feel like it says that the quote I'm about to
read, he talks about how it was, you know, carved and decorated
at his. Yeah.
So I feel like he had some involvement in like, make it
prettier dude. Like, you know, I feel like,
yeah, he was into it. I imagine as you went to
different spots, he would find matmakers, maybe the best
matmakers, and ask them to come back and help make this carved
table and make that idea. And the thing that would
motivate them to do it is they get to fly back on Valeria and
see the world. Imagine what a matmaker getting
down at the world and have the real perspective of it.
We have. We certainly have precedent for
dragon riders taking up a single passenger.
That's it. Only one in the show.
And then I'm not talking about the show, which also that
happened in, but it, you know it happened in Jerry this time.
So it's entirely possible that would make sense like you want
to get a good map of the world, get that overhead view.
You're total. That's a great.
I've never thought of that. It's a great idea.
Yeah, imagine what a world changing event, what dream it
would have been, you know for, for a mapmaker, even average
person I suppose. But another thought I have is
it. I think that the Painted Table
is another example of like. I don't know an exaggeration.
I want to believe it's an exaggeration.
I think they even. I don't even know if George
realized what he's saying when he said it's a 50 foot table
half a ball field. Like what room is that fitting
in? How long would it?
You can't see the other end of it.
Like it's not. I just, I mean, for planning
purposes. It's a little unwieldy. 15 I
think someone misheard. 50 For 15 George is known for making
things too big. The Wall, The Throne.
It did say he transcribed this. I think he just misinterpreted
50 or 50. He was listening to the audio
book too, 50 and 15. Yeah, well, let's have the quote
now. The painted table quote.
A common myth OFT heard amongst the ignorant claims that Agon
Targaryen had never set foot upon the soil of Westeros until
the day he set sail to conquer it.
But this cannot be truth. Years before that sailing, the
Painted Table had been carved and decorated at Lord Agon's
command, a massive slab of wood some 50 feet long, carved in the
shape of Westeros and painted to show all the woods and rivers
and towns and castles of the Seven Kingdoms.
Plainly, Agon's interest in Westeros long predated the
events that drove him to war. Yeah, and I think he was Lord
when he had this made. It says decorated at Lord Agon's
command. So, like, unless they're just
being sloppy with that. I mean, he would have been
called Lord by courtesy before he was officially Lord of
Dragonstone. But we can assume this was after
his father died. But it may have been an idea he
had when he was younger when his father was still alive and his
father was like, man, I don't want to do that.
But I totally agree with you Sean.
Like picturing it on the show, 50 feet long, but fifteen.
Yeah, it might be 15, might be a little more than 15, but closer.
To 15 was in the show is not that is not a change that I'm
unhappy with. I feel like that that size they
did seems like the throne. It's too like, yeah, just too
big. You can't fit that on the
camera. Not have shown.
They literally could not have shown a 50 foot table on a show.
It literally couldn't have shown it.
Yeah, it's too big. It's too big to fit in the
frame, Yes. Which is exactly the same
argument for the throne. It was too big to do that way.
So yeah, plainly indeed. Is this.
Plainly Aegon's interest in West was long predated the events
that drove into war. So yeah, I really wonder, like,
how much attention did he have paid to like having the wall
done just right? And did he?
It was that. How much of an interest was that
to him at that point? Or was he just really focused on
Okay? That's going to be a challenge
for my descendants. Ah, my goal, my job is to get
this realm all situated so that my descendants can have it ready
for the eventual darkness. Which he probably still
perceived as as a long way off, because again, I really can't
see any other way to look at it. Aegon's actions just do not
indicate that he thought this would be an imminent problem,
but still 1 to get ahead of. And he was told the man to do
it. Which is why you got to put a
healthy dose of ambition into this character profile.
Because yeah, like how much could he have really known?
And again, was he really the only one who had this dream
first, or at all? Here's another description of
The Painted Table, a discussion from a song in West and Fire.
Very relevant here. Stannis touched the painted
Table. Look at it.
Onion Night. My realm.
By rights, my Westeros. He swept a hand across it.
This talk of Seven Kingdoms is a folly.
Egon saw that 300 years ago. I want to resa.
This talk of seven kingdoms is a folly.
Aegon saw that 300 years ago when he stood where we are
standing. They painted this table at his
command, rivers and bays. They painted hills and
mountains, castles and cities and market towns, lakes and
swamps and forests, but no borders.
It is all 11 realm for one king to rule alone.
One king agree Davos. One king means peace.
One king does mean peace. I mean in terms of the ethical
argument for conquering, Things did get a lot more peaceful
after the conquest. There was a lot a lot less war
from north to South, from east to West, all in between.
I mean there were some war still.
Obviously it wasn't pure, all 100% peace.
But the average peasant had a very improved life under Agon.
As far as we can tell, they were a lot less likely to be called
up to go to war, a lot more likely to be left alone, which
is, as we've heard from several different characters.
And it stands to reason intuitively that they just want
to be left alone and not be dragged into the Game of
Thrones. Well, when the Game of Thrones
is settled at the top, at least relatively settled, then they're
not getting pulled into that game, are they?
So yeah, I mean it's a tough call but difficult.
So is this the type of argument, the same thing Stannis is
saying? Like picture Aegon saying it to
his sisters or to to have Lord Valorian and Lord Celtic are and
the others around him, Lord Coheris and Lord the and Oris
Baratheon, these other people. Is he saying look at it, you
know, this is going to be my realm or our realm.
I wonder how he phrased it. It's it's, you know, we're the
strong ones. We should have it.
Or if we don't seize this, it will all be gone.
All this will turn to Frost. Sometime in the future another
long night will come and it's up to us to stop that.
Like, did he use both of these arguments?
I could kind of think so. That's kind of where my head's
at. Would love to hear other
thoughts, but I feel like it. I feel like that's it.
And I think that because he was charismatic, we're told George
keeps his kept Agon's personality kind of hidden.
I think that's an authorial choice, to give himself room
later, but also kind of makes sense, as is a guy that kept his
own counsel. I mean, it's a valid human trait
to have someone who's kind of authoritative and aggressive and
ambitious, but also a little introverted about their talking,
you know, having relationships with other people.
So I. So I think that he had to have
been convincing because people did follow him pretty willingly.
It said that other men were won over by his strength, the other
Lords. Same with women.
Just he had that kind of personality.
A little Robert Baratheon without the boisterousness,
perhaps just people liked him who wanted to like you feel
safe. If he's in charge, you know,
like, well, this guy looks like he knows what he's doing.
He presents that attitude, that vibe.
You want to use a more modern term of just he projects
success, projects competence, and he's got a plan.
People like a man with a plan. People like a woman with a plan.
People like a plan, you know, if it's a good plan, and especially
if it's a plan that if it works, is going to do good things for
them, you know? And in particular, I wonder
about his sisters, like what do they think of his dreams?
Were they, like, instantly bought in?
Was it the case where they were pushing him, like, no, you got
to follow your dreams or was he dragging them into it?
When, when and if this is ever written down for a more detailed
story, this is an important decision that they're going to
have to make. And then I'm not sure which is
the smarter decision from a storytelling perspective because
it's probably be how they'll consider it like, well, what's
going to be the most compelling way to frame this?
But for now, we get to think about it in our head cannon and
wonder about these possibilities.
And here's another quote that helps us kind of understand
maybe why and from another angle, why prior Targaryens and
Valyrians didn't take Westeros, something that we haven't
mentioned yet that is definitely worth bringing up.
The wealth of the Westerlands was matched in ancient times
with the hunger of the Freehold of Illyria for precious metals.
Yet there seems no evidence that the Dragon Lords ever made
contact with the Lords of the Rock, Casterly or Lannister.
Septon Barth speculated on the matter, referring to a Valyrian
text. That has since been lost,
suggesting that the Freehold Sorcerers foretold that the gold
of Casterly Rock would destroy them.
Archmeister Pariston has put forward a different, more
plausible speculation suggesting that the Valyrians had, in
ancient days reached as far as Old Town, but suffered some
great reverse or tragedy there that caused them to shun all of
Westeros thereafter. So in addition to just not being
ambitious or motivated enough, or not having a dragon they
thought was sufficient to pull off a conquest, or not having
the proper dreams behind it, maybe even just didn't want to
do it because of this prophecy that told them that it would
cause their own doom. Arguably that's what happened.
Like they might look back on the The Doom and be like, well is
clearly these things can happen. The entire doom of 1000 year
multiple thousands year old empire of sorts can end well
then we got to take these things seriously and because it would
have been much easier for them than it is, right.
We can't look at it as like Oh well they just didn't want to
they just couldn't. Well maybe they didn't want to
but the whole they couldn't is ridiculous.
They didn't have this manpower problem that Aegon and his
family had at the time. It was before the Doom.
They had infinite manpower if you want to look at it that way.
So it wasn't a mat. You can't say well it just
wasn't feasible. It was absolutely feasible for
Valeria to conquer Westeros. It would have been maybe even
easier than some of their prior conquests.
It probably would have been easier than the Royn are in some
ways. And if it got bad, well, just
unleash all the Dragons they at least 300 Dragons on the Roinish
people at one point. Imagine just 50 just to send 50
to Westeros like it's over like they would.
Westeros would be like we're done.
We cannot possibly fight against this.
When did they take over the war and our people?
Sort of. They defeated them.
They said a bunch of Dragons killed a bunch of them, but they
didn't really take over, right? That might be the thing.
They might have been able to quote, UN quote conquer
Westeros, but not rule it after the fact.
And maybe they didn't want to bother with that.
That's true. A lot of the Ryaner cities were
just destroyed. They weren't really ruled
afterwards. They based in some cases, built
cities in nearby and just replaced them.
But yeah, they didn't. It wasn't really.
You're right. It wasn't really a conquest so
much as a genocide. But it played out over a long
time. But yeah, like, and and this is
another reason to think about Valerian and the difference.
Like, picture what you've seen of Vagar on TV.
Like, that's. Whoa.
Right. Enormous.
Right. We haven't even really seen
Vagar go up against a tough target.
We saw Vagar take out a much, much tinier dragon.
OK well if you're 50, Horde of 50 Dragons are all the size of
air ax. All right.
We're going to fight you. Like that's not a game.
That's a game changer. But we might.
We're not just going to bend the knee to those little guys.
I was still been the knee. I would too, but you can see why
they would. I think it's so true.
Breeze, fire and it flies or something.
But it's not like you can be brought down with like regular
arrows. You know what I mean?
Regular crossbows like. You can imagine they're not
melting castle. Fighting.
Yeah, you might change your mind after the fact, but yeah, you
can see that you might be. You're not just going to give up
right away. Yeah.
So you're going to, you're going to try to fight that.
Like, people didn't give up against elephants when they
first encountered elephants in war.
Like, they're like, we're going to try to fight that.
We're going to find a way around there.
We're going to find a way to scare the elephants or to drive
them off, you know, not have to fight them directly.
I mean, people may have thought they could scare the Dragons and
they might have been like, oh, he can't really control it that
well, he can't be that precise with it.
It's just as likely to turn on his own troops, right?
Wrong. I guess they might even.
You can maybe even compare it to like fighter jets or bombers in
World War 2 like they were. Powerful, destructive,
effective. But they're not a nuclear bomb.
We're not gonna give up because you have some fighter jets,
Exactly. Like if you got a bunch of air
axes flying around, like, well, maybe we can, maybe we can win,
maybe we can kill the riders, maybe we can overcome this.
But yeah, but Valerian, you just can't unless there's nothing you
can do. I mean, like you said, maybe you
get lucky and hurt the rider, but that's about it.
Like you got They did eventually try that.
Like the Doran is. They tried to assassinate a gun.
Like, well, we're not going to, we're not going to kill that
dragon, but we might be able to kill the rider.
He's not on it 100% of the time. Yeah, we got a shot.
So, yeah, so there's a lot of different possibilities here.
Let us move on to our it's been about an hour.
We're about closely halfway through this episode.
So let's take a little short break, answer a few questions
and get back to it. This episode is sponsored by
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healthy journey today. Christina Kay says on the topic
of BC A/C Plus, it just disregards any major events
Essos has. If we read an Essos history
book, well, I imagine it'll depend on if we're reading a
Ytish history book versus Bravosi one.
Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, it's a.
I wonder how standardized their measure of time is, of how do
they date things I imagine? ET for example, does their own
thing, but maybe all the free cities do one same, like maybe
they're standardized across like there might be like a point
where you're like everything West of ET uses 1 measurement
and everything. I don't know that's a good
they're particularly ancient is why I would think they would be
a little bit different. I think about like Chinese
calendar. Yeah, they wouldn't be making a
new calendar because some dude. No, thousands of years later.
Not another continent. Yeah, yeah, of course not
something. Yeah.
What do they care? But yeah, I would be curious to
know. I I like the idea that Bravos
like they like once, once the Doom happened, they go before
and after Doom. That's what matters.
Like, yeah, we like that one. That's a good one.
And that is probably is significant.
A marker is Aegon taking over Westeros, right?
Yeah. No, I feel like there might be 1
perspective. Yeah, as the Doom might be a
pretty major one, but there might be other.
Yeah, I'm super curious about how S S would do calendars.
The more I think about it, the more realistic I would think for
other continents and lands to not use that dating system.
I wish I knew the history a little bit better, but in the
real world, you know whenever the Romans started using that
date. As sex didn't know anything
about that, they didn't care about Jesus being poor like so.
Eventually as they conquered the world out and enter trade and
other things it it sort of spread and took hold.
But it still hasn't completely taken hold.
The Chinese still have their own calendar.
So I mean, like you said, the Why the World Went calendar,
yeah. 300 years is a pretty short time.
Maybe if Westeros went and conquered all of us, so forced
them right now. Yeah.
Yeah, you're right. George, we want the ET calendar,
and calendar is like, you're right to point that out that
they are often the source, just like who's the most powerful.
We use the calendar that pretty much started with the Romans.
That's where that came from. We changed the BC AD stuff, but
the dating like the months and dates are all based on.
That, and it took a long, long time for that to spread out to
to to be very standard within itself.
Even within the Roman culture, they kept changing the dates.
Just different Emperors had name one month after me.
That's true. Julie A takes us from BC to the
BBC pointing out that Queen Elizabeth's Jubilee had a
commissioned a 43 foot table for her.
Isn't that crazy, Sean? I know.
Yes, that is crazy level levels. See what this table looked like?
That is crazy a little. Dang, where is this table now?
They're like they just turned it into kindling after it was just
a one use table. Just throw it out after they
had. To like what's the word?
Refurbish Re. Reestablish a whole soccer
stadium to put this table in two.
You don't have soccer games in this stadium anymore.
They have dinner, Dornish Dame says.
As as much as I find the theory Agon didn't father Anus or Meg
or interesting, I wonder if also Wedding Rainy's came from the
knowledge slash belief that her line would be the one to
eventually fight the others. Yeah, that's an interesting
point. Like did Agon's dream include
specifics like that? It was just like, oh, the
Targaryen's need to be on the throne to fight this evil, this
darkness. Or is it more specific?
Is it like, well, it's going to pass through a particular one of
your sister wives, Maybe that that could explain some of the
senia's actions later if she didn't believe in that or if she
saw it differently, or yeah, cuz obviously these two branches do
collide later and it's pretty bloody and gruesome.
And we were when we get there, we'll talk about how the dreams
might factor into causing some panic or causing some people to
feel it was necessary. So very good point there by
Dornish Dame. As often Dornish Dame has great
points. Also, Lalatov sends super chat
and says, do you miss anything with the audio, fire and blood
maps, etc. Yeah, you do miss a little bit.
But those things are in the audio, they're there.
There's a big PDF attached to the audio that you can see now
it's not gonna. There's a lot of art popping up
right at the right time. There's a lot of black and white
art throughout the book. The book does have a lot of art
and there are some maps. I'm not sure if all the art is
in the PDF, I think it might be I.
Think it is. I think it is, yeah.
And the maps are certainly there, so it should be there.
If you're listening to the audio version, then be aware of that.
And if you don't have the audio version, well, you can go to our
website and we've got links for you to buy it.
And you'd be supporting the show a little bit by following those
links to do so. History of westros.com.
Can I say in the chat people are sharing different years, It is
in different cultures, you know, like.
For example, the couch stallion says in Thailand it's the year
2566. Oh.
Nice. It's the future, yeah.
All the top says it's Hebrew year 5780. 30 It's the past.
Yeah, which is where biblical literalists get the 6000 years.
Smart. That's the start of their
calendar. It's about almost 6000 years.
Very cool. And then of course, yeah,
Chinese people have different calendars as well.
So yeah, there are probably, I wonder how many total like dates
there are. Probably untraceable cuz there's
so many small cultures that there's only not that many
people who are still living in that culture, but they might
have those records somewhere. Yeah, there's gotta.
Be I'm curious what the young is.
Calendar. You know, like, yeah, what's the
smallest year? What's?
The smallest year, Yeah. That's all.
These are. Farther ahead, they're not.
It's one minute old. I just made it.
No, I just made one. It's even younger.
I made another one. No, I made two more.
Nothing I can do about that. You got me?
Yeah, I. Can keep the spirals going on
for a long time. You can make three more, but I
don't think you're good enough. I'm not.
You're totally right. Yeah.
So another point here about the audio book.
If you guys are experienced listeners and you hadn't
listened to Fire and Blood before, you may be like, who is
this guy? It's not Roy D'trees.
Yes, of course. Unfortunately, Roy D'treese's
past, so he couldn't read Fire and Blood.
He did read Part of The World of Western Fire, part of it.
And the Sidebars were read by another guy whose name I forget.
But Simon Vance has read the read Fire and Blood, and he has
done a lot of reading various audiobooks in this world and the
real world. I mean, yeah, Earth, I mean.
Let me know when Harry Lloyd does it.
Yeah, give us Harry Lloyd. He's so good.
I'm taking in Glenn too. There's plenty of people that
would be fine. But I'm very curious how that
decision will be made and when the time comes, because
sometimes it's up. It's like, well, if Simon
Vance's got another project like he might pivot away cuz this
one's so big. But I don't know, don't know.
I just want to say also Christina Case is maybe the
shortest one to do whatever the malware we use.
But also, North Korea starts in 1896 birth down Kim Ilson, so
that's probably one of the shorter ones.
Yeah. Might be North Korea.
Yeah. So their year one is is our year
1896 US year. 1896, Yes. So only 100 and what, 27 years?
So earlier the beginning of the episode, I mentioned how
audiences are more savvy, readers are more savvy, we're
better at picking things out. Sean brought up the excellent
point that we discussed these things on the Internet now,
where the best ideas float to the top really quickly.
So if one person figures it out and the evidence lines up, all
of a sudden everybody knows a lot of story.
Here's a couple of good examples of this authors changing their
plans because fans figure something out that has happened
on multiple TV shows that has happened in the real time book
series that happens, and it was a big mistake for Robert Jordan
to change something that he had laid out because fans figured it
out. Like you can't take away that
you laid this thing out. It's just looks really awkward
that this character isn't the person that you laid them out to
be. Like a secret identity kind of
situation where it's like, Nope, that's not him after all.
Like what? How could it not be?
It's everything pointed to it. Like, Nah, we're just Nah, I
just Nah change my mind. I don't watch it, but my family
does. The Blacklist seems to have done
that too. They seem to have been setting
something up and the audience figured out and they're like,
never mind, we're not doing that after all.
And everyone got, yeah, because like, no people like to have
that validation. It's like it's not better.
It's like the validation of figuring out.
People for watching and analyzing and figuring out.
Reward them with the correct like, it's just like this weird
ego move or like, oh, they figured it out.
So I have to change you. Like, no, you're ruining your
story, man. Don't do that.
Yeah. So it's a really bad call.
So that's why. And I think people might, I
think creators may have learned that lesson pretty quickly
hopefully that they're like, no, don't change the endings.
People figured it out. Just don't.
Just if they figured out, fine, they figured it out.
No big deal that good for them. Like, okay.
Maybe next time make the twist a little harder to figure out.
Or I think, I think Lost and Westworld both had this issue as
well, just to to a certain degree.
And both those shows, in my opinion, went downhill pretty
badly not only for that reason but you know, anyway, so this is
my argument for maybe a little excess back story.
A little excess history is a good thing because it's harder
to figure out twists and what's coming.
Throw in a little extraneous information.
It can be fun if it's well written.
It can add to the world and fill it out a little more.
If it happens to not serve the main story, Well, arguably it
does serve the main story. If it's concealing the truths
you're trying to conceal, then that does serve the main story.
It doesn't serve it as directly as adding to the evidentiary
body of what you're trying to slowly bring people into.
But hey, the world's changed Internet exists.
Authors got to do things a little differently.
Don't ruin your story over it though.
Soapbox ran over. But yeah, it happens.
It's happened so many Times Now and I don't remember it ever
happening when I was young. And you know it's like a new
phenomenon, Authors changing the ending because people figuring
things out shows and books. So George is kind of already
sort of his style already kind of work to this.
Plus he leaves us hanging for a long time.
You know, there's that we we get to think about it and we still
haven't figured it out like well, I mean it there's a lot of
things we've we've probably figured out, but there's still a
lot of mysteries that we haven't because George did a good job of
setting them up. These are well written
mysteries, so some of it. Is that is another thing about
having a very another thing about having a very broad deep
story is there are more different things to figure out,
things that might not be directly tied to the central
storyline. Well what if you don't even have
a central storyline, right? Like having a bigger world that
you have a lot of concurrently running, interweaving storylines
and people can figure one or two but not all of them you.
It gives you the ability to go off track two different
storylines to different. Continents or whatever else that
you have set up in there, whether it's because you think
it's something new or you're worried about people figuring
out or whatever, it is like one of the types of discourse that
comes in a lot of fandoms is like people, especially somewhat
unique to a song device. And Fire fandom is people trying
to apply standard things to a song device.
And fire like, who's the main character?
Like, well, there isn't one. What was it again?
But if there is, who would it be?
Like? Why do you need that?
Like, why? Why put it in that box?
It doesn't fit in that box. People talk about things like
the Big 5 and like stuff like that.
They're like, well, we have to have who who's our core has.
We don't. I agree that people do say that,
but yeah. Why, though?
I will say I I want to bring a counterpoint up.
Is it? Sometimes it does make it easier
to pitch to your friends or or market to the audience.
There's some value to it, but even still.
When I I'm thinking about when I started watching Game of Thrones
what I did each episode is I wrote down the characters and a
line between each character interacted with each other and
so I could start to see who had the most lines coming into and
out of them and OK, those are quote UN quote the main
characters. So it was hard for me to know
that was like 8 or nine of them, you know I.
Feel like those are just the the hinge characters, the
linchpincker. Those are the characters that
left other characters that might have the most line like.
Maybe doesn't make it. Maybe like a Sam.
Charlie might have had a lot of lines connecting, but you might
not have said he's the main character compared to John.
I mean, I love him, but you know.
And sometimes the character's position in the story in and of
itself might make them seem more main, like the king.
Like Robert might have seen more main because he's the king you
know but he he was tertiary secondary at best you know or or
or if you divide it by book like you could maybe maybe Ned Stark
is the main character of book one.
That's. What I was going to say, that's
what I was deducing as I was watching the first season.
I was like, OK, I'm pretty sure it's Ned, pretty sure he's main
character and you got his head shot though.
He was the main character for the first seven episode Roads,
but yeah, not anymore. This is also a reminder of how
big of an unknown magic is in this era.
Now we know from quote UN quote low magic area zones or times
that dreams are always happening.
Like dreams never seem to completely fall off.
Like Darren, the dreamers having dreams in a low in a socalled
low magic era. Melisandre was having dreams and
stuff and it's more of an ebb and flow than it is an off and
on, I think. Darren and Duncan Egg, right?
Yeah, that's Darren. Yeah.
Like, this is something we talked about in our Before the
Dragons episode, but it was more aimed at the various houses of
Westeros in the mainland and less aimed at egg on and the
Targaryens. But it's a big unknown there
too, of course. Do they have glass candles or
the glass candles burning at this time or not?
Were they? How were the hinges of the world
behaving? You know, Were they like, full
of energy, or were they a little at a low point?
Maybe the fact that Aegon's dreams were so potent in this
era? I'm assuming they were, which
maybe they weren't. Maybe they were more faint and
faded. Maybe that's why they were
vague. Or maybe they weren't so sure.
But maybe they were really vivid, and that is a reflection
of the magic of this era. The conduits are stronger the
the tendrils of dreaming. The ebb and flow is more
powerful in this time. It's a flow rather than an ebb
at this time. Maybe the moon being closer
matters or different comet. Maybe there was a comet in this
time. Maybe there was a red comet or a
blue comet or a green comet. Some other colored comet, a
black and red comet for the for house targarian, you know,
wouldn't take much. For a pink comment, a pink
comment, you would the Barbie comment, No, that's what it
would be. Now, before it was about you.
Now it would be about Barbie. So of course, an unanswerable
question, very compelling, very fun to think about, though, and
one that we'll probably never get tired of.
We talked a little about before about why the prior Targaryen
can take about Westeros. If we're backing up to that
topic just a little bit, we can talk about how the Prophecy
leads into that and how this creates parallels.
Like I said, Stan is parallel but different parallels here.
Daenerys and Stannis 3 Dragons quest for a throne and dreams.
Because let's not forget Daenerys has had a lot of dreams
of her own building up to the hatching of the Dragons and then
after that she's having visions that are maybe given to her.
That's a whole nother topic, but the dream she has before the
hatching of the Dragons might be given to her as well.
But there seems to be a difference between the quality
and even quantity and the way they manifest.
What about the quality, the quavity?
Yeah, the quavity, The quavity as well, the quavity and
quality. And with that, we maybe see that
someone is maybe adding to her dreams or giving her more dreams
to lead her on this path of saving the world, whether it's
Claith or people with Claith or other people entirely.
So we have to consider that a thing for Agon.
Maybe someone was manipulating his dreams.
Maybe someone was giving him dreams.
Either way, the painted table scenes really drive home the
similarities between this early phase of preparing to conquer
and getting all the ideas together and realizing that,
well, this won't be enough, we need more.
But if he's arguing like Stannis did, that it needs to be done
well. We've got this status quote to,
again, maybe help frame the argument he would have made to
his own people, trying to win them over on what would be very
difficult thing. Like, yes, he's the kid, he's
their Lord, he wants to be a king, and the Velarians and the
Celtic Guards are going to do what he says.
But they might have pushed back quite a lot against this idea.
Been like, yo, this is a huge endeavor.
This could really backfire. So if they aren't bought in, in
terms of their own ambition, like think of all the rewards
you'll win, then this is where it comes back to duty and
prophecy. And here we go, Stannis's quote
to Davos. His hand swept across the
painted table. How many boys dwell in Westeros?
How many girls? How many men?
How many women? The darkness will devour them
all, she says. The night that never ends.
She talks of prophecies, A hero reborn in the sea, living
Dragons hatched from dead stone. She speaks of signs and swears.
They point to me. I never asked for this, no more
than I asked to be king. Yet dare I disregard her.
He ground his teeth. We do not choose our destinies,
yet we must. We must do our duty.
No. Great or small.
We must do our duty. That's Stannis for you.
That's perhaps the most. The grinding of the teeth, the
grinding of the teeth and the going on and on about duty.
That's that's the like, if you had to pick a the most Stannis
moment, that might be it right there.
Yeah. All this, like, twisted logic
that might be right in this talk of duty and the grinding teeth.
Yeah, that's Stannis, the three things, right.
So as you pointed out very well earlier, Sean, the she is
Melisandre here is referring to. The darkness will devour them
all, she says. And Aegon's dream, well, the
darkness will devour them all, my dreams say, right, Aegon of
course wouldn't be concerned with Dragons from stone or a
hero reborn in the sea, but he would have his own little
details from his dreams that might be relevant to their
timeline. Little, I don't know.
Maybe he's a hero from the sea. You know he's from an island
landing on the mainland. The stone Dragons, though, that
part, not much way to fit that one.
But still, there'd be other signs and portents relevant to
his time, and he would be a lot of concerned with a lot of these
same things, like doing his duty and darkness enveloping the
whole continent. Like that's a bad thing.
There's lots of things that pop up in Santos and Melsandre's
chapters that would be very similar for Agon.
Not to mention look at this other parallel, which is gonna
lead us to our next section. Nicely.
Nice segue action here. Melisandre isn't Stannis's wife,
but is kind of like a wife. She's kind of like a wife, kind
of like a second wife. Aegon has two wives.
Maybe one of them is a little more dutiful and the other ones
a little more head in the clouds about prophecy and stuff.
Maybe it's it's not the exact same mix, Vesenia and Rainy, so
aren't going to be like carbon copies of Melisandre and Solis.
Of course, plenty of differences there, just as Stannis has
plenty of differences from Agon, but there's some very notable
parallels here. Even Danny has that to a lesser
extent. She married his DAR but hooked
up with Dario and that's what said about Agon.
He married Vesenia out of duty and Rainy set a desire.
Of course there could be more to it.
There also, like there is for Danny.
There's more to it there. And with Danny there's more to
come. She'll probably remarry and
probably have other lovers, or maybe one of each maybe, I don't
know. But but she's not done with just
with his darn darn or not the end of it.
I think we can be pretty sure about that.
And so that brings us to this next section.
As I said, polygamy, and how Agon's choice to marry two wives
has had farreaching consequences, Of course is
conquest has had far reaching consequences too.
That's a little more straightforward in some ways.
It's this sort of framing device for the entire story.
But the polygamy is more of an internal like.
There's more wiggle room here. It's a little more tricky to see
how it affects things like when we delve through our tomes and
sources here lore. The quote from Tyrion comes to
mind, which is we're all just puppets dancing on the strings
of those came before us. Part of that is him.
He's more thinking of recent memory of like your father and
mother like have so much control over your life.
But he's also alluding to, well, if his ancestor Land the Clever
hadn't done what he did, then he wouldn't be a Lord of castly
rock himself. So huge domino effects of what
our ancestors do. Some more than others though.
I mean Agon one of the biggest ever in that case.
So past actions by powerful nations or people are the same
puppet strings metaphor writ large.
It sets the stage for later and it can be large scale like war,
like a conquest, or relatively small event like a marriage, or
in this case 2 marriages which is a such a bigger deal than
just one at least at the same time.
Let's look at the consequences of Aegon's marriage decisions
first, with another quote. It had long been the custom
amongst the Dragon Lords of Illyria to wed brother to sister
to keep the bloodlines pure, but Aegon took both his sisters to
bride. By tradition, he would have been
expected to wed only his older sister Vasenya.
The inclusion of Rainey's as a second wife was unusual, though
not without precedent. It was said by some that Aegon
wed Vasenia out of duty and Rainy's out of desire.
It doesn't appear to have happened with any of the other
Lords of Dragonstone, any of his recent ancestors born in
Westeros. We have no evidence of a
multiple of a polygamous marriage, so it's it's sort of
wishy washy. The way it's presented it's like
unusual, but not without precedent.
Like this is a pretty wide bookends, like not without
precedent means hardly ever happens.
Not unusual. That doesn't sound, doesn't
sound that severe, you know. So there's a pretty big wiggle
room now. I think partly they don't know.
I think the Maesters aren't that versed in how often it would
have happened back in Valeri. I mean, we don't have a lot
about Valeri in general, especially about customs and
laws and just how basic parts of their society even operated in
terms of laws and like customs and traditions.
But here's a small clue into that window.
Apparently it has happened before, and maybe that's in part
because of some of the magical bloodline stuff.
I'm not exactly sure why that would be the case here, but it
makes sense because we have pretty strong evidence that
there is magical blood in the Targaryen's that both explains
their affinity for Dragons and why perhaps they don't have the
normal consequences of incest that you would see in the real
world so well, or you have a reduced version of that, perhaps
not, not the severity you would see in the real world.
So it absolutely has severe consequences with Megor.
Megor decides to take a second life.
It blows up badly and he's like, well and for a penny and for a
pound. Let's go three.
Let's go 456. As we talked about in our Under
the Dragons Hightower episode, why didn't he go 7.
The seven. It's the religion that well cuz
he's fighting against the seven. I don't know Meg or is not very
creative. Neither were his neither was his
core. But we're not.
We're well before Meg or now let's not.
Let's stay where we are. It comes up in Damon Blackfire
story as a potential possibility.
Something that's rumored. He maybe thought he could have
two wives if he'd become king. He might have.
It could absolutely play out in the story of Ray Gar and Liana
in the show's version. It totally did.
The doctrine of exceptionalism is important to point out here.
We're going to cover that when we get to it.
But it doesn't exist at this point yet, obviously.
But it does exist for after Regor and Liana.
But it didn't exist at the time of Megor.
So that's an important to keep in mind that times change.
Doctor of Exceptionalism was developed and the whole thing
changed. The whole custom, the whole
attitude towards it. So one of the other immediate
shortterm effects it has is there's a number of Lords and
ladies, some of them former Queens will offer third wives to
Agon, which they would never have done if he just had one.
You know, the 2nd is the big leap.
You're not like, well, what's the third if you've already got
two? It's the having going from 1:00
to 2:00. That's the huge difference,
right? But if if you're someone who
thinks that it's either monogamy one or many you don't like, you
don't really distinguish necessarily between 2345 or like
well, if you're going beyond one, why would you stop there
They don't get. It especially with the mentality
the, the the I don't know male dominated world that we have
here so absolutely so the queen region of the Vale.
Shara Aaron's like, I'll be your third wife, but only if you name
my son your heir, which is like, well, that is a big ask and sure
to be turned down, which indeed it was.
She knew it would probably be rejected.
But you know, you make this public declaration of of your
value. You're like, well, I'm good
enough to be in this Targaryen wives club and my son.
And if I am well, then I'm equal to you.
My son should come first. She's the he's the oldest one.
It's like, well, your son isn't the son of the king, though.
Anyway, it was a big ask, but, you know, a bold, bold choice.
Cotton. We'll see how it works out for
her. It didn't, but it didn't have
any consequences either. He just said, you know, no, and
that was that. So no biggie, right?
It's rumored later that Manfred Hightower offered one of his
daughters to egg on as a third wife.
That's a rumor. We don't know about it, and it
comes more like after the conquest rather than before it.
But first of the Mall was King Argalac the arrogant who
proposed the marriage of his one daughter, his only child, to
Agar. This one did escalate.
Unlike Queen Regent Shara, there was no consequences for the
proposal. This one had a lot of problems,
though, and we're also going to see issues and successes much,
much later with Dragonstone. And storms end in various
marriages. If you think ahead to, you know,
the Laughing Storm and his maybe son, Lionel Baratheon, having
that trial by combat with Dunk. Yeah.
And yeah, there's some, of course.
Stannis is, of course, his grandmother is Targaryen.
Robert and Renly too, of course. So there's a lot of these houses
have a lot of history to come. This is just the start of it.
Now let's talk briefly about our Galac before we get into a
little more of this. Interesting that he only has his
one maiden daughter. He's an old man at this point,
still capable of fighting a good warrior.
Still, despite having lost some of his luster through time, it
sounds like he's at least in his 50s, maybe late 50s, maybe early
60s. So it's unusual that he only has
a young maiden daughter as his only kid.
I recall from our Before the Dragons episode, Nina floated
the idea that since Argalac also fought against the volunteers
like Agon did right after the Doom when they were trying to
reestablish or establish a new empire over the remains of
Illyria. Argalac and Agon were sort of
allies fighting against that those imperial pretensions.
Nina suggests that Argalac had probably had some sons or maybe
brothers or uncles that participated in those wars.
And maybe that's why they're not around anymore.
Because it is weird for a guy in his 50s or 60s to only have one
young daughter, youngish daughter, like if he had an
older daughter, you know, OK, well, fine, You know, he had her
a long time ago, But where are all those other kids?
You know, he would have had kids when he was young and they're
not there anymore. So he outlets outlived them,
which is important to think about.
Like this is he's kind of a sour old guy.
So maybe this is part of why he's sour.
Is he lost? Definitely lost a wife because
he doesn't have. He's not married as far as we
know at this point. Surprised multiple probably has
had multiple wives and lost multiple wives because I'm
guessing Argella, this daughter is not from his first wife
because where were the kids when he was younger, right?
It just doesn't really add up. So the buffer is what we're
calling this next part. This is Argalax attempt to play
politics and create a new border, a new state between him
and the encroachment of the greatest, most powerful king in
Westeros at the time, which is King Heron the Black, who has
been a problem for our Galac for a while.
Here's the quote. No king in Westeros felt more
threatened than our Galac, the Storm King, last of the
Durandin, an aging warrior whose only heir was his maiden
daughter. Thus it was the king, our Galac,
reached out to the Targaryens on Dragonstone.
Offering Lord Aegon his daughter in marriage with all the lands
east of the God's Eye from the Trident to the Blackwater Rush
as her dowry, Aegon Targaryen, spurned the Storm King's
proposal. He had two wives, he pointed
out. He did not need a third, and the
Dowerlands being offered had belonged to Heron Hall for more
than a generation. They were not our Galax, to give
plainly. The aging Storm King meant to
establish the Targaryens along the Blackwater as a buffer
between his own lands and those of her in the black.
So instead of him having to defend these Borderlands against
the encroachment of the Ironborn King, he's like, let's put the
Targaryens there and they'll be the ones defending it and Heron
will go ramming up against them and their Dragons instead of me.
Not the worst idea on the surface, but it's just a little
transparent. It's just too obvious what he's
trying to do here and and our Galactic doesn't sound very
clever because Agon figured all this out pretty quickly because
it is pretty straightforward. If you're looking at the screen,
which I encourage you to do, we got a map up there.
You can see what we're talking about here.
Obviously you'd have to pretend King's Landing isn't there cuz
it wasn't yet but that but you can look at King's Landing as
the site where Agon landed and where he was operating.
And that's basically the general area that our Galac was trying
to create a buffer between the storm lands and Heron Hall,
which you know, those lands were expanding.
Heron Hall was was trying to exert its authority over
everything and range. And that range was growing
because, well, Heron Hall was almost finished.
He was really close to finishing.
Legend says that the day egg on set foot on land with the intent
to conquer was the same day Heron Hall was finished.
Probably not quite that smooth and exact, but whatever, it's
close enough to make no matter. It's basically at the same time.
Which, by the way, is an important consideration in terms
of the timing of all this, which we'll be discussing on and off
throughout this early stage of the conquest.
Even if the lands offered had been our Galax to give, Agon
probably wouldn't have accepted, right?
I mean, he didn't want to be a buffer state.
He didn't want to be an ally of these other people.
He wanted to make them his subjects, so they really wasn't
on the table anyway. But this might explain part of
why our Galac got so mad about in the end.
Partly because he was a little desperate.
His plan didn't work, and he had worked with Agon before, so
maybe he thought they would be more agreeable and come to some
arrangement because of fighting against Atlantis together.
Heron himself would have seemed like the common enemy of
everyone. He is the big dog at the table
right now, the one pushing everyone around, the one
breaking a lot of Westerosi customs with those ironborn
semantics. Oh, I don't have slaves.
I have thralls, right? And he had.
He had taken a lot of thralls to build Heron Hall and work them
to death. These are people.
It's like peasants that he just stole from our surrounding lands
and some that live in his own lands and just put them to work.
And no one like this guy, he's a bad king.
This reminds me of what we were talking about earlier about sort
of the perfect storm things coming together.
Maybe this is part of what a gun realized from a diplomatic
standpoint that might enable him to take Westeros over is that
there is this one person who is A very powerful and B not very
liked, and if he could take them out.
Other people will think, well, if you took out Heron, he can
take out me. And also glad he took out Heron.
Maybe this guy's not so bad, right?
So you're totally right. This is that's a really good
analysis, Sean. And it it's also expands into
some other topics I wanted to talk about.
Think about that in the real world, it's extremely common for
a politician's platform to be I'm not that guy like you.
You have you've experienced a crappy leader and someone's
like, well, I'm better than him and I like anyone, but damn,
okay. We'll vote for you or we'll
elect you or we'll join your army, depending on what you
know, time and place we're talking about.
However they settle, politics, whatever it is, whether it's
voting or war or whatever. So this would have been this is
a similar say, Yeah, you have someone who's really unpopular
Agons like hey, yeah by comparison I'm great.
I'm open handed. He's gonna do all the things,
the opposite and just to show people what it could be like.
I think then he can pull all that back.
Although it was like now that I'm in charge I don't have to do
all that nice stuff anymore. It's like now you see what I'm
really like and and yeah, he is better than hair and like that's
it. He was nowhere near as
tyrannical as hair. He is a better leader.
He is a better guy to have in charge.
It's pretty low bar, but you're right, it's an extremely low
bar. OK, let me give you an example
going way back in time, way back in time.
The time of of ancient Babylonia, the ancient Persian
Empire. Okay, the Assyrians, I think it
was had conquered Babylon. And the Assyrians were really
tyrannical, really hard, heavy-handed rulers which by the
way Heron the Black's grandfather was literally hard
when hard hand. So that's pretty similar, right?
And the Persian, I'm sorry, the Persian Empire comes along and
is like the Cyrus the Great. The founder of the Persian
Empire is like, I'm going to let you do all the things that the
Assyrians couldn't do. They're like, they're trying to
control your religion. I'm for whatever religion you
want to have. So I'm for freedom to worship.
So it's like they're just, he's just presenting himself as the
opposite to all the things these Syrians were like, You guys
can't do this. I'll let you do this.
They're taxing you like this. I'm going to tax you less.
They're doing that. Just figures out all the things
people hate and says I'm going to do the opposite.
It does a version that they'll like.
And so they flocked to his banner when when he came to
Babylon, the Babylonians like, we're like, yay, they just
kicked out all these Syrians. They just needed him to show up
and present his strength and just know that he was backing
them. Was actually there.
The timing had to be right. Very similar consideration here.
Aegon can read the the tea leaves and be like, yeah,
everyone hates Heron. So if I go after him, people
might join me. They certainly won't help him.
They might just wait and sit back and do nothing.
But they're not going to rush to his defense.
If they join anyone, it'll be me.
Maybe. More likely, they don't do
anything. And as you said, Sean, if you
knock off the most powerful guy there, well, it just shows that,
well, he knocked off the most powerful guy, then that must
make him the most powerful guy. And he didn't have any of our
help to do it because he he spurns all these alliances.
Like, no, I'm. I'm not about alliances.
No, I'm not taking your marriage offer.
I'm not taking your alliance, your deal.
I'm taking your submission. That's it.
That's all I'm taking. If you're not going to submit,
I'm going to make you submit. It's a very, very boss attitude.
Like, yeah, no, I don't need your help at all.
I'm going to do it myself. And that's going to prove
definitively that I that I'm strong enough to do it.
And if I can conquer you once I've conquered you, you're not
going to try to overthrow me because, well, I'm gonna be even
stronger once I've settled the conquest and started making.
And hopefully you're not gonna want you.
Yeah, hopefully you're not gonna want to, cuz Leo wants.
You guys weren't trying to overthrow Heron as bad as he
was. You weren't teaming up against
him. I'm not gonna be that bad.
Right. You.
You part of why you didn't team up against him?
Because you couldn't beat him anyway, even though he was bad.
Well, you can't beat me either, and I'm not bad.
So. Right.
We should all be on board. Yeah, the path is clear.
If you look at it that way. It's like, well, yeah, they
could they they couldn't gang up against the common enemy.
And that's a meta dream perspective here to think about.
That way, if Aegons like, OK, this realm needs to be united to
fight a common enemy later, they clearly aren't doing it now.
They can't do it against this evil guy right in their midst.
They're not certainly not going to be able to do it against a
supernatural foe that's way up in the North.
They can't get their act together here in the center of
the continent where it's warm, like they're not going to March
N then. And he's right.
Like they're probably not. Like again, the TV show isn't
exactly what's going to happen, but when half of the Westeros
went to fight the others in the realm, the other half stayed in
the South, fighting over the same old stuff they always did,
just trying to win the throne. Like ignoring the danger, That's
a very rational thing to expect. It's not rational behavior, but
it's rational to expect that level of irrational behavior.
So it's proving his point. He's like I need to unite this
realm. They're not uniting against the
common foe. This proves that I need to be
the one to unite them against the common foe.
Yeah, it's very self fulfilling and it's hard to poke holes in
the logic in some ways, right? It's a pretty good argument, you
know, in this setting, right? Continuing on here though, Heron
himself might have known some of this.
You might have seen something becoming, but the guy's just too
stubborn and and bossy and authoritative to to bend.
He's this isn't a Bailon Greyjoy.
Remember Bailon, His saving grace?
One of the few smart things Bailon ever said was bend the
knee. Like, if you're beaten, bend the
knee. Don't be.
Don't lose your head along with it.
Don't chase, you know, don't make your loss worse by denying
that you've lost bending the knee.
Never You don't lose your head bending your knee.
You can stand back up later if you, but if you lose your head,
you'll never stand up again. It's like, don't let your pride
ruin It's like, yeah, that's true, Beylon.
Yeah, if you're beaten, admits you're beaten, you know, don't
take your ego out of it. Which is difficult because it's
a lot of times it's ego and pride that causes you to to rise
up in the 1st place. Not always.
Sometimes it's injustice. But it wasn't injustice.
In Baymont's case, not really. So Argalac's grandfather, we got
to keep something else in mind about some recent history.
Argalac's grandfather had lost lands to this to the to house
whore, to hair, Black Heron's ancestors, recent ancestors.
The Storm Kings had ruled a lot of the territory that had since
been taken over by the Iron Born they had.
They were on the rise. Now this is their zenith.
They were, they were or their nadir rather they were on a
decline and our in fact our Galax strength as a leader.
Even though he didn't manage this situation very well earlier
in his career, he did a lot of things really well and he held
back the decline of the Duran did.
It probably would have come sooner if not for him.
So we're painting him as kind of a guy who makes a lot of
mistakes here. But when he was younger, his
maybe like, and again like a robber, like his early decisions
were good, but he wasn't in peacetime, he wasn't so good.
He's a good wartime ruler, but. Yeah, that was a Durandin trait
that the Brathians inherited. Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good way. Good way to put it, yeah.
You know, I have a question, something I feel like I should
know but I don't have a good idea.
The Riverlands kind of became a Kingdom after Aegon took over
and they were reset to one. They had been one.
They were restored. They hadn't been for a long
time, like 600 years, yeah. 600 years.
So the territory that is the Riverlands now that was just
divvied up among the the Reach and the West and the Stormland
it had been itself. It was a unique, you know, its
own Kingdom. And then eventually the Storm
Kings took a big chunk of it, like like the eastern portion of
it, and it was. And then they took even more of
it and they started picking more and more of it off.
It's obviously this isn't a this is a fluid situation.
And then the Ironborn came, the Heron's Dynasty came in and took
it over and took the east, the western portion of the river
lands and then eventually kicked out the storm lands.
This was a case of the River Landers rose for the Ironborn.
They're like, oh, we can kick out the Storm lands if we assist
the Ironborn. It was the reverse of what we
just described. Like, oh, let's get rid of these
cruel leaders that don't belong here because these new guys are
coming along to help us push them out.
This time the new guys were worse than the old guys Hair and
the Ironborn took over and predictably ruled them a lot
more harshly than the Storm Landers did.
So they kicked out a king in favor of renewing and, and it
made things worse for them. So it took Agon to restore the
old borders. And so because I feel like that
would have been a, I don't know, a point of contention, The storm
lands having to give it. If he puts Aureus in charge,
it's easier. He's going to do whatever Reagan
says, right? But some of that, none of that
land came from the Reach or the north or the Westerlands or
anything probably maybe a little bit of the West, but it's not
very well specified because the wet, the West's borders with the
river lands are very natural, like it's like where the
mountains begin. There's like some pretty clearly
defined, yeah, geographical borders there that makes a
little, little more clear where these demarcations are and the
reaches. It may be no one wants to fight
over anyway. And the Reach, yes, it would
have, it would have encroached a bit too.
Yeah, sure, you can have the mountaintop, the no one can get
you anyway. OK, fine.
But the Reach is also so centrally located that it's got
borders with the West, borders with storm lands, borders with
Dorn. So it's already.
Like whenever. And the Tyrells are also just
going to do whatever rake on sets, right?
They're fully bought in, exactly.
They want to get some lands back for the.
Riverland. Sure.
Yeah, whatever. Just don't burn us down.
Yeah, so when they were ruled by the gardeners, yeah, they were
trying to expand their borders, but the Reach was so large that
it was hard to expand their borders.
Recall the story from the Sworn Sword that when the King of the
Reach went to try to fight the Storm Land and this was a long
time back, the West invaded the Reach.
And it was. Remember his house had that
heroic stand. The Osgrays like held back, like
killed the King of the of the West in this heroic fight that
he he died in also. And it's like a really important
milestone for for the history of House Osgrey.
So yeah, so this is what happens.
Like they keep an eye on each other like, oh, it's like a
board game. You send all your troops E then
someone's going to invade you from the West.
Like you can very clearly see where their opportunity comes
from and you can see it coming before it even happens.
So there's a lot of back story here.
A lot of political situation, a lot of.
Moving Borders that Agon is trying to pick his timing for.
Like you said, there's there's an argument that this timing was
very precise based on exactly this, what was going on with
these big players at the time. One very unpopular king with the
very large Kingdom, another fading king whose domain has
been on the decline for a while. And those two are right next to
each other. Neither of them have a lot going
for them in terms of help. They're going to have to stand
on their own Aegon. So it might seem odd that Aegon,
when it comes time for the conquest, didn't focus on
individual kings. He went for one while Visanya
went for another and Rainey went for another.
That's a little unusual. You might think they'd focus on
one at a time, but they were going fast and they thought that
worked for their advantage. And we'll talk about that a
little more when we get to that, but.
Let's get back. Also helps prove a point that
hey, we just proving what if we? Teamed up right?
Like so. Let's see this next quote, which
is Aegon's response to Argalac for the marriage offer, his own
offer. The Lord of Dragonstone
countered with an offer of his own.
He would take the Dower lands being offered if Argalac would
also see Massey's Hook and the Woods and Plains from the Black
Water S to the river Wind Water and the headwaters of the
Mandor. The pack would be sealed by the
marriage of Argulaq's daughter to Ori's breath in Lord Aegon's
childhood friend and companion. These terms Argulaq, the
Arrogant Rejected Angrily. All right, Oshea's got the map
up again. You can see where the spot
roughly where King's Landing is. You looks a little bit S you see
the wind Water over there, just east of what's marked as the
Crown Lands the South of Blackwater Bay.
And Massey's Hook, of course, is is the nice little point
sticking out there that points right at Drift Mark and
Dragonstone, where Sharp Point and Stone Dance are.
That's interesting. Ask for Agon, you might say.
Well, he's asking for a lot. On the other hand, these Lords,
Sharp Point, Stone Dance, they had kind of already stopped
working for Argalac, for the Storm Kings.
They were technically sworn to Storm's End, but the Lords of
Sharp Points is Bar Emin and Massey would show up at Aegon's
councils even though they were sworn to storms, and so they
were kind of already his. So he was asking for he's like,
look, these guys are already kind of mine, let's make it
official. But our Galac wasn't having
that. He didn't like that, so he
rejected this. Not only did he rejected
angrily, as the quote says, he cut off the envoy's hands, but
this is a massive breach of protocol.
For a king. To do that to another High Lord
is really out of place. I mean that's just it's a wild
thing to do. I mean just say no and tell them
you're mad and you know I'm going to you know I'll kill you
if I see you. But his envoy I mean that's just
just don't do that. It's a this violates their
religion. It violates his honor.
I mean it's it's not a viable pushback by the dictates of
their culture. So I I think that even people in
Argalacs own court were probably uncomfortable with this.
They were like don't do that king.
You know they may not have said anything because the dude's mad
enough to do it. Well what might he do to you for
for saying don't do that you know so but but by in their
minds they'd be like ooh this is this is a cursive thing to do
this might bring bad fortune on us.
The gods will not shine on us here.
But hey, Storm's end is it's founding is wrapped up in, do
you know, pushing back against the gods.
Denial of what the gods want. Right.
The whole legend of Duran Durandon and Ellen.
I was was a, you know, middle finger to the gods.
It's like, no, I'll my daughter, your daughter is gonna marry me.
Screw you, you know. Even still, this envoy is not a
guy. He's just a dude trying to do
his job. Like chopping someone's hands
off. Never mind envoy or gods or
protocol. It's just messed up, man.
It's the messed up thing to do. Period.
Yeah, it reminds us of A Dance With Dragons when Danny sends
envoys to Mantares only to have their heads cut off and sent
back in a box. Now, Mantares isn't exactly a
city that is beholden to Westerosi cultural values, but
the treatment of envoys is kind of a universal thing.
This is, yeah. The treatment of people's heads
is kind of a universal thing. It's hard for a culture to exist
that doesn't respect people's heads.
Yeah, I mean, this is the messenger.
Like it To talk about literally killing the messenger.
I mean, damn, this is this is bad.
So. Real quick, these lands.
How similar is that to what just end up being the crown lands
anyway? Oh, it's pretty much what is the
crown Lands? And didn't his marriage just
ended up happening anyway? Yeah, right.
It becomes the crown. Also, yeah, right?
Yeah, this is just purely This guy should listen to Baylon.
Yeah, yeah, really should have. And it's odd.
The couple things are odd about this.
So he's not willing to have his daughter Mary Oris.
He gets mad about that because Oris is a bastard, which in
their culture, I guess that is. You know, I wouldn't have
reacted like that, but it it might have, it might have been
meant as an insult. I doubt it.
Cuz Oris and Agon were friends and childhood companions.
Like, I don't think Agon's like I'm gonna insult him by offering
my best friends and watch this. But he may have played it both
ways. He's like, well, from our
perspective, this is the only Targaryen blood you'll get.
You know, we this is something we're very protective of.
We don't just marry other houses cuz we keep the blood of the
dragon pure. This guy is my half brother, my
father's son. He is the blood of Valyria.
So us having him married to someone is a big deal.
Sure he's a bastard, but does that even mean the same thing to
a Valyrian? A bastard like I don't think
they have the same. We surely can't assume it that
they care to the same degree that a Westerosi person does
about children out of wedlock. We already know the Darnish
don't care as much, and they even follow the same religion is
the Faith of the 7th, so it isn't even necessarily a
religious thing, it's more of a cultural thing.
And we cannot assume at all, given how little we know about
Valyria that that children in or out of wedlock matter as much,
especially given the importance of the actual magical blood
being passed down. I kind of think that's the more
important part, or at least would be a more important
generation. From a Valyrian perspective,
it's like, who's actually giving our blood?
Who's actually a threat to take our Dragons are the people that
have this bloodline, so it's a big offer from their
perspective. So they might our galac
rejecting it angrily might be like, you're angry at our offer.
We offered you a lot and it isn't even less really a point
of pride. Like, oh, you should be willing
to accept this because you're lesser than us.
No, they almost treated him like an equal.
This is as close as they ever get to treating someone like an
equal in this early phase. You know, for your logic, it
might not have been so crazy for Agon, the unworthy to have.
Legitimized as bastards, The Ambassadors is a big deal.
Maybe. I mean, that's a lot farther
down the timeline, but you're right, it might be.
Yeah, he's thinking. That the cultural effects might
have bled more into the Targaryen's, and it definitely
has. Awful implications about how the
the, the, the, the crown is going to be passed and the words
that start because of it. But maybe in and of itself he's
like, of course I legitimize my bastards or targarians or
targarians. You might have had that
bastards. Doesn't, doesn't matter, you
know? Yeah, like, yeah, just just
different values. Yeah, you're right to think
about it from a different angle. It's not the same perspective as
that we see from a lot of West Rossi in their attitude towards
bastardy. Also by the way, the removal of
hands recurring theme with House Baratheon.
One way or the other a lot of removed hands are gonna become
important here and including their in laws much later with
Jamie. Yeah HM yeah HM.
So it's wild that he was upset about bastardy, but did he just
not care that he was offering his own daughter to be a third
wife to a? Like how is how's Durden going
to continue if you give your only daughter to egg on And it's
his third? What?
Like what? How does this even work?
Like he's concerned about this bastardy thing but he doesn't
seem to mind that his own daughter that he's offering to
egg on is going to be in a polygamous marriage which is
against their beliefs. And well, who is Storm Zen going
to go to when he's dead? His daughter that is just now
married to the Crown like he's is he.
He's asking you for just this small bit of the crown lands.
Well it's not the Crown lands yet but he's asking you for the
small bit of territory that's kind of already his because the
Lord's already show up for his meetings but you're giving him
the whole storm lands by giving his your daughter to him like
this guy. Just there's either more to the
story or he didn't think it through or both.
Like, this one potential possibility here again, thinking
of the story that we're front and center on right now.
How's the dragon slash, The beginning of the Dance of the
Dragons and fire and blood. Look at how Baratheon reacted.
Boros Baratheon reacted to being told he had to help Rainera.
He's like, oh, so I'm just, I just, you call me, you just Call
My Name and I have to send my armies up.
You know? That's how it works.
Pride, Big deal here. His pride was severely tested by
this, and there's long been a theory that the Meister didn't
use the exact language from the letter.
He may have exaggerated it to push him one way or the other.
We cuz Boros brathing can't read the Meister and the show was
clever. They had him read it into his
ear like he's like, he's with a whisper, whisper, whisper,
whisper. So we don't know what was said.
Just like in fire blood presented that way.
The Meister whispers in his ear and it's like whispers in his
ear, eh, when you hear that phrase you're like, well, how
did it? How exactly did he word it?
He's trying to push it one round and say yeah, there's a
possibility here as well Argalac gets a letter.
Do you think Argalac could read? I don't know.
I'm dubious. Let's say it's dubious.
It's very questionable. So maybe he's made to red skill.
What's that? Might be lacking that skill.
Yeah, that's right. He argalacs the ability to read.
Frequent reminder that we've made before that Argalac the
Arrogant was a character George created in the 60s.
Not for obviously not for so long.
Life and fire. Originally it was in his The
Dark Gods of Kor You ban or whatever it was.
I forget exactly. I know we talked about this
before, but I don't have it in my notes for this episode.
But anyway, so the arrogance certainly comes out here.
This guy's like plan to commit suicide by dragon.
Yes, that. Was it kor you ban?
Yeah, you got it right, Kor you ban.
All right, go. Me.
So did Aegon know? Like, we.
I wonder, did he know what he was thinking?
Did he know this would piss our gala off?
Did he Was he trying to bait our gala?
Like, I know this is going to piss him off and we'll just,
that's going to work. If you put him on tilt, he's
going to make dumb decisions that'll make this all the more
easier. Regardless, aside from what
Argalac thought of Oris's this offer, Oris's hand is really
valuable aside the bloodline dragon bonding stuff.
Even taking that aside, he's the highest ranking unlanded
Valyrian person at Aegon's Court not named Targaryen.
Obviously the Valerians and Celtic Guards are landed, so
that's they're not including them and he's Aegon's friend.
Like how good of an in is that? To have as you're in law, the
King's childhood best friend? Like he's shutting this.
Like again from Aegons was like, man, we offered this guy a lot
and he just cut our envoys hands off, right?
Like, but if he knows that's going to happen, if he know, he
probably doesn't know the hands are going to get cut off.
But if he predicts an angry reaction, it can be like, oh,
we're the good guys here. Westeros sees the situation.
Who's the one violating laws of hospitality?
Argalac? Who's the 1:00 making
disingenuous offers Argal. Who's the one offering to marry
the daughter, but just under slightly different.
Agon is like this. Agon seems like he's more
willing to compromise, like from a high level view.
So Agalac just comes off looking real bad here.
Whether no matter what side you take in terms of public, in
terms of optics, Arglac looks bad.
And he looks dumb too. I think a little more about
Oris. We don't know anything about his
mother like we know he was. His father was Aryan, you know,
Agon and Vicinity and Rainey's dad.
But like, where does this name Brathian even come from?
It's completely just out of cuz. Again, this is another reason
why it's a clue that bastardy works a lot different in
Valyrian culture, or had gone some, maybe gone some evolution
at Dragonstone over those 100 years.
He's not. Or he's Waters.
Right where there are no Gratians before him.
Is he the first brat thing we know?
The first that we know of? Maybe his mom.
It's possible that his mom was. It's possible is not Mom's name
was like. Beyond like right, like like it
could be like bar could mean just like how you could be bar
Emin and like we see that I. Was gonna say there's even a bar
Emin. Yeah, because bar and that's how
Stone dance, one of those ones that, yeah, that we just talked.
About South, like the idea that you could say BAR means like of
like someone like Emin was their father Theon or LC, I don't
know. That's my theory about it is
that maybe there was a root in terms of like the name of the
parent. So yeah we have no idea where
that name originates. Nowhere.
So yeah could come from the mother could be like she was a
noble of some kind from some house from from distance,
disenfranchised house back from Valeria that that fled with the
Targaryens. So she still has noble blood,
but she's that she not landed anymore and.
And that was my thought, that maybe it was some other ancient
Valerian house, or maybe not ancient but someone concurrent
to the Targaryens or tribute or maybe actually relative of them.
I like the bar because Bar Emmons also such a.
It doesn't fit the mold of any of the names, you know what I
mean? And so now thinking about how
similar Baratheon is to that. I really like your ideas.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's almost like, yeah, it isn't.
Because Bar M and that sounds like a real life Jewish name.
Yeah, that's kind of what it makes.
Suffix is like a male. It's male or female.
That's male, right? That's male, Yeah, for like, bar
mitzvah. Yeah, exactly.
It's bar mitzvah. Yeah, for women.
So that is kind of what it makes me think of as well, I don't you
know, and like Bar MN is. Son of Theon or something, Yeah,
Yeah. So it's very, yeah, it's a
really compelling idea. And and so there might have been
and this person, this mother of Oris might have still been
alive. Like it's entirely possible as
Aegon and Vicenia and Ranis's mother was probably alive too.
But. It's entirely possible.
But you know, she died on Charlotte, where it's coming.
Yeah, so obviously Valyria would just like the Westeros would
have to account for things like property laws and inheritance,
so they would have laws around bastardy and all that stuff.
But it again, we cannot assume it's the same and we definitely
can't assume the cultural view of bastards is the same or even
similar. Cuz in Westeros they're
obviously they're shunned and like big time.
And there's no reason to think that's how it was in Valyria.
Yeah, all right. I think that's our good place to
stop for this week. We're gonna start next week with
the claim. The thing I started talking
about by accident, I jumped ahead and Asheya pointed out I
had jumped ahead. Good catch there.
So that'll be a great place to start next week, and I'm excited
for that. This is a great start.
I loved our pacing here. I loved our progress.
I loved a lot of the little rabbit holes we dove into.
Some of them, most of them were planned, a few of them were not.
That's the value of doing these things live.
A couple of y'all threw in some ideas that helped us out and
that's how it's going to go. We'll hone our process a little
more, but this is basically how it's going to go the way through
until we get to the death of a series.
Another comment from Christina Kay.
In my opinion, the reason George's mysteries work so well
is that he never asked the question.
In universe like, no one ever asks who is John's dad, right?
You just read it and you're like, wait a minute, who is
John's dad? Which is just what we did with
Orius Baratheon. Like what's Orius's mom like?
Who's Orius's mom? Where does his name come from?
No one in the world asks where does the name Baratheon come
from? Because if we they did, we'd
have thought about this a lot sooner.
Perhaps we would have arrived, perhaps in the same place
because we have the same info, but we wouldn't have.
It's fun to discover the question on your own rather than
have it thrown in your face. It's neat.
It's a little more satisfying when you discover the question
or when we discover the question and tell it.
You want a podcast? Yeah.
All right. The trivia question.
The question was, what does George himself call Fire and
Blood, his nickname for it, as inspired by Jr.
Tolkien? Did anyone get this one?
Yeah, a lot of people got it, I thought so.
A lot of people got it. A few people had some fun
guessing, some like. Other ideas.
They were like, you know, Tar Gillian, Tar Gurilian, still
Margari. People got a little silly but
just like I think everyone knew it's the Gur Marillian, yeah,
which is funny cuz it says the word Marillion like the singer
but and the band, the English band, the British band from the
70s. But yes, the Gur Marillion is
what he calls it the G like the Sil Marillion, of course, the
Tokyian history and lore book that is beloved.
I've also read the Silver Lane myself.
I do not remember much about it at all.
It was a long time ago, but it was fun.
I do remember enjoying it. Can I add a little thing here to
the talk about bar names? But of course.
So I got a message not in the chat from listener Dom who said.
He has a Reddit post from many years ago where he theorized
that bar was an associate bastard name and I.
The notable thing here that I'll take from that is that the
original, the name of the original Bar Emin is to Gary and
Bar Emin, and they say he's an and all Warlord doesn't sound
her and all. It sounds like a Valyrian like
bastard, like an associate, like tagarian.
Yeah, like that sounds like he was a bastard of like, I don't
know. I think, I think.
It's a good idea. Togarian sounds a lot like
Targaryen. But it credits him as being an
and all warlord. So I think that was a bastard
who was part and all part. Yeah, I like an and all Valyrian
bastard. That's a cool idea.
Official head cannon. And we're corrected.
Which will probably be never, but I like it.
So yeah, Germerling was the answer.
Next week we'll pick up where we left off.
Left off And If you want to dive deeper into these related
topics, check out our episode before the Dragons.
Check out our multiple episodes under the Dragons.
Check out the episode on Valerian.
Check out the episode on The Doom.
Check out the episode on Dragonstone.
Check out our two episodes on Valerian history.
Check out our episode on Valerian history.
Check out our episode on Celtigar or Celtigar if you
prefer. That's one episode, not two.
Check out our episode. But we did one episode on
Celticar and one episode on Celticar, and we just like.
The same thing. It's the same thing we just
pronounced. It definitely just said it
differently. Or check out our episode on The
Century of Blood. I mean The Century of Blood.
Or our Or our Patrons only episode on Mantares where those
heads were cut off. And heads are a big part of that
episode because there's multiple headed people in Mantares.
And for that reason, we theorize that maybe there's a connection
between Mantaris and Melis the Monstrous who had a congenital
twin sticking out of his neck. Yikes.
Yeah, that's strange. But apparently a real life
thing. But in this case, probably
supernatural and not a reflection of the real life
thing, but who knows? Anyway, we'll see you all next
week. Thank you, Patrons, for
supporting us. We really appreciate you backing
us financially. We.
Are still trying to build our self up to the ability for all
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Yeah, so you know, I hope because we do end up having some
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But if you're here living live now, you can know that we're
going to have our next Patreon Quiplash, Discord.
Hangout will be on August 24th at 9:00 PM Eastern and that post
will go out with more info, but you can know to mark the day the
24th. And again, we'll be doing it
every month, varying the day. So if you miss this month,
you'll catch the next time. Patreon is a cadet branch of
House, per Atheon. They're the financial managers
of the Patreon, Yes. Yeah, that's it.
Sure. And thank you for the happy
belated birthday wishes as well. Yes, it was a Shane birthday
last. I know.
That's why we took a week off. We went to Chicago, I went to
some of Lollapalooza. We saw a friend of the show,
Tommy Pappas, who does Tkok podcast and other stuff and.
He was a great host and we just had a really great It was my
30th birthday and I had a great time, so thank you.
It was super fun, yes. Thanks to people who came out to
hang out with us while we were there too.
Cuz yeah, we did meet a few we met.
At least we saw a few listeners, one of whom we met for the first
time. Other people we had met before,
yes. So thanks y'all.
Thanks as well to Joey, Jesse and Bran for our music and video
intro to Michael Klarfeld. Also, wonderful additions to our
show make us seem so much more professional.
And thanks to the engineer for sound quality assistance and
going forward for the Fire and Blood series.
For now, we're trying out every episode on video so you can
watch us on Spotify and or YouTube and on Spotify you can
toggle Leon off video feed. Some people you don't want to
have that much bandwidth on your phone, but you might can flip
the video on. When we mentioned that there's
artwork or maps on screen, or if you just want to see what shirts
we're wearing, I have my, you know, John Cocco Theater Dragon
here from This was the premiere, the premiere of House of the
Dragon at that George's Theater in Santa Fe, and Shay and I went
to that. We were very.
There was a shirt for it. Huh.
Shirt for it? Yes, this is one of my most
prized fandom shirts. Very cool.
I have a I got this shirt at the official kind of Thrones Game of
Thrones con. Game of Thrones con LA.
It's a host of Dragon shirt. Nice.
Not a house shirt, Not so. You should be house to show, so
you should be hearing about the same amount of us, but you'll be
seeing even more of us if you've been.
You might want to toggle on to see my weird drinks.
Yeah, I'll do another soy sauce pickle juice one next week.
Someone someone suggested that you should really throw people
for a loop some week and just drink water.
My drink today is clear. Look at this clear drink.
I'm not wasting stomach. My stomach space with empty
calories from water. An insight into Sean's beverage
thought process there. And with that, we'll see you
next week. For more valor, reread us.