Aegon had been crowned when the Conquest began, or arguably
before it began. No one had actually bent a
single knee other than people who had already bent their knee
to him as their Lord. But now that it was nearing
completion, a second crowning became more sensible, and it
made sense for a variety of reasons.
He had wanted all along, as a strategy to demonstrate his
power as a Dragon Lord 1st and then as a king, and with that
power to overwhelm everyone. And what better way to
demonstrate that? By being ordained by the most
powerful religious leader in the biggest city, with Valerian on
hand for all to see. None could doubt the stories
they had heard of the ease in which the Targaryens had
subjugated dynasties that had ruled for eons.
Everyone would know, and everyone would know why.
But even with all those eyes on the Dragons, with all those
knees bent to the Conqueror, and even with the seven above
seemingly accepting Aegon as their king, there remained many
who did not. They didn't see it that way.
Some chose independence, Some descended into.
I'd say chose Chaos, but more like Chaos chose them.
Some followed different gods, so the ordaining of the High Septon
didn't mean as much, but all would pay a high price for their
shot at freedom. And I say shot because not all
would be successful. Today we discuss the unbowed and
more on this episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Hello and welcome everybody. We are live almost every 3:00 PM
Eastern on YouTube on Sundays. You can catch the video anytime
afterwards or an edited version on Spotify.
And the audio only version is available everywhere you listen
to podcasts. And it's ad free if you listen
on Patreon. Sean, what do you got to drink
today? I'm I'm boring as usual.
Chocolate. Coffee in a thermos.
You know, I'm I'm consistent at least.
I do think that your shirt is kind of Halloween evocative.
That castle looks like a ghost face for the flaming head.
You're you're right. It's a high tower shirt.
We like the way the tower does kind of have eyes and a mouth.
And I don't like a Carrot Top head here, I guess you could
say. Yeah, it's Jack O Lantern ish,
but tower style. That's why it's screaming.
It's on fire. No, I'm Carrot Top I.
Try to make an orangish drink. It's kind of creamy, you know,
the the naked protein drinks haven't been the the naked
drinks are there, but not the protein ones.
So I've had to branch out. This is the the Mango naked
drink, but with the Bolthouse vanilla protein drink and of
course, Mountain Dew. So kind of orangey.
Halloweeny. Sweet like candy and crazy.
Just crazy and kind of scary like Halloween too.
'Cause, you know, I'm afraid of what that would taste like.
I thought my branzixture was pretty Halloween evocative too.
Yes, human horn brand, indeed. So shout out to our excellent
and smart friend Nina, who has received a question on her blog,
Good Queen allie.tumblr.com with one Ellen Allie.
If Tywin was to remarry, what kind of marriage alliance would
he look for? It obviously wouldn't be a
marriage for love. What would he aim for?
So check goodqueenalley.tumblr.com for
how Nina responds to this question.
It's not straightforward, yet it is straightforward.
I like her answer quite a bit. I don't want to go on too much
of A tangent, but it it makes me think, why didn't Tyrone
remarry? It seems like there would have
been a valuable strategic. Political move.
He didn't want to. It's simple as that.
He did not want to, and he thinks.
He's above it. Yeah, he's above it.
He's willing to tell people you need to do this, you need to do
that. But when it comes down to it,
he's not willing to do it. Yeah, he's a huge hypocrite.
We've said it a million times and he's.
Exactly right. But I wonder if.
And if someone had confronted him, who but who?
Literally who would confront? Tywin.
If seriously, who confronts Tywin?
Let's say Kevin does. Kevin.
He'll shut him down. Tywin's like, you have no
authority over me. I'm not talking about.
That's what he did to anyone who even remotely brought.
It up. Do you think internally it was
just like he hadn't gotten over his wife or oh, yes, of course,
Like there's no replacing her like he was.
She was perfect for him. And there's no, there's no
replacing either who she was or her or the circumstances, their
upbringing as well as someone who was not too close to him in
terms of their value, views on incest, but still within the the
close enough to him that he could see her as an equal or or
someone that's not beneath him, maybe, if not an equal, not
someone way far beneath him. So yeah, basically a huge
hypocrite and very proud. The combination they're in and a
bad father, all those things. We loved it.
We loved to talk bad about Tywin because it's so easy.
And you know what? That all rubbed off on his kids.
I think that's fairway to call. Describe all his kids
hypocritical and arrogant or whatever.
Yeah, absolutely. And proud.
Yeah. And yeah.
And he it's, it's very, very well written all of that.
You know the reason he evokes such like I was like who who
would talk about like because Tywin like it's personal like we
thought about him so much you know and and and it's it's it's
sunk in and you know it it bleeds into real world stuff
like how real fathers can be the.
Fact that it didn't cause real frustration in you thinking
about it means it had to be written really Well, yeah, yeah,
exactly. It just will come full circle on
this. Like why did that?
Why did that slightly bother me just now?
Because it's so well done and it's realistic and it's like
damn bad fathers really can bring bring that that anger
streak out. So anyway, yeah, so questions.
If you have any questions, whether they're live or
something you occurs to you while you're listening while
we're not live, send it to westeroshistory@gmail.com or
type it in the comments if you're if you're watching live
and this episode is brought to you in part by patrons such as.
I I like how Aziz, you you dubbed the newer patrons as new
pledges and older patrons as veterans.
That's a good way we'll start off.
With a couple of veterans. Nov Shadow binder from the
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We speak for the trees. You go tree girl.
And Lord George Stormsville, the cunning Lord of the Chiliad and
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Lord George, Lord George storms Lord George Stormsville.
That's that's up there with Irish wristwatch.
Lord of Jordans storms. Yeah, never mind.
OK, yeah, it's really hard. A couple newer ones we've got
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champion of Sansa, I'm going to say your name.
I'm going to give you some credit.
You get Sean's eye that way. Narcosis Wet star Dane motto A
dry sword is a dull sword. Nice.
I think Narcosis has been around is a returning had been there
and came back. That name's very familiar.
I like that one a lot. Narcosis Dane.
That's cool. Wet star.
One last one. Another mouthful here stives the
white captain of the hopeful patriots, a band of exile
Knights motto. The world ends when hope dies.
Yeah, that's cool. Well, I hope Hope doesn't die
then, because I would like the world to continue.
You can find all these Patreon names, the History of
westeros.com along with everything else we mentioned
throughout this episode. Anytime we bring up patrons or
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find those Patreon names, you could get your own Patreon name.
Good, True. Good.
True.
Good said. Well said.
Yeah, Yeah, so I'll mention episodes at the end of this one
that relate to this one to keep you immersed if you want to stay
in Westeros. And we'll also kick it off with
the trivia question, the answer, which is also at the end of this
episode. And as we've been doing lately,
the new pattern with the trivia questions is the answer can be
found within the episode. Who gave Princess Maria of Dorne
her nickname, the Yellow Toad? Who dubbed her the Yellow Toad?
Our first section is called Open Gates at Old Town, and we'll
start it off with a quote. The greatest city in all of
Westeros, Old Town, was ringed about with massive walls.
And ruled by the High Towers of the High Tower, the oldest,
richest, and most powerful of the noble houses of the Reach,
Old Town was also the center of the faith.
There dwelt the High Septon, Father of the Faithful, the
voice of the new gods on earth, who commanded the obedience of
millions of devout throughout the realms save in the North,
where the Old Gods still held sway, and the blades of the
Faith Militant. The fighting order the small
folk called the Stars and Swords.
Yet when Aegon Targaryen and his host approached Old Town, they
found the city gates open and Lord Hightower waiting to make
his submission. This is something that's a
slightly puzzling that we've talked about, and it affects the
timing. Maybe not puzzling, but curious
or interesting or worth discussing.
And that by that I mean that Aegon didn't know until he got
there that they had surrendered, apparently.
You know, maybe he brought some scouts.
Go ahead. And they're like, they came
back, like the doors are just open.
Like, I don't think they're going to try to fight you, you
know, I don't. It might be a trick, but I don't
think that's a very good trick. Just leaving your doors open and
I'm like, it's like, seems pretty genuine, right?
Seems pretty sincere. So it's it's it would have been
really interesting to know at what point did they learn that,
yeah, they're not going to fight you.
They may have already known they've already suspected it
because, well, if they were planning on fighting, why not
join forces with their overlord at the field of fire?
Why wait and try for a second try, especially after the first
one was such a complete failure. So that doesn't really make much
sense, does it? So Aegon was probably at least
suspecting that they were going to concede, or that they already
would. It may have been odd that they
didn't send an envoy out ahead to announce this, but maybe
that's also just how the history is recorded, and it's exactly
how it happened. And I don't blame them either.
I mean, I would have knelt too. I would have knelt fast.
But no one knelt harder than Old Town.
I mean, they they knelt big. They planned ahead.
They had a whole cover story as to why they were going to kneel.
The gods told them to like they were very prepared.
This was not a Should we kneel? OK, yeah, we'd better kneel or
else. Now this was this was very
planned. Preordained, like ordained is is
a funny word to use here because this was preordained.
Like the moment Aegon sent out his letters.
Apparently this prophecy came to the High Septon, or he started
praying over it and seven days later, etcetera.
So they had decided to bend the knee, apparently all the way
back when the Crown land, before the Crown lands were even
settled. But they were also prepared.
I supposed, to change their minds if Aegon just died during
the conquest, which is maybe why they never said anything.
Is that how you read it, Sean? Like they were just they they
were leaving their doors open in more ways than one, yeah.
I I hadn't considered why. It did seem to me like for
multiple reasons that they should.
Kneel. Like, you know, not only did it
seem like they just couldn't beat him and they have a lot to
lose, like their their castle and their people and their
resources all getting burned by a dragon would be, you know, not
that it wasn't awful for Harrenhal to get built, but
Harrenhal didn't have the history to it.
That Old Town has, you know, and now Aegon has more forces than
before. After conquering those photos,
now there's extra people with them to come attack.
There's all kinds of reasons, and I also do feel like they're.
Their prophecy. You know, here and there.
Maybe some people genuinely believed it, but it's a pretty
easy thing to believe, you know, like God told me to do the right
thing. Well, it's going to do the right
thing anyway, but sure, the God told me if I jump off this
building, I will die. Like, Oh yeah, did God tell you
that? Or science.
Yeah, I guess I would jump off the building, whatever the
reason is. Like whatever justification
either way. But but yeah, all three agree.
Yeah, I did. They didn't send someone out
ahead of time to announce that is is interesting.
And again, maybe they did. But maybe it makes for less
interesting of a story, right? Maybe it's more symbolic for
Aegon to show up and her doors were open, rather than the
middleman story of some envoy. Or maybe they even tried, but
the envoy couldn't get there. Or maybe they had instructions,
only talk to Aegon, but they weren't allowed to talk.
Day I can. I can see other.
Behind the scenes minutiae that is just citizen as interesting
as important for the story. Yeah.
And and we've seen this before throughout Fire and Blood and
other parts of the history where it seems like is that really
what happened or is that just a way to come out and make it look
nice afterwards? And we're not saying like you
know, is George fooling us here? No, I mean, like did George
write the history in a way so that it shows how the in world
historians would have done things that real world
historians tend to do? It's something that we've come
back to many times of course, but this is an important spot to
remind ourselves of that because just as say for example, the
death of of Argelact arrogant, like did he was it really just a
lat one-on-one duel where they each wounded each other once and
all very stored. But that's why it's written that
way. The story resonates.
That's what they want people to believe because it it keeps them
in place or makes them believe something that they think is
important to upholding their authority.
Or the story of Aegon, the story of Oris Parathy, and this is
something they have engineered, just like the story of Old Town.
Surrender is not a story of cowardice, right?
It's some like when Tauren goes back NA lot of his constituents
will be like, well that was cowardly, but we don't hear that
about Old Town because it's like, oh, it's not us.
The gods told us to surrender. Who says no to the gods?
It's not cowardly when the gods tell you to do it.
And it's just the same thing. It's not dirty to steal Argylla
Durenden and make her your wife if you're noble about it, right?
And it's like, well, that's you got to read between the lines
and be like, there's really no way to make that noble.
But their their cell, they're trying to make it sound noble
because they want this new ruler who's taken over a dynasty that
existed for 8000 years to. They want that to be a smooth
transition, as smooth as possible.
And you know, making him look good is one of the best ways to
do that, Make him look honorable.
Along the same lines, some of the constituents in the north.
At that time, might have been grumbling, right?
But it's not the way the story goes.
It's not the way the Targaryens wanted to be told.
They don't want the story to be this coward in the North is now
one of our wardens, right? They want to be this wise man in
the North did the right thing. That's the the the lesson and
the legacy. You know, Aegon's not trying to
shame them either. He doesn't want them to bend the
knees in and look bad. He want 'cause they're now his
like second and third and fourths in command.
Like you don't want cowards and your your authority structure
and your hierarchy structure are these people who look like
cowards. If they are, you don't want them
to look like that, you know? But you do want people that are
wise and loyal and you know and know when they can win and when
they shouldn't. When they can't you know and to
use common sense rather than pride or or think of their own
people, think of their the common folk beneath them and the
responsibility you have towards them.
So and and everything that happened throughout the war,
they decided they were going to bend the knee.
Maybe they didn't tell anybody, but everything they saw
throughout the war just confirmed that their decision
was or that their command from above was correct.
Like Yep, the gods were right about that one.
And as you pointed out Sean and it just got worse.
Like now Aegon's army is larger like the time to stand up to
them has passed like it's harder now than it was.
And Nina points points as well. The Hightowers had a lot to
lose. They had more to lose than a lot
of these others. Old Town is the biggest city in
the region. Of course, that event or in the
realm, eventually that changes. But again, we got to remind
ourselves King's Landing is not bigger than Old Town at this
point. It's barely started at this
point. Say, hey, been the second
biggest? Well, yeah, that's still a lot
to lose, right. Yeah, you're right.
Yeah, that's you're right. That's almost irrelevant point
like whether it's first, second, third.
It's huge. It's really important and that
that's what matters, not which exactly how large it is compared
to the others and the faith of the Citadel.
Like it's not just the city, it's the heart of religion in
the entire country. Like what happens if they play
it stubbornly? What if they play it like
Argalac or something like that and decide to go down swinging?
Well, at the end of all that, you might have no more Great
Sept in Old Town. It might have been destroyed, or
the High Septon has been killed, or just really bad things that
make it hard for everyone to get along afterwards.
Like you don't want to. It's the same thing.
You don't want to cause that bad blood that lingers for
generations. You want to try to minimize
that. That's why if if you're going to
take on a family, you wipe them out entirely.
Don't Don't let any of them survive so they can come get
revenge later, like the hair and the Blacks family, or maybe even
the gardeners and maybe a few other lesser examples.
But you know, that's just one way to keep peace in the realm
is to eliminate all those who would otherwise disturb that
peace. It's not always just, but it is
effective. To keep peace in a realm where
the leaders are chosen randomly by the oldest born son.
Like, that's given that that's the random way you're choosing
your leaders. Yeah, it's already not a great
system. Of course they think it's a
great system. They think, of course.
Well, why would you do it any other way?
Well it's like why Of course that's the best system.
Just because it's has problems doesn't mean there's anything
better. Of course that's that's what we
that's how we look at a lot of our systems and I was like what
could be better? It sucks.
But what could be better? Well maybe there are better
things. Anyway so and this is we say
it's and we talked about this from a Hightower perspective and
we we covered this in the Under the Dragons episode.
We have no way of knowing how sincere they were.
They may have been completely sincere.
They may have truly believed the gods told them this, or maybe
the High Septon did and Lord Manford Hightower went along
with it. Or maybe the other way around.
The High Septon is the one who's a little bit of a politician but
makes all the pious noises. And Lord Manford Hightower was
the one that actually believed was like, that's that God said,
so it's done, you know, So there's no way to be sure.
But it's really interesting to think about because it's
probably not simple. It's probably not, oh, he's just
super devout and not political at all.
Or he's super political and not devout at all.
It's probably somewhere in between.
It's also probably not just him, right?
It's him and the septum and the other members of their family
and the other. I don't know what Sub Septums
would be called Cardinals or bishops or whatever.
And there's probably like some equivalent of like a maester and
a master coin. It's probably a lot of people
getting together trying to figure out.
How to manage this right? And among those people, there's
probably a mix of people who were like We should stand up and
fight, we should not sacrifice our people to Dragons.
What do the gods want us to do? And all those people will be so
easily placated by saying God told us, like the political
people. Like, sure, that's a good story.
Yeah, the the wise people. Like, if that story works, let's
do it. The the the devout people will
obviously go along with it. So it's.
I was really mad that he surrendered until I found out
that God said so. Then it was cool and like, oh,
OK, I get it now. Yeah, and that's and that's a
great point Nina makes here too, which is how do you look at an
Undefeated, basically. Unstoppable rolling force here
of Aegon and the Dragons. How do you look at that and say
this isn't or like ordained? You know it's hard to argue that
the warrior isn't behind Aegon when he just beats everybody
that that worships the warrior more directly and he's and he
does worship the warrior now at this point.
So how do you ignore that the gods you either have to say the
gods have chosen this or you have to say that the gods don't
want this but they're losing. You know, like how do you frame
that? It's difficult when.
You live in a world when your beliefs exist because you think
God's made it this way. So if the God's made it this
way, then you have to look at what's happening and say, well,
the God's made it this way. I guess this is how it is, that
God's Aegon is just steamrolling everyone.
That must be what the gods want because you can't have it both
ways. You can't believe the gods are
in charge and then also believe the gods don't want this.
You can believe they're testing you.
You can always like. Do that sort of thing.
But but you don't have to. That's not the only choice you
have. You know, you can also say this
is what they want. I don't want to create too much
of A tangent, but plenty of people do do that.
Oh yeah, you can. Yeah, absolutely.
But people that have a lot to lose tend not to like the
Hightowers, right? They're like, well, we let's
come up with a reason that fits this world view.
But also gets us what we want or keeps us from losing, you know,
Keeps us from dying and all our people dying.
Yeah, keeps us. From dying, which you, which I
get like I think that's a fine time to tell a few lies if
you're going to save a bunch of lives.
Yes. I don't think honesty Trump's
keep survival. You know what I mean?
Like there's there's something to be said for honor and
honesty, but not at the cost of just, you know, people dying,
especially other people. People who aren't you.
Like that's that's the way that's even worse.
So. Anyway, whatever was actually in
these people's hearts and minds, we can never know for sure this
is what actually happened. Quote.
Thus it was that no men from Old Town burned on the field of
fire, though the High Towers were bannermen to the gardeners
of High Garden. And thus it was that Lord
Manfred rode forth to greet Aegon the dragon as he
approached, and to OfferUp his sword, his city, and his oath.
Some say that Lord Hightower also offered up the hand of his
youngest daughter, which Aegon declined politely lest it offend
his 2 Queens. We discussed that marriage offer
at the time in the Under the Dragons episode, so refer back
to that if you're curious about about it.
We also, I believe, discussed some of it at the beginning of
the Conquest, Beginning of the Fire and Blood Reread because
there were several offers of this sort and we covered them
all at once rather than individually.
So this is wise, like the Starks to bend, but a little more
creative in their justification, but also.
Possibly a huge parallel, right? It might be prophecy.
There may have been some supernatural dreaming, or at
least influence here. And in the part of the decision,
Neil, whether it was stated or genuine, whether it was just a
cover story for kneeling or something that actually happened
or both, we don't know, but it's very possible something that
happened in both cases. Just a quick tangent, just
thinking about that. Just for example, let's say that
this knowledge of the others coming one day that that Aegon
potentially saw that viscera saw, you know that we we seem to
know that now what if Torrance Stark saw it also or some other
earlier Stark saw it and was passing it down.
And similarly, you know I think there might be an argument for
like tell everyone make sure everyone knows and is on board
and is ready for this prophecy. But maybe that you seem crazy or
you get twisted interpretations or whatever but but but I'm just
saying that might be a reason. Torn might have known he needed
to surrender. He might have known this was
coming, but he still needed to put on the right show, went
down, talked to Aegon. That might have been part of the
negotiations, you know and and I wanted to look right, right And
I wonder to if that could have been passed down through
generations of Starks and might have died when Aries burned the
this the Stark of Winterfell and his oldest son Ned might have
just not known, not have known the prophecy anyway.
I'm wondering if it's possible other people in other places
were aware of the same prophecy that Aegon might have been aware
of also. Just like we have wondered about
the tracking down through the years of Aegon's dream and who
it went to and who learned about it.
If there was a Stark prophecy, or if the Stark if there must be
a Stark and Winterfell isn't just a political necessity, but
may have some supernatural wrapped into it and maybe that
part was forgotten. Some of the original reasoning
behind it may have been forgot. Yeah, that's possible.
That's certainly or kept secret. Or kept secret?
Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah, that seems entirely
possible. Again, going back to all ideas
of like what's in their hearts and minds when they're
surrendering to Aegon. There, there maybe there really
was a prophecy, and some people really did believe it, you know,
or really even knew about it long ago, you know?
And and who knows what like vast knowledge is in the Hightower.
We know what was written here, but maybe they they framed it
as. The will of the seven.
But there could have been other prophecies or other writings
that they referred to that may have worried them, but they
didn't want to make that part of their cover story because, like,
we're not going to talk about some ancient text here.
No one's going to care about that.
That's just going to look cowardly or right.
We don't want to cloud if you don't want to confuse the issue,
yeah. Because we do.
We certainly know they have a lot of knowledge, a lot of vast
stores, and of things that we couldn't possibly know, things
that we couldn't dream of or guess at both in their own tower
and in the Citadel. Perhaps they would have access
to both? And so something interesting too
they were let one of the decisions that they made or one
of the results of their decision staying out of the field of fire
was that they were not there for the restructuring of the reach.
Now that May, they probably wouldn't have had any impact on
that. To be fair, they probably
wouldn't have changed anyone's mind.
They probably wouldn't have stopped the Tyrells from being
given High Garden and they may not have cared to interfere with
that. But we're told that there was a
lot of. Reach House is upset with that
decision. High Towers, not among them,
because they just weren't there for that.
They weren't part of the decision.
They weren't there to gripe. And then maybe since they hadn't
yet surrendered, they weren't going to make any waves until
they're like, I'm going to kneel to you.
But man, you shouldn't have given the Tyrells High Garden.
Man, that was that was a bad call.
It could also, it could also be because they knew that was part
of the prophecy. They knew that centuries into
the future, that they would still exist, be subject to the
Tyrells, and need to team up with the Targaryens to fight the
others. You know, they might have known
like, Oh well, it's it's all happening.
Look, it's in this thing, you know?
If there was some kind of prophecy or dream of that regard
that that may have been referring to them marrying the
dragon during the dance later, that would be interesting.
Of course that would lead to very bad things, but.
That's the uncertainty of prophecy, isn't it?
Yeah, So it's certainly not the first time that they have bent
the knee either. The type, the high towers.
They were kings of their own way back in the day.
They had to be subject to the Gardener Kings, and there was a
time when they weren't. But it was Lyman to Hightower
who rather than lose it all. Which is a similar decisions
like, look, you either have to bend the knee and accept the new
overlord or you might lose your tower, your city and all that.
You can still keep it, but under my authority.
And just like Lyman Hightower, Manfred Hightower took the
lesson and was like, Yep, better to lose a little authority than
to lose everything, so. Pretty pragmatic, pretty smart.
And from the Targaryen side, as much as we looked at this from
the Hightower side, the Targaryen side is pretty
interesting. What would they think?
Would they think this was a little?
Would Aegon think this was a little?
Would he see the politics and the the the gamesmanship behind
this decision to be like, sure. They waited this long to tell me
they were going to surrender. I think he kind of understood
what that meant. They were waiting to see what
happened, to see, to give themselves the option.
Of backing out because they couldn't support, like you said,
not only did they not support their Liege, they didn't support
him. He could have, they could have
show brought their troops to the field of fire to fight for him
if they had really been on his side from the beginning.
So these are the kind of things I think he would think about
now. Ultimately they bent the knee
and what he said was bend the knee and I'll treat you well.
So he's not going to go back on that, but he's also.
Not going to fully be able to count on them as like hardcore
loyalists cause a he understands that they have a lot to protect.
They have a lot of wealth that they are at stake to lose that
they could lose if they play it wrong.
So he knows that they're always going to put that first.
Even though he's their king, he can destroy them.
He knows that's the thing that matters to them most is their
own wealth and power, which of course it matters to them most.
So he's not he's he's neither foolish.
Naive or overly trusting about this, I think.
I mean Aegon doesn't come off as someone that would be overly
swayed by such things. On the other hand, there is
examples that we're going to get to of him being overconfident as
much as he projected extreme confidence because he really was
that great in terms of dominance and power and having Valerian.
There's some signs that it maybe went a little bit to his head.
Maybe he thought, OK, I've proved my point.
No one's going to stand up to me now, Who would possibly fight me
now? I've dominated everyone and
conquered almost the entire continent.
Well, there were some, but he may have taken some of their
surrender for granted, which we're going to be seeing here
throughout the rest of this episode.
So when the Hightowers didn't go hard for the gardeners, why
would Aegon expect them to go hard for him?
So he knows what he has. He was like, OK, I can count on
them to run this city. I can count on them to send me
taxes. But if it comes down to a big
war, I don't think I can count on them.
And he'd be right about that. And the the loyalty of Old Town
is going to become an ongoing back and forth, not just for
Aegon. It's not really going to be a
problem for Aegon, but for future Targaryen kings.
There's going to be a lot of work put in to make sure Old
Town is in the fold and then eventually where it'll be too
much in the fold when they marry into House Targaryen, but that's
quite a ways away still, that ball started rolling when it
when Old Town surrendered without a fight.
I think the positioning itself as a as a as a piece of power
that you can't quite grab onto. If you grab it too tightly, it
will be gone. If you don't hold on to it
tightly, it may go to some, it may help somebody else or help
on your enemies. And I think marrying into them
was holding it too tightly, quite hard, quite possibly.
Still, he was ultimately pleased that I think that he didn't have
to destroy them or do any severe damage or unleash Valerian.
It's a best case scenario. For the most part.
The highest up in taking his side, effectively taking his
side, was a massive windfall. Here's how it went after that
quote. Three days later, in the starry
Sept, His High Holiness himself anointed Aegon with the seven
oils, placed a crown upon his head, and proclaimed him Aegon
of House Targaryen, the first of his name, King of the Andals,
the Roinar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and
Protector of the Realm. 7 Kingdoms was the style used.
The Dorn had not submitted, nor would it for more than a century
to come. Only a handful of Lords had been
present for Aegon's first coronation at the mouth of the
Blackwater, but hundreds were on hand to witness his 2nd and 10s
of thousands cheered him afterward in the streets of Old
Town. As he rode through the city on
Valerians back. This is the same group of Lords
that had followed him to confront King Torin.
The ones that had submitted after the Field of Fire, with a
few River Lords mixed in from prior to that, and then a few
other Reach Lords who probably weren't on the Field of Fire who
decided it was finally time to submit.
Better now than later. The longer they waited, the
worse it would get. But picture Valerian going
through the streets. We've got art of this.
It's pretty incredible. Wowing the crowds And as it
says, the crowds would be enormous.
Hundreds of people at the coronation itself and then
thousands, 10s of thousands afterwards.
And this picture it, it's the spectacle, the spectacle, the
spectacle of a dragon is worth it alone.
Like if I lived in that world and there's a chance to see
Valerian, I would totally go do it.
You know, it's just a just a parade scenario.
Obviously. I wouldn't go to the field of
fire. I wouldn't go to the
battlefield. But if I knew it was just, you
know, hanging out, Of course I would go.
And I think most of you would too.
You'd want to see what that thing looks like, and you would
see that the rumors were real. It wasn't exaggerated.
And the holy crap, that dragon really is as big as they say.
I can understand what people bent the knee.
I can understand how the field of fire was so one sided.
I can understand why Heron Hall was burnt.
And all these people will remember it.
And it's not just the dragon, the sighting of the dragon.
It's a momentous day in the history of Westeros.
The biggest? Like governmental shift, the
biggest cultural shift since like the Pact or the Long Night
in a single day. I mean the end Alls was a big
different, big thing, but that was a very gradual thing.
You know the end Alls coming was a more than 1000 years of waves
and slow change. Whereas this is a single day or
a few days or however you want to frame it it, it doesn't
really compare to a gradual migration.
So I think I frame it more like that, like the Pact or the Long
Night. Something like that.
So what? What were the, what was the
average? What was like the common view of
this? Like, were people fleeing the
city in advance of Aegon's arrival or were they were they
worried? What were the rumor?
What was the rumor mill like? I think eventually people
figured out that, oh, that he's not coming to attack and that's
why the crowds were so big. So clearly people weren't that
scared. But I but I I feel like for a
while before people knew there was going to be a surrender.
Maybe. I don't know if the common folk
knew that Manfred and the High Septon were planning on opening
the doors because, and we can say that because they were.
Were probably waiting to make sure what happened.
They again, they hadn't fully committed to surrender or else
they would have told him ahead of time.
So there would have been quite a lot of consternation or like
what's going to happen? Is he going to come and destroy
us. Like he destroyed Harrenhal once
the fear passed and then the people saw OK, well he's not
doing that and the coronation happens then.
I think that enables so many people to show up and watch him
in the streets and then. Talk about that for literally
generations, people who saw Valerian that day, they were
there for the coronation for one of the biggest days in the
history of Westeros. Whether they were in that room
when she, he was crowned or just saw him on the streets
afterwards. That's something you tell your
kids, your kids tell those kids, tell their kids they were there
for that. I mean, it would be like being
there for, I don't know, like the US is just roughly.
Similar age to the the the Iron Thrones age.
It's a little younger, but if you were there for the
Declaration of Independence OR during the the Revolutionary War
and lived through that, that would be pretty huge.
Your family would be proud of having had a.
A representative there during that time or whatever.
If you're not from America, obviously you can have a
probably a similar event you can imagine in your country's
history that's similarly momentous.
It's not as fantastic, but you know, George Washington being
coordinated as the first president, you know.
Yeah, yeah. It's very similar.
Like you were establishing a new system like he's the 1st
president of the You know, like it's.
It's not as powerful as a king, but it's the first of a new
system of government, the first to sit the Iron Throne, the
first to rule the entire country.
That's that's a huge deal. Yeah.
Well, not the entire country, but most of it.
Most of it still a new political designation, a new level of
authority that hadn't existed before.
It's it's very significant. And that makes it memorable and
important to be a part of. Even if you're just in the
crowd, you know. Just even if you're in the crowd
for game seven of memorable sports series like, that's.
You tell your kids about that, probably, if they gave a crap
about that sport. But, you know, like just being,
just being there, being witnessed really does mean
something, right? It's it's I was there.
I saw it. Yeah.
You know, I think if one we would probably tell folks, I I
guess it's you know. We were there when George read
Forsaken. That's a good one for us.
Yeah. Yeah, we don't have.
Our game Seven of the sports. That was our game seven.
Yeah, the Forsaken chapter. I don't even know if you say
game seven. I'm like, I don't know what
sport you're talking about. Lots of sports.
Not football, not soccer. But yeah, basketball.
Hockey. Or we went to the premiere of
House of the Dragon at George's Theater, too.
That's that's not quite as cool as the Forsaken chapter, but.
Yeah, I don't think, I I don't know that that would necessarily
be told to children. But I would tell them the other
ones. Yeah, you're right.
We also don't have any children to tell them to, but.
I told the cats. We told, yeah, we told our cats,
yes, they're very proud of us. Yeah, And you mentioned Sean, is
this, if someone had wanted to like, assassinate Aegon, there
were chances. There were not just here, but
there were chances. Yeah, it's this and and other
chances for the other Queens, too.
Yeah. Being spreading through the
streets like this, I wonder what kind of security there was.
How confident was Aegon, you know how many how big were the
crowds? You know that that art we
showed, you know one person, that crowd with a crossbow, one
guard who didn't like this new thing, right.
But I can also imagine everyone being in such all like, you
know, I I went through a little bit of like what if it did?
What if someone did you know some some militant some faith of
the seven, some person who is still loyal to whatever took it
on themselves. You know, without even any kind
of organization or or or some plotting that might also could
have happened. But it's just one person decided
I'm going to be the one to kill. The Dragon Lord shot him with a
crossbow. What happens?
Valerian unleashed to fire? Does Vicinia come in?
From the grassy Knoll they. Wouldn't do it.
See, that's why I know from grassy Knoll.
That's hilarious. But no, that's why I think they
wouldn't do it. Sean, is that if you shoot
Valerian 1, even if you? Managed to kill him.
He probably unleashes fire and devastation to everyone around
you. And if you're doing this, you're
probably doing it because you're trying to stop.
Also, maybe it's not that easy to get a crossbow or be a good
shot or. You might have had, yeah, you
might have had Manford Hightower or the High Step that are both
and or the Warrior Sun just. Very wary of exactly such a
thing happening and being watchful for it.
They might be like, yeah, we can't allow one of one of the
zealots to just like, take a shot at Aegon.
They probably won't even hit him.
But what will he do to our city if if he blames that on us?
What if he, like, finds a reason to put put that on us?
They're very they obviously were taking a lot of caution to avoid
the destruction of their cities. They couldn't necessarily stop
all the crazies, but they might be aware of it and that would
help, you know, for what it's worth.
And you know, relatively modern times took a lot of presidents
before someone killed John F Kennedy, you know what I mean?
Lots of presidents were paraded through the streets and any
person with a gun could have just walked up and shot him.
And finally someone did. Same to Abraham Lincoln.
I guess even after Abraham Lincoln, they they didn't stop
going out in public after that, you know, so.
Ronald Reagan got shot, Yeah, there.
There's been a lot of presidents that have been shot.
Yeah. And yeah, and a crossbow.
It's hard to kill someone with a crossbow.
I mean, Aegon was probably wearing his armor while walking,
going through the crowds, you know, So yeah, you got to have a
really good shot. Yeah.
Anyway, so it's it's a lot to consider there.
And in terms of number of eyes on it, we talked about how
important it was for all those Northerners.
We talked about why, maybe why Torin brought so many of his
armies. So they would be witnesses.
Either they would be there to help him fight or they would
serve as witnesses afterwards. Either way, it worked.
It's it's a good thing for him. But consider how many witnesses
this would be compared to that. Way more, way, way, way, way,
way more 'cause you got the armies there too.
They've already seen it. But now you've got this entire
population of Old Town, plus all the people that came from the
outskirts of the city, who just for the spectacle to see the
coronation, the extra Lords who weren't there before and all the
people they brought with them. So many witnesses.
I don't think there's this is maybe one of the largest crowds
that's ever gathered in the entire history of Westeros.
You know, not just that, but a crowd this size gathered at, I
don't know, Winterfell or something.
Word won't spread as far and as fast.
Old Town is a Center for commerce and education and et
cetera, et cetera. So there's just more people that
live around there. In general, yeah, more people
means more stories, more travelling.
Like everyone in the Citadel saw this and now teaches everyone
else who comes from the through the Citadel from now on.
And those people go out to other places to spread their spread
their knowledge and all the merchants and everything.
So yeah, that's a fantastic point.
The the, the most capable historians would be there to
record the moment. Like lots of them.
There's probably more accounts of this in the Citadel than
there are a lot of other things that wouldn't have taken place
right in front of them. Capable and connected?
Yeah, yeah, same thing with this step to everyone when it comes
to this step to train or to worship and goes back to their
homes and other lands. Brings this story with him.
Yes, yes, that's. And Eglin was probably aware of
that. Or if he wasn't, people would
have made him aware of that. I was like, hey, hey King, look
at the power of spreading word here.
And so this is when. Speaking of this is when
conversations of of a new capital started to come up.
Now, Aegon had already decided, it seems like very likely he had
already decided on King's Landing, and for multiple
reasons, the biggest of which he was already collecting swords
for his throne. I don't.
He wasn't going to build his throne somewhere other than his
capital, right? That doesn't make any sense.
He's like, Oh yeah, my capital's here, but my throne is hundreds
of miles away. No, of course not.
The Capitol and the throne are going to be in the same spot.
So the fact that he's been sending swords to this place all
along ever since the first battle meant that he had already
decided he just hadn't told people or hadn't told many
people or word wasn't out. You know, it wasn't important
for him to spread that word. And he may have had a reason for
that. He may not have wanted people to
know. He may have wanted them to court
their city and do things for him.
And I mean he may have liked that process that may have been
value to him for that because that in doing so they may have
given him a good accounting of all the features of the city.
So that it could be you know like a presentation like a like
a a PowerPoint presentation on all why Old Town should be the
capitals. Like I want them to make this
presentation so that they tell me everything there is to know.
Even though I have no intention of choosing it.
I still want to know everything about the city.
Things that they might have otherwise kept from me, factors
and tax revenues and things like that they might have kept
hidden. If I Defensive capability.
Yeah. Defensive capability.
Sure. Sure.
Number of troops discount. Yeah.
How many Spears and bows and things you have.
Those like those things might have been told anyway.
But if they're it's different from then he's forcing you to
tell versus You're in a position where you're pitching it to him,
so you're more likely to exaggerate than hold back in in
one in one scenario versus the other.
These are the kind of power games that Aegon would, would
maybe and probably be aware of. It's like, well, it's all about
how you frame it. If I present myself, are you
selling this to me or am I demanding it of you?
If you're selling it to me, then I'm going to get a different
kind of answer than if I'm demanding it from you.
So he knew all along that King's Landing was going to be the
site. Now what we can only guess at is
why he waited. And I just gave you one possible
reason, but that's just a pure guesswork.
And the other would be, well, what was he?
What were they doing to guess at this and why did he wait for
now? And what did?
What were people's reactions to him declaring King's Landing?
Were there immediate like investment in the new city?
Where like the high towers and the Lannisters immediately the
Rick rushing to invest in shops and build houses and mansions
there or there's there would be business opportunities like
crazy. And this is the kind of thing
that George doesn't write about a lot.
But it had to have been happening and it would be real
interesting like a a big new city being built in a really
important location right next to the new capital where all sorts
of trade and opportunities clearly going to be happening.
How did the realm react to this? Who got their finger into that
pie? Who ignored it?
Who missed the opportunity? I mean we don't hear today about
like the Lannisters having like big amounts of property in
King's Landing or the High Tower.
So quite possibly they were not allowed to do much or they were
they didn't take the opportunity or I don't know, but this is a
kind of a more than a Gray area. It's a dark Gray area.
I really I really have very little idea but it but it had to
be happening. This is the kind of things that
happened, whether we, whether it's written about or not,
economic development, rich people trying to get richer, you
know that's that's always happening 24/7, the way the
world works, even when it's a fantasy world.
So the second real coronation, if we go back to that briefly,
it's the change in how the dates are reckoned.
So whenever we look at dates for a while there before fire and
blood and and before the world of ice and fire, there was a
little discrepancy. Not a discrepancy, but a
confusion as to wait. Did the conquest start when the
conquest started or when it ended?
Like when do you start 'cause that's like a more like a year.
When when is year one start? When everyone bent the knee the
first time, The second time or so?
Yes, the second time is the answer.
This is when the reign begins officially.
Like the calendar is marked from this point, so that makes it
more official than the first kneeling.
And that makes more sense too. It's the the High Septon and the
gods and way more all the Lords. Whereas before it was just his
own people, hardly anyone witnessed.
So it makes sense to to have a big show, a big make a big
spectacle of it all. And let's look at what he called
himself, right? King of Westeros.
Not just that, he was king of the Andals, the Roinar and the
First Men. OK, so he had pretty much
subjugated the Andals and the First Men mostly, but he hadn't.
AI don't know that a single Roinar had bent the knee at this
point. They all lived in Dorne, other
than a few random people that you know live elsewhere.
But so maybe a few technically had Dentony, but very few.
Certainly not any large group. That's a very important
distinction he was claiming. This is where I'm talking about
the overconfidence and maybe even a little arrogance.
He's claiming dominion over people he had not only not
conquered, he hadn't even, like had FaceTime with or diplomacy
with. Yet he's called himself Lord of
the Iron Isles and of the three Sisters, and of Dorn, who
haven't bent the knee at all. And Rainey's was sent to go talk
to them, but it's unclear whether she had actually had a
meeting with anyone yet by this point.
So Aegon may have been calling himself King of Dorn or Lord of
the Roinar and all these different titles without a
single Dornish representative having said a word about it yet,
which is like, yeah, that's you're trying not to insult
people. That's pretty insulting.
He's like, yeah, I'm, I'm your king now and I haven't even set
foot in your. Country in his defense.
He didn't know that they weren't bending the knee either, right?
It's not like he knew they were standing up to him and he was
disregarding it. And I mean, we just talked about
he showed up at Old Town and their doors were open.
Like he the precedent was established.
He won battle after battle. He proved his point.
How can anyone beat me? The fact that it's so hard to
beat me means people are preemptively surrendering.
It's a reason why, you know, if you're winning the Super Bowl 47
to 12 or whatever, and the reporter comes up in a sideline
and there's still 7 minutes in the game, but you're like, yeah,
we won the Super Bowl. You know, it's 47 to 12.
It's a reasonable thing to think, you know, like Shorty 70,
it could come. Back, I guess.
But yeah, any of these things can happen.
But it's reasonable for him to not expect the crazy thing, you
know? Yeah.
So the point is, though, maybe it wasn't crazy.
Maybe it shouldn't. Maybe it's not crazy for Dorn to
give up or or to not submit. I'm not sure that it's
debatable. In hindsight, it seems to be the
case. Yeah, 'cause clearly they
didn't. He didn't beat them.
They didn't. They're not going to submit for
190 more years and it won't be due to violence.
So he clearly miscalculated there.
Even if it wasn't crazy, he was. He was wrong.
He was, either. He was wrong, maybe not crazy.
So there is also a little more to be said about it too.
Like one of the other titles he's taken is the shield of his
people, protector of the realm. Well, there's still fighting
going on, and there's still places where that are in chaos
that he's not going to address for quite a while.
It's like you call yourself protector of the realm.
While the realm is tearing, A portion of the realm is tearing
itself apart, and you're not lifting a finger to do anything
about it for a while. To be fair, again, he's got a
lot to do. He can't, you know, he can't be
everywhere at once. So yeah, it's, you know, making
apologies for a conqueror is a weird position to be in.
But that's sequesterosis did become a better place to live
after. So I think, I think it seems
that way. So it's also like, well, yeah,
it's not simple. The moral, the morality here is,
is it's hard to put real world morality into it because it is,
even if it is, even if you think of it as a real world, values
and technology and history is also different.
Also, screw that portion of the realm.
I hate sand. Well, no.
I meant the Iron Islands. I hate salt.
I hate the concept of salt wives.
How about that? OK, Yeah, that's good.
That's good. So let's talk about the unbowed.
Here's a very brief quote to describe what we mean.
Though the Wars of Conquest were said to have ended when Aegon
was crowned and anointed by. The High Septon and the Starry
Sept of Old Town. Not all of Westeros had yet
submitted to his rule, so Aegon had work to do.
Still, despite so many acclaiming him as their king,
despite all those witnesses spreading the word, which he
presumably logically expected to solidify his rule even more.
It wasn't enough. There were holdouts, like very
few of the people who Bentany at Old Town went to Dorne to tell
the story. Very few witnesses or the OR if
they did it didn't move them over much and there would be
microcosms of this story. We've talked about it a few
times with regard to the Starks, but there would have to be other
versions of this on a smaller scale in the other regions too.
There would be maybe a few in the Veil that or in the West or
maybe even in the Storm Lands who were like, I am hesitant to
accept this new order of things. It's been this way for so long
and they're not necessarily up in arms, but they they're
holding out. They're stubborn.
They're refusing to do a few things, and there would be,
there would need to be FaceTime between some of these former
kings, and they're still vassals who are no longer subject to a
king but to a high Lord. And a lot of these little things
would have to take place. And this is the kind of thing
I'm thinking of when I'm thinking Aegon can't just rush
off to Dorne or the Iron Islands.
There's maybe some of these smaller scale things that don't
make the history books because it never came to blood.
The negotiations were tedious, but they did end up working out.
So like it's not very historical, but it's something
that we can definitely read between the lines as likely
happened. And I like to point these things
out because, well, it's realistic.
We're trying to fill out the world as much as possible,
trying to make it feel realistic and breathable and breathing and
and well, if you like role-playing campaigns, things
like that. You try to just over turn over
every stone, look under every, look behind every door and see
you know what would be there and what realistic elements would
take place. What are things that humans
would do no matter what, You know what are some stimuli that
we can reliably predict would be the responses for.
So yes, the three sisters, the Iron Islands and Dorne were the
three big holdouts, but I'd like to guess that there were some
more smaller scale ones. So two groups of islands, right,
and the farthest Kingdom to the South.
And I think that's important because this geography plays a
role here in both. They're more unique, they're
most cult, they're more culturally distinct.
Some of them have different, well, one of them has a
different religion and Doran is culturally different.
They treat women differently. They treat, they have.
There's different racial groups, Yeah, besides the geography and
the separation of things like mountains and deserts that
enforce certain cultural differences and keep people from
meeting and and talking and and growing more similar over time.
The Three Sisters sort of had a different religion too, right?
Weren't they at least sort of worshipping the Old Gods?
I mean, no, not really. I mean yes and no.
Like they have their older gods that are different than any
other old gods. They worship the Lord of the
Waves and the Lord of the skies which is sort of like the ground
God and the Storm God and a lot of the there's similarities
between those but that but that religion is gone whereas not
well, almost gone. Whereas the Iron Islands clearly
still worship the Drowned God and and fear the Storm God.
So they're they're mostly worshippers of the seven there.
They have knighthood and and all that stuff.
They're they're mostly they're similar to the Vale than that
cause the Vale is what's ruled them for most of that time but
they do have more north in them than anywhere else in the Vale.
I would guess, 'cause just not just because of proximity, but
because of that cultural separation, that distinct
microcosm that they are and just frequent trade.
And with the North and people, Northerners probably lived there
too, at some, at some point off and on.
So that's important to note. The actual distinct differences,
cultural significance, this and that here and there, all that.
Yeah, there's a lot of differences, and those things
mean a lot. Like, that's the because think
of it this way, If a king comes in and demands you surrender,
and he has all the same values as you, it's a lot easier to
bend the knee, especially when he's also stronger than you.
But that's not the case for the Iron Islands, right?
He doesn't have your values. He's in fact going to stop your
values. He's going to tell you no, you
can't live this way anymore. Whereas the rest of Westeros for
the most part, gets to go on living the way they were before
this. The the King in the North is the
High Lord in the North, but he's he still gets to worship the
same gods, eats the same foods, does goes about his business the
same way Ironborn are going to be told to change a lot about
how they live. It's a cultural upheaval as well
as a authoritative upheaval. Finally, Finally.
Be clear, yeah. For Dorne it's similar.
It's not a religious upheaval. They worship the Seven, so
they're not being told to change that.
But it is still a place that values their independence more.
Even under the Prince of Dorne, they're less beholden to their
own ruler than, say, the Hightowers were to the
Gardeners. Right?
There's just less. There already was less authority
held by the Martels. They hadn't ruled for as long.
Doran wasn't united nearly as recently as the other regions,
so there wasn't a long history of, Oh well, we've always
followed the Martels. No, that only been the case for
hundreds of years, not thousands.
And there were some houses that kind of like how there are even
houses now that don't like the Tyrells being in charge.
There are houses that in this time we're still kind of like.
I don't know about those Martells, you know, I don't
think they deserve to be on top, especially people like the Iron
Woods and a few others who were similarly elite, amongst other
Dornish. They were also correct me if I'm
wrong but. Smaller populations that are
more spread out. They're not as streamlined and
connected from city to city from, you know, it's not as
regimented A hierarchy leading up to the Martels.
The Martels probably barely know or care what most of the people
in Dorn are doing. They're technically in charge,
but they don't have some Lord going out.
You know there's not as much interaction or connectivity
between them, right? Yes.
And that's probably kind of true for the North too, more so than
the REACH, right? Yeah.
For example, Yeah, absolutely. That's a good point.
OK, let's take a little break here and we'll come back and
talk about the Iron Islands 1st and make our way over to Dorne.
We probably won't have time for the three sisters, but all these
three of these situations begin now or have started a little
while ago and last into the reign of Aegon.
So none of these things are resolved quickly, especially
Dorne. So it will be continuing forward
with these threads until they're complete.
That said, after this episode we are taking a fire and blood
break. Not a episode break, but we will
return to fire and blood content right at the end of the year,
right before the end of the year.
We're working on the schedule right now.
It's a little bit subject to change, but as of now, the week
before the end of the year is going to be when we get back to
fire and blood. Most likely in the meantime
we'll be putting out more of our regular style episodes where
y'all vote on a selection topics that we present and they can be
pretty much any topic from all over the fandom.
And it's and also we're going to be doing an episode on catching
ourselves up on what's been going on with the TV shows.
Just just a kind of round up of what's been a while since we
talked about that and want to get ourselves caught up and stay
up to date on that. All right.
I also want to bring up something that's just a little
outside of Game of Thrones. You know, it's hard to find good
fantasy shows on TV. There are a lot of them, you
know, start off good and kind of decline.
Not just fantasy shows, but a lot of TV shows go that way.
It's more common for a show to start off well and get worse
than the other way around. But it does happen, and
sometimes it goes both ways. Sometimes it improves and then
it goes back down. Who knows?
All shows are different. There is no one-size-fits-all
for the history of television quality, right?
One show that both falls into the fantasy bucket and also has
improved from its first season, which is a, as I said, a breath
of fresh air. It's kind of rare that that
happens. Just the Wheel of Time.
I'm a fan of the Wheel of Time series.
I've read the books and a long time ago, so long ago that when
watching the TV show I would kind of forgot some things.
Every once in a while I was surprised by things I should
have known, like Oh yeah, I knew that I should have known that
from the book, but I had forgotten because it's been so
long. So I do recommend the Wheel of
Time TV show. You Can get it on Amazon Prime
and season 2 was way better than season one.
It was a huge improvement. They focused more on characters,
focused more on conflict, events of the heart rather than well,
chasing things around and monsters and battles, which can
be fun, but it's not as fun as as character conflict and and
character driven stuff. To be fair, that's also a
reflection of the books. The first book was kind of like
that and the second book was just better.
So that makes sense. The TV show would be like that.
If you're one of those people that gave Wheel of Time a
chance, didn't really like it, give me, give it a second chance
you can find again. Might be worth getting on Prime
if you don't have it. So you can sign up for Prime on
our website. And there's a lot of other
benefits to Prime as well besides that.
So let us know if you enjoyed Wheel of Time or if you come
back to it. You know, I like to.
Mention other good fantasy shows that are out there, other good
fantasy books from time to time, and since this one's currently
in the zeitgeist and we'll be back for at least one more
season, hopefully more. If the quality uptick continues,
then it's a nice thing to have for your in your entertainment,
you know? The Wheel of Time just keeps on
turning. Wheel of the time keeps on
turning. Yeah, I don't know.
I can't remember if you said it, but you can sign up for Prime,
like with the history of Westeros discount, right?
Is that the Well the there's not a Prime discount but you get all
these extra benefits one of which is this and you we would
get you know we do get a cut of anyone any sign up of course but
also you can use your you also get a one free Twitch
subscription which some of y'all could use to watch our twitch
streams and and subscribe there because we do our Crusader Kings
for a Song of Ice and Fire stream almost every Friday at
6:00 PM. So shout out to that as well.
Yeah, good stuff. Yeah, I'm it's very
disappointing seeing the the from like 5-6 years ago.
We had a golden Age of Fantasy TV almost and already it's feels
like that was much longer ago. You know, with Game of Thrones
season 8 being a downer for a lot of us and some of these
other shows have come out since like The Witcher started off
great and it really super, super disappointed in that how that
went and yeah. Mixed emotions around the Rings
of Power. I wouldn't call that too mixed.
It was pretty bad. But but I still watched it.
I still watched it. I watched it as soon as it came
out every week. So I can't say that I didn't
enjoy it, but I was like a lot of times I was like crinkling my
face. Like what?
What? I don't do that.
Don't. Don't take the plot in that
direction. If you want to crinkle your face
too. That's also an Amazon show,
right? Amazon's got a lot of outside
fantasy is there's a lot of Amazon has a lot There's a lot
of great shows on here. Vikings.
And yeah we'll we'll we'll come back and mention a few others in
future weeks because we've spent enough time on it today.
But yeah, I like, I like to to mention what's good that's out
there, since it's our, it's in our wheelhouse, right?
Shout out to Kenny from the chat for sending a super chat dancing
sticker. Appreciate that Dancing.
Maybe that's for you, Sean. My kind of sticker.
Dancing sticker for dancing Sean.
Yeah, all right, back to the Iron Islands.
That's right. Let's talk about them.
This is, like I said, we're not going to cover the entire
scenario with the Iron Islands. This is just what's been
happening while Aegon's conquering elsewhere while after
Heron's fall. Here's Theon's first chapter,
which of course is the Clash of Kings quote.
The Drowned God had made them to reave and rape, to carve out
kingdoms and write their names in fire and blood and song.
Aegon the dragon had destroyed the old Way when he burned Black
Heron gave Heron's Kingdom back to the weakling Rivermen and
reduced the Iron Islands to an insignificant backwater of much
Greater Rome. Yet the old red tails were still
told around the driftwood fires and smoky hearths all across the
islands, even behind the high stones of Pike.
Theon's father numbered among his titles the style of Lord
Reaper, and the Greyjoy Words boasted that we do not.
So it had been to bring back the old way, more than for the empty
vanity of a crown that Lord Balon had staged.
His great rebellion reduced, he says.
That's all it's like, reduce them to that.
They kind of already were that. But at the time, for most of
their history, it happened to be a blip in history that they were
perhaps the most powerful Kingdom at the time of Aegon's
conquest. But for most of their existence,
they were not going back really far.
They were very significant because they were kind of
unstoppable. They attacked wherever they
wanted to and very few people could stop them.
So they sort of did have their run of the western shores and no
one could really do anything about it.
But that had fallen off long before what Theon is talking
about here. So they had kind of made a
resurgence and then fallen off again once they were beaten.
So like a lot of Ironborn, even ones who weren't fully raised on
the Iron Islands, they have misconceptions about the
greatness of their own people. They they kind of lie to
themselves, kind of exaggerate their own glory to make
themselves feel better or to be proud.
I don't know why, but I mean people do that.
It's not strange to think of people pumping up their own
culture and and ignoring the bad parts, which is pretty hard to
do with the Iron Born. To ignore the bad parts, you
pretty much have to. You pretty much have to look at
the bad parts as good parts. Yeah, I was going to say, you
just don't think those are bad. Yeah, you're they think that's
good. Yeah, so.
You don't think it's bad until someone else is doing it to you?
Yeah, right. So they what's the problem here
is they they descended into chaos because they didn't have a
leader anymore. Yes, like a lot of these
countries, right, they lost their leaders, but they got
appointed someone else to take over immediately or they took
over immediately. Like Oris Baratheon took over
the storm lines right away. The Tyrells were given control
of the Reach right away, like days after the field of Fire.
Immediately after Heron Hall was burned, Edmund Tully was given
the Riverlands. Like that was like the same day
or the 24 hours later or something.
The Iron Isles though Heron taken out, all the sun's taken
out. I'll come back to that later.
So the Iron Isles is tearing itself apart while Aegon is
conquering the rest of the continent.
Busy with the field of fire. Busy with getting crowned and
Old Town. Busy declaring himself king of
places like the Iron Islands that he's not really being a
king of. Because how can you call
yourself protector of the realm when you're allowing the state
of affairs to happen. And he allowed it.
Allowed it to happen for quite a while.
To be fair, he may have thought it would take a lot to stop and
that requires a lot of gathering of military power and getting it
all together and sailing it over there and which is what happened
eventually. But we're not covering that
today because it, like I said, took a while.
It wasn't. It wasn't even within a year.
You know, I mean there's another angle I didn't think of till
just now. But when you said how can you
call yourself protector of the realm da da da da.
If he had say he had named someone to be in charge of the
Iron Islands and then that person took a Navy and attacked
the West or attacked. You see it now, it would be kind
of under Aegon that this is happening.
Where is if he doesn't name someone and they war against
each other, they're not worrying against someone else.
He's he's almost is protecting the realm by getting them to it.
I totally agree he he might have it might have been playing he
may I say he just let them be but that may have been
intentional you might be right. That might have been the part of
plan. Like yeah, it's the best thing
to do is let them weaken themselves and then I'll come
in. Then we'll bring the heavy hand
down. Make them stop after they've
gone at it for a while. But if we attack them now they
may unite against the common foe.
Us the one that's trying to come and take their religion away.
To take the old way away. That's you can you can picture
it like they're coming to take the old way away.
Well it's all united to stop that like that.
That is one of the few things that might get them to unite.
Is someone coming to take their their gods away or their their
way of life, which was true, He was going to come do that.
Or again, what I'm saying is, if they were united, even if they
accepted Aegon as a ruler, they still under their union might
have gone after one of the other Seven Kingdoms, right?
And now it's. So rather than Aegon stopping
them from fighting each other, Aegon's got to stop them from
fighting one of the other kingdoms that he's already got
on his side that's expecting this from.
Because you know what I mean. Like he they're distracted with
each other and not attacked in the rest of the Seven Kingdoms.
Which is his way of protecting the rest of the Seven Kingdoms.
Yeah. So Theon does have a point
though. So even though he didn't be
exaggerating and gets some of the details a little mixed up
and maybe his chronology is a little bit off, he's still
mostly right. Like it did it isn't.
Maybe blamed on Aegon. It's fine to do it if you want
to. I don't think it matters most of
the regions under the Iron Throne.
Life improved there, but arguably the iron the Iron
Islands is. Is separate.
Is not under that. It depends on who you are.
I think like the fishermen of the Iron Islands who I, I, I
would care about them more anyway because they're, you
know, innocence for the most part.
Their lives may have gotten better.
I'm not sure. But it definitely got worse for
the the people who follow the old way.
Which good, you know, good for the.
It's good that they all get to do that.
Yeah. Nina writes that it's just the
problem with the Ironborn system.
It's incompatible with submitting to a king and being
part of a greater realm. Their system is kill everyone
who's not us. Everyone else is our wheat.
We do not sow. We reap a harvest of humans.
We take your harvest. You do the work for us.
You can't have that doesn't. That's not compatible.
That's not a neighborly attitude.
It has to change for them to fit.
So yeah. So which is why it has to be
approached differently. Which is why it maybe has to be
approached with a little more caution and or with a lot more
strength to make sure whatever you force them to do, they've
got to be they have to do it like the force is strong enough
to compel them. Because you're talking about
zealots, not you're talking about brave warriors.
You're talking about zealots here.
The Drowned God is going to play a role here, as we'll see.
And yeah, like, you can't just. That's an important distinction
too. When I'm talking about the
fishermen versus the reavers, Like the problem isn't the
ironborn necessarily, it's the old way.
The old way is the problem. Like the old way isn't in their
DNA. It isn't their cultural DNA
because it's been around for so long, but it's not like
literally in their bodies. You know, Like that's a thing
that's like a a real world way that racism is throwing around
is people act like the behavior of a group is some sort of like
an inborn quality rather than a cultural behavior or a thing
that's taught or or an effect of being downtrodden or spoiled or
anywhere in between. But a fantasy world gives us an
exception, potential exception, the kind of thing that people
say in the real world when they want to, when they're being
ridiculous, but they actually believe it.
Like, in other words, like calling another race like the
devil or calling another culture of the devil.
Like, no, they've got the devil in them.
Now here, this might actually be true.
It's like in a fantasy world, that kind of racism actually
might fly because the Iron Born might actually have deep ones
DNA in them, right? So it's like, 'cause if that's
the true, then OK, fine, sink the whole islands.
Like, just get rid of them all. Just that's fine, OK, we have to
There's no, there's no, there's no rehabilitating the old ones.
But. You know, there is a maybe an
argument too that is just. That it is a systemic thing,
that since the Iron Islands have limited resources, they don't
have the option of fields of wheat, right?
So possibly you could argue that you know, attacking, pillaging
other areas is a natural thing to occur.
Still don't think it justifies it, but we just saw we've seen
it in the real world, right? Like this part of the reason the
Vikings came down to England and Europe or whatever.
They just. They didn't have enough food for
all the people up there. They needed more land for farms.
It's not so much that they wanted to go conquer and
pillage, they just needed more land to not starve.
And there were other people on that land already, so they
conquered A pillage. But yeah, well, some of them
did. Some of them wanted to conquer
and pillage. But yeah, yeah.
So yeah, you're right. Like, there's again, we don't
want to. You can't put them all into a
single bucket. There's a lot of different types
of people involved here. Some that just wanted to rape
and pillage and there's no rehabilitating that.
But some of them were would be open to making a life a
different way. Like Asha.
We even a Greyjoy like Asha's like, why are we doing this?
Let's just go buy a load of goods and go to the other side
of the World, Trade that and come back and come back with
their goods and we'll make a ton.
Like a lot of Ironborn could do that instead of raping and
pillaging and and there's even arguably more money in the
trade. Less danger and yeah, or at
least similar danger. Traveling all the way to this
side of the world is probably pretty dangerous, but it's.
But that shouldn't be a problem. If you're willing to to make a
living a dangerous way with the axe and sword than than what it
then yeah, this is a different sort of danger.
So yeah, I do see a path forward for the Ironborn that isn't, you
know, raping and pillaging and so did Asha.
She sees that as well. Like it's hard to convince her
countrymen of that, but most readers can see that and be
like, yeah, that. I mean, yeah, I think that makes
sense. There's, like she pointed out
how there's large parts of the north and no one lives that have
food. Like people could live there
like you. You could build farms and and
hovels here. There's good hunting grounds
here. There's good fishing here.
There's good trees for. Yeah.
But yeah, so there is with the right vision and and right peace
and and sense of unity you could have that.
Some those things did not happen under Aegon or anyone.
Yeah, don't blame Aegon. Things like that did happen
elsewhere in the realm. But yeah, at no point is even
under Jaharis when building was at its peak, there's never been
a lot of like public works projects or building projects.
It's always been, you know, Jaharis was like one of the very
few exceptions. And yeah, there is just not a
lot of that. So yeah, so the Iron Islands you
can't really blame even though Aegon, it's sort of his job as
protector of the realm to come in and stop them from killing
each other and or to stop them from killing their neighbors.
The fact that they went at each other so hard isn't his fault,
right? It probably would have happened
in some degree anyway, so I'm not sure he's showing a disdain
for them rather than just making them a low priority slash
understanding how hard this job is going to be to fix the Iron
Islands or to keep them in line. So there's a lot of different
factors to consider here now, and it's not the first time this
is going to happen either. Consider what, a hundred a 200
and 1020 years later when Dagon Greyjoy emerges and just starts
attacking the West and the North and doing his thing, and
Bloodraven's a little too concerned about the possibility
of another black fire invasion to send the ships over there and
it's the same thing. It's kind of like he ignores the
problem, doesn't ignore the problem.
He considers it a low priority for a while and maybe hopes it
takes care of itself and never does, and he has to go over and
deal with it. Now.
I don't think Aegon expected this to take care of itself
entirely, but it's similar in that he he had to maybe rethink
his priorities eventually because this kept going.
One reason he might have not thought this would happen.
He may have been surprised at how much the Iron Isles tore
itself apart. Well, because, well, because
they aren't supposed to do that. They have that religious
prohibition. We'll come back to that in a
minute, but let's not forget the old way, says Ironborn are not
supposed to fight Ironborn. It's it's it's like religious
cultural thing that you're supposed to turn your violence
outward on other people's like everyone else is our wheat not
each other. Obviously like every cultural
taboo across a huge amount of time it gets broken.
But this is perhaps one of the most spectacular long extended
times of of that happening, of it being broken for quite a
while. So yeah, the ruling dynasty just
up and vanished. Huge power, vacuum, structural
and power. There's no dynasty and no like
like the the horror dynasty had kind of started ignoring the
Iron Isles anyway, they were more focused on their land based
projects on Harrenhal and ruling the Riverland.
So they've already kind of been turned into a backwater.
That's something Theon forgets when he's talking about turning
it into a backwater. Your own king had started doing
that to. It just got worse when that king
died. And so this.
So this is of course the power vacuum is going to be people
that step forward to try to fill that vacuum.
For example, there were claims to be made, and here's the first
one quote. House Horror had ruled the Iron
Man for long centuries, only to be extinguished in a single
night when Aegon unleashed Valerian's fires on Harrenhal,
though Heron the Black and his sons perished in those flames.
Korn, vollmark of Harlow, whose grandmother had been a younger
sister of Heron's Grand Sire, declared himself the rightful
heir quote of the Black Line and assumed the kingship.
Not all Iron Born accepted this claim, however.
Yeah, if they had, it might have just gone peacefully and they
may have bent the need to egg on on their own.
And that would it be that and they're going to be like, Yep.
I don't have to do anything he may have, That may have been
something he hoped for. He may not have expected it to
be likely, but it was certainly on the table as a possibility.
But Corn Vollmark was unable to unite the Ironborn.
By the way, this is the only other corn we've ever heard of
besides corn Half Hand. I believe I heard the theory
from Nina that there's a chance that Corn Half Hand is Ironborn.
Not what you would expect, necessarily, but absolutely
possible. Now, generally speaking, if
someone's claim to a throne or a seat or whatever a title, it
causes you to scrunch up your face calculating it.
Like wait, grandmother had been a younger sister of Heron's
grand sire Wait, what is that? If if it causes you to like feel
like you're doing math, it's probably a bit specious.
It probably isn't a very strong claim in terms of blood.
However, it tells you nothing in terms of how strong the claim is
vis A vis military strength or political power, because that
can be you can have a very thin claim backed by a lot of
military strength. This appears to be neither.
It didn't have a lot of political power or military
strength, and it was kind of thin in terms of blood.
But Nina points out this is also pretty common.
You know, sometimes there's just the the IT may be a thin claim,
but that thin claim may be the strongest.
Like thin doesn't mean you know there's anything thicker like
Henry the 7th of England, right? He was the great great great
grandson of King Edward the 3rd through the legitimized female
line. And then when the 17 O1 Act of
Settlement acknowledged Electress Sophia of Hanover as
heiress to the British Crown, there were more than 30 people
that probably had a stronger claim now because they were all
Catholic. Queen Anne turned to the
youngest daughter of her grandfather's sister Shay.
Do you remember that TV show? What was it called the one where
the the two heirs the English? It was the two heirs from almost
Royal where every the beginning of every episode it said Poppy
and Georgie are 51st and 52nd in the to the line of the British
throne. The next episode will be Poppy
and Georgie are 67th and 68th. The next episode Poppy and
Georgie are 33rd and 34th and they would just change every
time. They would just make up a new
number every time for it and this is kind of that like I'm
like this is Corrin Valmark I don't know if he's his claim
might have been the best but that doesn't mean it was good
right That the argument both works both ways it might be the
best claim that doesn't mean it's a good claim and but
they're but who else is there There's no one It's a problem
when someone's claiming the throne and and no one has a
strong claim So it really it only comes down to military and
political power if no one has a a strong blood claim.
Religious power, right, which is where I'm going.
That's where religious power is going to come up huge here
because of the the power vacuum of political and military power
is filled by religious power. So while Aegon is off receiving
the blessing of the most important religious figure in
Westeros, meaning the High Septon, a less important
religious figure to Westeros as a whole, but the most important
religious figure in the Iron Islands was emerging or or I
guess he was becoming the most important at this time.
His name was Lotus, and we'll see him in a second here, in
addition to showing some contempt for the Isles via
making them a low priority, right.
Which is where we come back to reminding ourselves that Agon
accepted the seven. He took on a new religion, but
it wasn't the religion of the of the Iron Isles.
So they're seeing him switch religions and and they're still
on the outside of all that. So the power of religion again
this is what this is kind of this is pretty realistic I think
you have a lot of back and forth.
You have power, vacuum, you know people killing each other.
Religion floods the void. And then religion in the Iron
Isles is already extremely powerful.
The Drowned The priests of the Drowned God wield more power.
Than perhaps the priests of almost any other religion around
the world. Maybe the red priests are an
exception, but I don't even know about that.
They if it's the case, it's partly because they're so
numerous. But man, the drowned priests
have a lot of power. Let's hear about that quote.
On Old Wick, under the bones of not a, the sea dragon, the
priests of the Drowned God placed a driftwood crown on the
head of one of their own, the barefoot holy man Lotos, who
proclaimed himself the living son of the Drowned God and was
said to be able to work miracles.
Other claimants arose on Great Wick, Pike and Orkmont, and for
more than a year their adherents battled one another on land and
sea. It was said that the waters
between the islands were so choked with corpses that Krakens
appeared by the hundreds drawn by the blood.
Can I say real quick, though, every time I say the words
driftwood crown? I hear we had a blooper one time
where I think it was Aziz who said it, he said.
The Driftwood Clown. I did so I was like trying my
hardest as I said it. I was like the Driftwood crown,
the clip we unfortunately we lost this clip.
I had a collection of clips of of goof goofs mostly my own and
the hard drive that that was on died.
So we lost all those comedy clips and I I immediately just
busted out laughing. I just like heard myself say
Driftwood Clown and then just stop stunned at the humor that I
had accidentally uttered. So this is a great great quote.
It brings into brings in a lot of fantasy elements but also
real world like religious traditions where some powerful
person declares themselves the son of a God, whether it's Jesus
or any number of people before him or after him.
You know, declaring themselves the son of Egyptian gods or
Phoenician gods or just you name it, people like Achilles is a
descendant of of Zeus and Thetus and all.
You know, like Alexander the Great claims to to be a
descendant of Heracles with a descendant of of Zeus, etcetera.
Like making yourself divine is a age-old, tried and true practice
in settings of both real and fantastical.
So said, he can work miracles. That's, I mean he declares
yourself the son of God and can work miracles.
That that does sound familiar, doesn't it?
So that's kind of neat. And this is one of several
mentions of krakens being drawn to the surface thanks to large
amounts of blood. George is dropping those hints
of what happens when there's lots of blood in the sea, and
it's associating that with the Iron born.
And Speaking of the forsaken chapter and exciting, yes, yes.
So Speaking of Euron and Aaron as well, Euron new to get rid of
Aaron because of stuff like this.
And he's like, he knew his history.
He knows how much of a hold the drowned priest have on the iron
where he's like, I can't let this get out of hand.
I can't Like this priest was crowned.
That's pretty unusual. Like you like Baylor, The
Blessed was crowned, but that's he's the Targaryen.
Like, how often is a Septon crowned or a religious leader
had a crown put on their head? Not very often.
And here it almost seemed normal.
Whereas in other places it'd be like, whoa, that is bizarre.
This is like like when Aaron in Aaron's chapter, his first
chapter, he hears Balon is dead. He's like, who should sit to see
stone chair. A bunch of his followers were
like, you should they're they they went right to it.
They're like Aaron Drift. Aaron Dampier, King King Aaron.
And then he's like I was made to be a prophet.
He's like the drowned God made me to be a prophet, not a king,
you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Which is why I know Euron is not fit, because it's like, don't
put me on, but definitely don't put Euron on.
You know, like he's worse you. Know, but his argument wasn't
that a religious leader shouldn't be it.
It just so happens I'm not the religious leader.
That should be it, you know. Yes.
And so. And he still wields, and you can
see he wields enormous power. It was just he's like, you know
what we should do? King's mood and the whole Iron
Islands is like, yes, King's moot because of this one guy,
this one priest. I mean, he is a Greyjoy.
He's brother of the king. But still it goes to show the
power like Tommen couldn't do that.
He's the brother of a king. He couldn't have.
Just maybe that's not the best example, but still you.
Couldn't have done it. Stannis couldn't have done it.
Yeah, like they did a lot, but they couldn't do this, right?
So. So Euron is kind of doing a new
old way. Like he calls for the King's
Moot. It backfires because Aaron gets
Euron wins. The King's moot anyway.
And how does he win the King's move?
By promising to do what Aegon did.
He's like, Ash is like you dumb brother.
You Aegon had Dragons. He's like, no, you're the dumb
one, sister. I mean nephew, Niece, I've got
Dragons. Or at least I've got a way to
get them with this here horn that you all will believe works.
And maybe it does actually, but she didn't see that coming.
You know, like, oh, OK, really Dragons.
Yeah. Never mind that these Dragons
are tiny and are not instruments of conquest.
Nearly nearly the means of Valerian.
But it is a parallel. It is a parallel.
And Urine also got rid of Meron Valmark before the Kings move.
Who had this bloodline? The horror dynasty.
The one that's even 300 years later had had some power, had
some sway in there. And he's like that's one guy.
Euron had his plan to win the King's move, but he still didn't
want this guy to participate. He still kind of took this guy
out, removed him from the from the picture.
He mostly just he didn't care about what the other people were
going to say because he knew they weren't going to sway
anyone. He's like the one guy.
The the lonely light guy just starts babbling.
The the one Harlow guy or Vollmark.
Not Vollmark guy. Black tied guy just talks and
talks and talks. Everybody gets bored.
I should uncorks root vegetables.
Victorian is boring and and just says I'll be like Baylon who
lost, you know, and so yeah, so they're not.
You know, Jaron's like, I'm not worried about what they're going
to say. But he was worried about what
Aaron would say, which is why he captured him and why everyone
was like, where did Aaron go? What happened to Aaron?
Did he did he die on the way home to his home planet like
Poochie? Well, that's an ongoing
situation. So you're on new air.
The power who to shut up and who to let talk to best when he
understands his people, right. And this is something that is
important here for us to understand, because Aegon is
dealing with this in a way that he doesn't have that experience
for he he doesn't know how to manipulate the Ironborn in ways
that a Ironborn who, who've grown up amongst them would an
ambitious, cunning manipulator like Euron.
Aegon isn't isn't really like that.
And I don't mean that in a good way.
Like, he just isn't like you're on.
That's a pretty low bar. Low dose is a real piece of
work, though. That guy's like the shepherd who
you haven't met yet. Sean.
That's the Dance of the Dragons religious leader.
He's like the high Sparrow of the Ironborn.
Or again, like a Jesus figure, where I mean many, and I mean
many Ironborn died for him. Just gave up their lives.
Like like you jump off a wall, OK?
Drown yourself, OK? And you know, that kind of he
had that kind of sway over people.
They didn't die for him. Like charging into battle they
died from just to prove their devoutness.
Yeah, or that too, both battle and that.
And so that's why this is part of why such a strange time in
the Iron Islands. You have a drowned priest as
king, and they're fighting each other when they're not supposed
to do that. You hear they're fighting each
other so badly that there's Krakens and blood in the water.
And that's that's wild. Like some some priests might be
saying. That's a good thing.
The Krakens are signs of God. The Drown God has sent his his
steeds to us or whatever. What do they How do they refer
to Krakens? So yeah.
So again, this may have been intentional on Aegon's part.
Let them tear each other apart, come in later when they're
weaker, and then settle things. Regardless of why he did it,
this will be the state of affairs until the second year of
his reign. Not two full years, but during
the second year of his reign is when he finally comes to settle
that. We'll come back to it at that
point. Now let's spend the rest of this
episode on Dorne chopping off as much of Dorne as we can, because
the war is not going to start for a while.
So we'll talk about the lead up to it and actual war with Dorne
will not until what, 10 AC? But it's not going to start
right away either. This wasn't violent at first, as
violent and nasty and all out as it gets.
It doesn't start off that way. It's always been a bit of a
realm apart from the others. The North is sort of like that
too, with geography and and different beliefs and culture.
And like we said, so is the Iron Islands.
So Geography's created a buffer and those cultural microcosms
bloom because of that separation, and it's been that
way for so long. The separation is less in some
ways. Obviously the North and the Iron
Islands have their own religion and Doran doesn't, but there is,
and there's less difference in ethnic origin as well.
Though the Roy and R are not found in large numbers
elsewhere, most Ornish have common ancestors with the rest
of Westeros, right? And all first men, etcetera.
And the separation is also a big part of why the submissions and
kneelings north of the Red Mountains was not compelling
enough to force their surrender like, well, just 'cause they
bent the knee doesn't mean we have to.
If you're if they were your counterparts like, well, the
Reach bent the knee, so the Stormlands will too, because
they're similar. They're way more similar as a
cultural group called Stormlanders and Rivermen, and
the Reach and the Vale have way more in common than they do with
the Dornish, even though there are plenty of things to point
that they have in common. Not just culturally, but I don't
know how to say it geographically.
Yeah, the way they live, like day-to-day.
Foods they eat, things like that.
Yeah, the Riverlands might maybe are a little less in the
parallel I was trying to draw earlier how like?
The Reach and other areas would be more have more interconnected
society societies. I I feel like the Riverlands are
more of some isolated communities that get lumped
together and that's kind of how I feel about maybe the North and
and and Dorne, whereas others are more complete,
interconnected societies, yeah. And when you have that, it, when
you have a complete Internet to connect to society, you're more
susceptible to Dragons, Yeah, yes, than when you're spread out
rural communities. And when you are already you
have that cultural connection that like you said, they're
doing it. So we will too.
They made that decision. It seems smart.
We will too. It it reflects our cultural
values the same way as it does them.
They've they're used to having the central authority.
It's not essential to the whole read to the entire continent,
but it is central to the reason they live in.
Whereas Dorne, as we've said, A, they haven't had a central
authority nearly as long. B, that central authority isn't
as strong. So they've already valued their
independence more. So they already they're united
by this ideology of independence, relative relative
independence, more so than any of the other regions with the
possible exception of the Iron Islands, because they have that
whole every captain is a king on the deck of his own ship thing.
But that's still, it's a different kind of independence
because it's not a national independence, it's more of a
like my ship. A ship isn't a nation, right?
It's it's different in that sense so and so yeah.
So they value their freedom and independence more like the what
the wildlings the free folk are maybe our best bet here they are
their knees do not bend as easily like if you'd expect like
you see a number of times where the cultural friction between
people South of the wall and north of the wall gets off pace
right. Like where John Neal's demands
and they just laugh at him like what are you doing man.
Like that's we don't do that here like you goofball like
don't call him my Lord. He calls Corin half and my Lord
and Corin's like I'm not. I mean that's not he's not even
free folk. He's just like I'm a Ranger.
He doesn't even he doesn't even get that difference which is
that's within his own people. But it's just things are done
differently north of the Wall. Like it's just a it's just a
culture apart from most of the Seven kingdoms.
I mean the Wall is really far from most of the rest of society
so that makes sense but John brings that with him until he he
starts to learn not to do that. But it's it's hilarious when he
bends the knee oh he doesn't even bend the knee to Mance.
He bends to torment. Right he's he doesn't even he
sees the wrong guy. He's like Oh yeah, wrong Oh yeah
your mance. Oh my bad and torment is
laughing you know they're all laughing at him and egret too
He's like you just you just had to have someone.
He's just looking for someone to kneel to huh.
You just got to he doesn't kneeler's knees here and got to
kneel to somebody. It's it's the Dornish.
You're like yeah we're not our knees aren't itching to bend.
We are. We a lot of date.
Like the Dornish are more like the type who you might not see
your Lord more than like or even deal with him more than once a
year. Whereas like a river Lord
there's a lot more back and forth with like the levees and
the harvest and all this other stuff.
And yeah, they're just, they're just less connected even in
their day-to-day lives. So that's pretty important.
So Aegon, the farther you are, just the way they live makes
them less susceptible to Dragons.
There are not, they're already not a culture that masses huge
armies to fight each other because it's hard to have big
armies in the desert in the 1st place.
It's just just doesn't make sense.
Logistically you can't. Like how do you or you're going
to get enough water and food to maintain that host?
And and with all this independence, why would there
even be a big army? Like who?
Where is this coming from? So they're naturally more
predisposed to to stand up to Dragons because their method of
war isn't a huge disadvantage. The way they are used to
fighting doesn't make them an automatic loss, right?
Whereas the way the the Reach and the Riverlands, the way they
fight it just sets them up to lose.
Where's the darnish guerrilla tactics?
Hiding, sneaking, ambushing. That doesn't present a set of
disadvantages to facing dragon. In fact, that's a good way to go
about facing drag. It might actually work, and it
hadn't been tested yet. No one had tried this guerrilla
style warfare against the Dragons yet.
The Dornish like, hey, we're good at this, we haven't seen
that it works. When the hightowers bent the
knee, they were like everyone tried.
We tried nightly combat in a number of different ways and
none of it worked. The Dornish can't say that.
They can't say. Well, we tried our way of war
and it didn't work. No, it hasn't been tried yet.
They haven't tried yet, so they they're not willing to surrender
until they've tried. Well, they weren't even willing
to surrender after that, but definitely not before.
Clearly Aegon and his sisters expected otherwise.
Though they walked in, they said one dragon and one rider.
I don't think they would have just done that if they expected
otherwise, but that is what happened.
They were mistaken, quote. Rainey's Targaryen had no such
easy conquest. A host of Dornish Spearman
guarded the Prince's Pass, the Gateway through the Red
Mountains, but Rainey's did not engage them.
She flew above the pass, above the red sands and the white, and
descended upon Vaith to demand its submission, only to find the
castle empty and abandoned. In the town beneath its walls
only women and children and old men remained.
When asked where their Lords had gone, they would only say away.
So let's look at where Vaith is on the map.
It's a pretty neat location here.
They're sigils a little bit like the Cleganes.
Instead of three black dogs, they got 3 black leopards.
Yeah, that's cool. So instead of capitulating,
they've kind of agreed tacitly to a countrywide strategy you
just don't face the Dragons, don't surrender, just don't even
talk to them, basically. And and here on the only one
that would talk to them, Well, we'll get to it in a minute.
We'll see. I wonder if House Vaith and
House Santagar are very related. They both have leopards.
It's really and it really just speaks to like the idea of there
being, you know, Yeah, because I'm Spotted Silva of South
Santegar. Like, see, they're they're
leopards. But I just never considered the
idea that vase and vase and Santegar might have married or
maybe just I never really thought about how how much that
speaks to how many leopards there must be and or have been
in Dorne. That's a good point.
You know one day we're going to do you know animal stuff more
animal stuff and and regional animals and Westerosi animals
SoC. Animals that would be neat to
kind of use sigils as a way to try to figure out maybe what
type. Of regional actually live in
that area or live. Yeah yeah yeah yeah like you
easy. It's pretty easy to see like
people having like over over haunted the leopards because
they are so like yeah it's really easy to imagine that
having happened. So there's very few or something
now. Good call.
Or something from the roinar having brought over then maybe,
I don't know, but maybe there aren't many leopards there in
the 1st place. Like there aren't any lions in
England, but so many of the Crest of the royal families
have. Lions in them.
That's a great point that totally we could look that maybe
there were leopards in Esso so and along the Rhine or something
I I it seems likely enough that are there other desert leopards
I think I think I don't know big cats.
This could be a good question for George at some point.
So Rainey's might have been a little confused.
She shows up at Vaith and they're like, they're not here.
And she'd be like, well, that's weird, like, because it's not
just the Lord's away, It's like, everyone's away.
There's like some some older people, some children, you know?
No, no one noble, no one to take is a hostage.
Not that she could take a hostage, anyway.
She's by herself on her dragon. Like, how's she going to strap a
hostage on her saddle? I mean, I guess she could do
that, but that's a little weird. So.
It'd be a little risky physically getting a hostage,
like, Yeah, exactly. And so she would be like, I
wonder what's going on. Or she would have.
This is what she'd be thinking about while flying to the next
castle. Like, what are they doing here?
What's their game? Why are they?
Am I going to have this happen again?
If I fly to another castle, are they going to also not be there?
Well, let's see what happened next quote.
Rainey's followed the river downstream to God's Grace, seat
of House Elyrian, but it too was deserted.
On she flew. Where the green blood met the
sea Rainey's came upon the planky town, where hundreds of
pole boats, fishing skiffs, barges, houseboats and hulks sat
baking in the sun, joined together with ropes and chains
and planks to make a floating city.
Yet only a few old women and small children appeared to peer
up at her as Meraxes circled overhead.
So let's also look at these locations on the map, just to
situate ourselves, and you can see where she came from and
where she went. She went from Faith down to
God's Grace and near Plancky Town.
Course the people of Plancky Town might feel a little
vulnerable with the dragon around and all these ships and
their livelihoods. Just one breath of Meraxes could
wipe out, you know, like a third of them and start a fire that
might wipe out most of the rest. But of course, that wasn't her
business. She wasn't there to destroy
them, not yet. And they weren't there to kill
her, right? They could have.
She's by herself. She's walking into castles by
herself without a guard. If they had wanted to kill her,
they could have, but they clearly didn't go straight to
that option. They're definitely going to try
that later, but it's not their first move.
I I I assume because they didn't want it to become a blood debt
situation right away. Kill one of Aegon's sisters and
he's not going to publicly. He's not going to be able to do
anything other than bring massive fire and sword down on
you. And they didn't want to do that.
They wanted to maybe find a third option, a way to dissuade
a conquest, but not a way to encourage revenge, you know, So
the staying away method is what we see here.
I'm going to say before you take the map down real quick, just
because I was thinking about it, looking at it, just going back
to what we were saying earlier about the differences in the
cultures and how the geographic regions kind of preserve that.
And how I was saying that Dorne is more this loose union of a
bunch of different cultures rather than an interconnected
society like, you know, the West or something.
Just think about how different and far away Planky Town and
Black Mountain like this coastal town versus buried in the middle
of the mountains and the distance between them.
I wish I knew a little bit better, but that's probably as
far as from the Reach to Winterfell, right?
That's it's just left right difference instead of you know,
east West instead of north-south.
But not quite that far, but very far.
But if someone in Sunspare makes some proclamation or says, you
know, send an envoy to me or gathering on, I think how long
it takes for that message to get to the Tower of Joy or
Sandstone, Yeah, just just sending that message and then
the response to it. And it like it's just it's so
much harder for Sunspear to have the same sort of direct control
over its envoys. Then say the Reach over Old
Town, or Old Town over one of its banner men, or I think even
Winterfell over. I think you mostly still have
Ravens with messages, which wouldn't be too bad, but you're
right. Like any but not obviously not
all messages go by Raven. Like most messages don't go by
Raven because most people don't have a maester and trained
Ravens to. Right.
But yeah, say but say the Raven can get there fast and they're
not affected by the heat of the desert or going across the
heights of the mountains. But with it, what if the message
is we're having a feast? Send here Prince and four
soldiers or whatever. Then they have to cross the
mountains. Cross the desert.
You know it's it's. Crazy to think about how far
ahead you have to send the invites out for medieval
parties, and that's something that they might be excited to
do. What if it's like we're
gathering army to go attack the the Dragon Lords or something or
we're we're setting up a defense against the Dragon Lords or
whatever it is. You could see how the message
might be. Hey black mom, just hide out.
Just hide out. So we'll see what happens.
We're going to hide out. You hide out, you know.
I really like that and have this organized front against the
Targaryens. I agree because it's it's it is
it does seem like they may have had a united strategy like I I
flow to the idea that maybe this is just kind of because they
share an ideology, this is how they're going to handle.
But it seems like this was a concerted effort that they had
discussed the fact that no one was there to meet her.
Except for one very specific person who was there to meet
her, as we'll see in a second, and had just has just so happens
to be the leader of Dorne. So it sounds like this was
prearranged, like no one talked to her.
Let her come all the way to me and I'll give her the final
message, which is, well, let's hear it.
Well, before we do this message, can I just show, say something
about this map? Absolutely.
Sean, you were bringing up the distance from Blackmont to
Planckytown and looking at it there.
I just wanted to like and you were comparing it to the Reach
versus Winterfell. I just want you to visualize
that. Like picture the end of the
desert to the tip of the desert. That's the distance you're
talking about. If you look at Highgarden up to
Winterfell, it's it's four or five times that is much farther.
I just thought it would be helpful for you to see it
visually right here. Ultimately anyway.
It's just that I I might have picked a bad example, but I
think you can easily pick two cities that are far apart that
are clearly far apart. They're.
Harbor to As far as White Harbor to the Yuri is probably about
similar. Yeah, how about like from the
Sisters to Dragonstone? Maybe that is maybe still even
twice as far, maybe 3/4 as much. But anyways, sorry I didn't have
a digression, I just had to. I just wondered if it just
boggles the mind sometimes how big the world actually.
Is I I'm always down for a a map discussion.
Yeah, yeah, just when you see it, when you see it zoomed in on
Dorn, it looks so big. And then you see it here on
West, you're like that's just the tiny little.
As long as you're getting into the weeds of this, though, and
just to defend myself a little bit, maybe I wonder if the North
is stretched out kind of like our maps of Canada are, you
know? Yeah, I I actually do think that
that's possible that there is some slight distortion just
because I I don't I. Mean We're told the North is
larger than, not just. And that's not because of maps,
that's just because of travel and like think of how long it
takes for the northern host together and all that.
That's partly because of the difficulty of messages and and
getting, you know, Raven places where Ravens don't go.
But yeah, some of that would be worse in a desert scenario.
Or I was going to say, aside from the straighter distance,
there's also the train. It's easier to travel across
these forests and fields and against the deserts and
mountains, so. Well, there are rivers to cross,
and even though there's deserts, there's also rivers to cross.
Yeah. So, yeah.
So anyway, so it's not a simple thing.
You can't just look at the map and be sure that's that's one
thing we can tell from from this mini debate here, discussion.
It's not just as simple as looking at distance, but that
definitely gives us a ballpark figure.
It help definitely helps. And also is a good time to
remind folks that you can if you're listening on Spotify or
if obviously if you're watching the video, you're you've seen
all this. But if you're listening on
Spotify nowadays, you can click a button and turn the video on
and then turn it back off. So you're not using a lot of
bandwidth, your phone isn't using as much battery.
But if you want to just briefly be able to see what we're
talking about and then have the screen off the whole time, you
have that option nowadays on Spotify.
Click the video feed on, look at what we're talking about, and
then click it off when it's just us.
In front of our microphones again.
So I want to just take my take a an opportunity every once in a
while to remind people that that's an option because that's
a fairly new thing in the podcast world to be able to have
to have video at all. But to have video doesn't mean
just because people, people think of it as all or nothing.
But you don't have to. You can have the video on just
for a few moments at a time if you if for some reason you can't
have it on the whole time. So now I can read my quote.
And now it's backing up to where we were, which is the next step.
In Rainey's travails and treks around Dorne quote.
Finally, the Queen's flight took her to Sunspear, the ancient
seat of House Martel, where she found the Princess of Dorne
waiting in her abandoned castle, Miriam.
Martel was 80 years of age, the Maesters tell us, and had ruled
the Dornish men for sixty of those years.
She was very fat, blind and almost bald, her skin sallow and
sagging. Argillac the Arrogant had named
her the yellow Toad of Dorne, but neither age nor blindness
had dulled her wits. I will not fight you, Princess,
Maria told Raines. Nor will I kneel to you.
Dorne has no king. Tell your brother that I shall,
Raines replied. But we will come again,
Princess, and the next time we shall come with fire and blood.
Your words, said Princess Maria. Ours are unbowed, unbent,
unbroken. You may burn us, my lady, but
you will not bend us, break us, or make us bow.
This is Dorn. You are not wanted here.
Return at your peril. Thus Queen and Princess parted,
and Dorn remained unconquered. It's a different kind of
Princess and the Queen. Yeah, it's true.
The Princess and the Queen. I can only hear Ian Glenn saying
that in his. Great delivery of the Princess
and the Queen, Yes, Because, yes, Ian Glenn slash Jorah did
read The Princess and the Queen. Pretty cool.
So, Sean, you had in our notes you're wondering about the
phrase fire and blood here. Now of course, the phrase we
don't know how I knew that they didn't have a sigil before,
right? That was something that they
came up with as part of this conquest, and it made me think,
oh, did they have words? The words came at the same time.
OK, so but, so I wondered if they if this is where they were
coming from or they must have just come up with these words.
This is like the Is this the first time it got run out there,
you know? I think it might be the first
time it was run out there. Yeah.
Because like, it's neat that that she says it that way.
It sounds like another one of those examples where the
historians kind of just wrote with their like there's no
witness to this. You know, this is not like it's
specifically said. When Heron and Aegon have a
conversation, it says the maesters were there, so they
know exactly what was said. That's the only time they say
the maesters were there. So we know exactly what was
said. So all these other times this is
made-up dialogue. Horses made-up dialogue, but I
mean it. You see this in history books
all the time, real history books where invented dialogue is
inserted by historians. It is extremely common.
I I had that day as a as a young person interested in history.
I remember reading ancient history, but just reading like a
battle speech before some battle.
I remember what it was and it just donned him.
He's like, how do they know what he said?
Of course they don't. The answer is they don't have
any idea what he said. They completely just put words
and mouths of these powerful people just to make it.
I don't know why. Just to make it feel more
realist. I don't.
Yeah, just to put us there, a bunch of different reasons why.
Yeah, entertainment, like and. Yeah, I'm not against it, but we
should see it for what it is. And this is George is doing
following a real world tradition here attempts to find the truth
too. There might be like, yeah, maybe
stories of what was said were passed down even.
I don't really know. And whatever the story is
probably gets manipulated a little bit to make it sound more
exciting or interesting or appropriate for the morality of
their culture. You know, do.
They really say their slogans like that you, we're unbound,
unbent, unbroken. You know, like, that's our
words. Your words are fire and blood.
Were they really chatting via slogan?
Maybe. I mean, it's it's possible,
'cause it does fit the situation.
It's like, well, our words say we don't do that.
I was like, well, our words say we're going to come make you.
All right, then we'll see whose words are stronger.
Slogan, fight. You know, slogan.
Slogan. Battle.
Slogan. Wars.
So yeah, this was maybe the first time that this, the word
fire and blood were used, like, projected that way, 'cause
you're right, they didn't have those words until they decided
to be more Westerosi. Like, we had a banner and house
words like all these other houses.
So let's do it. And so yeah, this is them
projecting that out into the world.
So according to fire and blood. When this is happening, when
Maria of Dorne is saying Nope to Rainy's around the same time
this is happening, Aegon is being crowned at Old Town.
He may have already been crowned, so they may have been
again. We were talking about how that
was full of premature. It may have been very premature.
She may not have even spoken with the with with Maria yet for
Maria yet. So he's calling himself King of
all Westeros. And Mary's just waiting there to
be like, no, not all of Westeros.
And This is why we suggested maybe a little bit of
overconfidence. Because Agon's not going to win
them over by violence, nor will any of his descendants 190 years
before a full submission. And that's through marriage.
And like I said, it may have made their resistance all the
more fierce that he insulted them by claiming dominion
without even coming to their country in the first place.
Now, Miria Miria, clearly named for Nymeria, it's.
Nye Miria, it's. One of my favorite details.
I just want to shout that out. Presents another prudential
angle for for us here in explaining Dornish resistance.
It's quite possible their resistance would have been just
as fierce without this angle, but I think this matters.
Nymeria LED her refugees away from where?
From the destruction of the royner cities.
By who? The Valyrians?
The Dragon Lords. They're very much predisposed to
standing up or not bowing to Dragon Lords like it's in their
history. The people, all their royal
families named after. This is what they did like.
It wouldn't. It would be demeaning in a lot
of ways, or would insult their own history to give up,
especially without a fight. Like, they fled all that way.
They went through all those travels and travails, The
Odyssey of the Roinar. It's their their equivalent.
And they're they're just going to bend the knee to the next
dragon, to a Dragon Lord 600 years later without a fight.
After all that. What a what an insult to all
they had gone through, all they had fought for to keep their
culture alive. Right.
Like that's. Yeah.
Come on, you can't do that. I mean, I'm not there.
I'm not in charge. But you would think that would
matter a lot. Yeah.
And there's all these names. It's not just Maria, right?
It's. For Maria, there's Nymaros
Print. The title is it's Nymaros
Martel, right? Nymar is like her son or her.
Yeah, there's just half of them are named after Nymaria, so they
clearly value the things she valued and hold her in high
regard and the things she stood for, so.
What, are they going to just become slaves of another set of
dragon Lords that they fought so hard to resist?
Yeah, I just can't see it. Yeah, like, but Aegon seems to
have ignored that he he he seems to have understood the history
of a lot of the other people he was going after.
This looks like a pretty big oversight to not consider that
the descendants of those who fled his ancestors would not
submit so easily the second go round here, even though it's
been 600 years or more, they clearly haven't forgotten so.
I think there's definitely some oversight, some overconfidence,
as well as maybe missing some important details.
If they had thought some of these things through, or been
more aware of them, I think they would have known that they
wouldn't be bending the knee so easily.
That doesn't mean they wouldn't still approach at the same we'll
still OK, we'll go through the motion, send an envoy, ask for
your submission, you say no, back to the drawing board,
because it's not like it went straight to war after that
either. It's not like war just
immediately started. It's not like Rainey didn't fly
home and say, OK, get the Army ready, let's go.
No, no there was there was actually more to it but what
we'll get to as the timeline moves forward there was more
peaceable attempts before it turned to war.
So the war, the violence doesn't start for quite a while still
and there there's so this is a large number of reasons why the
Dorn we we've out we've pointed out why the Dornish would see
the situation different culture, geography, history.
Big one here with the with the Roinar.
Especially them. But beyond that just their
ability to resist their confidence and understanding and
and their strategies and and thinking maybe we have ways that
will work in war that they don't.
So Aegon was proved wrong like he whether he his advisors told
him. Here's another angle to this by
the way who is who are his advisors at this point?
Who's telling him how to handle the Dornish by the reach and the
Storm lands? People Who?
Have a lot of bias, if not prejudice, if not trade up a
racism against the Dornish. So they're probably not going to
give very good advice. Their advice might be tinged
with that. Oh well, we've been fighting my
Lord or my king, Your Grace. We've been fighting these people
for thousands of years. Let me tell you a few things
about them. But then it's all just tinged
with through the lens of war and and raids and back and forth and
bitterness and and blood feuds and not a honest assessment.
Of what they're capable of. It's like all the Dornish
they're cowards. They always run away.
That's why you should be worried.
If they're not cowardly, the fact that they won't face you is
a problem. If they if they're just going to
line up and face you, then yeah, then it will be easy because
you'll just burn them like you burned anyone else that dared
face you head on. But they're not, and that's why
you should treat them differently.
So yeah, Nina says This is why it's important not to read
history backwards. That because Doran was
successful in resisting Targaryen conquest for nearly
two centuries. The Targaryens.
Were stupid for trying in the 1st place.
No, it's not that simple. Yes, I think they made mistakes,
but it's not like, like you said, Sean, in Aegon's defense,
it did kind of seem like common sense to bend to me.
Even though there's all this cultural separation, even though
they're more stubborn, even though they value independence
more, it's still Valerian and all of Westeros outrayed against
them. That's still a lot to say.
We can beat that. We can stand up to that.
You know, like it's still common sense still.
The argument to bend the knee is still very strong.
Like a lot of the arguments, a lot of the arguments you might
use for why Dorn, quote UN quote, shouldn't have bent the
knee stand for Winterfell too. But Winterfell still bent the
knee. So like the culture differences,
the history, the physical barrier, all this stuff.
Yeah, Winterfell had all that too.
And they still bent the knees. And just from the Dorn's
perspective, like maybe it was a Maybe it was a bad idea to
resist. But they weren't wrong.
If they could stand up to the Dragons, they didn't beat the
Dragons, but the Dragons didn't beat them either.
I mean, Daron the first came in later and conquered them for a
few years, but that was also without actual Dragons.
That was regular military. So yeah.
So again, I think comparing them to the free folk makes a lot of
sense. Very hard to subjugate, not pop.
They don't have population centers.
The way they fight makes them less vulnerable.
They're the they're the Dornish of the North or the they're the
free folk of the South. Whoever you want to say it.
And also like if you think about this Westerosi to fight Dragons,
they would have to adapt. They're bad at adapting.
They're just not. They just do things the way
they've always done them. You know, Westeros is very
conservative in that regard. They just, it's like if it
worked before, do it again. Even though if everything is
different, you know, still do the things that we've always
done. Dorn's not quite the same.
He was right to predict that. The rest of Westeros would kind
of do what they've always done and that that wouldn't work.
But Doran also did what it always has done, and it did work
to A to AI was going to bring a counterpoint there too, that
it's not so much that they're not good at adapting, is it?
They are more established. Doran is less established.
They don't have big cities, right?
Once you have a big city, I guess it's harder to adapt, but
it's because you already made adaptations in ways that cause
your society to thrive, right? Dorn isn't thriving.
They haven't built a great set. They don't have a citadel.
They don't have. Eventually they build water
gardens, but hundreds of years late, you know, I'm just saying
that they don't. It's kind of like we said
before, they don't have as much to lose.
They don't have these big population centers.
They don't have fields of wheat or whatever else.
Yeah, that's very true. And they have caves.
It's easier for them to adapt when they don't have as much to
lose, yeah, yeah. Like remember how?
It was difficult for Damon to defeat the crab feeder in both
book and show version because they could hide you in caves.
That's a very good place to hide from a dragon.
Caves, like Dragons, can't follow you into a cave.
It's a good adaptation. But you're living in a cave,
right? Yeah.
Yeah, it's not good but it will keep you alive.
At least it's a good place to hide, but it's a great it's not
a good long term solution, but it absolutely works in a pinch
And and the red mounds are full of caves like not all of Dorne
is full of caves because a lot of it's desert and or waterways
or whatever, but the places that have mountains it's a good place
to hide and so at least it works.
In this, it's better than burning to death, that's for
sure. Another angle I want to take to
make it again. Again, I'm presenting A
counterpoint, but it's kind of like saying it, especially given
how sudden it was for a dragon to show up.
It's kind of like saying Japan wasn't good at adapting to the
nuclear bomb. It's like, yeah, no one's good
at adapting to the nuclear bomb. I guess it could have all fled
the city, lived out in the woods and had crappy lives, and that
would have been a way to adapt. But yeah, we're not good at
adapting nuclear bombs. If someone drops a nuclear bomb
on New York, the argument isn't well, America's not good at
adapting. You know, Like, no, it's just
nuclear. Bombs are hard to adapt to.
So that's a big consideration here too, like when we hear
about Aegon prior to the Conquest.
And there's that note in the book that says some believe
Aegon had never left Dragonstone before the Conquest.
But that's not true because we know about him going to
Lannisport and. Hawking on the Arbor and other
things. None of those mentions are of
him going to Dorne, which possibly feeds the theory that
he had misconceptions about it, about how their what their
culture was like. He may have thought it was more
similar than it was, or more different than it was, or who
knows? Again, the hearing about them
through the reach in the Stormlands might have got given
him the wrong idea and he didn't know how.
He didn't know better himself by it, not having gone there.
So yeah, that's, I think that's pretty important.
So and of course as we said before, like you said about the
big city thing too, even if they had a big city, they would be
reluctant to destroy that because they want to roll it
afterwards. They don't necessarily want to
torch it. It still would be kind of a last
resort that it's a last resort we're almost going to see.
So it's going to show how bad this war gets.
They're not going to torch the Shadow City or Sunspear, but
almost everything else is going to be that is going to happen.
So they're going to, Aegon is going to show.
Well if I it is in his wheelhouse like I will I can go
that far. You know he he doesn't want to
necessarily. But it's it's almost like the
don't make me do it kind of things like well, no one's
making you do it, but it is that is the threat that he's making
like if you if you quote UN quote make me do this, I will do
it. And you know I'm capable.
You've seen my dragon and you know what?
It's capable. Of, you know, you know, I had a
thought in here that I'm adding to.
It's occurred to me something I brought up in the past episode.
Is it? Remember, Aegon did intend to go
down to door more quickly, but stop to go confront Torn.
Yes. What if, Aegon?
What if? What if?
Right after burning Harren Hall. Yeah, Aegon had gone down to
Dorne. Where?
One, they might not have had as much time to come up with a
plan. And two, Harren Hall burning
would have been the story Right now.
This story is he burned Harren Hall.
But then did he burn Old Town? No.
Did he burn the Reach? No.
Winterfell. No.
It's kind of moved past the
burning cities down thing, huh? Maybe.
Maybe he won't burn down Sunspear.
Maybe he won't scorched earth. Us he.
You know, maybe they're kind of taking advantage of what I think
was correct for Aegon to not have the Scorchers policy, but
once they realized that, like, let's just leave the cities.
He's got no one to conquer. I don't think he's going to burn
him down. It's not what he's doing right.
Like eventually he shifts gears, but.
But that might add to why they did it just doesn't ring as.
Loudly did what they did and it and why it might have gone so
much differently if he had been able to go straight there after
Harrenhal instead of dealing with the North and a field of
fire and everything first. That's a good point.
Yeah, and Harrenhal is just a much bigger, bigger, better
example too, because it's so centrally located, so huge, like
destroying one of the Dornish castles, which is going to
happen on multiples. It just doesn't have that same
effect on the rest of the country, especially because the
rest of the country's already submitted at this point besides
Doran. So yeah, that episode, that
episode, that lesson doesn't ring as loudly.
It doesn't. Nor does it stand the test of
time. Like, we don't hear about all
the burned castles in Doran to this day, even though they were
burned, even some of them were. We don't hear about all the
lasting damage and how that serves as an example because
they're so they're all relatively remote.
Like the story Song of Ice and Fire doesn't go there except for
a little bit with Ariana. And even then we don't see the
evidence of this destruction. It's all, I guess, been rebuilt
or. And and one other piece that we
brought up before too is it. If he had gone straight to Dorne
in a weird way, they might have felt like.
We're the next most important. He came to us, so we respected
Okay. We'll but when he saves him for
a last, like, screw you, man. Yeah, you're not going to burn
us down anyway, you know? And they ended up getting
second, sort of second primary. I ended up being a problem for
the other houses when eventually they were brought in by
marriage, they got concessions that the other regions didn't
and that was so they kind of like we did get second place.
Y'all the rest of y'all are behind us now because we get
better tax situation. We're the royal family all this.
So, so it did kind of work out for them in that sense.
In the longer as a country as a nation holding out the fact that
they were able to withstand the Dragons did get them a better
deal, you know, almost 200 years later.
But it was a much better. Deal in the very long term.
They might have ended up with a better deal in the long term.
Also, if they kneeled right away, like if all their people
hadn't, their homes hadn't been burned and everything.
So that's also potentially true. Yeah.
Who? That's a really tough call.
Yeah. We have no idea what would have
been the outcome of that. And they went into it with a
different strategy because this is interesting too.
Like they maybe because they saw what happened or because it's
just naturally how they handle warfare.
The Reach played to win. They played to beat Egon.
The West played to beat Aegon. They wanted to kill him.
They wanted to defeat him. They didn't, of course, but that
was their goal. I'm not sure the Dorne, the
Dorne is trying to beat Aegon so much as aim for a stalemate.
It's a totally different strategy.
They're trying to just turn him off of the idea of conquering
them rather than straight up beating him, like make it not
worth it, rather than actually beat him, like actually defeat
him in a pitch battle. That's they're not even going to
try to meet him in a pitch battle.
But if they're going to win, it's going to be in an entirely
different set of terms. But to me, it seems like they're
less trying to win and just trying to not lose, which is
different. That's different.
Playing for a stalemate is like, if you go into a game of chess
aiming for a stalemate, the strategy is very different.
I mean, it's rare that you would want to do that, but there are
times when you would like in a chess tournament maybe, and
certain points matter more, like you're just trying to finish
ahead of someone else to make a cut.
I don't know. But yeah, warfare is similar in
that the strategy you're taking determines a lot of how you
might win or lose and your opponent might mess up because
they're thinking you're playing to win when you're not.
And that screws up their strategy.
So that's kind of interesting to think about it from that sense.
I want to get too deep into chest, but time is a factor.
Also, sometimes when there's only a there's always time
limits and if you get down to a certain amount of time.
Sometimes a person realizes that there's not enough time to
actually get a checkmate, wins because they start playing
quicker and runs the other person out of time rather than
get a checkmate, if that makes sense.
And in a way, you could argue time's a factor in War Two when
it comes to like winter coming or supplies running out or.
And one other thought I had about this that hadn't
encouraged me just now when you talk about going for a
stalemate, is that George lived through Vietnam.
He, you know, that's was sort of Vietnam's technique.
There they were. Way outclassing almost every
factor, but they just hit away, you know they didn't.
It was a different sort of battle than World War 2 or
whatever. And then the the US couldn't
even fight. It had limitations how it could
fight. Anyway, I could go on and on,
but I think there's a lot of parallels here that I bet George
had, at least in the back of his mind.
Yeah, you're right. No, that is a very good
parallel. You're totally right.
Yeah, They used like the the the parallel to caves is there with
tunnels. The the Vietcong made huge
amounts of tunnels and that's like a a low tech but very
effective thing that was just a terror to American soldiers as
well as. A lot of locals and we were
napalming the heck out of their country.
And yeah, like, which is part of why they use tunnels, right.
Because like, the napalm isn't going to get down in there and
the same, like dragon fire can't penetrate into the caves too
deeply. So yeah, that's a really, that's
a very good parallel. So, all right, so we'll call
that a wrap on our progress for today.
That's a good place to end with Dorne.
When we come back to Dorne, it will be to discuss the outbreak,
the beginning of of negotiations, and then
eventually the outbreak of hostilities.
That's all going to happen under the reign of the Dragon.
We're basically out of the conquest phase now.
Technically, we could come back to Dorne if people vote on a
Dornish topic. Just say it if you're feeling
Dorne. So yeah so like I said earlier
in this episode we'll we'll be off of fire and blood for about
six or seven weeks, return right before the beginning of 2024.
In the meantime we will have a variety of other episodes.
So it's not a not a break from episodes, just a a break from
fire and blood. We've been down in the in the
trenches with Aegon and his sisters for a while and and
normally we like to mix things up with our topics a bit more
than that. So let's do that.
Let's not get too over focused on one part of what is such a
vast and diverse selection that we have to choose from, but we
will certainly pick it back up where we left off and have a lot
of fun with that as well. So let's work our way out here.
Couple of bits from Julie A. She says, plus the oral
traditions from the descendants of the Roinar.
They'd have passed down stories of escaping Dragons and Valyrian
times and the assumption it's possible would be known that's
true. They have proven in their
history that they could outlast or survive the Dragons, even
though they didn't beat them. They weren't beaten by them
either. They escaped them.
They weren't, they weren't enslaved, they weren't killed.
Well, a lot of them were, but as a as a race they they weren't as
a yeah and Julia again says ver, PBS or per PBS.
Leopards are the only known species that live in desert and
rainforests of of big cats I assume.
Yeah, yeah. Well, no, I think it might be.
It might be mammals. I don't know.
But because someone else, they live in both desert and.
Rainforest. Yeah, yeah.
Oh, the combination of the two. Because lions live in deserts
but not rainforests. Yeah, I see.
Yeah. Exactly.
That is interesting. That is a very different.
Yeah, I'm sure, like, Panthers live in, you know, like Panthers
might live in rainforests, but not.
The desert invites that guy. Yeah, I was like, oh, I can't
think of any other like mammals that like elephants don't.
I can think of 1 immediately. I bet there's others.
Humans, yeah. Yeah, that's what someone said
immediately with humans, but we were clearly speaking might be.
Species of cats. I mean, there might be some bird
species, but it would probably be.
There's probably difference in that bird.
Just like this is a leopard. It's not the same as a cheetah,
but they're related, so that's neat.
That's very neat. All right, the the trivia
question again was who gave Miria her nickname, the Yellow
toad? The answer is Argyllac the
arrogant, as was reminded in the quote, one of the quotes that we
read today. That's right.
So next week, I don't know what our episode will be.
Next week we're going to be posting a poll.
So it will be a surprise. And if you want to participate
in the poll and future polls, well, sign up for our Patreon
and get not only that, but bonus episodes and lots of other
benefits that come with your support.
You give us support and we give you bonus content.
And my question for you is these.
Do you know the the poll topics yet?
Not yet. Interesting.
OK, well I was planning on doing them last night, but I've been
sick this week and my energy level has been terrible.
I feel pretty good today. I think it might be finally over
it. But yeah you're you're you're
you're seeing a lot but whether you just turned it on for the
stream and like we might stop recording a disease just like
deflates and stealing the. But your energy level seems
better. Your mood and everything.
I do always get hyped up for the stream.
I do love that. And I do have.
I do have a coffee, yes, but yes I do.
I do tend to pour all my energy into these live streams.
Lollatop points out there are also Siberian leopards and urban
leopards, too. Whoa.
Well, this episode is over. But if you want to stay immersed
in Westeros or Essos in Martin World, whatever your name for
it, we've got some suggestions. A couple of Patreon episodes,
The Last Storm, which is a part of the conquest you may not have
heard that we did separately and had a Jim Mcgean, our military
expert in to be our helper there.
The Red Kraken episode, The Red Krakens run takes place during
the Dance of the Dragons, but it's a separate story, doesn't
really have a whole whole lot directly to do with the actual
events of the dance. It's more of a Side Story.
So we covered it separately, and in that episode there's a lot of
the same things we talked about here about what's going on.
The Ironborn, the Red Kraken was the first one to bring the old
way back. Of the many people who brought
it back, who tried to bring it back, the Red Kraken was the
first one to actually do it, and he was more successful than even
a lot of the ones that did it later, with the possible
exception of Euron, which is still ongoing.
So we'll have to wait and see on that.
But the Red Kraken was enormously successful, and he
had a political mind several levels beyond most ironborn.
He understood the politics of the realm and how the blacks and
Greens would go at each other. In a lot of ways, that was very
savvy. He played them.
He he managed to play them off each other a little bit and get
the best deal for himself. Which enabled him of course to
go a reaving and raiding and plundering and taking of many
salt Wives. And how the West resisted him
and how that all went, and how the old, the return of the old
way and how important that was the Iron Born and how ready they
were to be unleashed again. And why that made things so
bloody. That's well why that episode is
fun and it was Co written by Radio Estra so there's an extra
benefit to that as well. All right as well, our Nymeria
series, of course we talked about Nymeria quite a bit in
this one. This might be a good time for
you all to head back to that pair of episodes.
We still have a third part of that series that we are many
years behind. On one day we'll get to it.
But we covered all of her journey.
We covered everything in Valyria and Sithorios on all the
different trips to different islands.
But we didn't cover what happened when she got to Dorne.
So one day we're going to do that, and that'll be fun to to
finish. But we got those first two for
you, and I think you'll enjoy them even if you've heard them
already. Yeah.
Yeah, also of course our episodes before the Dragons,
under the Dragons on the episode on Valerian, the episode on
Dragonstone, the episode on House Valerian and House
Celtagar. Those will be pretty big.
And of course the episode on the Century of Blood, a lot of stuff
that takes place right before the conquest.
And of course our episode on Mantaris, which is another
patrons only episode that discusses blood magic and
strange doings in the east and fall out from the Doom.
Lots of cool stuff there. I'm very happy with those
episodes and I hope you are too. It's like it's.
I'm really trying to vamp here to give it time for Sean to get
a cat and it looks like. Well, I can say something here.
One we just got a super chat from a long, expected
soundscape. Oh, hey, Jordan.
How's it going? Jordan is working on, oh, we got
a cat now. He's working on Duncan Egg,
correct? Yeah, he's working on Duncan
Egg. That's pretty cool, which is one
of the things we'll discuss when we have our TV show roundup
episode. We'll discuss where the Dunkin
Egg show is proceeding, and of course House the Dragon and and
other news related to those two shows and other stuff.
I also feel obliged to tell everyone we were supposed to go
to the corn maze on Thursday, but Aziz, obviously he just said
he was sick this week, so we did it.
But we're going to go tomorrow. It's still open, just barely.
There's only a little bit of time before they harvest the
corn. Oh, look at the Kitty though.
It's been Cora a bunch lately, huh, Sean?
She's just the most amenable to being grabbed.
And to stay in place you know to.
Stay in place and locked in her as she Cora.
Yeah, so, so the wee leopard. Yeah, the brown leopard.
Well, thanks everyone for coming today.
Thanks to those of you who support us, either on Patreon or
Spotify or through PayPal. Our website contains all the
ways that you can do that. All the ways you can find links
to our other episodes, All the ways you can find links to
anything, any sponsor or product or item that we pointed you to,
whether it's other books or other series or other episodes
of ours. You can find it all at
historywesteros.com. Thanks to Nina for her great
notes, lots of valuable insight and input.
And to the the politics and the marriages and the writing
process. This a lot of things I've talked
to her about ahead of writing things, so it's even some of the
things I've written were influenced by her, so can't
thank her enough. Joey, Jessie, Bran and Michael,
you two, you 4, you as well, not 22 TOO.
You two as well have done great things for us.
And I want to thank you for the music, for the maps, for the
intro. Y'all are great.
Our show feels so professional because of y'all, and to our
Benjineer giving us sound quality assistance here and
there, and occasionally everywhere.
We must as well. Thank you for that, and to the
rest of you for listening. We appreciate it and we'll be
back with more next time you know what to do.
Until then, LR Rereadus the.