There is power in King's blood. Melisandre and others have told
us this quite a few times, but generally they're speaking
supernaturally right. It's also true in the mundane,
literal sense. In a monarchy, especially, even
more so in an unstable monarchy, being the child of a king comes
with a certain measure of power, potential power, shall we say,
the kind of power that can do more harm to you than good, or
it can perhaps lead to bigger and better things.
It's really kind of a hard to predict and depending on
circumstances and context, type of situation.
But part of the reason it's a potential power is, well, for
that power to matter, you have to know you have it.
You have to know you have King's blood, right?
Not everybody does. In this case, with Robert
Baratheon's bastards, they definitely don't all know who
their father is. In fact, the three that we're
focusing on today, we have a nice range of options. 1 doesn't
know, one does know, and one we're not entirely sure about.
So that's interesting too. Now, honestly, when I say Robert
Baratheon's bastards, I don't really have to say that.
Do I just need to say Baratheon bastards and specify the
timeline 'cause I mean, Stannis and Renly, now they just, that's
not their game, is it? And they're, who else is going
to have Baratheon bastards in this era?
So that's interesting, right? It's, it's kind of the way they
were written. But of course, all Baratheons
have some dragon in their ancestry, right?
Robert Baratheon's bastards are Egg's great grandchildren.
That's mostly trivia, though. Is it or, or is it?
Maybe not indeed. Melisandre will be in this
episode too, because these questions of blood are
specifically and intrinsically and and completely just tied
over all to who these characters are.
Maybe less so to Mia Stone, but maybe that'll change.
Gendry is deep in relore and without Melisandre's influence,
and Edrick with her influence a little bit, has kind of rejected
it. So, you know, that's, that's
kind of telling, I think now. So Robert dies early in the
story, as we know, but his shadow never left.
Or perhaps his shadows is a better term because his
children, yeah, they're individuals with their own
personalities, their own hopes and dreams and struggles and
desires and all that. But there's no escaping his
influence on them or his lack of influence on them.
Either way, it's a big deal. Having little presence in
someone's life when you're their father.
That's huge. Having a lot of presence in
their life is also huge. And this presence, this
influence remains even after he's been dead for 4 1/2 books.
Robert Baratheon comes up a lot because his children are
everywhere. And it's not so simple as his
children. It's the ones called his
children who aren't the ones who are his children that aren't
known that way. It's just a whole big thing,
isn't it? And on top of all that, Maya,
Gendry, Edrick, I'll probably carve both Maya and Mia in this
episode. They, they don't have complete
stories yet, right? Or even if they did, we'd still
have a lot to say about them. But these are three characters
who are still very much in play in the Game of Thrones.
Maybe they're too young to be players, so they might just be
pieces, but they're not without some agency.
They have some. Certainly it's not it's not
completely taken from them. There are circumstances in place
in both society and their own lives are very different, and
even though there's a lot of overlap, their tails are
compelling and a great insight into the variety of ways
bastards are treated in Westeros.
We get a variety of settings and contexts and upbringings and
gives us a bunch of different looks.
They're all children of Robert, but their paths are very
different. And sure, it's true that
Westeros doesn't treat bastards well, but that's also not very
specific. It isn't just A1 size fits all.
Not all bastards are treated badly in the same way.
And there are exceptions, right? Bastards can rise high too.
That's a phrase we've heard maybe as often as there's power
in King's blood. So combine this that thought
with the notion we just presented, that all three of
these characters are active in the story.
We haven't seen their ends yet. And those endings, or the
pathway towards those endings could be special.
So we'll discuss them as individuals at first and then at
the end as a group. All that and more on this
episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Hello and welcome back everybody.
It is our first non Duncan Egg content episode of the, well,
not the year, but almost of the year ever since after Duncan
Egg. Now, we're not done with Duncan
Egg content, but it's time to start mixing in some other
things, and we're back in our usual time slot.
Mondays at 3:00 Eastern. I mean, sorry, Sundays at 3:00
Eastern. That's not usual.
That would be completely unusual.
So yeah, Sundays at three, we're back here.
This is where we'll be for the time being until House of the
Dragon Season 3 gets going, and then we're back on Mondays.
You could find us. Although not next.
Week. What's that?
Although not next. Week, not next week, not every
Sunday, just most Sundays. And we will be continuing to
publish the remastered versions of our Black Fire Rebellion
series on the off weeks in the coming months here, so that'll
be nice and fun to have out there as well.
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What did I Say? I mean it's true that there's
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Oh yeah, I know it sounded wrong.
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Her latest post is talking about the implications of what Aryan
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boy. Like the things he asks for, Is
that normal? Could he?
Does he really just ask for a pretty wench wherever he goes
and that's given to him? Yeah, it's.
Yeah. It's a little bit of a dark
subject, but very relevant, very realistic.
So you want to check that out once again over at good
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we've been around. Obviously it's been around for a
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our individual. Follow on Instagram because we
are trying to get our numbers up.
Yes. So it's just history of Westeros
over on. Instagram.
No, it is not. It's the history of Westeros,
the history of Westeros. OK, the history of Westeros.
That's us. That's actually why we weren't
on Instagram for a long time. There's an account called
History of Westeros and I messaged them many times trying
to get the name and I kept hoping for it and eventually I
just had to give up. They never responded to.
That it's just an inactive, totally dead account anyways.
Someone that doesn't even use it.
What a what a tragedy. Here is our opening trivia
question. As is so often the case, Roberts
last known bastard was Bara, whom he fathered on a virgin sex
worker in the year 298. She was born in 298.
That is maybe fathered in 297. Regardless, Barra and her mother
were murdered early in A Clash of Kings on Searcy's orders.
But who did the actual killing Answer at the end?
But the answer is also revealed during the episode.
So if you didn't know it and you're paying close attention,
you'll hear it and you'll get it.
Let's tell you what you what we have coming today.
I don't have a bunch of creative section headers today because
we're really going through each of these characters with a a bit
of a format. With each one of them.
We'll do their first appearance and then maybe some subtopics
like with, especially in Gendry's case, because he's the
most prominent of these characters, he has the most
appearances. We'll talk about him as the Bull
and amongst the Brotherhood Without Banners and becoming a
knight. But the main template for these
three characters is their appearance, their character.
And then who knows? As in who knows their identity?
Who knows who they are? Who knows their their connection
to Robert and all the aspects of that that are relevant to the
story or that we find interesting.
Now our poll, let's talk about that.
We got a quick poll for you all a little bit different than
normal is we're going to reveal the results of the poll a little
before the end instead of at the end.
That way we can add it to our discussion and you'll see based
on the question why it's fits so neatly into our discussion.
There's a good chance that the false Lannister Baratheon line,
meaning Joffrey, Tommen and Rossella and Shereen will all
die, plus Stannis. So who's going to have storms
end in the long run? As usual YouTube gives us 4
choices which is perfect. Gendry Adric Storm, Mia Stone or
other right So. Which I changed to someone else
in the poll so no one got, you know.
And other. No one said like the others
have, I just wanted to make that extra clear.
They do have blue eyes, just like Baratheon's, so yeah, not
so much. Black the Others might take all
of Westeros if I don't think that's how it'll end, but.
I don't either, but you're right that someone could definitely
interpret it that way. So again, results near the end
rather than at the end. We'll discuss those in context
with the question and give our own takes on that, but here we
go. It's a very interesting and
poignant starting point for this episode.
I thought this quote was pretty perfect.
As Robert is dying, he has some last words and wishes for his
best friend quote. I will give Leanna your love,
Ned. Take care of my children for me.
The words twisted in Ned's belly like a knife.
For a moment he was at a loss. He could not bring himself to
lie. Then he remembered the bastards,
Little Barra at her mother's breast, Maya in the veil, Gendry
in his forge, and all the others.
I shall guard your children as if they were my own, he said
slowly. And all the others?
There you go. They're Robert's children.
All the others are Robert's bastards.
See. We figured it out.
The blue eyes. That's the.
Yeah, I wonder how much mileage I can get out of that joke now.
Unfortunately, Robert Ned didn't have much of a chance to follow
through on that promise. It's not for lack of trying, but
he joined you and Liana in the afterlife a lot sooner than
expected. And frankly, only one of
Roberts's bastards has died since the books began.
And it's bare, like that's the one we just mentioned.
Well, Robert Baratheon's namesake, Rob, right.
Have have you all caught that? I know I've mentioned it before,
but it's been a while. Rob with two BS that's like Rob
B Robert Baratheon. It's like he was named with the
extra BS thrown in there to be the last initial there.
And of course, Rob is dead as well.
So yeah, Ned's own children are dying at they're roughly the
same rate as Robert's bastards. You know, Aziz, that quote I
just read, Yeah. It made me think of one thing,
he says. You know, little Berra, little
Maya, little Gendry and the rest.
It's a it's like a Simpsons joke when he goes little boy.
Forgetting the other kid. Who's my other kid?
Yeah. And the rest.
The rest you can't think of. Imagine that would be comedic
because Gendry does forge, you know, Edrick in this castle.
Those two twins that Cersei murdered, those other nine whose
names we don't know. Actually, I know them.
There's Bill, there's Joanne. He just goes through all of
them. It's like, like, it's like a
food description. Like.
Also, all Roberts bastards take longer to list than the food
served at the Red Wedding or not the Red Wedding, Purple Wedding.
So, yeah, not, not not the most uplifting moment there, but it's
really big and poignant and important.
It says a lot. Coming back to the scene.
It's like, wow, that really is a lot.
Lot came from that, didn't it? It's still doing work that that
line. Now.
Again, Egg's youngest daughter. Bringing us back to Duncan Egg
briefly was Rael, who married the Laughing Stores heir,
Ormond, whose heir in turn was Stefan, who fathered Robert,
Stannis and Renly with Cassan Estrimon.
And that's right. So we're going to discuss each
of the three bastards in their birth order.
So that means we start with Mia Stone.
She was the first of Robert's bastards, not just the first
that we know about. She was born in two 79280, the
World of Ice and Fire app, and the implications from the main
books suggest that she was just a common woman to the veil.
There's really not much detail other than that her profession
wasn't noteworthy or known or anything like that.
So Robert himself was born in 262, meaning he fathered her
when he was 17 or 18. And again, this was before he
was withdrawn to Liana and was a big part of the reason Liana was
more than wary of marrying Robert.
Like, this guy already has a bastard, you know, we're
betrothed, we're teenager, and he already has a daughter.
Like what the heck, how can I trust this guy?
I'd hard to argue with that. And the proof is in the later
events. Like, yeah, Liana was right.
And it's interesting that Liana heard this.
Like, it's not like Liana was in the veil.
So when we discuss, like, how much of A secret Maya's
parentage is, well, Liana found out from afar and not directly
from Ned, Robert, we don't think maybe Ned told her about it and
that's how she knows. But it seems like she heard it
elsewhere, like that gossip filtered through other channels,
you know, and somehow got to her.
And maybe who knows how what that Channel was.
But she found out, and it was a big negative for her.
And I don't think it would have taken a lot of digging.
I mean, Sansa finds out pretty quickly.
I'm not right away, and she doesn't find out in A Storm of
Swords, but she does find out relatively soon.
And she has the bastard surname. That's something we'll get into
the insurance and outs of when you get the surname.
And when you don't, you only get the bastard surname.
Stone, Snow, flowers, whatever. If your parents were one of your
parents or both are noble. Mia's mother is definitely not
noble, so the fact that she's called me a stone is an open
admission that her father was noble, even if not everyone is
speaking openly of who that particular man was.
But it's also just widely known, which is a difference with the
other characters that we're going to discuss.
So maybe Leona overheard Ned talking about it, or one of
Ned's household guards was gossiping about it.
She overheard that because Ned wouldn't have been in the Veil
just solo. He would have had some
Winterfell men with him and they might have gossiped about it.
There's a lot of ways. It's just impossible to track
this Grapevine. It's easy to imagine that it
happened, though, because it's just so many possibilities.
Now, the obvious comparison to her is Harry Harding in a lot of
ways because not to her, but to her circumstances, because Harry
Harding is acting out like a young Robert in some ways.
Here he fathered a daughter, also by a commoner her.
This daughter's named Alice. And Harry was also about 16, a
little younger than Robert when Alice was born.
And he doesn't specify or no, we're not told, but we're not
sure what this common born woman's job was.
Probably a domestic servant, probably connected to the
household in some way. Otherwise it's a lot more
random. Someone that works in the
castle, that that's proximity does a lot of work here.
This girl that bore this child did marry a Waynewood man at
Arms, so that is another reason to suspect she was already
working in the household. All that really adds up.
Now in the same sense, quite possibly Mia's mother was of a
similar job, domestic servant of some kind, probably at the Gates
of the Moon because that's where Mia works.
She officially works for Nestor Royce running those mule trains
up there. But maybe her, I mean her mother
could have been born or could have worked at the Erie too,
just in the general vicinity is very likely.
So that is just an uncommon or a common rather not uncommon,
shall we say, uncomfortable thing about medieval and proto
medieval settings that this is really normal that domestic
servants. I mean, it's still true now in
the real world, maybe not to the extent it was in in this sort of
setting or the real world version of this setting.
How many times has someone slept with a nanny or something?
Right, like that is just the oldest type of story.
Like that is common type gossip. Right.
Common type drama in a household, like there's very
ordinary in a certain sense. The, the in modern times, it's a
lot less likely to result in children.
People have a lot more sense of how to stop that.
I guess that's one of the big differences, but it still
happens. It's still, people are still
preyed on that way. The power imbalance is is real
and exploited constantly, right? So most likely it's worse in
Westeros than it is in the real world.
But it's a big deal in both. In fact, Franklin Flowers, a
Fossaway bastard who we'll be talking about in a future
episode. Speaking of slight, slight
Segway here, this episode was actually chosen as part of
Topics Moot 2025. As you all are well aware, this
is no longer 2025, but our schedule got a little wonky.
We had to bump this one episode, so we're just now getting to it.
Topic mid 2026 is already underway.
All voting has begun, and it's already looking likely that
we're going to have a Fossaway episode.
So we'll talk about this a bit more at the time.
But yeah, Franklin Fossaway slash Franklin Flowers, the
brown apple Fossaway. He, his mother was a washer
woman at Cider Hall. You know, assaulted or forced or
forced on whichever term is appropriate.
They all fit. It's it's not, it's not good,
but it certainly results in a lot of children in the setting.
So Harry also, like Robert, basically just abandoned the
mother of this child the second the kid was born.
And he has another child with a girl named Saffron.
So Harry is, he's a regular Robert Baratheon, just with less
mobility. Robert was a temporary resident
of the Veil. And we don't know at all what
happened to me is mother. Not unlikely.
She had a similar path as these other women who bare bore the
children of highborn people within the household.
They got married to someone in the castle to lessen the stigma,
to lessen the scandal, things like that.
And maybe to a man in arms or to a lesser knight, something like
that. John Aaron and very likely would
be the one to have taken care of that.
Given who the father was, given his connection to Robert, he
certainly would have been aware of it.
Given it was an open secret, there's no way John Aaron didn't
know. So John's involvement here is
also very interesting. We don't have a lot of idea
here, but we have to think that John, being the kind of man he
was, knowing Robert would want to keep him away from this
woman, perhaps, even though that's cruel to the child and
the mother. The political fallout would be
much worse, potentially, if Robert were to actually develop
feelings for this woman. And, well, it's John's
responsibility as Roberts, a caretaker, to make sure he
doesn't get himself in these embarrassing situations.
Yeah, it's Roberts fault. It's not John's fault.
But still, John is his. He's responsible for him.
Robert is a young man. And let's not forget, this is
before Robert had a reputation. This isn't.
We know what to expect from Robert.
This guy's always sleeping around.
No, this is when that just started.
This is young 17 or 18 year old Robert doing this for the first
time. So this isn't like a pattern yet
It became one. But this was the Mia was the
beginning of that pattern. So it wasn't something that John
Aron could necessarily see coming until it started
happening. And then it repeated and was
like, oh boy, what do we? We have a womanizer on her
hands. We have a man who can't keep it
in his pants on her hands. Well, I got to do something
about I got to help him with that.
I'm his caretaker, you know, I got to maybe try to keep him
under control. So and Robert, there's all sorts
of plans for Robert. He's the air to storms and of
course there's no knowledge he's going to be king one day, but
he's on track to be 1 of the 7 great Lords of of Westeros.
That's a huge deal, keeping him, keeping his nose clean, keeping
him from having these things that might be problems down the
line. You know, he's too young to to
care about the consequences. But John Aaron is an older man.
He knows, he's well aware of of what could go wrong here, and
would maybe have just done his best to keep Robert from going
too far, maybe to mitigate the damage.
Things like that. Let's talk about Mia's first
appearance. It's very convenient for us
because the first line, her first line, also immediately
includes her description too. Nice and succinct and complete.
Here. Quote a knight ascent with the
moon not even full. Even Lysa should know that's an
invitation to a broken neck. The Mules know the way.
Sir Brendan, the wiry girl of 17 or 18 years, stepped up beside
Lord Nestor. Her dark hair was cropped short
and straight around her head, and she wore writing Leathers
and a light shirt of silvered ring mail.
She bowed to Catlin more gracefully than her Lord.
I promise you, my lady, no harm will come to you.
It would be my honor to take you up.
I've made the dark climb 100 times, Michael says.
My father must have been a goat. A goat man, a stag, It's not too
far off, I guess Stags don't climb like goats, but they do
have the hoofs. And yeah, anyway, so her
description along with her half siblings that we'll get to in
good time in this episode is important because the seed is
quite strong. I mean, these features are just,
it's like every single time, right?
He she doesn't have long hair, so it's hard to tell if she got
the curly locks. She keeps it short and and clean
and neat and she's graceful. So yeah, technically she serves
Lord Nestor here. She worked at his household.
And Nestor got promoted after all this by Littlefinger to the
actual holder of the Gates of the Moon rather than just the
castellan. And of course that only holds if
Littlefinger's power holds. So that's it was his way of
buying Nestor onto his side. Now Mia would only be indirectly
affected by all this political back and forth with Littlefinger
and all that. I don't think she's like Nestor
Royce falls that she's going to fall with him.
No, she's just not politically important like that.
Despite who her father is. The mule runs are really
important. Maya is like the only one who
does this. Sansa specifically thinks about
hers, like me as the only one bringing us certain food.
Without her, we wouldn't have this that the other when they're
when they're still in the air, you know, of course, now there
he's been abandoned for winter. They they descend the mountain
and they're not going to go back up there till winter's over,
which means they probably won't go back there at all.
In the length of A Song of Ice and Fire.
We've probably not, probably not going to see the area again
unless it's some sort of like epilogue type setting, but even
then we might not because yeah, they're not going to reopen it
for a while. It terrifies people.
That's why she's the only one that can do it.
It's scary as hell. The the heights, the winding,
narrow passageways. It's like fear of heights is one
of the most ubiquitous human fears there is.
People that aren't afraid of heights are a little uncommon.
People who love heights are extremely rare, but they do
exist. People that are genuinely,
sincerely, positively affected by being in a position that
almost everybody else would be terrified of.
Maya is that type of person. She is unique.
It's a cool way for George to give her a form of bravery, a
rare form of courage that has nothing to do with battle.
Nothing whatsoever, right? She's immune to fear of heights.
In fact, I think she likes it. She's like an Alex Arnold.
If you know climbing, that's that free solo climbing guy that
climbs mountains and buildings without ropes.
That guy loves it. He's not just doing it for the
attention. He genuinely loves the feeling
of being up there doing it. He doesn't get adrenaline
rushes. No, he just, it's like a calm
sincerity, a calm serenity and not sincerity, serenity.
And that's, I think my stone. She loves the height, she enjoys
the views. It doesn't scare her.
It's not just something she says to pump herself up.
It's a it's a genuine internal softness.
She's like, yeah, I love this. And it might because of partly
her upbringing. She was raised doing this.
She got adjusted to it as a kid and she never learned to be
afraid of it. Things like that.
There's a lot it's, it's amazing the things that when you get
used to them as a very young person, how well they can stick
into adulthood. So I feel like this is Mia.
She, she got into this very young and, and took to it.
So this is probably how she got involved.
Like, she was born to this commoner and Robert and John.
Erin wanted to give her a position that where he could
keep an eye on her, you know, And she's Robert's child.
He might actually have some noble intention behind this,
too, just making sure she's well taken care of.
He doesn't want to just throw her to the wolves or the
Falcons, whatever hits the veil. So, yeah.
So he wouldn't be taking her away and hiding her.
And he's kind of doing the best, like he said, doing the best he
can. It's not his fault that Robert
fathered this child that he shouldn't have.
But you know, she's still a servant.
She's a mule girl. Even though she's Robert's
child. She doesn't have the status or
or the danger even associated with her.
In some ways, she's at less risk than than an Edrick or a Gendry
or even some of the other nameless children of Robert
Baratheon because she was raised this way.
She's very happy where she is. She's very set in her role.
No one really sees her as a threat to make a claim or
someone to make a claim through her.
The she's a mule girl. That says a lot.
That's just, that's not a negative thing coming from me,
but from the nobles of Westeros. It's a, it's a, it's absolutely
a negative thing. They look down on that.
And thus she's not a threat because they look down on her,
right. It's not going to be necessarily
the same with the Gendry or and Edrick, because one, they're
boys, they're men and that automatically makes them a
bigger threat in this society and as far as claims go.
But still, the human angle here is big.
We should think more about John Aaron.
Like, what did he do? What, what he what was his
concern besides just making sure the girl was well taken care of?
I'm sure he had concern for her as a human being.
But like, does he want the Lannisters to find out?
I mean, Roberts betrothed to, to Leanna.
I mean, later on he's betrothed to, to Cersei.
Like the the picture changes, but the information's already
out there. Now.
Searcy made threats against Mia when Robert suggested maybe
he'll bring her to court. And he's like, yeah, this is a
dangerous city for a young girl. Like they Searcy's like, yeah,
I'll have her killed without saying so much.
And Robert got super mad about that.
But, and I think that's when he hit her, but he didn't press the
issue beyond that. So Robert took her threat
seriously, basically. And he really wasn't that into
it in the first place. You didn't hear.
Robert was like, yeah, this was kind of a flight of fancy.
Like, yeah, I could have my daughter around, but he didn't
really care that much because he's Robert Brathy, and he's
just on to the next woman, on to the next bottle of wine, Right.
Yeah. I'm not here to defend this man
like that. So, yeah.
And Nina puts it pretty well, too.
Like, who in the realm is realistically going to rally to
the cause of Mia Stone? Like, this is not how it works.
Like, again, I'm not denigrating her.
This is what they would do. So yeah, I I don't know that Jon
was that worried about it. As long as she's not thrown in
Cersei's face, she's probably safe, especially given where
she's living. Like how Cersei doesn't have
some network of assassins that she can just dispatch to the
veil. She's trying to have Jon Snow
killed, and she's making a a botch of that and.
And other things. Yeah.
She wouldn't have been able to pull that off very well.
So she didn't try to kill Mia just because she existed.
She tried to would have tried to kill Mia if it was thrown in her
face, which is telling. And that's going to matter when
we discuss Gendry. Less so Gendry because they
don't know about him, but Edric Storm for sure.
So in other words, it's less about Cersei's fear of her
children being usurped. In the case of Maya, it's about
the embarrassment and shame that Robert cheated on her.
That's the well, she didn't because Maya was born before he
married Cersei. But still, it's still an
embarrassment to Cersei because it's a connection to all the
other bastards he's had after he did marry her.
So it's still part of that bag. So, yeah, she was born prior,
prior to the war and all that. So her place in things is a
little different in that sense. Yeah, Michael.
Michael also says that she has the eyes of the owl, in addition
to saying her father must have been a goat.
But wait, so he's he not in on the open secret if so many
people know that Maya's father was Robert.
And she's not really acting like she knows either, which is a
little peculiar. So it's fitting.
It's not weird that Michael doesn't know because he's so
young. It's an open secret that the
adults know, right? Michael's what, 1415?
Her age, roughly. Maybe a little older.
He's not very old. Maybe Lynn Corbray is, you know,
the one he Squires to would have told him, but maybe not.
It's not necessarily. Would it have benefited him to
tell him, you know, Lynn's kind of not the best guy?
I think if he had a a reason to do it, he would.
But if he didn't, I don't think he would just.
Do it. Maybe he would do it just to be
a jerk because he would like just to get a reaction and just
to stir up trouble because he's he's Lynn Corbray.
But yeah, you're right. I don't I don't see a compelling
benefit to him. More likely to be trouble with
him not knowing and him spurning her because he thinks she's too
lowly. Yeah.
And which is just would be so, you know, tragic because she's
actually, you know, a King's bastard, right?
Yeah, and here's where that comes up.
When Catelyn asks my like, who? Wait, you, you keep talking
about Michael. Who is that quote?
Michael's my love Mia. Explained Michael.
Red Fort, he squired a Sarah Lynn Corbray, We're to wed as
soon as he becomes a knight next year or the year after.
She sounded so like Sansa, so happy and innocent with her
dreams. Catelyn smiled, but the smile
was tinged with sadness. The Red Forts were an old name
in the veil, she knew, with the blood of the First Men in their
veins. His love she might be, but no
Red Fort would ever wed a bastard.
Ironic that Catelyn thinks her too low born when she's actually
a King's daughter, but you know, even the bastard daughter of a
king is not that much of A marriage prize given the
circumstances. Raised as a domestic servant as
the mule girl, which again, it's impressive that she's the mule
girl. It's a really dangerous, hard
job that would drive people crazy and they would hate it.
They would be in fear all the time.
But again, the nobles look down on that.
But it also makes for great humor like this.
There's all sorts of these little hidden identity jokes
when you're dealing with characters like this.
As a reader of A Song of Ice and Fire, we don't know that much
about Michael, whether he's manipulating Maya or whether
he's kind of naive too. He's kind of young, so it's
certainly possible that it's the latter truth.
But as a Squire of Len, you kind of wonder what kind of influence
this kids had on him and if he's kind of going that same
direction. So there's a lot in common.
His relationship with Mia has a lot in common with Roberts
playing with Mia's mother. It's a little bit of a pay it
forward kind of karmic situation.
Robert's attraction and interest in Maia's mother was genuine,
though, as usual, fleeting. It was brief again, though usual
hadn't been established back then.
But yeah, she was the first of what became a pattern.
But the similarity lies in the privilege inherently of the man
in question. There's no risk for Michael or
Robert, really. If there is a bastard, it's
someone else's problem, right? Well, for Robert's John Aaron
had to deal with that, or his brothers, or what have you.
Or Ned. It's not his problem, even
though it's his responsibility. It should be his problem, but it
isn't and he knows it. Michael Redford's in a similar
position of privilege, not as high as Robert, but pretty high,
and knowing that whatever he does with Mia, he can just get
away with it and have no consequences.
But for her or for Mia's mother, there's all sorts of
consequences. Having the bastard of a high
born person, it's going to change your life.
Maybe not for the better, probably not for the better,
maybe for very much the worse, maybe for the better.
It's possible, you know, you get some money out of you get a
higher station potentially, but it might end up getting you
killed or the kid killed. So it's a real, a real lottery
type of situation. So again, Sansa learned through
gossip, through one of the servants, not even through one
of the other highborn girls. It was Maddie who taught her,
who told her that Maya is Robert's kid.
And she's like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, I she caught it.
She's like, oh, yeah, I can tell by looking at her.
She noticed as soon as it was pointed out to her, she's like,
yeah, I see it. And that's the case for a lot of
these kids. Robert, his look to see being so
strong as it is, if you're not looking for it, you don't
necessarily catch it. And I'm talking about people in
Westeros. But if it's pointed out to you,
it's, we've seen it a number of times where someone goes, oh,
yeah, look at that. Just looks right, just looks
right. And there's some other cases
where they don't need to have it pointed out.
They notice themselves immediately.
Ned Stark has that happen once or twice.
Brienne has it happen when she meets Kendry.
Because because Brienne was so, you know, into Renly, she had
more of an eye for it, I would say, right.
It was so shocking, like, Oh my God, that looks like Renly.
Yeah. And she was also, like, groggy.
So there's a other things going on there too that fueled that
moment. But the look is there.
It wasn't it's it's not exaggerated.
And Sansa has learned a lot of Sansa's naivete, like her
learning to not be naive has come in the veil, like it
started in King's Landing, right?
Being around Cersei, being around all these awful things.
But it's continued very much in the veil and a lot of it is
learning how naive she had been. She's not just becoming less
naive, she's addressing the fact within her mind that she was
naive. She it isn't just a a
coincidence. She's aware of what she was.
She compares herself to younger women who are still in that
space and both wants to be like that and feels bad for them.
She's like, I would like to be naive like that.
I would like to not have all these concerns and cares and
waits, but I also feel bad for them because one day they're
going to learn and it's going to be really hard for them like it
was for me. And so she has some idea of, of,
of Maya, more than she would have before, because she's now
masquerading as a bastard as well.
And that puts her on not equal footing, but closer footing than
they were and gives them, gives Elaine more a chance to put
herself in Mia's shoes. And Sansa understands a bit too,
the whole Michael Redford angle because Santa herself met Waymar
Royce on the way to the Wall before he took the black, and
she had a little brief crush on him.
So she kind of gets it, you know, Michael Redford, Waymar
Royce, these are very similar ranked houses.
They're both from the veil, similar age.
Yeah, real similar. So this is a good Segway to more
insight on Mia Elaine observing Maya thusly in the very first
lines of this chapter here quote.
She was reading her Little Lord a tale of the Winged Night when
Maya Stone came knocking on the door of his bedchamber, clad in
boots and writing letters and smelling strongly of the stable.
Maya had straw in her hair and a scowl on her face.
That scowl comes of having Michael Redford near, Elaine
Knew. Yep, Caitlin was right.
Unfortunately, she did indeed get jilted and left for a noble
girl as yeah, Caitlin saw that coming a mile away.
She said to her she she thought at the time if if Michael
Redford lay with her, it would be on the wrong side of the bed.
He was right about she was right about that too.
So again, the responsibility for all this gets pushed away from
the person with the most agency. The man is the one with the
power here, whether it's a teenager, a teenage Squire, Red
Fort or teenage Lord and waiting Robert Baratheon.
Bastards are assumed to be lusty and wanton because of the act
that made them. The blame is pushed on to the
child, and the responsibility of taking care of the child is
generally pushed on to the woman, the mother, where the
father just goes off and lives their noble life, mostly
pretending it never happened. Unless they happen to like the
kid, or the kid is, you know, skilled in some way, then maybe
that changes. In fact, this is perhaps a dark
angle to why Michael was attracted to Maya in the 1st
place. He's a young kid growing up
hearing what bastards are in Westeros.
What is he told? They're wanton and lusty.
If you're a 131415 year old boy, that's a plus.
Like wanton and lusty, you say? That sounds great, right?
So it's, it's a double edged sword.
It it denigrates them in society, puts them on a lower
social standing and it attracts this sort of interest, this bad
interest, this negative interest that leads to these negative
outcomes. So yeah, Nina suggests that, but
maybe that's exactly what he was hoping for me, that she would
conform to these bastard lusty, wanton stereotypes.
It's exactly what he wanted. It doesn't mean he didn't care
about her to some extent, but in a in a I'll only care about you
as long as I care about you type of way.
Like this is won't last for her. My's thinking this is everything
for Michael. He might be saying that maybe to
a certain extent he's convincing himself.
But if he were to really sit down and have a talk with his
father or someone else, or as the adults in the room, they'd
be like, dude, come on. You know, you're going to marry
a noble woman, your father, like.
So there's a big wide range here of him being almost as naive or
him just lying to her, pushing all this like, yeah, I love you,
blah, blah, blah. You know, we'll be together.
But just knowing that time, that's not true.
It's hard to say. We don't know Michael very well.
We haven't seen him much at all. But we only see these things
from afar. However Michael is there at the
tourney. That's what Sansa meant or Elena
meant by thinking. Yeah, that scowl on her face
comes from having Michael Redford nearby.
And yeah, he's there for the tournament.
So she's trying to avoid him. You kind of wonder whether she's
going to watch the tournament. Will she, I mean, not
participate? Will she, you know, sit in the
stands and be a spectator? Or is it just she just kind of
done with it all? I don't know.
And that's interesting because that the Tournament of the Wing
Knights comes with a lot of speculation on things that could
happen. You know, whether it's an attack
by the Klansman or whether Sir Shadrick is going to make his
move on Elaine. You know, Mia isn't directly
connected to these things, but could be sucked into them
somehow. Obviously, maybe attack of the
Klansman could involve all sorts of people in this chapter where
Sansa notes for Scowl. She doesn't actually appear
again in that chapter, but we can certainly speculate on what
comes next. Now there's a person interested
in her that isn't Michael, and that's Lothor Brune, captain of
Littlefinger's Guards. He has romantic feelings for
her. Now, he could declare his love
for her at the tournament, you know, in a, in a kind of a
chivalrous, you know, romantic style or what have you.
Or he could do it behind closed doors.
But it seems like it's coming. He's, she's not going to be
those one of those girls who hands out a favor like Elaine,
Will and maybe some of these other noble girls like a Miranda
Royce. But it's still a festive
opportunity. It's a festive moment.
Feelings would be high, positivity would be in the air.
Maybe Lothor doesn't clock that Mia is not feeling it because of
Michael Redford. He may not be aware of all that,
but either way, he's a reasonable match for her in in
terms of status. He's the captain of the guards.
He's a knight. He is nobly born, though on the
lower end of it still, he's a Brune that is nobly born.
Even though the Bruins don't accept him, it still counts.
He's also competent. He's shown that he's a good
fighter. He was good in the Battle of
Blackwater. He's Lothor, Apple Eater if you
recall, did some damage to the fossil ways.
They just keep coming up, don't they?
So it's definitely seems possible that that's a
connection. That's that who she ends up
having a relationship with. Maybe her marriage, but there's
nothing whatsoever to indicate she's into him.
We know he's into her, but you know, this has got to be a two
way St. She's not going to be forced
into this. This isn't like that.
I don't think. Of course Lords can tell anyone
who is in their domain who to marry, but I don't think sweet
Robin is terribly concerned with with this right now.
That's pretty low on the list. And I don't think Littlefinger
or his people care much either. I don't think they're too
worried about Mia. They're they're, I don't think
she's on his radar very much, but I do think he knows who she
is. If there was an angle to for him
to gain out of Maya's parentage, if there was something for a
little finger to gain out of who his father is, who her father
is, he would exploit it. But I don't think there is.
I don't see what he can do. Like Nina said, who's going to
rally behind her? She's the way she was raised and
her employment sets her as lower status despite who her father
is. It works against her King's
blood in that sense. So, yeah, I just don't know that
he has much of A political use for her as a piece in the Game
of Thrones. Might not be a very valuable
piece in terms of that, which is good for her.
She doesn't need to be pulled into all that, right?
That's not positive. She's like, yeah, I'm raring to
play the game with Nah, She's she loves her job.
I think she wants to stay where she is.
So who knows Who knows about her identity, given it it is an open
secret. It's hard to tell.
Like, I'm guessing that Littlefinger.
Yeah. Is he know any open secrets?
That guy knows. He knows a lot of the secret
secrets. So I kind of doubt that one
slipped past him since Maddie, a serving girl, told Sansa.
Like, how many? How quiet can this be?
But it gets back to her. Michael Redford didn't seem to
hint at knowing. And maybe she doesn't either,
right. It might because Michael says my
father must have been a go. Well, did you correct him?
Did you say my father was Robert Baratheon?
I don't know. Doesn't seem like she did.
So it's kind of one of those things where like it's an open
secret that's kept from her, like no one's told her, which is
that credible? I think it could be.
I think it's possible. But on the other hand, she knows
she's called Maya Stone, Mia Stone, and she knows that like
everybody in that world, that you don't get the bastard
surname unless your parents are noble or one of them is noble.
She knows her mother isn't. So did she really just not think
about it like, well, my father was somebody important?
Is that the end of those thoughts?
Did she not dig any deeper? Did she not ask around?
She's got to know other people would have met this man.
Did she not ask her own mother? Right?
Is we don't know what happened to her.
If her own mother's alive, then hey, mom, who's my dad?
Right? Simple question.
Like most kids are going to ask that.
So I lean towards her knowing it's hard.
It would be hard to keep that from her.
And she's not like, she's not 12, she's like 18.
So it's a long time for that to have escaped her notice.
And she that's setting aside her own potential, digging her own
curiosity into her own heritage. Maybe she just doesn't want to
know. Maybe she's got that sort of
advanced wisdom, wisdom beyond her years, where she's realizes
that knowing isn't going to do her any good.
She's like, well, if if my father doesn't want to know me
to know him, there might be a good reason for that.
Maybe it's kind of a bitterness to it.
Like, yeah, he doesn't want me, but so I don't want to know who
he is. That's a Brathian kind of
stubbornness. So I could see that being there.
Like she could have that level of I don't want to know.
I'm dedicated to not knowing. Screw him.
I don't care. I don't want to know him.
He didn't want to take care of me.
I don't want to know him. The intensity of an emotion that
develops like that in childhood and you can hold on to it and
cling to it and gain strength from it or at least maintain
your stubbornness. Yeah.
I mean, mule personality, stag personality.
Robert's child. Yeah.
This is this kid has some ancestral stubbornness alongside
her own cultivated stubbornness with the lifestyle she leads
and, and and her own attitudes. So, yeah, I wonder if her own
internal stubbornness has kept her from addressing this
question. You know, it is some sort of
denial. You know, we've seen that
before. It's denial can be really
powerful. What would she do with the
knowledge that she's Robert's child if she did know she took
it to heart? What would she do with that?
Would she be proud of it? Would she be mad at Robert?
Would there be? There's probably some mixed
feelings. I thought it would just be one
or two emotions and that's it, right.
This is a big deal. Learning about your father,
maybe later in life, confronting these things.
So. Yeah, it's a it's a fascinating
question that gets into both questions of monarchy and
royalty, but also just questions of humanity and parents, you
know, very basic human things. So yeah, there, there isn't a
bit of an advantage to being a woman in this spot.
You know, it's in a patriarchy. It's usually not the advantages
of women we speak about. But there is an advantage here,
which is that, yeah, you don't want to be in the Game of
Thrones. You don't want to be thrown into
that mess where it's dangerous and deadly and you win or you
die. If you choose to be in that, OK,
that's your own consent, your own will.
But you don't want to be pulled into that without your consent,
without your, you know, And it doesn't seem like Maya is at all
interested in that life or that part of her, that possibility,
that potential. She's not wanting.
She doesn't want to walk down that road.
The only path she wants to walk is the narrow path that the
mules walk. She's not trying to walk that
golden road or that Royal Rd. that King's Road.
Nope. No, no, no.
So being less of a threat is probably good for her.
That's probably keeping her out of harm's way.
She's in grief over Michael. But I mean, this is a song of
ice with fire. Grief over a breakup doesn't
really register very high in terms of the bad things that
happened in this world. We got war, we got death, We got
all sorts of awful things. What?
What young person doesn't go
through a few breakups early in life?
You learn from that. It's not such a bad thing, You
know, she'll be stronger for it in the long run.
And it's good that she's not actually deeply involved with
this guy. He's probably not a great dude.
Yeah. So maybe Lo Thorbrun isn't bad,
isn't good for her either. After all, Lo Thorbrun works for
Littlefinger. That's not the.
Doesn't reflect terribly well on you, and that's your employer.
But they'd have their own bear in the maiden fair thing going
if they did hook up because, you know, he he, she's the one with
the big black hair. But he's how Brune is a brown
bear sigil. So yeah.
Anyway, the veil in general, if we take a if we take a higher
level view here, as high as honor, the veil has been kind of
separate from the rest of the realm.
They've been doing their own thing.
Lysaaron closed them off from the War of 5 Kings, But that is
coming to an end at some point, Maybe some point pretty soon.
Will Maya be relevant to that opening of the veil?
I don't know. I kind of lean towards no.
I don't think she's going to go north with sense.
That seems weird. Why would she go north?
Why would she go to the Winterfell?
Why would? Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
I just can't come up with a reason why, especially because
she loves where she is already. Why would she?
Why would she want to go there? A.
And if she's made to go there, for what purpose?
Right? I just don't understand.
On the other hand, during winter, she's not making the
mule runs anymore. The area, as we said, is closed
for quite a while and would be it's going to remain so for who
knows how long. So maybe her her job's a little
different, right? I don't know.
Her employment situation is doesn't have as much to do.
I don't know. Maybe that's a reason for her to
go somewhere else, but I don't know.
I don't. I don't think so.
Yeah. I don't see her leaving the
bail. You guys weigh in.
Let me know if you have different theories about her.
If she does leave the Vale, it could be in the epilogue
scenario. Maybe she'd marries Lothor
Brune. Lothor Brune was promised a
castle or keep land of some sort in the Riverlands.
Problem is that was promised him by the by Joffrey by the
Lannister regime. So that may not be good.
That may not hold up in court so to speak later on.
And of course, if Sweet Robin dies, if Littlefinger has him
killed and then Littlefinger himself goes away, all sorts of
things could happen in the Vale while they're gone.
Maya could be could be there while chaos happens, while the
Vale armies goes NA lot of possibilities.
But ultimately I find her. Of the three bastards we're
going to discuss today, I find hers end game the hardest to
guess at. I think, you know, Edrick is a
little more tied into the potential ancestry to, to, to
the royal wine, to Storm's End. Gendry doesn't even know his
heritage. So it's a little harder to
figure where she's going in that sense because they all, they're
all doing other things out in the world.
So I have there's less gravity pulling her into the Game of
Thrones. That doesn't mean it won't,
though. I'd love to hear your ideas on
Mia, on her, on her outlook, on her character, maybe some
personality traits that I missed or didn't address as thoroughly
as we could have let us know. But in the meantime, let us move
on Gendry, the one we know the most about, the character that
we have the most insight on, the one who's on screen the most.
He was born in 284, not all that long after the end of Robert
Rebellion, his father's rebellion, which is a reminder
of how quickly Robert was out there in brothels after marrying
Cersei. Right away, essentially, Yeah.
And this is par for the course with Robert.
He had already fathered a child during the rebellion.
That's Bella, who is the 4th most known of the bastards.
But I didn't really, You know, we didn't really have time for
four Baratheon bastards in this episode.
This is already a lengthy 1, So he wasn't going to hold back.
Like he what's going to stop him if that's what he's willing to
do? Like he's literally fathering a
child while he's being hunted by Jon Connington.
And he's during like during the proto stages of rebellion, he's
still doing that. So this man is is not going to
set that aside so easily. He's going to take time for his
pleasures and not care much about the downside or the the
problems that it creates because again, someone else will
probably take care of that for him.
So his mother was a Tavern wench.
She died young. Gendry remembers her as blonde
that she would sing to him. The blonde is a nice little
touch by George because it's a yet again, an example of the
seat is strong. It's the coal over the gold
again, right? It's a it's one of the more
subtle examples of it, but it stands just as tall when you
line it up against the others. Joffrey golden hair, Tom and
golden. Of course, they didn't actually
have Robert as a father, but the point that's the point that they
would have had black hair if they did, because all the ones
that Robert actually did father do have black hair.
It's it's like a 100% rate of this.
It's extremely strong genetics. And actually Gendry looks more
like Renly than looks like Robert, partly because of the
the proximity in age. Gendry's closer to Renly in age
at this time. As we mentioned before, Brienne,
it's so much a resemblance that Brienne is struck dumb by it.
He's she's, she actually says Renly and he's like, what?
And he's like what She's like, Whoa, hang on, I'm, I'm
feverish. That can't be Renly.
But it's so overwhelming in that moment.
She actually, the word actually escapes her lips.
Now, Gendry does not take after his father in terms of women.
He is not a womanizer. If anything, he's a little shy.
We see that with Bella of all things.
It's kind of humorous that Bella maybe not flirts with him
because she's actually interested, but she's a sex
worker. She's flirting with a potential
customer right now. Sex workers don't just pick any
random person. They're going to have
preferences like anybody else. But still, this isn't
necessarily like a genuine attraction.
But it's funny if it is because they're brother and sister and
don't know it, right? Bella is was fathered there at
the Peach. Gendry ends up at the Peach.
They both have similar hair. They both have the blue eyes.
But yeah, this is what by comparing Gendry to Renly and
putting him in similar situations as Robert.
Now Gendry isn't gay like Renly, but he's not out there fathering
bastards for sleeping around Also like Renly for different
reason, but he's not doing it, which makes him similar to Renly
in that regard as well. But and Renly looks like a
younger Robert and Gendry looks like that.
So we're kind of getting a window into what Robert looked
like in his prime. He looked like a Gendry or a
Renly did, but maybe a little bit bigger.
But in current times, when we know when Robert's in the story,
he's no longer that, he's no longer handsome and fit.
Like when he married Cersei, Cersei remembers him as being
like the most perfect manly specimen, even though she wasn't
into him in the 1st place. She wanted to marry Rhaegar,
which he actually saw him, you know, standing there in his
armor getting ready to get married.
She's like, OK, actually, but that only lasted like an hour
until he got drunk and whisperedly on his name in her
ear. So, yeah, real quick for that
one, Robert. Also, by not parenting Gendry,
Gendry didn't witness his father's womanizing.
That may have been a real turn off or it may have been the the
wrong kind of influence. He may be like, yeah, I'm going
to do that like my dad. So it's a there's a little bit
of a conspiracy theory that Dendry's mother was murdered to
conceal his identity, but it doesn't seem very likely.
Because if you're going to do that, why not do it sooner?
Why not do it like right away? If they were worried about that,
you wouldn't take the chance and just let it go for a few years.
Like Gendry does have memories of her.
I believe it far more likely Virus was just keeping an eye on
her, maybe giving her some money to make sure she was taken care
of, to make sure she didn't talk or to bank this for later.
For Viruses could have a plan for Gendry down the line, a way
to use this against Robert or against the the Lannisters or
something. Something that fits in his long
term plan with Fagon, with Young Griff.
In fact maybe even including a Gendry, maybe even a Gendry or
Edric Storm are part of his long term plans.
We've talked about in other circumstances, Virus and Illyria
stashing airs like Tywin or like Tyrion or Tyrek for Casterly
Rock. They may have a plan for Storms
End. They certainly don't not have a
plan for Storms End. You're not going to have a 20
year plan to take the throne with your hidden candidate and
not consider the seven great houses as part of that plan.
Yeah, like, oh, we kind of forgot about Storms End.
Yeah. Now this isn't David and Dan
making ATV show. So that's also good for Gendry
that Cersei doesn't know who he is.
Because we know that when Cersei found out about Gendry, she did
find out about him. She made she wanted him dead
right away, which tells us she didn't know about it before.
If she had known who he was, she would have had him killed
beforehand most likely. But she only made a move on him
after Robert's death, which maybe she wasn't worried about
any competing problems there. Maybe she just wasn't worried
about it because her children come first and there's no way
this, you know, blacksmith boy is going to usurp her own
children. But maybe she maybe she's
doesn't want to take that chance.
And also, what we said before, it isn't just about the danger
of succession stuff. It she, Cersei murdered 2 twins
that were born at Casterly Rock because Robert fathered them.
I don't think she was worried about the political implications
of that either. Again, it was the shame, the
embarrassment that just Robert is shaming me by having these
kids. I want them gone.
Again, Gendry doesn't necessarily fit into that
because he was born, I guess, you know, he was born after
Cersei was married to her, but he, he she doesn't necessarily
know that, but she would assume he was.
So, yeah. So that puts him in danger, a
danger he wasn't in until she found out.
So how did she find out? Who told her?
My best guess is Littlefinger, right?
Littlefinger, probably. He's like, hey, I'm Mr. Chaos.
I want to cause the Great Houses to fight each other.
You know, I want Cersei to be distracted from what I'm doing.
And there's really no one better than Cersei for causing chaos
and distractions while Littlefinger can do stuff while
she's creating those distractions.
So him telling her when things are falling apart, when the
Civil War is getting ready to break loose, what better timing
for a Littlefinger be like, hey, Robert's got a kid right here,
aren't you worried about that? Right.
I I mean, yeah, I think that's entirely possible.
She acted. She immediately had Berra killed
then, too, and she didn't have that done before.
So, yeah, like, this all came out when things started to slip
into a succession crisis situation.
Now going back to Gendry's life, when his mother passed, let's
say Varys took over from that point and said, OK, his mother's
no longer raising him. He probably judged his mother
wasn't a problem. It's like, OK, she is smart
enough to keep it quiet. She is wise enough to understand
that blaring out loud, who this boy's father is is not unlikely
to get him killed. That is not in your child's best
interest. She's one of those mothers that
is not going to use this boy as leverage or ambition.
She cares about the kid and will mother him in secret so that his
parentage doesn't come out because that's bad for him.
So she's a seat comes off even though she's nameless, faceless,
she comes off as one of the good ones, unlike Berra who is not a
bad one. She's a naive one.
More on her in a minute. She didn't know to keep quiet is
my point. But Gendry's mother apparently
did and that's why they seemingly let her be.
But when she died, Vars had to step in and be like, hey, we
need to make sure this kid is well, what?
What was Varus's angle here? Is he a stash?
Edric Storm hadn't been born yet when he first sent Gendry over
to Tabo Mott apparently. Or or maybe not.
We don't know the exact timeline here, but it looks like Gendry
has been with Tabo Mott for perhaps as long as a decade as
apprentice Smith for that long. So let's delve a little deeper
into this because it's pretty interesting, but let's also back
up and get some set up stuff done here.
First appearance for Gendry. Basically, Ned is following John
Aaron's footsteps, trying to track down the same information
that John Aaron was, trying to see if that's what got him
killed and what else is at the end of this trail, and it leads
him to Gendry among other things.
So Ned is already knowledgeable about Robert having bastards.
He knows he's seen them, he's seen Mia, he's seen others.
He thinks about them. Net isn't a super clever guy,
but there's just no mistaking Robert's look.
And it's extremely familiar to him.
He grew up with Robert, Robert's best friend.
They they were teenagers together.
I mean, this is extremely familiar to him.
Now here's that really important scene where we meet Gendry and
Tabo Mott. And it's just a wonderful
exchange between people who actually care about a child
rather than using them as ambition.
And you see this wonderful moment of mutual respect quote.
The master called over a tall lad about Rob's age, his arms
and chest corded with muscle. This is Lord Stark, the new Hand
of the King. He told him as the boy looked at
Ned through sullen blue eyes and pushed back sweat soaked hair
with his fingers. Thick hair, shaggy and unkempt
and black as ink. The shadow of a new beard
darkened his jaw. Hard to imagine that could be
had such short cropped haired Gendry.
Yeah, right. Yeah, and.
Messy. Yeah, and of course, as to
repeat what I said in the intro, Ned is not even for a second
going to think, well, maybe it's Stannis or Renly's bastard.
Yeah, no way. Stannis.
No. Renly even even more.
Nope. Well, I don't know.
Both just so Nope. It's just yeah, it's just major
Nope on both of them. I mean, Renly could have had one
just because he's trying to overcompensate for things.
It's like, yeah, more weirdly more possible for Renly than.
Stannis, but it wouldn't be an 18 year old because Renly was 5
when Gendry was born, right? Or digitious time talent.
Right. He's a stag.
He's ready to go. Yeah.
Rutting at six. There's also some dark humor
here, besides the humor we just dropped there.
Gendry is seen, Robert. He's saw.
He's like that drunken king. He almost got run over by him,
by his horse. Gendry almost got run over by
Robert's horse. And he Yeah, he's like that
dude's a drunk. You're right, Gendry.
He is. He's just also your dad.
So in this scene, Ned figures out that Gendry doesn't know who
his father is. He's then he's concerned about
Tabama. He's like, what is this Tabama
character all about? Is this guy really the man that
should be guarding Gendry? What's his what's his take?
Does he have an angle? Is he is he trying to
manipulate? Is he trying to play the game?
But Ned asks a few pointed questions and drops his worry
quickly. He sees, Nah, this guy is the
true steal. He's like, this guy has Gendry's
best interests at heart. And that must be difficult for
Ned to figure. He, he, he, he gets, I think
that Virus arranged all this, but he doesn't understand
Virus's angle. Frankly, neither do I.
There's a lot, there's a streak of Virus that really seems like
he actually cares about some of these kids.
He also is willing to do awful things to children like the
little birds. But one of the real most
poignant pieces of evidence, character evidence for Virus
himself being a noble bastard that was abandoned is that he
has pretty well documented care concern for some of these
bashful he did. Why does he care about Gendry if
he's got an Edric or if he's got why does he send Gendry to the
Knights watch if he wants to stash him as a claimant?
That's the worst place to put somebody that you you've
forsaken your your name. It doesn't work that way, right?
You know a king can undo your vows like that, but you're if
you're the one with the King's blood, we're going to legitimize
yourself. I don't know.
I got it. Doesn't seem to fit.
It seems like there actually is a soft spot Virus has here for
people like this, which is part of why people like myself think
he might be a person like that himself.
He might be some air black fire or otherwise.
Now that's really getting into virus territory though, so let's
bring it back to Gendry and Tabo Mott.
Just like Ned is like, is this Tabo Mott guy going to take good
care of Gendry? He realizes, yes.
Meanwhile, Tabo Mott has the same concern.
Let's not forget we're seeing it through Ned's eyes.
And that's one of the things that Ned realizes that Tabo is
checking him out too. And it's like you're checking
out whether I'm going to do bad things.
He's hiding Gendry from me, which is good.
Like he's not giving this kids identity up even to me, even
when being pressed. That's exactly what I wanted to
see. Tab Ho Mott.
You're a good man. So they both kind of like it
that it's kind of like that, that knowing not you're like
this guy. This guy knows what's up.
I'm on his team. We're on we're on the same team
here, even though they're never going to interact again,
probably like I like this guy. He likes me passing ships in the
night. Respect.
Move on. There's no ulterior motive.
They both realize that of the other.
Now this, they both have Gendry's best interest in mind,
which is they would not have expected that.
That's not the default. You expect, you expect ambition,
you expect someone to be out for themselves.
So they're like, that's why they got to ask these questions.
That's why they got to be sure. There's an extra level of
cleverness in Varus's stashing him with Tabho Mott here.
And let's remember it. It was Varus for sure that did
this. What I mean by that is
blacksmiths are one of the most valued common born professions,
right? If you don't have high birth or
station or wealth, blacksmith is one of the best professions you
can have. It's generally a man's
profession, but it because it keeps you alive.
It's you're valuable armies that would normally kill anyone that
has no value to them. Well, blacksmiths have great
value to them. Even the bloody mummers won't
kill a Smith even like Dothraki would think twice about that
right? That's that's just a most
valuable kind of person you can have.
If you are a guy with armies, you need horseshoes, swords,
armor, fixing, all of the above, etcetera.
That literally happens. Gendry would have been killed by
the bloody Mummers and or by Roose Bolton.
But in both cases they're like, oh, you're a Smith.
Step over to the not going to be killed, tortured or assaulted
line and you know, we'll pull you aside.
You get better treatment. Not good treatment, but better
treatment. And of course, he had already
made that helmet, the bulls head helm, which was kind of his
resume, right? People are like, who are you?
What you're doing? They don't look at him and think
blacksmith. They don't doubt it when they
hear it, though, because he's big and muscular like, Oh yeah,
OK, that tracks. Yeah, OK, OK.
And it's also he's also strong. He he show maybe showed that
promise. Like look at the size of this
kid or maybe it's Robert's kid. He's probably going to grow up
strong. Maybe it was a bit of prediction
because again, we don't know when his mother died.
His mother, but probably pretty young because he doesn't have
much of a memory of her. So virus wouldn't have been
going out on too much of A limb thinking this.
This kid will be perfectly comfortable wielding a hammer in
a non combat situation. Donald Noy, Hugh Hammer, and
things like that were human. Hammer's father, you know.
Now, Tabo Mott would have also been clocked by Varis as a man
trustworthy in this spot, something that Varis did long
before Ned figured this out. Varis did it, but Virus had to
act. After Robert's death, that level
of protection was no longer enough.
Maybe he knew Littlefinger would tell.
Maybe he one of his agents overheard Littlefinger telling.
Maybe it was just too much of A risk.
And so he had Gendry sent to the Nights Watch.
He had to probably. Well, he had to have come to
Tabo, the guy who was his caretaker for maybe as long as a
decade and be like, hey man, good job apprentice and Gendry,
but his life is in danger and you probably know why.
We don't have to say because Tabo would have figured
something out all over these years.
He doesn't necessarily know he's Robert's son, but he could have
figured it out pretty easily. Like what noble born kid needs
to be hidden that much? It's really only the kings that
that this comes up with. Like you don't have to hide
Tywin Lannister's bastard. You don't have to hide Ned
Starks. Well, you didn't have any, but
you don't. You don't have to hide any If
you did. Ned Stark pretended to have a
bastard. That's why it worked.
Because it's not a big deal. It's it is a big deal when
you're a king, when you're a King's son.
Queen's son, maybe, but not it's, it's a dramatically less
even amongst the high Lords, especially when they already
have large families. So Cabo presumed was like, yeah,
OK, I believe you. You were the man who brought me
this guy. I I get back of my mind.
I've always figured this kid was a King's son.
If he didn't explicitly know, he understands that Robert has just
died. It's obvious in that you don't
need much explanation in that sense why this kid would be in
danger. It was also a bit of a fake out
within the fandom. Now a lot of y'all came along
after a lot of the books were out.
I my first one was A Storm of Swords.
Now, before A Storm of Swords, I learned that there was a lot of
theories that Gendry and Donald Noy would become buddies because
Gendry's a Smith, he's going to the wall.
Donald Noy's the Smith at Castle Black.
Donald Noy made Robert's warhammer.
Oh, he's going to recognize him, right?
That really was a strong theory, but obviously it did not come to
play. Not only did Gendry not go to
the wall, but Donald Noy is now dead.
And let's not forget, Donald made Robert's warham.
He wasn't just a Smith that storms in.
He actually made Robert's warhammer.
So with those skills and all that other overlap, it could
have been a really interesting conversation, but it, I know
never, never happened. The bull.
Let's talk about his time on the road after leaving King's
Landing. You know, he spends a lot of
time with mostly with Arya, but also Yoran Hot Pie and then
Rorge and Biter and Jake and Agar.
One of these others that's in the group of of nice watch
recruits is a guy named Prade. He dies on the way and Yoran
allocates Prade's sword to Gendry.
He's like, well, you're big you, you're most of who we're
recruiting here don't look very warlike, very warrior like, so
we'll give you the sword. And there's that awkward yet
revealing moment that comes shortly after this where the
gold cloaks arrive and they're coming for Gendry and Aria
thinks they're coming for her. And Aria is really confused why
they'd be coming for Gendry. Yoran, however, knows they're
coming for Gendry because he was probably told he was at the last
minute. He's like, hey, here's this kid.
Yoran is old enough to know what Robert looks like and to catch
this and to understand that something is going on here.
A last minute hooded man saying, hey, take this boy with you.
Well OK, that's curious. I think he figured it out.
Cersei knew who he was, wanted him dead, and it was her writ,
her signed letter saying bring this kid back.
Joran knew what they were about. Joran's like, Nah, I'm not
giving this kid up to die, he's in the nice watch now.
And of course we know what happened with that.
The nights the Gold Cloaks ran off came back with Sir Amory
Lorch and there was the battle and the holdfast, Joran and and
the Nights Watch crew. Nights Watch crews try to defend
themselves. They have to run away.
Gendry does kill a guy along with Arya and and company, and
then they escape. They are captured by Gregor's
men not long after and that's when he's spared because he's a
Smith. He's given over to the Smithy at
Harrenhal where he remains and actually advances more in his
training. He was about to forge his first
sword in King's Landing when he when everything came crashing
down and he got sent away. But he does work on swords at
Harrenhal. His skill set advances, he
learns from the master there, and that is where he stays until
Arya talks him into leaving. She convinces him that he's
going to be maimed. That may not have been true, but
in general, she was probably right that leaving was a good
idea, that it wouldn't be go well for him if he stayed.
He wears armor when he shows back up, maybe something that he
made or worked on. And he brings his hammer.
He's got a little, you know, forge hammer with him, plus some
swords that he distributes to them.
Of course, they're on the road for a little while, and then
they're captured by the Brother without banners, captured but
treated well, Hot pie joints. Like immediately he's like,
yeah, let's go. He joins the cell, the brother
without banner cell calling him like a terrorist cell.
Yeah. At the end of the kneeling man.
Right, Which is one of their fronts and makes good bread
there. Hey, nothing like you gotta have
a resistance movement. Has to be well fed, right?
They got better bread now. Meanwhile, Gendry and Arya move
on to the Hollow Hill, where they meet Barack Dondarian and
watch Sandor fight him, meaning they witness real, true magic.
We see the scene through Arya's point of view.
It's moving and powerful and haunting and our reactions come
through her. But Gendry sees everything she
does, and he is quite struck. This is a man that lost his role
and is, you know, a young man looking for a place in society,
a place in the world. Doesn't have a family, so to
speak. But this is a brotherhood.
This is a family in a sense. And he sees how they operate.
He sees that they're trying to help people.
He sees that they're for the people, not for the Lords.
He's all about that that he's like sign me up.
He appreciates the way they attack outlaws, He appreciates
the way they take on the brotherhood, the the Bloody
Mummers. He likes the way Lord Barrack is
honorable and the way he leads in general.
He wants to be a part of that. Let's take a quick break or a
little roughly halfway ish point and then we'll come back with
more about Gendry and then we'll move on to Edrick Storm and the
group of them. A Shaya, we have something cool
to discuss here. We have a we have been in this
business for a while and editing has always been a big part of
what we have to do as as a podcast, both video and podcast
editing. And we've used over the years,
we've used a variety of tools for that Lately, the technology
has improved to a point where it is amazing.
So I'm gonna let a Shaya take over and give you a little
demonstration of what we've been doing with some of our older
episodes. I'll give you a demonstration of
how the old ones sound versus how they sound after using this
software, Alphonic. Yeah, absolutely.
This is when we remaster an old episode.
We thought it would be great for you guys to hear the difference,
so I clipped out a little brief thing.
This is from Black Fire Rebellion Part 1, Aegon the
Unworthy, which is gosh, over a decade ago now.
And we'll have, we'll drop the link to that as well.
But here, take a listen everybody.
Former rider of Tessarian the Blue Queen.
That's a great name. I love that name.
Obviously that's the name of a dragon if you haven't read the
pitches in the queen. Former rider of Tessarian the
Blue Queen. That's a great name.
I love that name. Obviously that's the name of a
dragon if you haven't read the pitches in the Queen.
That's it. I just did a quick snippet but
you can probably hear a huge difference and it's amazing.
We love Alphonic. You can use it to do multi track
editing. So when I do episodes with Aziz,
me and Sean, I put each of our audio track in there and it you
can edit them separately. You can do automatic cutting
with it where it can cut out your owns.
It cuts out mouth sounds that all those you know, lip sounds
and all of that. Just just mouth noises that we
don't like. So if you would like to try it
out, they do give you I think like 2 hours free.
But also the link is in the description it and I'll say it
aloud. It's all phonic.com AU
phonic.com question mark source equals history of Westeros.
That's our affiliate link for it and I we just really like this
product. So we were happy to get approved
for their affiliate program because we we use it for every
episode. It's really changed our
workflow. My life is so much better with
this product. Y'all like I I Can't Sing its
praises enough. Yeah, it's really amazing.
Y'all heard just from the demonstration, I'm sure.
But it's I mean that's imagine what it can do on new episode
that is a 11 year old episode that's remastered.
It's it wasn't originally recorded using some of this
text, so it's it's even better that way, but it makes old
poorly recorded stuff sound like it's made in a advanced studio.
So whether you're doing something like this
professionally or just on the side for fun, it's really the as
far as we know, it's the best you can do for audio quality
these days. Cannibal the Dragon says if
Robert's parents are dead, why is Robert still in the Veil?
Why was he still in the Veil after they die?
He was there when the rebellion started, yeah.
I put an answer here for him. Can I read?
It Go for it. Yeah, we got an answer straight
from. George Yeah, this is per the So
spake Martin, he said, and this is the first starting.
He's talking about Ned Stark, he says.
And once he reached the age of 16, he was a man grown, free to
come and go as he liked, which would have included both time at
home and in the Veil, since John Aaron had become a second
father. The same was true of Robert, who
divided his time between Storm's End and the Veil after reaching
manhood, not to mention dropping in on tourneys and whatever
choice fights he could find. I thought I wanted to include
this just because it gives some good context to what Robert's
doing and why he's maybe flitting about just to get to
have so speak Martin on the subject.
Yeah. I mean, ultimately the simpler
version of that answer is because he was Lord of Storms
and it could do what he wanted. Like, yeah, I mean, and Robert
did what he wanted before he was Lord of Storms.
And so, yeah, I mean, this is just he was even more empowered
to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted.
Good question though, because that is, I've seen that asked
elsewhere before and it is a little bit of a curiosity.
Why didn't he just like slip full time at Storms and after he
became Lord? Yeah, but the answer is simple.
It's boring. I mean think about if.
You wanted to think. About Duncan Egg, Lionel
Baratheon. He didn't sound so thrilled
about just going back to boring old Storm.
It's like hunting and Hawking, yeah.
That's. The most fun we'll have, I mean.
So Sir Gendry as a member of the Brother Without Banners, he's
knighted along with the rest by Relor and Lord Barrack, as it
happens. Right?
So he's Sir Gendry of the Hollow Hill.
It's certainly unorthodox, but any night can make a night.
So that's that. Case closed.
And he does eventually start to prefer the Lord of Light to the
Seven, in part because the example of the men who
introduced him to the Lord of the Light, it's not Melisandre.
Maybe why that's why Edrick is like, I don't know about
switching more on him later, of course.
But Gendry, his authority figures, his influences, the
people influencing him, the people he's looking up to,
Thoros Barrack, maybe some of the other brotherhood, they're
all worshipping the Lord of Light now.
They're all relorists. And he saw the Lord of Light's
power first hand, which is part of what brings Baratheons along,
right? That's what brought Stannis
along. He's like, actually, she's got
real power. I can't deny that.
I just saw her do stuff magically.
That's I haven't seen the seven do any magic.
Gendry maybe a little bit of that same attitude.
I'm a, I'm a show don't tell guy.
I mean, you tell me there's magic, OK?
I'm not going to do anything about that unless you prove it.
He got proof. He saw Barrick cut from neck to
collarbone, through the collarbone.
And then 20 minutes later, he's walking around again.
He's just no, he lit his, he lit the sword on fire with his
blood. But it's not just the magic,
right? Again, it's the it's the
character. Even more so Barrick's style of
leading brave, noble, putting himself at risk.
This is what Gendry appreciates and approves and is his.
That's where he lands. Gendry has true night vibes.
I'm not sure y'all recall where he finishes the story where
we're at right now. I mean he's defending the week
like a true knight and he is a knight.
He's Smiths at the end of the crossroads and he's part of Co
managing that front with Willow Heddle and helping to protect
the orphans. He stations himself with the
orphans. I mean, he is kind of 1/2.
So he gets it. He's like their champion in a
sense. Like that's great, right, Sir
Gendry, good for him. By the way, Brienne notices
Gendry, of course. We'll talk about this in a
second about he and have talked about how he looks like Renly to
her and Brienne wonders about widdle heddle Willow heddle if
she's Arya. No, but you know, because Gendry
having run with Arya for a while, it's not the worst guess
ever. But yeah, but no.
Now this is something interesting I find about George.
He doesn't have kids of his own, but he understands things like
this as well as any author I've ever read.
He he how easily kids and be influenced by their elders, how
they look up to them, how they do what they do they want to
follow their footsteps just. Well, two things, 1 he was a
kid. Two, we met his nephew and his
other his family. So he certainly has children
that he spent has spent time with.
Good point, you know, and and all that.
Yeah, he has sisters that had kids.
That's a good point. Yeah, very good point.
So it's not just pure insight, it's some living experience.
So Thabo Mott was the closest thing Gendry had to a father for
a long time. But then it's then suddenly he's
like, Nope, you're you got to leave King's Landing.
And Gendry probably didn't have the full story explained to him.
You know, he couldn't tell him. It's because you're the King's
bastard and you're Cersei went to kill you.
They they didn't tell him that. So what story did they tell him?
We all know, but it wasn't something that would make him
happy. He'd probably feel like, well,
this sucks. My like I was, I had my place, I
had my father figure and I was suddenly got to leave.
So he lands with the BWB. It's a new purpose.
It's a new family. It's again brotherhood, you
know, like that's, that's as close to a family as an orphan
can get. It's a purpose.
It's something to belong to that.
Don't underrate that. It's a big deal.
Other people depend on him. They he depends on them.
It's a it's a circle. He's protecting and being
protected. He's learning and teaching.
He's doing right by them and having right done by him.
Even though he's in a precarious situation.
He's technically an outlaw by a lot of people's judgement.
He's he's not a full grown adult.
He's already a better man than his father by a mile.
By miles. Though his father's physical
gifts have definitely helped. He inheriting those was a big
boon to him, but not much else. Right.
In fact, the else almost got him killed.
Being being his father's son almost got him killed and as and
though I'm saying his position is very precarious, it's also
very interesting. Consider this Stoneheart.
That's his boss. Now he doesn't run with her
'cause he's at the end of the Kneeling Man day today while
she's going place to place and running things from behind the
scenes and from their various hidey holes and caves.
But she would have interviewed him, for lack of better word.
Maybe that is the best word because everyone knows Gendry
and Arya traveled together and we know Stoneheart's looking for
Arya, so she would want every piece of information out of him.
She would also clock that he liked her and that he protected
her. And that might put him in even
better standing with Stoneheart as far as she's able to have
feelings like that and and judgements like that.
It's a little unclear what she's capable of, but probably pretty
capable given Barrack was capable of a lot of these things
too. Her problem just is lack of
being able to talk. So that that keeps some of the
mystery alive there. But I have to think that he's
one of her most trusted because of that.
Like, just her, just his credibility alongside Arya and,
and helping her and running with her, just being alive with her,
you know, keeping her safe to a certain extent.
Yeah. So if Stone Hard and Arya have a
reunion, Gendry could be right there, too.
And Arya might be more pleased to see him than her undead
mother. And maybe that leads to future
connections between Arya and Gendry.
I'm not sure a relationship is in the offing.
Could be. But certainly firing their
friendship back up again, their connection seems not unlikely.
But she is not one of the ones who knows who he is.
That would that could change their dynamic a little bit,
finding out who he was. That could be a moment of humor
for them. They'd be like, you know what,
all along you were Ned Stark's son and that was hidden.
She eventually finds out. He eventually finds out about
that. And then he starts to act out a
little bit, right? He's like, oh, all you high
borns is because Edrick Dane is there too, and he's like, oh,
you Lords and ladies. He's like starts to feel like he
doesn't belong. And Arya never, like, holds it
over him. He's more just kind of feeling
something that isn't being done. Neither does edge or gain.
Neither of them taunt him or any of that stuff.
Not about his birth anyway. Aria will argue with him and
taunt him about other stuff, call him stupid or whatever, but
it isn't. It isn't status based, right?
Aria isn't really like that. Aria doesn't see herself as
superior because she's a Stark. A little bit maybe, but not not
not in a typical way at all. So.
I kind of think Arya thinks she's superior just because she
she's superior. Like on her own merits.
She thinks she's. A better not because she's a
Stark, just because. She's better than that.
Yeah, I don't know. That's my take.
I think that's, that's probably closer to it.
I think that's a good way to put it.
So there's they have some things in common.
They're both very stubborn, but it would be funny for them to
both learn later that, hey, you were Lord Stark's daughter and
hiding that and pretending to be a boy.
Meanwhile, all this time I was King Robert's son and your
father and my father were best friends, you know, like, because
that the TV show did bring that out with John and Gendry and I,
I don't know if that'll ever happen in the in the books, but
definitely the people, Ned, you know, Ned's children being
friends with Robert's children, that that's kind of fun.
Varus obviously knows. Cersei knows now, because Varus
probably, or because Littlefinger probably told her.
And if Littlefinger told her, then obviously he knows too.
Yeah. So I'm not sure many other
people do because Brienne saw the resemblance, but he did.
She didn't go any farther than that.
She's like, whoa, she he looks like Renly, but he can't be
Renly. Yeah.
And then she just puts sets it aside.
She doesn't go any farther and go you know what?
Maybe that's a Baratheon bastard.
Doesn't really. That thought doesn't cross your
mind, Tab OMAD. Of course, as we said, he
probably knows and he's probably still alive.
I'm not sure that that will that he's someone that will be
brought back into it as a some as a verification, because if it
ever comes up, the verification is not really needed.
Kendry looks so much like Robert and as he gets older, he
probably look even more like Robert.
Of course, bringing it back, Kendry had that almost sex scene
with his own sister, who's also Robert's daughter.
So there's all sorts of again, the more in jokes with their
identities and for for us and Arya's best friend amongst her
own family is John. She just has a thing for royal
bastard that no one knows of royal bastards or few people
know that they don't know and she doesn't know.
So that's just I don't know something about Arya.
She's drawn to that without knowing it and and that them
neither. The other gigantic irony of
Gendry's identity and him being a part of the brother.
How about Banners is they're kingsmen.
They're just like we continue our job.
We're doing what the king sent us out to do.
This guy is son of that king. They would totally follow him,
promote him, you know, exhort him, just be like this is the
son of the guy we were following, the man whose
existence we owe our existence to.
Even though it was really more Ned, but still Ned gave the
order in Robert's name and all that.
They have Robert's son in their midst and have no idea.
It's it's pretty funny. Even with Thoros looking into
the flames and all that he never saw it is is still a mystery to
him. It didn't didn't clock this.
And this gets at why he's Gendry and not Gendry Waters.
I promised I'd explain that at the beginning.
Here we go. It's not just that Robert had
never acknowledged him. That is a big deal.
But Maya is Maya Stone without that open acknowledgement.
That's more of the open secret acknowledgement that she's Maya
Stone. So the acknowledgement is only a
question if the mother is noble. At least that seems to be what
George implies. So in Maya's case, it's some
sort of halfway measure. Not typical, but an open enough
secret that she gets the name. If Robert had let it known who
Gendry was, then he would be Gendry Waters even without the
acknowledgement. If it was known, like in Mia
Stone's case, he would get that name.
It's a legal thing and not just an it's both.
It's a legal thing and an announcement.
It can go both ways, but the point is there was no
announcement and there was no acknowledgement, and there's no
open secret. So it's also possible Robert
didn't know Gendry existed because when when he finds out
he's like she named the kid Berra.
What would that was that supposed to please me?
And then this is a very infuriating for Robert to say
because and Ned gets mad at him for saying it.
He's like, dude, you this was a virgin sex worker.
What do you think? She's some wise, you know, font
of wisdom here? Like, what do you think?
Of course she's naive and is going to do unpredictable things
and maybe fall in love with you and try to honor her as the king
with the naming the kid Berra, you know, like that was not
smart of her to do. It was unwise.
But Robert thinks she should have known better.
Like what? Come on, Robert, you should have
known better. You're the man with the power
and the agency. She's the naive girl that's like
her first day at work here. Anyway, So yeah, understandably
why Ned got mad at Robert for that.
He's like, he is shirking responsibility.
And there's that, which is just another level of denial and
shirking responsibility. It's really just damn Robert.
So anyway, in theory, he could become Gendry Sir Gendry Waters
if his identity becomes known. But it seems, while it seems not
unlikely, it's also kind of like, well, how will it be
proven? How will this knowledge
circulate? How will it get out?
It's kind of a similar question with John's identity, right?
Like how if John is outed as Rhaegar's son will, well, how
does that spread? How does that knowledge spread?
And how do and why would people believe it?
With Gendry's may be a little easier because he looks like
Robert. John Snarr does not look like
Rhaegar, not even a little. So that's a little bit of a
bigger hill to climb perhaps. But yeah.
Now earlier I said Brienne didn't clock his bastardy, but
she might have been on the track of it.
She might have it in the back of her mind and may come up later
because she started to ask. She started to ask about his
ancestry. But George did the old
interruption trick the con, The conversation that might be
revealing and illuminating to both characters and readers is
cut short because of the gosh darn Bloody Mummers.
Well, a splinter group of former Bloody Mummers led by Rorge.
Brienne goes out, No chance, no choice.
Which, by the way, Gendry had to respect that, being that he's
there doing the same thing, protecting these kids.
And of course, Gendry steps up, Roarge fights Brienne, Brienne
wins, takes a lot of damage. Then Biter shows up to get
revenge and starts doing awful things to Brienne, literally
eating her face. And then Gendry stabs him in the
back of the throat and kills him.
Good job, Gendry. So that's really it for him.
I mean, that's where we last see him.
We've discussed his knowledge about Aria and how that is very
interesting point with him and Stoneheart.
As far as future outlook, well, we'll come back to it when we
discuss all of their outlooks as a whole.
But unless his identity gets revealed, his outlook has
nothing to do with his parentage.
But maybe that comes out, what if he and Aria get reunited?
We just talked about that a second ago.
I think that is very possible, if not unlikely, not because the
show did it, but just because it could fit for a number of other
reasons. The show isn't a negative in
that regard as far as predicting that possibility, but the show
does not help us very much with these characters in general.
As you know, Edrick wasn't even in it.
Maya wasn't even in it. I mean, some of Edrick was
rolled into Gendry. So even him is different.
He's Gendryk. But the my big question I have a
big curiosity has if Arya and Gendry are reunited, is it after
his identity is known? So when they become in each
other's presence again? Is it after Gendry is revealed
as as Robertson? Is it after he's Gendry waters?
He's like, oh, hey, all along you were King's son.
How about that? And then then they can have
those funny conversations that we to discuss the possibility of
a minute ago. Now, before we go on to Edrick's
Storm, let's talk a little bit about the other 13 of Robert's
bastards. There's not a whole lot to say
because mostly they're unknowns. Now, we don't know who the
second child was. Gendry and Bella were fathered
within four years of Maya's birth.
Yeah. So Bella, a little more about
her. She was fathered by Robert while
he was hiding in Stoney stepped at the outset of the rebellion.
She'd be about 17 now, so, you know, a year or so older than
Gendry, younger than Maya. Of course.
I love this little joke Connington because he's a a
rigid Stannis like man who is just doesn't have a sex life at
all. Not for the same reasons as
Stannis. It's in his case it's he's like
a, I don't know, in the closet gay man.
I don't exactly know. But he doesn't think about it
very much and so he's not on Robert's train of thought.
When he was trying to find Robert in Stoney Scept, he
should have started and focused his searches on the brothels
instead of just a generic search.
It's like if you knew Robert at all.
Nope, wrong. The wrong man for the job.
John Cuddington So in during all that, Yeah, Robert follows
fathers Bella. She has blue eyes and big black
hair. Not shy, perhaps even content
with her life. Hard to say as a sex worker,
Like a lot of people in service industry, you pretend to be
enjoying your job to get better tips or results.
You don't it. It might even be true, but you
can't necessarily tell just by the their outer, outer exterior.
It's not unusual in Westerosi or SoC society, Nina writes, for
the daughters of sex workers to become sex workers themselves.
Even if they have aristocratic fathers, even if they're born in
a brothel from a tryst or a visitor or, you know, a noble
born visitor. It's just normal enough.
It happens enough that this has become sort of normal.
It's hinted, of course, we've talked about it a few times that
Murray and Dancy at your Thai brothel, or Tywin's, if not some
other Lannister. The sailor's wife in Bravos has
a daughter named Lana, who is also a sex worker and maybe
Jerry and Lannister's descendant.
And Robert, in terms of Bella, like she's much lower borne.
She's not. This isn't quite the high end
brothel the same way it's not a Shataya's.
But Bella didn't have options socially or economically.
She's got this kid. She's kind of smitten by his, by
her, by Robert. But it has these naive
expectations. Nina says Bella's a bit like
Glendon ball slash flowers his sister in the mystery night
which to refresh your memory. Glendon was encouraged by his
mother and the other sex workers to believe that he was Quentin
Ball's son. But it's not that likely given
that her, his mother slept with a whole bunch of people and it
could be any of them that was the father.
Fireballs is one of many. And Bella, just like Glendon
Ball, has been told the story of his potential origin and the
black fires and about his potential father, Bella has been
told the story of the Battle of the Bells, the her own origin
story. She knows that she was fathered
during a war. So, yeah, quite interesting
there. Nice little parallels.
Now, Glendon takes pride in something that he maybe doesn't
actually have, but it's working for him anyway.
And that's the difference. Clinton doesn't really look like
Quentin. Ball doesn't really look like
Fireball, whereas Bella just clearly does.
Just blatantly, obviously, black hair, blue eyes, all that.
Now, Berra, of course, we mentioned briefly there, Berra
was killed on orders of Cersei, on orders of Janos Slint by Alar
Dean. Bear's mother, again, was a
virgin. She's smitten, foolishly called
the kid after Robert, and because I've I've already
explained why Robert's reaction to this was really gross.
The lack of responsibility. Less than 0.
Really. He's fine with his own
ignorance, but is upset with the ignorance of the teenage virgin
sex worker. Right.
And Virus mentions that he saved Gendry.
He doesn't say it by name. He doesn't say Gendry by name,
but he mentions saving Gendry but is legitimately or seemingly
legitimately surprised. You never can be too sure with
Boris, but I, I believe him on this one.
He's surprised Cersei had Berra killed.
He just doesn't see what the angle was.
He doesn't see the point. On one hand, it's the reason why
I think maybe virus is lying is because virus is such a good
judge of character. We really have misjudged Cersei
there. But on the other hand, what's
his angle here? Why does he, you know, like,
yeah, Cersei killed Berra. It's not my fault.
It's not his fault. I mean, he he does seem to be
taking some responsibility for it, though, because he's he's
kind of like, I maybe should have seen that coming.
He saw it coming for Gendry. Maybe he just.
Yeah, he didn't think the girl was a threat.
The boy was maybe, you know, the boy that looks like Robert, this
girl. Who knows, maybe there's time
still. But yeah, it's pretty bad.
It's kind of a. Nina points out how it's kind of
an awful parallel replay of what happened to Elia and Rhaegar's
children during Robert's Rebellion.
Robert tacitly approved their murders without saying he wanted
it done. It was kind of wink, wink, we
need those kids to die and not for Robert to be responsible,
right? That's just kind of the, the,
the gross behind the scenes, wink nudge, nudge kind of non
conversation conversation. So, yeah.
And then? It's a replay of that.
Like, yeah, 15 years after his own rebellion, his own kid is
torn from his mother's breast and have them both killed.
As I mentioned before, Robert fathered twins on a serving
girl, a cast of the rocks. Or she had them killed and the
mothers sold into slavery, which is illegal, but she did it
anyway. She got away with it because
she's a Lannister. There's nine others, right?
That's that's not the full count, right.
We, that's, there's, that's seven we just named and there's
nine more. We don't know any names or any
circumstances. We got nothing, nothing
whatsoever. 9 is enough that maybe we'll see more all nine.
Nah, no way we won't see all of them.
Just kind of like Aegon the Unworthy had some bachelors even
we never knew about Robert having a lot in common with
Aegon the Unworthy is probably going to be in that same batch.
The only reason we have this precise count of 16 is because
of magic, because Maggie the Frog said so.
So yeah, Nope, I don't think Maggie the Frog was going to
give that same prophecy about the specifics of these children.
Edric Storm, our third and final of the Scions of Robert that we
discuss. He's the last we see of the
three. He's actually mentioned a lot,
though. He comes up in A Game of
Thrones, he comes up in A Clash of Kings, but we actually don't
see him till the Storm of Swords.
Now he's the one of the three who for an absolute certainty
knows who his father was and everybody else knows too.
It is not a secret, not an open secret.
It is just open. So for him, we're not going to
have a who knows discussion section here.
It's it's everyone. But there is perhaps additional
room for speculation on how he could fit into the story as a
claimant. He has a leg up there because
it's known and because he's noble on both sides, which is A2
head A2 edged sword. I suppose.
Mostly it's better for Edrick, but the bastard prejudice can be
worse when you're noble because you are a threat.
Gendry is not a threat, right? Because nobody knows about his
claim, and even if he had the claim, he's less of a threat
than a nobly born, nobly raised kid.
It's kind of along that same spectrum as Maya is the least
dangerous politically because of her mule girlness, both the girl
and the mule part. Whereas Gendry's in the middle
because he's got the same kind of common born stuff, the
blacksmith stuff. The Who He was raised by Edrick
now he was raised by other nobles, he's been around them
all his life. He's got the nobles education.
Even though he's going to get that slightly reduced status.
He saw the same upbringing in terms of education and
opportunity, not so much in terms of status amongst the
nobility. But yeah, anyway, the bachelor
prejudice is also manifest in awkward ways, like Solis
believes Edrick's existence cursed her womb.
I mean, this is a woman that is prone to all sorts of flights of
fancy, so I guess we can't put this one past her or be too
surprised. But it's another just
frustrating example of how the child is blamed for the actions
of the adult. The woman takes the next most
blame when the man is by far the one who should have 99% of the
blame I suppose, but gets only 1% of it.
Yeah, super backwards y'all. Well, is she not blaming Robert
for it? No, she's blaming Edrick.
Oh yeah. I mean, she blames Robert too.
You're right. She blames Robert, but she
blames Edrick more. But I mean, I have to say, like,
not to to go too bad for Solis, but assuming you live in a world
where you superstitions are real.
Yeah, you believe in them. This happens on your wedding
night in your wedding bed, and then you have this bad luck.
It's not crazy. It's.
Not it's not so crazy. It would be less crazy if she
was less crazy. Like if she had only that one
crazy belief, it would be a lot easier to be like, yeah, yeah,
because you're right. Like curses and stuff.
People believe in that sort of thing.
Yeah, I guess my point is she's not like far from the norm here,
I think. Lots of noble women I could
think. In general she is, but not on
this, Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah.
You know, she's not normal, but she's not as far from the norm.
All right. Edrick's first appearance.
It's great. Edrick is.
He's funny. He's he's a lot more
entertaining in a lot of ways. I really like this kid.
And so does Davos, as we'll see here in this first quote when we
meet him. He had turned to cough into his
gloved hand when another small shape crashed out of the hedge
and bowled right into him, knocking him off his feet.
The boy went down as well, but he was up again almost at once.
What are you doing here? He demanded as he brushed
himself off. Jet black hair fell to his
collar and his eyes were a startling blue.
You shouldn't get in my way when I'm running.
No. Davos agreed.
I shouldn't. It's pretty funny.
You shouldn't get in my way when I'm running like, yeah, that's
true. I mean.
Little noble right there. That's a noble I have the right
of way at all times, even when you can't see me coming out.
Of a hedge. He wasn't just like.
Yeah, you couldn't compare. This is it from nowhere.
It was damn funny. That's that's the it's a really
great introduction because he's he immediately shows his
privilege, but he also immediately shows his concern.
Dabo starts coughing and Edrick's like, hey, are you OK?
Should I get the maester? Like, that's a good, like that's
good. You know, he's a little, he's a
little haughty, but that's good nature immediately.
Not necessarily Robert like in that sense.
Robert's good in a lot of ways, but not this kind of good And
obviously Robert's bad in a lot of other words, as I've been
very clear about this episode. Edrick says he's like, who are
you? And he's like, I'm Sir Davos
Seaworth, which prompts a very egg like line.
He's like, are you certain? You don't look very nightly?
Are you certain? He asks, Are you sure you're a
knight and you did you mistake that somehow?
But then he he's like, I'm Sir Davos, the knight of the onions.
He's saying he's like, oh, I've heard of you.
He he knows that story and he introduces himself here.
Quote. The boy drew himself up tall.
I am Edrick Storm, he announced. King Robert's son.
Of course you are. Davos had known that almost at
once. The lad had the prominent ears
of a Florent, but the hair, the eyes, the jaw, the cheekbones,
those were all Baratheon. Poor Robert.
Really. I mean, the guy just wants to
father a bunch of bastards and be left in peace, but his
genetics are so strong that he just can't escape the proof.
Paul, Right. Yeah, I know you all feel really
bad for Robert. I'm.
I'm building this case here throughout the episode that
Robert's the real victim here. Ha, Yeah.
Please don't think that I was anything other than sarcastic
there. Yeah.
Anyway, so Hedrick, of course, is immediately given how much he
worships and idolizes his father, and nearly he wants to
know. Davos did.
You know my father, But Robert didn't really.
He knew him from afar, you know. Heard him talk, but didn't know
him personally. I'm sorry.
Davos didn't know Robert personally.
Yeah, but Edrick actually did, somewhat.
So Edrick actually knew Robert more than Davos did.
Edrick actually got to train with Robert a little bit.
And Varis would send presents to Storm's End every year marked as
if they were from Robert. And then Edrick would write back
with profuse thanks for those gifts.
And Robert would laugh and ask Vars, hey, what did I actually
get him? You know, what did I send him
this year? So again, Vars, again, Vars is
the Vars is involved, not so involved with Mia, but he's just
deeply involved with both Gendry and Edrick in in in Edrick's
ways. You can see the angle, the
political angle, maybe the stashing of an air with Gendry.
I don't know though. I just don't see that.
It's very peculiar. Anyway, of course, of all these
three, it's the Edrick is the only one with a noble mother,
she's a Florent, Delena Florent. And this is a big part of why
everyone knows Delena, Robert Carey, Delena up to Stannis and
to Salice's marriage bed. He later would claim that he was
too drunk to know which bed it was.
I kind of believe him. Doesn't absolve him, but he did
get that drunk all the time. So Edrick is really proud,
really entertaining and didn't spend enough time around his own
father to realize how many flaws Robert had.
He only sees the good because he knows him from afar and he's
extremely worships his idolizes Robert.
Rathian may be the only person on in all of Westeros who feels
that way about Robert. Ned Stark, Ned Stark.
Nabos is dead. Ned would have been, Yeah.
So yeah, he's really proud. He's really entertaining.
Dabos loves him. Everybody loves him.
He's just he. Stannis points this out that and
Stannis is very keen on this. Stannis is very notices this all
the time because he's a jealous of it.
Both his brothers have this charisma that he doesn't have.
People love both Robert and really they would just follow
them just effortlessly. Effortless charisma from both
Robert and Renly. Edrick has it too, hence.
And it's one of them things that Stannis is annoyed by because
it's like this guy reminds me of what this kid reminds me of.
Not only how awful my brother can be, he shamed my wife's
marriage bed. It's a.
My wife hates this kid forever. It's embarrassment.
I don't like it either. I don't blame the kid but I
don't like the situation. Oh he doesn't dislike the kid
but he doesn't like the situation.
I mean to say, but he is very keen on seeing how everyone is
charmed by by Edrick. He's like, man, he has my
brother's gift, that charisma, that Friendly and Robert both
had. This kid has it, too.
Everyone loves him. He charms everyone.
He says that he's like, did he charm you, Davos?
He has that gift. He charmed Courtney Penrose.
That's why he wouldn't give him up.
That's why he died for him. Yeah, this kid, it just wins
everyone over. Which brings me to a really
interesting point. Well, a little more set up
first. He he shows a little more of his
boldness and his just character by just disagreeing with Stannis
in front of Davos. He's like, he shouldn't have cut
your fingers off. He said, well, you know, it was
justice. You know, he's like, yeah, but
he brought you fish and onions. He saved your life.
He's like, yeah, but I also was a smuggler and he's like, my
father wouldn't have cut your fingers off.
And dad was like, yeah, got me there.
You're right, he wouldn't have. I agree with you, you know, and.
Yeah, like Robert had his own flaws.
It was. It wouldn't have been that.
Yeah, it wasn't that. You're right.
Flaws are probably definitely worse I guess, but I agree with
Edrick that Davos didn't need to have his fingers cut off.
Yeah, I kind of with, I'm kind of with Edrick on that one too.
Edrick and Robert, Yeah. From the mouth of babes.
So that wedding was in the year 287, meaning Stannis and Solis's
wedding. So Cedric is about 11 when the
series starts, but about 12:00 when we meet him in about 13
now. Now Delina of course spoiled.
She's no longer fit to marry someone of her own status after
that, unless it's someone like Tyrion.
But Tyrion status is so low that no.
Tywin suggested Delina marry Tyrion, but no, he was refused.
Delina would instead marry Sir Hosman Norcross a household
night. That's when Tywin is throwing
Tyrion's I'll marriage prospects in his face.
He points this out. He's like, they wouldn't take
you over this household night. Now Delina, we don't know
anything about her, but there is a very clever little subtle
catch by Nina here. This is Alistair Florence
household by the way, not niece of Lord of Brightwater Keith,
not the Yeah, so would have married someone much higher
born. Now she named her second son not
counting not counting Edrick, meaning her second trueborn son
Renly. At this point, Edrick was living
with Renly because when Edrick was first born, Stannis and
Solis didn't want to live with him and sent him to Storm's End
to live with Renly. And in his theory, and I'm 100%
on board with it, is that she named her other son Renly as a
way to Curry favor with Renly and to maybe get some access to
Edrick. She wants to know her son.
Like what is a more viable theory than a mother finding
with very little agency, a mother trying to find some way
to see her own son? Like that's you don't really
need to understand the motivation behind that one.
That's very clear. So yeah, Edrick lived with Renly
from a young age, but Renly was very young.
When Edrick was born, Renly was 10.
So Uncle Renly was really just more of older brother, you know,
rather than a father figure, you know, he was an uncle, but he
would wouldn't have really come off that way as a 10 year old.
Renly wouldn't have actually been running storms and it would
have been, you know, the Regency, the council, other
people, the adults would have been handling that for him.
Now, this would have been the time when Loris and Renly were
forming their relationship. Edrick probably too young to
clock that or even understand it, but maybe it definitely was
concurrent. But by the time Edrick was old
enough to maybe even clock that Renly was gone for long periods
of time, he would have been at court a lot.
Renly did spend a lot of time with the Red Keep, increasingly
more as he got older. So Edrick would have been, in a
way, the Baratheon at Storm's End.
No one would have called him that.
That's improper. But he had the personality, the
charm, and again, everybody loved him.
So he would have been like, as Nina puts it, the the darling of
Storm's End, the closest thing to a Baratheon and a Baratheon
by blood. And again, a Florent too, so
doubly noble, which to them, you know, that gives him a bit more
status in the eyes of people who were lower ranked than him.
Obviously people of similar rank to him would look down on that.
But you know, the lower ranking Lord Ling's like, Oh yeah, he's
the King's son. Robert, as we said earlier,
would visit once a year, train with him.
And this meant everything to Edrick.
It was the probably his favorite few days of the year.
The last time he visited before his death, Edrick was brought a
small version of Robert's Warhammer, a miniature version
of it. For some reason Edrick wasn't
allowed to bring it with him to Storm's End or to Dragonstone.
Maybe because they thought it would insult Standish or
something. I don't know, that seems odd.
But maybe he's a little terror with it.
And they're like, no, they're just, you're not bringing that.
You're not breaking stuff here. That's why I like that idea.
He's just ramming things with it all the time.
He's a stag, he's got to smash things right.
He's got to butt heads and hammers and yeah, so yeah.
So at some point in the two 90s, it would have been pretty much
no Remley around at all when Edrick would have been around
8-9 or 10 and Sir Courtney Penrose would have been was the
castell. And that's the one who, you
know, Melisandre murdered via shadow baby when Courtney
refused to give Edrick up. Remember, that's what Stannis
says. He's like, why would they think
I was going to kill this kid? Why would anyone think I'm
trying to harm the boy? I chose Robert over the
Targaryens. I want Edrick to prove Roberts
bastards aren't his to prove the Lannister kids aren't Roberts.
I'm not going to hurt the kid. Why does anyone think that?
Well, they think that because of Melisandre.
And they're right. Stannis is right that he doesn't
intend Edrick any harm, but they don't know that they it looks
like Stannis wants Edrick to get rid of a another possible
claimant, A stumbling block to his own path to the throne.
That's the basic look here. Stannis wants the throne, Renly
wants the throne. Stannis wants to get Renly out
of the way. He would obviously want to get
Edrick out of the way too, or at least that seems likely.
According to Stannis, that's not the case, but he's, he can't
convince anyone of that. And then of course it comes
around that Melisandre does actually convince him to burn
Edrick. So they were right all along,
Stannis, you just didn't know it yet.
And yeah, Stannis was a little bitter about some of this.
Because he doesn't. Have that effortless.
Charisma that Robert Renly and Gendry have, and some other
people clock that too. Like Stannis doesn't like this
kid. He's jealous of him.
Not only the claim, but the the charm that he doesn't have.
You know, I don't know. There's a lot of wariness around
what Stannis's true intent was, and that gets confused by how it
actually played out. And this is a key point.
Stannis won't acknowledge this even though he gets close to it.
Maybe. Well, he couldn't quite bring
himself to say this. Davos can't quite bear to think
about sons in general because he lost his own.
And that's who our POV is for most of Edrick.
Edrick is basically the perfect son for a noble Lesterosi.
He's everything you want as a kid.
Bold, proud, honest, precocious, stubborn, big, good looking,
even. You know, it just has all the
qualities that you want. It's like it's like if Randall
Tarley passed over Sam because Dicken was the kind of kid he
wanted. This is that kind of thing.
This is Dick on Tarley and and Edrick Storm are are of a peas
in a pod in that sense. They're the the ready to go,
ready to fight. Nothing gets in their way.
Like that's the kind of bravery from day one you want to see in
your son, especially your heir. Obviously Edrick isn't an heir,
but if he was he would be the ideal.
A lot of men would look in Westeros and be like that is the
perfect kid and that is what I want my son to be like.
They all want a kid like Edrick and very few of them will get
it. And that's maybe that's a little
bit of a statement by George here.
Just reminding us how silly all this birth status stuff is and
how merit it should matter more, and how Edrick has merit too.
Like he does have the merit in addition to the birth, but
because it's bastard birth, so much is withheld from him, so
much as prejudice has heaped on him.
Yet he seems to handle it very well.
It doesn't seem to make him bitter in ways that maybe Mia
and Gendry are. Now.
Of course, he also has much better life.
He's gets nice food and a nice education and lives in a good
place. So not all the bitterness is
just he handles it better. Some of it's just privilege and
status. Stannis once said, was there
ever a name so apartment it proclaims his bastardy, his high
birth and the turmoil he brings with him.
He's not just referring to Edrick, but the full name Edrick
Storm. The turmoil he brings with him,
his bastardy, his high birth. Pretty succinct actually,
Stannis. And it gets at Stannis's
frustrations here, right. He's like, it's frustrating that
this kid is so much like Robert. It's frustrating that Robert
once again is pushing his by blows on someone else, someone,
someone else's responsibility to take care of this kid.
There's just a lot of frustration wrapped up.
Plus not to mention the wedding night stuff like so I think
Stannis actually handles it fairly well up and to the point
where he's willing to burn him. Then it's like, OK, Stannis,
you've utterly failed here. This is the worst thing.
And Stannis grossly turns it into a math question.
He's like, yeah, he's just one kid against all the other kids,
right? It's just, it's just one versus
many. And Davos is like Edrick Storm
versus it's a, it's not a boy, It's Edrick Storm.
Say his name. Say his name, you know, and
that's what prompts Danis to get mad about the name.
I've said his name. Is there a name that's so
apartment, blah, blah, blah. So that's part of that argument.
Davos wins the argument. He does great job, Davos.
Stannis kind of all along kind of wanted to land on that.
But Stannis's, his pragmatism and his pride are so powerful,
so overbearing within his own person that he he can be LED
astray. Melisandre approves that she's
led him astray on several occasions.
Speaking of Melisandre, Speaking of Davos, Speaking of how merit
is such a recurring theme and Stannis's, you know, part of the
country, part of his Stannis's court, his people that follow
Stannis. That's a vibe he passes on
something that he upholds. It's a big part of who Davos is.
But as we said before, Gendry seeing a positive role model
under relore was willing to switch.
He's like, yeah, I see Barrick, I see Thoros.
These are positive relore role models.
I will follow in their footsteps.
Adric sees Melisandre doesn't have a great role model in the
sense Stannis converts to relore.
But Edrick isn't so sure about Stannis, right?
He doesn't know him that well and he's like, no, he this is
another thing that people really like about him that he's got
this this toughness unusual for a child.
He is not going to switch to relore.
He's like, no, I'm a warriors man like my father.
I worship the seven period and a story.
No change not going to happen. So the lack of influence by
other people, the fact that he just idolizes Robert and no,
there wasn't like a lot of other influences to step in and maybe
take some of that influence away from Robert and give a, a real
father figure in place didn't really happen.
So I really like that contrast between Gendry and Edrick in
that sense. It's it just really goes to show
you it's The Who, it's who the role models are.
In that sense, a good relorist like Thoris and and Barrett
could bring you along. But someone like Melisandre,
that's a little sketchy. And she, he doesn't know exactly
what Melisandre is all about, but she did Leech him.
It's not clear whether he knows what was done with those
leeches. I suppose not.
But you know, he might have picked a little up on it and it
wouldn't come off well. He's not going to be pro things
that stink of sorcery as a follower of the Seven.
That's not going to be his vibe. And of course, Edrick is beyond
a person, beyond a character. He is the linchpin of the big
moral conundrum that Stannis, Davos and Melisandre, and to a
lesser extent, you know, Axel Florent, get involved with.
And it resolves with Stannis agreeing with Davos and sailing
to Dragonstone or sailing to the Wall.
Even after Stannis is betrayed by Davos in sending Edrick away,
he takes he does what Stannis should have done all along and
just hopes that Stannis agrees. He's like, I'm willing to go
down for this kid. I'm willing to die for this kid
because it's the right thing to do.
Which is a good example for Edrick to have set for himself.
Maybe he doesn't see Davos as a father figure, but that may have
been, that's maybe something that he looks at later as a big
turning point in his life, something that he should respect
and be thankful to Davos for if he has the opportunity to be
thankful to Davos for it. But here's a part that I think
everyone, nearly everyone missed after Stannis takes Storm's End,
which of course he does via Shadow Baby, which maybe Edrick
heard about that too. It's kind of hard to keep that
under wraps like what happened there, right?
That that rumor would be flying all over the place, especially
given the rumor would have started with Renly's death,
which was all, which was quite mysterious and strange and
Brienne saw the shadow, etcetera.
So Stannis's plan was to send Edrick to Dragonstone and bring
Melisandre to King's Landing to fight.
The Battle of Blackwater. With Melisandre at his side
helping him win but his Lords were like don't bring
Melisandre, everyone's going to say it was her victory and not
yours. He relents, sends Melisandre to
storms end too. What does that mean?
The ship that goes back to storms end contains both Edrick
and Melisandre same time. This is very likely when
Melisandre starts coming up with her leeches plan right?
She manipulates Stannis into thinking that those deaths
Joffrey, Rob and Bailon are because of the leaching.
When it's vastly vastly more likely that she saw those 3
deaths in the flames and then just acted like she was causing
them through this ritual and then made Stannis and which
convinced Stannis of her power. Which she doesn't actually have
the the prophecy, the foresight. She does have that, but killing
kings with bloody leeches? I don't think so y'all.
That's ridiculous and pretty clearly Melisandre does that
sort of thing. She exaggerates her powers,
misleads people to as part of her bigger plan, birthing shadow
babies. That's ridiculous.
She definitely didn't do that either.
I'm saying I. I I Yeah, I just might not
believe that. You're right.
Yeah, but she has done more than prophecy.
That's what I want to say. You're right.
You're absolutely right. My point is, I guess, that
Edrick wouldn't be Privy to all this, but he might hear rumors
and that would. Still give him a dark sense of
it all. And of course, Melisandre is
just just something wrong with her, like her red eyes and her
giving off heat, like she's just something not quite right about
her. So I think he would be, yeah, a
little off, a little suspicious about that.
So I think that's when she came up with the plan when she's got
Edrick there and she's like, how am I going to?
Stannis has pushed me aside. I got to bring him back in.
And then she convinces him later that, hey, if you hadn't sent me
home, you would have won the Battle of Blackwater and blah,
blah, blah. So that's Edrick is very much
her way to get back in Stannis's inner circle after briefly being
pushed aside, but Davos intervened.
She got sent away. He got sent to waste.
Melissandre didn't see it coming, and Edrick didn't get to
say goodbye to Shereen. That's pretty sad, but it's not
the only thing sad here. They're they were good friends.
They had some things in common maybe that were missed.
They'd have the same ancestry. Father Baratheon, Florent,
mother. What are they, like double
cousins or something? Yeah.
What is that exactly? Yeah.
How does that work? Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know what you. Call that.
They're because it's. Not the same Baratheon father
nor the same Florent. Anyway.
So is Delina is. That's not Celisa's sister.
It is. Yeah, that's what it is then.
Yeah, exactly. That they're cousins in two
different ways, yeah. Double cousins.
It's weird so. My sad looking.
Ahead moment here is Edric Storm was sent to lease right?
That's where he's at. That's so far as we know he's
still there. In fact, the appendix seems to
confirm that at at the end of A Dance with Dragons that he's
still there is he's going to find out that Stannis burned
Shereen and why he's going to be like, oh, that's he, he maybe
can't figure that out at his age right now, but in a year or two,
maybe having conversations with his protectors.
He's not by himself. He's got a a guardian and some
other men. They know a lot of what
happened. He could come to know that.
Holy crap, Davos saved me from being burned alive.
He did it to his own daughter, that jerk uncle of mine.
What the hell, you know, and this is not a kid that's going
to take no for an answer. He's going to ask like, you
know, what's going on, what's going on back in Westeros,
what's happening? You know, why did they send me
here? He's going to want to know all
these things and he's got that pride that he deserves.
No, and he's going to just keep asking and he'll find out what
he can. So even when Edrick is leaving
to head to lease, that's where we're.
Going now, we're talking about lease.
He's still charming Davos and the Maester major pilots that
is. They put him on a ship and they
hope Melisandre doesn't detect them.
And they do this by just trying to involve her.
Like they don't account for her at all.
The less that she's included in their plan, the less she's
likely to take note of it. Seems to work.
One of one of the conspirators is like let's kill her and Dale
was like Nah better if we just pretend she doesn't exist and
hopefully that dodges her prophecy radar.
Also, Edrick says things like, I don't mind math so much, but
history is my favorite, you know?
Like, can you be more likeable? See what him and Shereen had in
common? Yeah, right.
Shereen like history. Too.
Yeah, they probably had lessons. Together, right, they did.
Oh, absolutely in. Fact this is they were at their
lessons together when they're like.
Hey, we're we're taking you away.
Now, you know, because he's so stubborn, he's he's not quite
sure what's going on. He kind of senses something is
off here. He's like, I want to see my
uncle before we go. And he's like, your uncle
doesn't want to see you. That's that was just a lie to
get him moving. And it's kind of sad, but Davos
isn't too bothered by it, knowing the alternative is the
kid gets burned alive. So I think he can kind of
properly weight these options here and be like, look, this is
nothing making this kid a little sad or hurt is nothing compared
to burning alive. And and he has this moment of
maturity at the end where he kind of accepts it.
He's kind of sad. He's like, well, I should
shouldn't I get to say goodbye to Shereen?
He's a he's a boy for a minute there.
It's it's a little bit heartbreaking, but then he's
back to his noble demeanor, 13 year old noble demeanor, he
says. May the father judge you justly,
Lord Davos, for what you're doing right here is the unspoken
part. And Davos is like I'm.
Pretty sure the father. 'S going to judge me just fine
actually, and I think Cedric will realize that in time, you
know, assuming enough time happens.
Now let's remember who else was exiled to lease Aryan Bright
Flame a good, you know, 90 years prior or so.
Almost exactly 90 years prior, but very different
circumstances. And of course Edrick is younger.
Edrick is a lot less likely to father bastards in at least like
Arian Bright Flame probably did. And that's the equality of his
father we hope he doesn't have. The leader of the group keeping
Edrick safe is Andrew Estermont. Sir Andrew Estermont.
Now, while Edrick maybe isn't the type to be so distracted by
drinking women, especially at his age, Andrew Estermont and
his men, maybe they get slack on protecting him because of that
reason. But that said, I'm not sure
there any danger being so far away. 13.
Yeah. He's 13.
Yeah. I mean, all it takes is being
around that stuff for a little while.
It wouldn't take long. Yeah.
He'll be into it real quick. Hopefully it'll.
Activate his inner robbery, Yeah.
And if if. Melisandre were better.
Connected, she might learn of his being there and lease
through her other contacts in the temple because there's a big
old temple of Valora at lease. But she seems like she's rogue
right now. I don't think she's that
connected to the temple hierarchy.
So overtime Edrick might really realize what kind of danger he
was or is in, but he wouldn't like having run from it.
He's a warriors man like his father.
He would want to go face the danger and and win and defeat it
and face that challenge, overcome that challenge rather
than hide from it. I really suspect he is eager to
go back. He doesn't want to be where he
is. He wants to be in Westeros.
He wants to be in his father's Kingdom.
He wants to do stuff. And as he's getting older, these
thoughts will become less childish and more specific and
more, we'll take them more to heart more, more set on doing
them. He doesn't have the means so
easily to do so. He can't order his protectors
around, although he might charm them into into becoming
followers and then they'll do what he says, especially as he
gets a little older. But here's the thing, getting
older. We've spoken and other people
have spoken a lot about Edrick Dane and the five year gap.
Edrick Dane may be the most clear apparent change to his
story because of the lack of a five year gap, but Edrick's
storm seems like he was a huge candidate to be impacted by the
five year gap in a very similar way.
It's like both the Edrick's lost their important years that they
needed. I mean, he is like Robert in
personality, at least in a lot of the most meaningful ways in
terms of like martial prowess and bravery.
Has the size five more years. He might have been tall.
He might have looked like Robert or Renly at 18.
Big, fearsome, intimidating, holding a giant hammer, you
know, big old beard looking older than he is.
Just people ready to follow him because he looks the part and is
the part and, and can prove it. But we're just, I just, I guess
that's just not happening. Maybe that never was the plan,
but I don't think I, I kind of hard to believe it wasn't or
something like that. Like, this kid was presented to
us as a the spitting image of Robert Baratheon, and the
original plan was for enough time for him to become the age
Robert was when the rebellion happened, or very close to it.
So like that, this is really hard to see that as not having
been part of George's plan. But now, yeah, I don't know so
much about that. Now, here's another angle.
Salador San No longer in the employ of Stannis, got tired of
waiting to get paid, lost a bunch of ships.
His employment with Stannis may have cost him money in the long
run. He may have come out behind.
He might be looking at ways of recouping that which well, he
has been doing that he's been back to piracy.
Salador San The Sans are a lysine family.
It's unknown. Exactly.
What sort of connections they still have, what kind of home
base they have there, what you know, how they're viewed by
other Lyseny. But the point is here, he's not
like Melisandre in that he doesn't have connections in the
city where this Baratheon dude is.
Maybe this is Salador's long term way to get paid by a
Baratheon After all, he doesn't just we just said, well, he how
does Edgar get back to Westeros? Well, maybe just a ship, but how
does he come back to Westeros in force this way?
This is one way, anyway, Salador San says hey, I can back this
kid for Lord of Storm's End, and when he gets it he'll pay me the
money I'm owed from Stannis and what whoever else, whatever debt
he thinks he's owed. Edrick would probably be like,
all right, oh, I could do that. And who would the alternative
claimant be to Storm's End? Someone Mia Stone married, or
Gendry? There may not even be stiff
opposition here that the opposition may be just a
completely new family that Young Griff wants to put on the after
Connington and his people's advice, Varys's advice or Varys
may advise, Hey, no, no team up with this kid, bring him on
right? That that that's a possibility.
Let's more on that in a second. So I think Salah knows that
they're there. It's just a matter of whether he
wants to do anything about it. So Edrick is an also.
An interesting comparison. As we move into talking about
the potential for him to be involved in Aegon's faction
comes back to Jon Connington and the whole story that Jon
Connington drank himself to death in exile.
That's an interesting little angle to consider with Edrick
and his protectors in a place that would very much tempt them
into doing lots of drinking and partying.
But Jon Connington didn't fall for it.
It was just a cover story. And maybe that'll be the
something like this here. It's too bad he wasn't on TV
because his lines are so funny. But on the other hand, it's it's
good when a character isn't on TV because we don't have their
potential end game ruin. We don't know what happens
because Gendrick isn't a story. Gendrick isn't a character.
Gendry and Edrick were combined. Mia wasn't in the show at all.
So yeah, so that's good. So we don't know.
We don't know how they're going to end up.
We don't, we don't have Gendry and Arya hooking up and then
Gendry getting Storms End. That happened on the show.
We have no reason to believe that's the case in the books.
It's it's way low on the things that the show gives us where
certain things are like, yeah, that's probably going to happen.
And other things are like, no way.
This is pretty close to no way, at least as far as like we
should think about it that way because like they changed.
They clearly changed so much. They mashed up characters.
Yeah, like how can you look at that?
The same Gendrick getting Storm's End might be the the
Edrick Storm part of the story. So, yeah, I think the other
angle to Aegon I want to point out here, Aegon the Sixth, Young
Griff, all that. Imagine him hearing the story
that, well, put, putting it from, sorry, putting it from
Edrick's point of view. Imagine hearing that Young Griff
calling himself Aegon Targaryen has taken the throne, calling
himself the son of Rhaegar. Well, one of the things Edrick
bragged about was my father beat Rhaegar on the tribe that killed
Rhaegar and took the throne. What happens if Edrick sitting
there in exile is like, what? Rhaegar's son took the throne?
My father killed that guy. I got to go.
Like, if anything is going to draw him back to Westeros, some
of these other things might. This is another one.
He's like, you've got Aegon Targaryen trying to make
everyone think he's Rhaegar's son by doing things like maybe
having Dark Star on the side, wielding Dawn, doing all these
other things to remind people of Rhaegar, maybe having Dornish
allies, maybe marrying our Arianne Martel, just doing all
these things that remind people of Rhaegar.
Here comes Edrick Storm trying to replay his father's role.
I'm going to kill that son of Rhaegar, just like my father.
I don't know if that's what's up, but it's if he does this
that might make him an enemy of Danny to follow in his father's
footsteps on the other. Hand.
Maybe he could become an ally of Danny.
I don't know what how is Danny going to face off against Aegon,
right? That's a big open question.
And somehow in the middle of all this, he could fit in Edrick
could fit in all this as a ally or enemy to both or either.
So let's work towards the end of our upside by summarizing and
looking at some of these characters as a whole.
The title. Section 3.
Baratheon Bastards. So in reviewing we have one who
doesn't seem to know but is an open secret.
Even though I kind of lean. Towards her knowing there's
still are. Discussions about denial and
clarity, and maybe it will be fully proven to her later, into
A to the way to a point that she can't deny it or feel open about
it. And of course, Gendry doesn't
know at all, doesn't even know his father was noble, let alone
the king. No idea whatsoever.
And then and then Edrick, who's very much knows, is very proud
of it, speaks about it as often as he can and is willful about
being like him as much as he can be.
And much as he knows. That is itself a fascinating,
realistic, realistic aspect of birth and privilege.
The kid who knows he's the son of the king is the proudest and
most confident, Go figure. It's not just about that though.
It's the upbringing of knowing you're getting treated better
than everybody else for the most part by having better education,
better food, better housing, all these other things like that
tells you something that's hard to not feel subconsciously.
Mia Stone isn't getting that. Gendry's getting even less,
although he doesn't realize he maybe is owed it to certain to a
certain extent. Hopefully this wasn't lost in
the shuffle too much. But while it's very plain Robert
had nothing, well, not nothing to do with these children's
upbringings, very, very little to do with these children's
upbringings. Their mothers were sort of
forced out of the pictures as well, maybe less so for Gendry.
Again, we we just, we talked about that separately.
We're not really sure what happened there.
She might have been an exception, but Edrick was sent
away from Delina and Mia was given a role that probably
didn't have her connected to her mother at all, probably
separated in a similar sense. And we don't even know her name.
So basically because Edrick and Mia's father is who he is, they
can't just be left alone and hope nothing goes wrong.
There's a chance that someone comes along and would pluck up
Edrick and would use him as a claimant against his own will.
Maybe less so, Mia, but still the issue is there.
So it's kind of heartbreaking in that sense.
These these bastards, whether they're nobly born or not, they
don't have proper families. Even when they get taken care
of, it's not by their mother and father.
It's by their extended family or by someone else entirely.
They end up in places like the brother without Banner.
They try to find their own family.
They make a family, you know, like I don't have one.
So I'm going to go ahead and find someone to join.
That's very human as far as their collective outlooks.
Of course, the claims are a big part of all this.
We're talking about a family that is very like likely wiped
out. So it'd be one thing if there
were like 50 Baratheons, like there's that many Tyrells.
Like if there was 1 Tyrell bastard.
If if Edrick was Edrick Flowers, I don't think it wouldn't be
that big a deal. Who would care?
I mean, maybe if he was like a really older son of Mace or
something like that, maybe. But if he's just like Mace's
younger brother's bachelor, there's the bajillion Tyrells,
no one would care. It doesn't matter.
His claim is nothing. There's just so many.
What's he going to do? Kill 50 Tyrells?
Who's going to help him do that, right?
It just, it's unfathomable. But the state of House
Baratheon, I mean, I said at the beginning, there's nobody right?
In a book or two, we might have no one with the true born name
Baratheon left. Thus, the door is very open for
one of these bastards to be legitimized or to claim it that
via those means because of that path is so wide open.
And Varus again comes into the picture because hidden claims
like those that can be found in bastards are a sneaky way of
advanced planning. Like like as if you're, if
you're an arch plotter like Varus again, Varus maybe he's
got Tyrex stashed and he certainly had Tyrion in mind.
He and Illyrio for a possible candidate to take over Castley
Rock once they've installed their regime, as I said earlier,
they're going to have a plan for all 7 great houses, whether it's
a marriage, whether it's a some sort of violence or an alliance
of some sort of that they're, they thought it through one way
or the other. And Storm's End is literally the
one that they have conquered so far, right?
Aegon has already taken Storm's End as of early the Winds of
Winter. So it's it's the one castle they
actually have too. It isn't just one of the seven
main considerations, it's the one they have in their
possession. They have a lot more ability to
dictate what's happens with the ownership of Storm's End given
they have possession of it. So I'm not out here suggesting
King Gendry or King Edrick, even though they're the children of
Robert. Especially given Virus is who
we're talking about here and King Aegon is their plan.
But having, you know, a Baratheon on your side, or maybe
even multiples backing you up, it would stiffen his claim.
It would stiffen Aegon's claim. It would make it look more
legit. I don't know if Edrick would be
on their side given the whole Rhaegar Robert thing, but you
know, if if he's offered Storms end is a part of it, maybe he
would make that compromise. I don't know.
Edrick becoming older and doing things as an adult instead of as
a as a boy is a little harder to figure.
But regardless, Lord of Storms end is on the table I guess.
Edrick is the most likely me as possible through marriage and
other reasons. Gendry is older than Edrick, so
if somehow both of their claims are out there, Gendries would
have a little of that going for it.
But of course, Edrick's being more noble, has a lot going for
him too, and has lived there and it's lived there and it's
charmed how many people that are there.
Yeah, he's more familiar to the Storms End people.
To the Baratheons in. General, they've all known about
his existence since he was born. So yeah, he's a, he's a kind of
a known commodity. Gendry's like, hey, where you
coming from? He's a Stormlander, whereas
Gendry's a crown land. That too.
Good point. Like yeah, he's a Baratheon, but
not really from. There.
That's a good point. Yeah, so.
I do think it's. Possible, in fact likely, that
one. Of them ends up with Storm's End
at the end of the story, and I do think Edrick is the most
likely, probably in that order. Edrik, Gendry, Mia.
But obviously since there are other bastards of Robert out
there, there are other possibilities.
Mia is a little more possible if both Edrik and or Gendry die or
are unavailable or something like that.
The idea would be to keep Baratheon blood at Storm's End.
If Mia married somebody else and did it, it would be a little bit
like how Orice Baratheon married the last Durand and Princess to
keep that bloodline still in play as well.
So yeah, as to Gendry involved as a potential stash, now giving
the given the fact that we have both Tyrek and Tyrion viruses
may be smart enough to think, hey, let's not put all our eggs
in one basket. Let's have a couple of potential
claimants in our back pocket for all these major seats.
But again, he sent Gendry to the Night's Watch.
I guess he could be thinking a king can legitimize even someone
who took the black. Maybe that's his angle.
Maybe that actually is a really good place to stash someone,
Make Aegon king. Once he's king, Aegon can be
like, all right, you that kid up there that you have the
blacksmith kid. I legitimize him and I remove
his vows. Just like you can legitimize a
bastard, you can remove Nights Watch vows.
Rob specifically told his mother that he could do that.
So if Rob can do it, then why not the Iron Throne?
So maybe I'm going a little too far to repeat myself in
suggesting that Var sending Gendry to the Night's Watch is a
dead end. Maybe not.
It's definitely makes it a little harder to figure though.
It's a little confusing. But also, as I mentioned
earlier, Thoros never saw any results, never saw any grand
destiny for Gendry. But maybe he hasn't looked.
Maybe he's just been looking at other things.
He he hasn't had a reason to maybe specifically look at
Gendry's future in the flames. You know, poll results at the
beginning of this episode, we asked you all to weigh in on who
might get Storm's End. Y'all have voted Mia Stone did
less well than someone else, which you know to given
Westerosi rules and and claim boy claims work and her status.
It's not that strange. But I I'm slightly amused by a
blank did better than Mia Stone by only 1%.
Overwhelmingly y'all picked Edrick Storm almost a full 2/3
with a 1/4 going to Gendry. So yeah, you guys are pretty
much in line with me. I also think Edrick is the most
likely and I would put Gendry decks.
So there you go. I think we're pretty much in
line there. Is that kind of how you see it a
shave? Yeah, I would agree with that.
I don't think. I think it's got to be Edrick, I
think. People just get the show kind of
confuses things a little bit for them and and all that and the
five year gap not existing maybe effects things.
My other question is like, will we see who's who owns storms?
And at the end, maybe we don't, maybe we don't know who has it.
Maybe it's not wrapped up in a neat little bow and we just
don't know. I you know what I mean?
That's a possibility I'd really consider, but I can't say you're
wrong about to to add that to the list.
Yeah, I mean you don't get resolution.
On every No, we won't. No, you're right, you're right,
We can't. It just wouldn't be feasible
like. The story doesn't work that way
I guess like the the logistics. Within the story, don't create a
situation where we could have some narrator tell us that
everything that happened at the end there that just doesn't
yeah, like it. Something will have to be left
unknown. It's like when you see a
documentary or like something in the end they say like Edric
Storm came back three years later.
And took storms out like, OK, yes, we can see any of those
like biopics or whatever. They give you the rest what they
like. We didn't have time for the
whole everything. So here's what happened.
The rest of the time. So I'm really curious about
Edric and his view on Targaryens because yeah, Robert hated
Targaryens with a passion, but I don't think Robert passed that
on to Edric. He was very little time spent
around him. He knows Edrick.
Edrick knows his father killed Rhaegar, but does he know Robert
hated Rhaegar, that Robert hated Targaryens?
He might not have. And if he doesn't know that,
then that really opens up a lot more potential for a positive
connection between Edrick and Danny or Edrick and other people
that we like other people that that indicate perhaps a happy
landing, a safe ending, something like that.
I think if Robert visited him every year, there was a good
chance that something came up about.
His beliefs in that, you know, it's it's possible it didn't it
it's definitely possible. I just wouldn't take it for
granted. Yeah, I wouldn't take it for
granted that that he did. But I would say like if they're
training. And fighting you might be like
And here's what you do for a Targaryen.
Pet, you know, I don't know. It's also he's at that perfect
age where you cannot assume how Danny will will look on him.
Danny. Looking on a a son of Robert.
Probably not good, but he's 13, does she going to look on him
like that is maybe old enough to look on as an enemy.
Tywin would look at it as a baby, as an enemy, as someone
that you might have to kill or should be killed for political
reasons. Danny, though Danny's very
different when it comes to children. 99% of the time, maybe
not. 100% of the time We've seen an exception or two, and Edric
Storm might be a candidate to be an exception because he's
Robert's son and Danny really, really, really doesn't like
Robert. On the other hand, she's been
coming around a little bit on that, slowly and surely.
Not so much that she's coming around to liken Robert, Nah, but
she's coming around to hate him less and understand that her
father was bad and that Robert maybe wasn't so out of line and
overthrowing her father. She hasn't gotten there yet, but
you can see that some of that progress is maybe being made, or
at least some headway. Maybe it won't get all the way,
but at least that that track isn't entirely on trod on.
Last little subtopic here. Will any of them ever meet each
other? Yeah, I keep saying Gendrick as
a mash up, but what if they actually meet and they could
come buddies and that be their ship name?
Like, hey there, it's Gendrick, they're friends.
Look, you want to say a ship name for for that, you never
know. Ship name?
You never know. They're not.
Lannisters or Targaryens? Come on.
Yeah, you're right. They're.
They're related. They can't.
Do that, but I, I. Feel like I feel like I my gut
reaction is that if those two met.
They wouldn't like each other. Well, I think maybe.
Gendry would be open to it, but I feel like Edrick would be
threatened and would haughty and and I I don't know, I don't
think it would go well. I guess it's my gut reaction.
Yeah. It's really, it's it's tough to
say because like, he might be like you.
Yeah. Because if Edrick was older, he
might be able to accept it more easily.
And Gendry just has negative feelings towards their father,
which Edrick wouldn't necessarily appreciate or agree
with. Yeah, but like, if Gendry's
older than him, so that's why he would feel more threatened, you
know? I don't know.
And. Gendry would have gone through
so many, like, cool life experiences at that point.
You know, I don't know, Edrick might admire him or look fondly
on him or, but they might just never, they may never meet.
Yeah. And Speaking of meetings that
there's obviously other possibilities.
Mia could get involved. Although she's perhaps less
likely to leave the Vale and and meet anybody but Bella and
Gendry. Matt.
And that was really funny. And, you know, there's nine
other kids out there. So yeah, maybe maybe there's
some other humorous meetings or some not so humorous meetings,
some meaningful plot driven meetings.
It's yeah. I, I we were joking about Gendry
and Edrick as like a ship. Friendship is definitely
possible. But a marriage, you know, like
Mia marrying Gendry, that's I don't think so.
That's just too incestuous. These aren't Targaryens, even
though they do have some Targaryen blood in their
ancestry. Yeah, I don't, I don't know
about that. So, yeah, and that's the thing,
like if Gendry is going to be the Lord of Storm's End or
Edrick is, maybe we get that far.
We don't necessarily get a a pairing, a spouse for them.
You know, that's the thing, like you were saying, we don't
necessarily get a full everything is set.
Well, maybe that part happens, but it isn't like a marriage and
children also maybe imply that that's coming.
But we don't necessarily know who that will be. 3 characters
with the same father, none who know each other or even know of
each other. Lots of possibilities for them
as individuals and as children of the recently dead King
Robert. That parentage can be a blessing
or a curse or both depending on the circumstances.
Depending on the context, it might get them ahead later in
life, it might get them killed. From major political
possibilities, massive impact on the plot to potential character
moments like Gendry learning who his father is, Edrick learning
who his father really was. In terms of personality, I don't
mean identity or just other mysteries being cleared up with
Mia. We have a lot of uncertainties
there. There's a lot of moving
character moments possible and political implications that are
huge. Both of these are full of
potential. Melisandre was more right than
we knew or that she even knew. There is power in King's blood.
Y'all couple of questions from you guys here from SK Gano.
Who do you think that Robert without net his hand is covering
the truth about his royal kids would do and well would he do in
Aegon the unworthy and legalize them?
No, I don't think he would do that.
I think Aegon was just cruel and wanted to inflict harm on other
people. I think he he liked the idea of
creating all this chaos and and civil war.
I think Robert is more of a just can't be bothered.
Robert doesn't have the like I want to screw everyone up vibe
to him. He doesn't have that.
Like I would love to ruin things to to mess things up for the
sake of messing things up. That doesn't Robert doesn't seem
to get pleasure from that. Robert gets pleasure from the
actually sleeping with women. He he gets pleasure from
pleasure. He gets pleasure from pleasure.
Yeah. He doesn't get pleasure from
cruelty and from. The thought of like Robert.
Wrecked the realm through his laziness, through his
inattentiveness, not through trying to do it right.
He wasn't. If he had aimed to do it, he
might have done a better job of wrecking the realm.
But Aegon the Unworthy was just a different kind of motivation.
Like the results are similar in a lot of ways but but.
But milder. Like, I don't foresee A
Blackfyre rebellion of five generations of Baratheon
bastards troubling the realm starting with Edric Storm or
something like that. The Stormfire rebellions, you
know, actually sounds really cool, but I don't see it coming,
a guilty undertaker says. If Robert paid more attention to
his bastards, he had realized that.
Cersei's kids couldn't be his. Oh, very good point.
Yeah, that's a very good point. It might have talked about
denial. Robert had quite a bit as well
about his his whole relationship with Cersei, his whole marriage
with Cersei and all his children.
Did he at least see every child once?
No, definitely not. No, you never saw like a a.
You never saw Gendry? Yeah, he never saw Gendry.
Well, he did, but. Didn't know who he was like, I
mean he saw him like. In a crowd like yeah, yeah.
Even as a tiny. Baby he never saw.
Him. OK, well then yeah.
Yeah, if he'd just seen every baby.
Maya remembers like him throwing her in the air.
So he, he definitely and he and he apparently had more interest.
In Maya than her mother like he's kept going to see her even
after he lost interest in her mother.
But yeah, never met, never saw Gendry after, and never
apparently still, you think he saw, like, what did he see at
least three kids then, right? Yeah, he didn't see those twins
either. He fathered them.
The Castle Rock they were. Born after he left.
At least three, I think. Yeah, at least three.
So. That's pretty good.
Like comparison to be like why are these?
Three kids blind, he's. Just just.
He was just. You know, lazy and inattentive
is the answer. Not thoughtful either.
Not thoughtful, not an active mind, not an overactive
imagination, not not an active. Imagination not.
An imagination. The trivia question was again
Robert's last bastard was Barra. Who?
Robert. Fathered on the Virgin.
Sex worker In 298 Barra was murdered on the order of
Searcy's early A Clash of Kings who did the actual killing, Al
Ardeem. Al Ardeem was sent to the Wall
by Tyrion along with Jiano Slint after this dirty deed.
And Tyrion told the captain of the ship.
You know, if Al Ardeem falls overboard on the way to the
Wall, I'd owe you a favor. And did that favor happen?
Well, we got a lot of chapters on the Wall, including plenty
with Jano Slint, Memphis, TLRD, McGann.
Do we? Yeah.
That dude, Bottom of the ocean. He lives with the Merlings.
He's down there with getting the the patch face treatment.
Hopefully something worse. He deserves it In this episode.
We didn't put too much effort into discussing what other
episodes we have that relate to these topics, but I will do so
now. We have a whole episode on the
City of Lease, the free City of Lease, their whole history, many
political connections. I believe we say a few things
about Hedrick in there because why wouldn't we?
He's there and that's relevant. Aryan, The Winds of Winter
chapters are very relevant in terms of what's going on with
the Young Griffs faction. They're taking up Storm's End,
they're invading the Storm Lands and all that.
Very relevant. One could make comparisons and
considerations with regards to Edrick Storm and Young Griff and
all that. And of course, Valar Raritis our
book series contains. Our reread series contains a lot
of the talk about Gendry and Mia Stone and Edrick and Robert and
Cersei and Davos and all these other related characters here
and there and everywhere. We hope you have already
listened to Valar Raritis, but maybe it's time for a Valar re
Rearitis. On behalf of a Shaya, I'm Aziz.
Thanks to Nina. For her.
Great takes. A lot of excellent notes here
today, she told me as we were writing this episode.
I've got a lot of takes on this one, and I was very pleased to
hear that. And they were.
And I was very pleased to read the actual takes themselves, in
addition to knowing they were coming.
Thanks to Joey Townsend for our music.
Thanks to Michael Klarfeld for our intro video and the maps.
You can get your own Klarfeld maps at claredocks.de.
The link is in the description, whether you're watching video or
listening to the podcast version.
No episode next week, but we'll be back most weeks this year for
more deep dives into A Song of Ice and Fire, House of the
Dragon, Night of the Seven Kingdoms, and everything else
Westeros and Essos related. And you know what to do, as I
always say, and am not going to stop Valar.
Reread us, my friends.