The end of the First Dornish War kicked off 24 years of peace
under Aegon the Conqueror. To him, this was the first law.
The Dragon's peace would reign, or else the conquest wasn't so
far in the past that anyone could forget what that meant and
no one tried. Hence that long run of peace
still reading between the lines tells us that peace ended as
soon as he died, like the minute he died, and that is a correct
reading between the lines. Did Aegon actually rule?
Well then is the question? Or was the peace just because
everyone was afraid of him and his sister and their Dragons?
Did his policies lead to the many civil conflicts that came
less than a generation after his death?
Perhaps even if he did botch future peace, he otherwise ruled
Well, though, so it's not a simple answer.
We're not looking for simple answers.
In fact, we're trying to get a little complicated.
But Speaking of, I mean, how much can we read into his
actions regarding his views on the prophecy?
So that'll be a question for us today as well.
And that's not exactly the sort of thing we can take into
account based on, you know, real world experience or examples
beyond that. He had one of the longest reigns
of any Targaryen monarch. He wasn't just the first, he was
one of the longest reigning. So we've got no shortage of
topics in rabbit holes to dive into on this episode of History
Westeros Podcast. You know, before you get too
into it, I want to point out something about the idea of not
being able to read too much into it based on real world scenarios
that as far as like trying to fulfill some prophecy, but more
so than you might think, like whether or not there are real
world prophecies. There are a lot of people who
believe in real world prophecies, especially leaders
in, you know, more ancient times and even Christianity
prophesizes in Armageddon and everything.
So like, there are lots of people who do make some
decisions based on prophecies. And Sean, you're really bearing
the lead here because you have been telling us how you expect
Ragnarok is coming any day now, for example.
I bring this up for a reason. Yeah, you expected it to come on
Super Bowl Sunday, so this live stream may be interrupted by the
end of everything. I just don't know which Super
Bowl Sunday. It might be a future.
This. Time.
Hopefully a future one. Yeah, Every Sunday.
Even Super Bowl Sundays. Maybe not every Sunday.
Almost every Sunday, including Super Bowl Sunday.
This is definitely not our first Super Bowl Sunday live stream.
We are on talking A Song of Ice and Fire, Game of Thrones and
all that related stuff, and it's at 3:00 on Eastern.
That's when we do this when we're live.
But then afterwards you can find every video on YouTube and then
Spotify. An edited version appears on
Spotify and then an audio only version appears at the same
time. Ad free on Patreon if you so are
inclined. If you are so inclined.
If you so are inclined. Either way, whichever you
choose, that option is there for you.
We are about halfway through our topics moot.
We're having a lot of fun with that.
Three polls a week going up on our Patreon, picking topics
that'll get made this year. By the end of it, we'll have
chosen 12 topics we've already chosen.
What is it, 5-6? I think 6 already?
Yeah. So halfway, exactly because
we're choosing 12. We've got some good stuff
coming. We've done authorial influences,
historical influences, we've done undead characters and we've
got a lot more to come in that regard.
Worth saying, it's head and head right now in the last Friday's
poll, with authorial influences and some and historical
influences if they. I believe there's a couple that
The Black Dinner and Tolkien are like really close, with a few
votes away from 1:00. Another.
Yeah. Last felt like it was one vote.
Yeah. So yeah, we got some.
If you're hearing this, you might be able to make a real
difference in what topic ends up winning if you're super pro or
anti Tolkien or the Black Dinner.
We had basically the the top choices from the authorial
influences poll fighting against the top choices from the
historical Influences poll, and it looks like y'all prefer the
historical influences over the authorial influences, but it's
close in some cases. Yeah, it was kind of cool to pit
them against one another because we can kind of see our audience
which they prefer. Yeah, what do you guys like more
than other? I was a little surprised to see
the the popularity of historical influences so much over
authorial. I knew I I figured, you know,
both are going to be popular. But we learned.
We learned something. At least we think we learned
something. Shout out to our good friend
Nina. Her blog is over at Good Queen
ali.tumblr.com That's 1L and Ali and the latest post over there
is a question about Beth Blackwood.
Is she the only Was she likely to have kept the old gods even
after becoming queen and was that a problem?
If so, meaning like a political problem?
Were other people at court going to dislike that or etcetera?
And Nina really liked that question, so you're going to
want to read her answer to it. You can also send us questions,
either live or not. If you want to send them live,
well, just put them in the comment box there and Ashea will
probably grab it. Otherwise, send them to
westeroshistory@gmail.com or interact with us on a different
social media site. We're Westeros history on pretty
much everything. I'll mention some episodes at
the end of this one that relate to things we discussed during,
and at that same time I will reveal the answer to this trivia
question, which is the first King of Harrenhall died.
Thanks to Valerian. How did the first Lord of
Harrenhal die? Not too.
Valarium is the answer, so I narrowed it down slightly for
you. It's not dragon related.
Since the last episode, there's been a fairly big news drop that
the Aegon's Conquest show has been moving forward, so that's
timely. Given what we're talking about
here, there's still no certainty it'll get made by any means.
But it has a writer you know, and it's moving forward.
Moving forward meaning to the next phase, which hopefully will
mean a pilot order, if if not a full series order.
Which you know, as we know, House of the Dragon never got a
pilot order. It went straight to a full
series order, so that would be better.
But because the pilot can get cancelled like Blood Moon.
So you know, but that's also why they do pilots, cause yeah, the
show sucks and they have like, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope.
Yeah. I'm probably glad they did a
pilot for Blood Moon and not a full series order.
Yeah, they might have tanked the franchise a bit.
I mean, we don't know. We didn't see it.
But if if it if it had been bad, you know if it was as bad as.
It seemed on its face, yeah. Unfortunately, it's pretty easy
to describe a lot of things in a ludicrous way that makes it seem
bad when you're just giving a few sentence description of it.
I will say that, but the few sentences that I've read about
what would happen in that story did not fill me with confidence.
And also just they'd have to be real idiots to cancel it if it
was good. Like, it's a Game of Thrones
show that they spent $30 million on.
Like, I I I don't think they had the bar so, so high.
You know, like, no, I don't. I think it was really actually
bad. Not to get too caught up in
this, especially 'cause I don't know a lot of details, but there
are other things to consider. What was the budget for the rest
of the series? Like?
If this is mediocre but the budget is only 30 million, let's
run it. But if this is mediocre and the
budget's 300 million, no, no, no, no.
It'd be better for 300 million. That's that's a good point.
Yeah, certainly it's it's about the cost benefit analysis, not
just the total cost or the total quality.
Yeah, like one of our favorite shows, It's Always Sunny in
Philadelphia would have been cancelled very early on, except
it was dirt cheap. They were like, yeah, we'll keep
it going and then it's now it's the longest running sitcom, like
of all time. Yeah.
So you know, you never know. Live Action sitcom.
Yeah, not, not, not. Animated, that's true.
So we we're pretty sure that the Zagun's Conquest show will be
under the House of the Dragon moniker 'cause that's sort of
what they hinted at early on, that it would be anthology
style, but not single season anthology style.
Although I suppose they could do a single season edition of House
of the Dragon in some timeline. Certainly that would be
possible, but Aegon's conquest probably wouldn't be a single
season. I guess it could be weather.
And so the point is, I don't know whether this is going to be
connected to Ryan Condall in any way, and it's moot if it doesn't
get picked up anyway. So we'll keep you all updated
about series or pilot orders or future news.
If it starts casting then that's a good sign too.
But anyway, it's it's fairly exciting.
But we'll temper our expectations 'cause we know how
these things work. They don't always come through
and well, that's what we that's the world we live in.
We'll probably have some Night of the Seven Kingdoms Dunkin Egg
news to talk about before we get to Aegon casting news anyways.
That's a good point. Yeah, that'll probably happen.
But we'll we'll we'll come back to that when it's appropriate to
whatever TV show news we have. Next plus there's the the The
Sea Snake 9 Voyages of the Sea Snake animated series as.
Well, they're pivoting to that possibility, which is good.
If it helps it get made, I'm all for it.
Exciting time to be. It always seemed like a very
expensive show so that. Oh, I mean, yeah, it always
seems like it should be animated to me, so.
Yeah, nautical stuff like that. Very, very expensive.
And so pivoting to our show, Sean, how you doing today?
You got any, any, anything in your beverage today?
What are you What are you drinking?
This is the Naked Green Machine along with Magic Mind along with
Bolthouse Protein Mix, and I've got a little ice in there that's
good. It's very green.
It's pale green today. Yes, pale green.
So yeah, pivoting to our show away from talk of Game of
Thrones TV, One thing we really like to do is take what George
gives us, the way he presents it and presented differently.
What if he presents it one way we presented a different way?
Like if he has characters looking at the details, we try
to look at the big picture, and vice versa, if he has them
looking at the big picture, we try to look at the detail.
If historical counts show up in the text, we expand on them to
make sure their significance is clear.
If historical counts pertain to A Song of Ice and Pfizer
characters, we point that connection out.
If one of George R Martin's accounts slash sources in World
takes things year by we year, we try to look at trends and eras,
right? That's a big picture to look.
Maybe we look at how these events were viewed later on in
the timeline, and if George jumps around in the timeline, we
try to go year by year. Now Fire and Blood does a bit of
both. Sometimes it goes year by year,
sometimes it jumps around quite a bit.
That depends on which Targaryen monarch we're Speaking of.
You can't really jump around much inside the reign of Magor
'cause it was only six years long.
There's not a lot of room to jump around, or any who preceded
him was even shorter or closer to five years.
Aegon's reign was 37 years. It jumps around quite a bit.
It it doesn't jump around too much before the 1st Dornish War
'cause that's a real big delineating differential within
his reign. But within those last 24 years,
it jumps around a lot. I really wish I could play that
song right now. Which song?
Jump around. Jump around, jump up, jump up.
Iron crown on on my crown. There we go.
That's that's why I said it. I'm like, I don't need to play
it. If you can just do a little, you
know, version, that's safe for us.
Another little tidbit to add to what you're saying about the the
different ways to analyze it. We have this new wrinkle and
everything now with this prophecy.
That's another piece to however, we might have analyzed it before
that we have to add in. Yeah, absolutely.
And we we considered that as it pertained to the conquest, now
we have to consider it as it pertained to how he ruled
afterwards, because that's prepared for this inevitable
future that he saw in his dreams.
Even if it's far in the future, it's his.
Some of his actions should at least be weighed against that
preparation. So yeah, it jumps around a lot,
both in Fire and Blood and The World of Ice and Fire.
And in terms of references, we get inside A Song of Ice and
Fire as well. There's mentions here and there,
especially in Tyrion and Danny's chapters and and elsewhere as
well, about Egg on the Conqueror and those tidbits matter here as
well. So it's hard to look at things
year by year. We can't just do the year 20,
then 21, then 22 because of all this jumping around later in his
reign. We are going to do that a little
bit because we have dates on, say, when his grandchildren were
born, and that's really important.
We can look at that time by time, but today we're not
focused on his family. We're separating that.
There's two parsings that we're working with.
It's like a dichotomy of Aegon's rule, how he ruled the realm and
how he ruled his family. And those are obviously
connected because his family ruled the realm after him.
And they're he's, they're being prepared to rule during his
life. Or are they?
And that's that's one of the questions, How well, how well
and how much were they prepared to rule after him and how well
did he set the realm up for them to take over?
And the answer is, well, it's it's.
Little. Little good, little bad, maybe a
lot bad, maybe a lot good, depending on what angles we're
looking at. And we'll be looking at several
different angles. You know, I I probably I just
now thought this question. I wish I had thought to research
it ahead of time, and I don't want to put you on a spot too
much, but how many times have we had a Targaryen King and a
Targaryen hand at the same time? Oh.
Every Targaryen king has had Targaryen hands.
Sometimes only 1/2. Hands, yeah.
They were born with two, all of them that we know of.
But yeah, there's been several because a lot of them made their
heir. The Hand, like Balon, was Hand,
and before him, his older brother Amon was Hand.
Before he died. Dailor the Blessed was Hand.
In, you know, later generations, they were more able to do it and
it seems like a wise thing to do.
It seems like the person who's going to end up being in charge
at some point should be second in charge to get ready for that,
right? But Aegon didn't have that
advantage, right? He'd say like maybe eventually
once his kids grow up, but even then they're 20, but there's
other people who are 40 with more experience or whatever.
So you can maybe still you should make the 20 year old
hand, but it's a different challenge for him so.
He did make his half brother hands, which he's not Targaryen,
but he was in his family. You can count.
I would count that in terms of purposes of this this category,
but but you're right, he didn't have the choice of his own
family. He didn't have a choice.
Because I wouldn't count it. And and maybe even I should have
been more clear. Not just the Targaryen hand, but
the heir, the person who's going to end up being in charge.
Or East wasn't the heir, so I. Think about the best way to now
maybe they need to be trained up to that point too and that's
another challenge is that that maybe they're not ready for
that, so. If we're being technical though
at the time before a nice was born there are a lot of people
who may have considered or east the heir it it was unlikely that
would ever come to pass but like if you're going to well it has
to be a man. If that was the rule for them
then in the next closest relation to Aegon would have
been Ori. So and we we covered that at the
time too as a like a a pain point for the realms like well
if Aegon dies now what's going to happen.
That of course didn't happen but anyway so yeah I said Aegon's
reign is the is the second longest reign of all time.
Well Harris and Allison had the longest of all and Allison
technically didn't make it till the end, but it was 55 years and
oddly enough I guess George likes the number 26 cause three
different kings ruled for 26 years.
Viserys the first egg on the 3rd and egg on the 5th and dare on
the second was 25 years. So it's pretty close.
Surprising perhaps is that Aries the Mad King was the next
longest at 21, but let's not forget he wasn't mad when his
reign began else it probably wouldn't have lasted that long.
So that is interesting to think about that Aegons was the second
longest, in fact just the peacetime era of Aegon the
Conqueror post first Ornish war was 24 years long, so just his
peacetime, his No War era only was one of the longest Targaryen
reigns. Even if you count it as
separate, it's longer than any reign other than those five that
I just named Mad King and the Jairus Viserus first, Aegon the
3rd and Aegon the 5th. And how many of them had eras
had no war? Yeah, Phew.
Certainly Aegon the 5th had war during his Aegon the Third had
some. Mostly it was the war that
preceded him that set him up. And then of course, mysterious
the one same thing he he presided over peace and then
immediately it turned into war upon his death, which is also
the case for Aegon. So yeah, it's interesting.
It's a lot to analyze, but I feel like Saris did more to
cause that war. Yeah, and Aegon did.
I agree, but I think might be. I feel naive saying that, but
that's what I feel right now. I don't think you're wrong.
I mean the dance was was the biggest Targaryen civil war, so
it's also in terms of scope it was larger.
But but Amis and Megor had their problems, and I think Aegon gets
some blame for that. Yeah, right.
I think you're right. I I I mean, I think if we saw it
play out, we would see all sorts of things that Aegon could have
conceivably done to smooth things over between his two
sons. Yeah, I think it's a question
similar to one we get with Tywin Lannister.
People point to Tywin Lannister keeping the peace for so long.
But did he really? Was that was he mortgaging the
future to keep the peace in the short term?
And I think maybe Aegon, that question is clearer.
And for Tywin it's not as clear because he a wasn't fully in
charge, so you can't put it all on him anyway.
But yes, I think, for example, the Faith is the topic that's
going to come up today. Aegon kind of just kicked the
can down the road with the Faith.
There were a lot of simmering problems that just weren't dealt
with, and they were left for a weaker king or a more violent
king to deal with. In both, really.
Two separate kings, of course, I'm speaking.
So I think that is maybe still the best thing to do with the
faith is to time needs to pass for your reign to be even more
legitimate. You're dealing with the faith is
going to be easier as more time passes and you're more embedded.
That's a true point, yeah. Like, things change.
You need that period of the current generation sort of
passing off and the new generation being the ones to
take over. And they're, they were born into
this world, this new world where Aegon is king and the faith is
not quite as powerful, but the people who transitioned from one
world to the other are maybe a little more difficult.
And so, yeah, as those people no longer are making decisions in
the world, it maybe gets easier, but it didn't necessarily.
Like that was a good theory, I think, but maybe it didn't
actually work out as well. Yeah, that's true.
I do. I want to clarify that just
because I think Viserys might have been more at fault than
Aegon doesn't mean I don't think Aegon was at fault.
Right, Okay, yeah. I guess more so, but also I
think Aegon had more of a difficult challenge.
Like we were just talking about he's got to deal with all these
completely new things, whereas Viserys still had Dragons and
inherited peace, right? He was in a better position to
set things up for his posterity than Aegon was.
I agree, I totally agree. And also I think it's fair to
say that observing them, and I don't even mean TV, I mean
reading, although that certainly adds to the opinion.
Reading about Viserys and Fire and Blood, reading about Egon
and Fire and Blood, whether or not they made the right choices,
it's pretty clear Egon worked a lot harder.
Like he put way more effort in and and tried harder.
He traveled half of his reign was going from place to place
where Viserus when he went hunting people.
I mean this was a TV thing. People held the deer for him,
you know, like. So that wasn't necessarily what
really happened, but it might have been because he was
overweight and partied too hard, so he might.
He probably did need some help getting around, especially when
he was older so. Aegon worked hard and Sirius
played hard. Yeah.
That's right. Yeah.
Tell you which one I'd rather hang out with.
Yeah, yeah, you know, I I agree with you there.
Yeah, but Saros would be more fun to hang out with.
No doubt, but the one. I want to hang out with is not
the one I want to be king. Yeah, yeah.
Let him just be a Prince. Yeah, I said.
Hang out with. Yeah, not the one that we want
to vote for, for King. You don't vote for king?
Well, they just did at the Great Council.
Aegon might not be happy. It's like you guys voted for
King after me, like. What?
Jeez, I did not teach you well rolling over in his grave.
But yeah, you don't have to judge Aegon to conquer from a
moral perspective. You wouldn't even have to do
that if he was real. I mean, you can if you want to.
We do. It's kind of fun.
The setting is just so different from our own.
It's hard to do in the 1st place, but yeah, you can totally
do it if you want, like we do. But ethics aside, we cannot
definitely judge whether or not his rule set up future troubles.
I think that's an easier conversation to have cause
ethics are more confusing and and not as easily transportable
from time to time and place to place.
But cause and effect is a little easier to judge I think even in
politics, even in fictional politics.
So we can judge arraign and we should never do the thing that
happens a lot in real life, which is judge a reign solely
based on what happens during that reign.
It should be like what Aegon did spilled over into the next
reign. What presidents and prime
ministers and kings and premiers do carries over into the next
term of office. So obviously some more than
others, but the point is those rules are universal, whether
fictional or non fictional. The actions of the powerful have
consequences and impact well beyond their reigns, their terms
and their lifespans. And the bigger the power, the
bigger those effects in general. And this was the most powerful
Targaryen on the most powerful dragon at the most pivotal time
in the history of Westeros, And was Aegon the most powerful man
in the history of Westeros. It's an interesting question.
I think quite possibly. I can't really think of someone
who was more powerful. If you throw in supernatural
power then it gets a little wonky.
I don't know, Brandon the Builder, maybe Garth Greene?
I don't know if we're post legendary times.
I think Egons got a strong case. The relative ease at which he
took and held supreme power makes a compelling case by
itself, but let's break down what he did with that power
after taking it. The Dragon's piece is where we
start if you're interested in the sometimes counter intuitive
strategies employed by politicians and rulers and such.
Not exactly the Game of Thrones, but the Game of Throne in this
case, this episode should have a lot of that.
The throne isn't up for grabs, right?
It's about as locked down as it ever will be after the so-called
eternal peace. Quote UN quote with Dorne.
But just because the top spot is sealed up doesn't mean there
isn't power to fight over, right?
If you can't have supreme power, aim for second highest or third
highest, or make friends with those who do have the top spot,
there's plenty of jockeying to go on to go on here, even though
it's not for the throne itself. Many seem to have just accepted
Aegon's rule, because what are you going to do about it?
His way or the highway? So among those, there were
surely many that were trying to become his friend, trying to
become his ally, or just trying to get favors out of him.
There's more of those people, I'm guessing looking for pit
power within the new realm rather than, say, pining for the
old days or let alone planning some kind of rebellion.
Though there were definitely those too.
Even though Aegon failed to bring darn into the realm, there
were just no threats to his rule to speak of.
There were threats to the peace, there were things to deal with,
but nothing that was going to remove him from the throne.
Not after the not after the Dornish war, anyway, because no
one was trying to assassinate him anymore.
He was concerned, right during the Dornish War.
He was concerned that the way the Dornish war ended might lead
to future rebellions or future unrest.
Well, it didn't really happen. Well, it did, but not during his
life. And that's why we're starting
off with this point of did Aegon just kind of kick the can down
the road and let his descendants deal with these problems rather
than dealing them head on? Or were these problems just kind
of fundamental? Were they going to happen one
way or the other? So if we're really looking at
this this cause and effect thing really getting into the weeds,
then perhaps the defeat Endor did set the stage for rebellions
against anies and and Megor. Well, maybe not Megor, but
anies, just not Aegon so and maybe that wouldn't have
happened if Aegon hadn't lost endorne.
Maybe Anies would have had an easier time of it.
It's an interesting question. It's also, I want to point out
there's other factors other than like it's not just rule well or
set things up for your legacy. Yeah, it's which things to
manage while you're ruling that may or might not be prompt or
like I say like maybe he could have done certain things while
he was ruling to set things better up for his kids to rule.
But that might have been at the expense of dealing with other
things at the time that he was ruling.
So it's it's really complicated to analyze all that.
Yeah, there's no road map to what makes a successful king of
all Westeros. I mean, there isn't one for King
of Anywhere any book, so why would there be one for this?
To whatever extent there is a quote UN quote road map, it's a
more developed road map, 3 or 4 reigns in than the first one,
yeah. That's very true.
So he had settled the unsettled regions well prior to the first
Ornish War. Remember we talked about that
the Sisters, the Iron Islands, the places that weren't quite
adjusted to his rule, had to be dealt with.
And then the First Dornish War happened.
And after that it was time for Westeros to reap the rewards of
living under a very strong and mostly benevolent ruler.
And by that I mean someone that wasn't like chopping lots of
heads off and he was generally doing justice.
And yes, obviously Dornish opinions aside, he was very
popular in part, as we said last time, thanks to Rainey send her
clever use of song and and music and things like that to prop up
the conquest and prop up their personalities and just make good
things said about them. And of course it doesn't need to
be said, but I will say it again that there was just no question
about taking him on directly in war.
So we've said many times in the show there's hard power and soft
power. And of course, soft power is
more on the docket today because again, Aegon fought 0 more wars
during his life. He never had to do more than
threaten or just show up or remind people that Valerian
exists and that was enough. But consider how often peace
speaking historically, in real world or not, is just a matter
of coincidence. Meaning sometimes the world just
hasn't birthed a person with sufficient power and ambition
and military strength to start something that's like a soft
piece. The kind of soft piece where
things worked out. A.
Hard piece is what we have with Aegon.
It's no coincidence that people aren't going to war with each
other. The worst Lannister of all time
could have become Lord of Casterly Rock during Aegon the
Conquest, Aegon the Conqueror's reign.
But if such a man existed, they would have had to reckon with
him. Go.
If that person had been born 100 years before, they would have
run wild, wreaking havoc, causing untold suffering,
torturing people in Casterly Rock.
Just that you name it. And again, we're imagining the
worst Lannister of all time. This is a made-up person.
But if Vagon the Conqueror existed, well, they they could
have still tortured people in Casterly Rock.
But they're not out. They couldn't go out there
conquering and leading armies place to place and just doing
that. That would have been stopped and
stopped easily. So yeah, that kind of thing is
not going to happen during the Dragon's peace.
And that state of affairs lasted as long as he did.
He employed many things to make that happen.
The first of which we'll discuss is the hidden strategies of the
royal progress. We briefly discussed Aegon's
policy of royal progress is back in the Dragons interim episode
because we weren't sure if if they had started yet.
We're pretty sure they did, but now we're sure this was a main
strategy and it had many benefits.
Quote. Gull Town and the Erie,
Harrenhal River Run, Lanisport and Casterly Rock, Crake Hall,
Old Oak, High Garden, Old Town, The Arbor, Horn Hill, Ashford,
Storms End and even Fall Hall had the honor of hosting His
Grace many times, but Aegon could and would turn up almost
anywhere, sometimes with as many as 1000 Knights and Lords and
ladies in his train. He journeyed thrice to the Iron
Islands, twice to Pike and once to Great.
WIC spent a fortnight at Sisterton in a 19 AC and visited
the N 6 times, holding court thrice in White Harbor, twice at
Barrowton and once at Winterfell on his very last royal progress
in 33. AC It is better to forestall
rebellions than to put them down.
Aegon famously said when asked the reason for his journeys.
It's a bit cryptic though, because yes, that statement I
agree with. It's pretty straightforward.
In terms of the logic there. Yes, it seems definitely better
to forestall rebellions than to put them down.
But how? How exactly does a royal
progress forestall A rebellion? He spent half his reign on the
road. It really shows that this was
important to him. There was a lot of work to get
people to accept the new state of affairs.
And not only did he not want them to rebel, he didn't want
them to make the mistake of thinking they had a chance.
You know, he doesn't even want them to.
Just like, look, I'm going to crush you.
I've got Valerian. Visenya has Vegar.
You have no hope. Don't even try.
He doesn't want them to think that they have a chance, so he
wants to make sure that they're not stupid enough to try.
Like, he knows it's dumb to try. Most people know it's dumb to
try, but do they know that? That's the that's the question
that really needs to be answered.
Nina mentions the contrast to the historical king of the
Trident, Theo Teague, who was derisively referred to as Theo
saddle sore because he spent his reign on horseback not to go on
goodwill trips, but to put down near constant rebellions.
Now that it sounds like Theo had near constant rebellions to deal
with while Aegon was more doing due diligence, I don't think he
was constantly putting down rebellions.
Nevertheless, it is a very strong parallel, especially
because we're talking about some of the same places here.
Theo Teague ruled the Riverlands and Aegons right next to the
Riverlands. We even several of the ones
mentioned on that list were Riverlands are nearby, Heron
Hall and River Run were specifically mentioned.
And then there's some spots in the region and the West that are
close by to the Riverlands as well and the Vale.
And it's it's a real world thing too.
There's lots of examples of conquerors who spent huge
amounts of their reign in the saddle or on campaign.
Marcus Aurelius, famous philosopher, emperor of of Rome,
doesn't sound like the kind of guy that would be in the saddle
a lot but he was he was in the saddle a huge amount of his
reign. He just a lot of those
philosophical musings were written in his tent.
Of course it was a fancy imperial tent, but it's it's a
lot less fancy than you know, this Imperial Villa or whatever
he would be in. I don't even know, but it would
be a lot fancier than whatever he would have on campaign.
So yeah, and like Richard the Lionheart lived, hardly spent
any time in England, let alone you know, living there were
having peace there. He was constantly moving around
in Europe and all that. So this is, this is a pretty
normal thing historically speaking, maybe not common but
but plenty of examples and was showing up with huge crowds of
courtiers. Egan was making the unspoken
point that he had tremendous buy in, right.
All these people are supporting him and the commoners love to
see him. They're like, well, if we're
going up against this guy, he's popular.
Like even our own people might turn against us if we go against
this guy, let alone the difficulty of going against him
in the 1st place for military reasons.
So it really reminds people just how popular he is.
Wherever he goes, that's a pretty big deal.
Like, yeah, you don't want to go up against someone that's that
popular. Another piece to it is bringing
1000 Knights and Lords and ladies with him just to say,
hey, what's up, let's have dinner.
What if he was coming for battle?
You know, like it's it's it demonstrates a mobility of
forces because it's sure you can fly in with Valerian and maybe
burn up the fields or burn my castle, but you can't take over
my land. You couldn't get Dorned even
right? But when you can show up with
1000 soldiers, that is like I could have the Dragons and 1000
soldiers or more, right? It's it's a full force, and you
would so rather this force be on your side than be against you.
Absolutely. It's multifaceted.
It's you. It's showing off the the
strength of his court and the strength of his army and the
strength of his dragon and his popularity.
Of loyalty. Yeah, it's a really.
It's a really powerful in that sense.
Any Lord who's having any sort of second thoughts or like
thoughts of maybe going against that would be like, OK, never
mind that's just too much. I can't possibly how can I go
against even one of these factors let alone all of them at
once. This was what Aaron whore
learned. It's like no, I can go against
that. No you can't.
And you didn't even really get close to stop like you lost
badly. And yeah, it shows off Valerian
to more people who didn't get to see him.
That's important. Another reminder here and there
and it's almost worded in a way. How do you interpret this, Sean
and a Shay? If you feel like weighing in,
let me know. It says.
But Aegon could and would turn up almost anywhere.
It's almost like he's not letting them know very far in
advance, almost as if that's part of his strategy to just be
like, Aegon's stopped at Cray call.
Here we are. You know, let's say we're the
crag and we're like the Western's like, is he coming
here next? He's close.
He could come here next. We don't know.
He doesn't tell people. So, like, we better prepare just
in case he comes and then he does it and like, OK, whew, he
doesn't come or he does come. And like, oh, we got to prepare
even more so. How do you take that?
Do you? Think that mean how do you
reinterpret that? I thought about that too.
And I I I feel like while there might be some value to turning
up by surprise that it might be more exciting or maybe again
sort of a demonstration of his capability that he could just
show up any time. But also I think it's, I think
that the unrealistic and unwise elements over overweight that
because to show up with all those forces they got to be fed
and they just want the the host wouldn't be ready for that.
And also to show up with all those forces it on.
Some of them might be sudden where you might expect a month
notice, but you only got 5 days notice.
But still like people just noticed all these troops
traveling across the field, they would see blaring in the sky.
There would be some warning, you know, even if he didn't directly
tell them, they would see it coming.
So, but again, maybe that does count as turning up with really
a weak point, yeah. Yeah, how long did?
How far ahead did Robert have to tell Ned that he was coming?
That's exactly what I was going to say.
Ned was a little caught off guard by that.
He was like, oh, like he's coming here like, oh, but that
was still like. With they had yes, because it.
Takes that long. And then that was what they
said. They're like, OK, we have time
because they're traveling in a wheelhouse and it's really slow.
But he was still Ned was still frustrated.
He was like, damn, I needed more, you know?
I needed more time and more warning and it was like, I think
it's the first time Ned gets upset.
It's and it's only a little bit. But it's like it's it's a it's
foreshadowing Ned's relationship with Robert.
Or what What's already what's already developed long in the
past but is new to audiences that you know, Robert's nothing
like Ned. And and the sort of lack.
Of planning and stuff like that is kind of a hallmark of of him
and what Ned is getting pulled into by being made hand.
Here's. The the way I interpret it, more
so now, it still might mean that he turned up with less notice
than you might expect, but I think it meant more that he
would turn up in places you wouldn't expect you would
expect. If he went.
To Highgarden Old Town Winterfell Da Da Da.
But he was going to Barrowtown. He was going to a lot of other
like secondary, tertiary, Tarth and.
Craycall and yeah like these aren't huge names.
They're big but not huge and and and it's a lot of effort to go
to to go to even Fall hall. That's Tarth.
I mean that's an island. So he had to put all the that
1000 Knights in his court on ships and he presumably flew
Valerian, but everybody else had to take ship and all that.
So that's a pretty big deal, yeah.
And I think that is also. Valuable because it shows that
he's not just, I don't know what were you sucking up or butting
up to all the he's. Like everyone?
Everyone is part of Westeros, the whole realm, anyone?
The other important thing here is it says.
Sometimes with as many as 1000 Knights and Lords like I think
sometimes. He He traveled.
You know, he kept it tight and he, he didn't have a huge, huge
royal progression and he just arrived on Valerian,
potentially. Oh yeah, that's a good point.
Sometimes he. Might just show up some somewhat
alone or just yeah, like I would, I would I.
Would guess, for example, that his visit to Tarth to Evenfall
Hall was kept smaller for the same reason that you said that
he had to load everyone onto a ship and take him over there
because he also went to Sisterton.
I would guess it was in the. Arbor Other.
Islands that would be, yeah. OK that's a very good point.
Now it also says in that quote that some of those are it's.
It says some of those locations were visited quote many times
which that's. I don't know what how to
interpret many, but at least three.
More than two, you know it's not two.
You know what I like to interpret?
From that. Those were good hosts.
Like they?
Serve. They got good food there.
Yeah, he just. Loves their the, the.
Fish and it tarth, you know, and we have to.
Look at patterns. Here one of them is they're
mostly not in the Crown lands. Like he wasn't going, It's not
mentioned. Driftmark isn't mentioned, like
there's there's not much of this and the storm lands.
It gets mentioned where you know he's already got loyalty there.
You know Storm's End is there but of course he's got to visit
Ori's from time to time. That's that's kind of
straightforward. But yeah it seems like most of
these were farther out and there's some that like you said
Sean are a little bit obscure and maybe not that you would
expect. It's mostly big places far from
King's Landing. All four of the cities are
mentioned, meaning the non King's Landing city cause of
course he wouldn't go into royal progress to his own city, you
know, like he would be he could just walk out his front door if
he wants to be seen, you know, it's like hey everybody, I'm
still here you know so that's interesting and and Nina reminds
us to look at places that aren't mentioned, which we can't read
too much into that because they're not all mentioned.
There's places he went to that just aren't mentioned, but still
there's an awful lot unmentioned.
So there's got to be some that might have gotten snubbed even
if we aren't sure who they are. But Sean, you mentioned
Barrowton and so does Nita. That's a really interesting one
because they're not a true city in the in Barrowton, but it is
large. It's probably one of the next
top 10 sized locales in terms of population, one of the closest
thing to being a city. So that's important that he went
there twice, and he went to White Harbor three times, but he
didn't go to Winterfell till his last progress.
And so, well, what does that mean?
Let's consider that it's a great test case for us to look at.
Now. We don't know when Tauren Stark,
the Last King of the North, died.
It might have been around that time.
Maybe that's why Aegon thought it necessary to finally make a
visit up there. Or maybe Tauren died well before
that, and it was Brandon the Boisterous that was in charge.
Now we've covered all these Starks in our Under the Dragons
series, under the Dragons of the North series, and let's not
forget that the Stark sons were very unhappy with the kneeling.
They were unhappy with it to the point that they discussed
rebellion against their father, not necessarily against Aegon,
though if they had rebelled against their father
successfully, that would have probably been the next step that
that. Didn't come to pass.
Of course. And some of them formed a cell
sort company and went off and did their own thing elsewhere.
And they they were they protested the marriage of their
sister to Ronald Aaron as well this this marriage arranged by
Rainey's. So there's a lot of discontent
here. So I think maybe we can maybe we
can tie these things together and and think maybe Aegon was
reminding the Lord of Winterfell that hey, I can, I'm popular in
Barrington. I'm popular in White Harbor.
If you start stuff with me, your own people might not take your
side. You know, I'm getting in close
with the Mandelees. I got a lot I can offer the
Mandelees, and they worship the the Seven Gods.
So in some ways we have more in common with them than you do.
Are you sure they're that loyal to you when it's us in the
balance, right? Things like that.
So maybe so. Point being, a change in
leadership at Winterfell might be the reason why Eggon finally
went to Winterfell. It might not.
It might be some other reason. He might just yeah, who knows.
But I think that's a it's a strong gas in my opinion.
One thought Is that he? Might have known his presence in
Winterfell would cause trouble. Yes, I agree even.
If the. Moment.
He's there. They all like Yes Sir, and do
what they're told, but he still might feel like it's going to
make things hard on torn Stark rubs it in their faces a bit.
Maybe right. And or maybe he knew Torrance
Stark was loyal. I don't.
I'm not worried about making sure Winterfell falls in line.
They're in line. I don't know about baritone.
I don't know about White Harbor. I need to make sure these places
fall in line. I already know I've got Torrance
Stark and Winterfell. Like, I could see either of
those. I could too.
Yeah, I. Agree with that.
Yeah. So those are good thoughts and I
think that that's probably it. Yeah, like if one of those
Lords, one of the ones that was pushing for a rebellion or
discontent, if that guy became Lord, well, that's a that's a
pretty obvious red flag potential.
But if it's still Tor and I agree, then what's he worried
about? So let's get further into how
royal progress has helped keep the peace.
It's one to just what we've seen so far is, is a little bit of
intimidation. Maybe making friends helps like
doing the honor of coming to us like some some houses are take a
lot of pride in being visited by the king and that alone would
raise their esteem and be like, you know, this King's all right.
You know, I wasn't sure about him, but he did US.
He did good by us and I'm on his side it some, you know, that's
the, that's the thing with pride, right?
Sometimes a small, relatively small gesture can flip the whole
thing on its on its head. Like you, you go from really mad
at someone to OK, you're all right by me because you treated
me well. My pride is a swage now.
I feel good about it, and I think a lot of these visits did
that exact thing. But that can't be all of it.
That can't cover every single Lord and lady.
That can't cover every scenario. But it is harder to go with.
Go to war with someone that you've gotten to know.
Unless, of course, you've gotten to know them and you hate them.
It's beyond that too, though. There's a value in bringing
another value that other than what we've already mentioned to
bringing this big host with them.
Because not only does Aegon and whatever Lord is he visiting
create some sort of bond, but all the the master at arms and
the the the stable boys and the the the soldiers and Knights,
they're all going to interact. You know, both both his host and
the hosts, you know, staff and everything, They're all going to
have connections and bonds and communications as well.
They're going to share stories and secrets and just think about
whatever, like you know, Robert or Ned or Aegon or whoever, they
still have like a council and a family, all these other people
under them that they have to account for the opinions of.
And so you would like to get all of them on board, right.
When Aegon shows up with his host, he doesn't only go into a
secret room with the Lord, he meets with all the other family
members and staff and all of his staff meets with all their
staff. And it's all this is kind of
bringing Westeros closer together and make it less likely
for them to go fight each other. Well, let's just have the next
quote, then we'll. Go forward from there.
Let's let's read further to get a little deeper into what answer
we're looking for here. Quote much of every.
Royal progress was given over to Feasts and Balls and Hogs and
Hawking, as every Lord attempted to outdo the others in splendor
and hospitality. But Aegon also made a point of
holding court wherever he might travel, whether from a Deus in
some great Lord's castle or a mossy stone in a farmer's field,
6 Maesters travelled with him to answer any questions he might
have on local law, customs, and history, and to make note of
such decrees and judgments as His grace might hand down.
So yeah, there's the honor. There's the presence but.
What else? Happens to a Lord when they have
to host Aegon a trail of huge nights, valerian and whoever
else comes along. Extreme expense is what happens.
That costs a lot, especially given the above note about Lords
trying to outdo each other. I mean, damn, what is Casterly
Rock, High Garden and Old Town trying to outdo each other?
Look like the obscenities of excess there would be just off
the chain the Valyrian steel chain.
And this is somewhat exaggerated.
It just has to be because clearly the Lord of Cray call to
keep using them as an example wasn't trying to outdo Casterly
Rock. Like, that's just not feasible.
Unless the Lannisters were randomly deciding to be penny
pinching, which seems very unlikely, right?
And even then then what? Are you going out to Highgarden
and Old Town when you're Craig called?
No, you're just not. They're just, they're just so
vastly more wealthy than you. So maybe they're more like do a
good job, do something creative, or just not be remembered as the
the, the weak one. You know, like I remember all
the different nights, like you said, it's not just about Aegon,
all these different people that are in his court, They're going
from place to place. Some of them are making friends,
some of them are maybe making enemies, but they're going to
get back to King's Landing and talk about all these places they
visited and the best and the worst are going to be gossiped
about. Some will kind of be forgotten.
Some. Some of these lesser Lords might
not mind being forgotten, but they don't want to be made fun
of. They don't want.
Because again, pride, pretty big deal amongst these folks.
Bigger than you might think. In some ways it's like high
school gossip, you know? But that's whatever works as a
as a analogy and Sean to build on what you were saying too.
I really like that example because it's again something we
see extremely early in the story.
The royal progress of sorts that Robert and Cersei and all them
take to Winterfell includes exactly that.
Now we don't see a lot of them getting along, but we know that
that could have happened. For example Rob and Joffrey are
practicing swords in the yard and that does not go
particularly well. It's meant to be foreshadowing
that they're going against each other in war.
It meant it was meant to even be even bigger foreshadowing cause
George's original plan was for Joffrey to lead the armies and
they would have been more directly opposed to each other
in the field. Obviously that didn't happen but
still people could have been making friends and it didn't
have to be a rivalry. They could have gotten along,
you know and in some cases that would happen like the the sun
like perfect example that is Theon getting along really well
with Patrick Malister. The Malisters and the Greyjoys
are like diametrically opposed. They're like supposed to be
enemies. Patrick's father even reminds
him of that. He's like, you remember?
You know he's Ironborn, right? Like that dude, I know he's your
friend, but don't forget where he came from and where we come
from. We're the maoisters.
We our castle. It was built to defend against
the Ironborn. We are the Ironborn stoppers of
the region. So like, be careful with that,
you know the warning. Comes but the bond.
Still comes too. And.
And and you also see Tyrion and Jon have Bond.
And yeah, good point. And you don't see too much of A
bomb. But you know Sansa and Brandon,
whoever and all of Jaime Lannister showing up and and you
got to imagine we're seeing these featured characters.
But you know, there's got to be that type of interaction
happening among dozens and dozens of other people.
Yes, I totally agree. Yeah.
So it's it's really does have a it's really a long list of
interactions and people and connections and there's all
sorts of room for relationships and and anger and intrigue all
sorts of things. So yeah it it's really
interesting to consider and all the possibilities it's it's a
grand grand arrangement and lots of lots of different moving
parts. So yeah, how are you going to
raise any kind of hell though afterwards?
How are you going to rebel after spending all that money on the
king and all his Knights and his dragon and all that.
So it's it's almost like that's a great example of soft power.
You're coming to party and hang out and do you honor, but then
afterwards you won't be able to afford to cause problems, so
the. Resources.
That you might have spent, you know, if there was something you
were frustrated with Aegon over and you were contemplating
raising an army, making a stand, refusing to pay taxes.
And to do that you would need to like equip some soldiers and put
some horses on the field. But now you just all that.
You just spent that all up at this great feast that everyone
enjoyed, and so now you don't have the resources and people
aren't motivated to go against Aegon now.
So yeah, and it's the same thing.
The Pride enters the equation in a very similar way.
Just like they don't want to lose in a battle, they don't
want to lose in this contest of outdoing each other for prestige
into entertaining the king. Again, the lesser houses aren't
really in this contest, but Old Town, Highgarden, Lanisport, all
these places are like we want to be the one that gets known.
Like Tywin Lannister. Good example of showing off our
spending lots of money shows our power, 'cause it shows we can
afford to spend a lot of money. It proves that we can do that.
It isn't just talk, it reminds people that this isn't just a
rumor, that we have tons of money.
No, we really do have tons of money and we're going to prove
it here. And how much better is?
It for them to be using their their money and their proof of
their power and such by making a a painting and a tapestry and a
a a jeweled necklace and you know, works of art rather than
equipping soldiers to go fight and destroy, you know, I agree.
Yeah, it's. It's it's very smooth.
I think it's it's political aikido at its finest.
You've heard the cliche, turning a weakness into a strength.
This is turning a strength into a weakness.
Or turning a strength into a different kind of strength.
Turning a strength into a thing that isn't a threat.
Turning it into a a strength for the realm rather than a value.
Turning it into a value. Value very well said.
Good said. You want to take pride in
showing off your wealth? Well then, go for it.
Have. A.
By all means do it. Just don't show it off and buy
buying lots of armor and putting armies.
In the field. Do it, yeah.
Do it the other way. And Nina says, of course this,
this can go two ways. The gnostic hereditary monarchy,
as the Targaryens had established for their for their
new state, means the personal is inherently political.
If you're friends with the king, political favors are going to
follow, right? So the better chance you have to
angle for those things, the better your party is.
The better your tournament is, the better, the more chance you
have to like, ask for a favor or do have quote UN quote one a
favor if you please the king. Easy.
Probably going to do you a favor.
And the favor for Meg on the Conqueror is going to be worth
unbelievable amounts. You know, like it could be a tax
write off, a tax concession or a a new tract of land or
something. Just something massively
valuable. And again I want to point out.
Other favors could be one from the other people and and the
entourage. You could someone could give you
some advice on how to plow your wheat fields better or the
armorers could exchange notes on how they get this deal harder or
shaped and etcetera etcetera. There's so many other exchanges
of ideas or favors that could be other than just Aegon and the
Lord. There's all these other people
interacting that can give and get favors from each other, His
counsel, His. Knight Yeah, you're totally
right. Like, I'm like, some people may
not be that powerful, but they might have access to Aegon,
which gives them something of value to people that are more
powerful than them. No wonder he went to the Iron
Islands three times, right? There's it's they're one of the
most discontent of all right. Aegon will mostly allows and
customs allow laws and customs to remain in place.
He doesn't try to change that too much, but the old way kind
of had to go right, The reaving. You can't do that.
Actually, he did allow them to keep reaving outside of the
Seven Kingdoms. You just can't reave in his
realm. Like, no reaving your fellow
members of the Seven Kingdoms. Reeves, Sothorios and Essos.
Yeah, I'm not going to say no to that.
And remember that point earlier I made about, well, they can't
beat Aegon, but do they know they can't beat Aegon?
And the Iron Islands are the number one in that sort of
thinking of no, we can do it. No, really, we can win.
We really can. Palon, Greyjoy, all these guys
tried all these things that just were never going to work.
Or at least not in the long. Term.
But they, you know, they just kept trying.
They did their thing. So it's reminding the captains
that Valerian exists as much as it is reminding the Lords
Valerian. Things are a little different in
the Iron Islands, right? And remember how easily Valerian
dispatched Heron's sons in their long ships after the Battle of
Wailing Widows? Which would be very on the nose
for the iron bars, like long ships, Ironborn, Valerian.
What he did to them. Yeah, OK.
It was easy, wasn't it? Remember that they they
successfully raided Aegon at night and then fled back across
the God's eye to get back to Harrenhal.
But they didn't make it before dawn.
And once the sun came, that was it for them.
They were literal toast. That's something with the iron.
Islands one their, I don't know, Arrogance and disconnectedness
and different set of morals and their their distance all
combined. Not only might they have it in
their mind that Aegon can't stop us, but also Aegon's nowhere
near us. And even if eventually Aegon
does go stop them, in the meantime the people Westeros are
being reeved on right? He's got to remind them
consistently, right? Like if he goes a couple years
in a row without making a show, someones going to get it in
their mind, even aside from the whoever the Lord of the Iron
Islands is at the time, just random captains just decided to
go reaving and he's got to keep that reminder in place.
Hell, yeah. Yeah, that's, that's.
Very well said as well. And to be fair, though, this may
have been a little more due diligence than a legitimate
threat. Because Lord Vicon, Lord Greyjoy
was very smart about Aegon. He was like, no, don't challenge
that guy like he he wasn't one of these foolish types to think
they had some sort of chance. He told his son Lord, who became
Lord Goran in the year 33 AC don't challenge the Dragons.
And that advice held until the Red Kraken, which is much later.
And then after the dance of course they were free.
They pretty much never stopped except for here and there for a
little while. But once the actual Dragons
were, the literal Dragons were gone.
The Ironborn were like, hey, ships, we can get back out there
and not worry about Dragons. So yeah, but this era under
Aegon was the 1st true death of the old way in all of history
besides before it existed. Which it couldn't die, but that
which is dead may never die, so. How many?
How many times did? Aegon go to Highgarden.
It's many. Times.
Many times, yeah. So we don't know.
At least. Three.
Probably more. Maybe five.
I don't know. I'm gonna guess 5:00-ish because
that's a place where. The rule might have been
suspect, right? Well, the Tyrells are new to be
there. The Tyrells?
Yeah, So he wants to. Shore them up like the Tyrells
are definitely loyal to Aegon because they're he.
But the people around the Tyrells?
Need the reminder, right? And so I I wonder if sometimes
some of the reasons he might have gone to some places or
another. I wonder if he's like, OK,
Winterfell's good, I don't need to go there.
I could trust. Torn.
Hey Torn, where should I go? Who needs the reminder?
And same thing with Vicon. He might have asked the Iron
Islands, he might have been requested.
Hey, can you please come and remind my stupid captains to not
do stupid stuff like I'm on board with you?
But it really helps for your dragon or mind every random
captain in my multiple islands that I can't keep a handle on.
Please come back again on board with you.
Good. Good.
Nautical pun. There.
It's like, hey, hang on. I need you to come be my anchor,
you know, be the wind in my sails.
Yeah, the storm is brewing. You know, I need you to.
I agree with that. Yeah.
Some of the some of them may have requested it's like, look
like Lord Tower. I could see that.
Like it would look good to have us, like, sitting at the dais
together, you know, laughing and joking together, toasting.
Just to remind everyone that you stand with me, you know?
And the Egan's like, yeah, OK, that makes sense.
I was going to come anyway, but yeah, I'll, I'll come a little
sooner. I almost wish George had.
Included like a demonstration, like some old ship that they're
retiring. Like can you get Valerian?
Just like blow this out of the water?
Just want to see it, you know? That's not a bad idea, yeah.
Let's just just to see what it looks like just to light a fire,
just so you can, just to warm, you know, just for the spectacle
of it. Don't talk about what how it
could be viewed by more warlike captains.
Yeah, so. And and holding court is a
pretty big power move, too. It's like normally the people of
any given region are used to seeing their Lord and someone
from that house, 'cause it's been so long that these houses
tend to rule in their domains. They're with use of that Lord or
someone from that house dealing out justice.
When Aegon comes and everyone and everyone just defers to him
instead, it's a real reminder to them and to that Lord where the
power really lies. It's like these people have been
mine. They're they're always mine, you
know, before them when my father's or my mother's,
whatever. But when Aegon shows up, they
just all go to him, you know, just instantly.
Like it's a pretty potent reminder of of where the power
really lies. And let's not forget to what we
discussed during the Dragons interim which was Aegon's policy
of send me your children to be raised at court and to be
hostages, which was in full and constant swing.
A lot of these would be part of the royal progresses.
They'd be a lot. They'd be those some of those
Knights, those thousand Knights in their armor would be some of
them would be these young nobles from houses that sent their
second, third, fourth sons and and daughters in some case.
Well, the daughters were would be pretty unlikely to be
Knights, but you know what I mean?
They'd still be there in the in the court in the progress a lot
of times and someone would would have risen high in Aegon.
Someone might have become friends with Visenya or you know
what, trained with Oris Baratheon sons or something like
that. You know, maybe even trained
with Aenes or Megor. Yeah, like a lot of important
folks that could have had an opportunity to to rise socially
and as need to remind us the personal is the political in a
monarchy. So there's a lot of power to
being friends with the right people.
And royal progress has continued until the year 33 by Aegon.
Then they still continued. It just wasn't him gone anymore
because he was too old. He he decided it was better for
his health and for the future, for his son and daughter-in-law.
Princess. The future?
Well, she wasn't a Princess yet. She went straight from nothing
to queen. I don't think you become a
Princess when you get married to a Prince, do you?
Do you? I guess you do.
I think so. Yeah, I guess you do She.
Was a Princess. Princess Alyssa.
I've just never seen her called Princess Alyssa, but I've seen
her called Queen Alyssa and Alyssa, but I guess she would
have been a Princess for a while there.
Princess by marriage. So yeah, so there There are
obviously a part of this too. Prince Amy and Queen Alyssa, our
eventual Queen Alyssa, were part of these royal progresses
eventually and eventually they ran them them themselves.
Now, when he's holding court and discussing things and debating
and and giving outlaws and making judgments, well, he has
to keep in mind the laws of these various lands because,
well, he wasn't trying to change a lot of laws.
He left that for later rulers to sort of sort that business out,
for better or for worse. And here's what the book says
about that I just want to point out.
That we do. This is an example here.
A moment ago, what we were talking about of Aegon was
looking to the future. He was trying to set things up
past his own rule if these progressives start kept going
past him, right? OK, that's true.
Yeah, it. Might not have panned out.
Or is that his fault? I don't know.
But it seems like he was trying to institutionalized this.
Yeah, yeah, he knew. That changing too much too fast
would be a problem. It doesn't mean he didn't
eventually want it changed, Yeah.
Anyway, let's have the quote a Lord should know.
The land he rules, the Conqueror later told his son Aenes, and
through his travels Aegon learned much and more about the
Seven Kingdoms and its peoples. Each of the conquered kingdoms
had its own laws and traditions. King Aegon did little to
interfere with those. He allowed his Lords to continue
to rule much as they always had, with all the same powers and
prerogatives. The laws of inheritance and
succession remained unchanged. The existing feudal structures
were confirmed. Lords both great and small
retained the power of Pitt and gallows on their own land and
the privilege of the first night.
Wherever that custom had formerly prevailed.
Aegon's chief concern was peace. More on 1st.
Night in a minute. That's a big topic.
But the power of Pitt and Gallows to be clear.
That just means they have the power of thrown people in jail
and executing them. They have the legal right to do
that based on the laws of the land and otherwise.
You know, because the the state has to decide who is allowed to
deal out justice and Aegon is the state.
So he's like you guys have this law or this, right?
You still have this right. Now one of the castles he
visited that was nearby, I mean we talked about how so many of
the ones listed were farther away were were rather remote
like Craig Hall is the West Coast and the Arbor is almost as
remote as you can get from King's Landing and the north
equally so, but that he also went to some nearby places like
River Run and he was close to the Tullys.
Remember the Tullys were the first effectors from the
Riverlands and they were rewarded.
He Lord Edmund became hand after Lord Auris but only for two
years because his wife died in child bed and he went back home
to be with his family and all that.
But more relevantly here is the second exception to close by
castles. He also went to Harrenhal, and
Harrenhal is a bit of a different scenario because of
course Harrenhal had belonged to the horror family and he had to
redistribute it to someone else, which was House Coharis, which
we mentioned Lord Quentin Coharis, who had been probably
his master at arms, if not his then his father's most likely.
So a Valyrian, a person of Valyrian descent.
Now Quentin Coharis died in nine AC, the same year that Edmund
Tully resigned his hand. So this is well before the end
of the first Ornish War. He he fell from his horse and
died. Now falling from your horse is
occasionally code for being murdered.
It's like a hunting accident. It definitely could have just
been a fall from people, absolutely die from horses.
But think again of like Rey Royce from House of the Dragon.
That's written off as a hunting as a fall from her horse.
But we know that's not exactly what happened, is it?
Again, that's not in the book, but she did die from a fall from
her horse and that gave them license to consider it the
option that it was a murder, because it's just code for that
sort of thing. It's one of those things that,
yeah, you can die from a fall from a horse, but it could
easily have been murder. So this is all the more
suspicious because the man who took over for Lord Quentin was
not one of his two sons, because they both died prematurely as
well. Not sure if they were murdered
or not, but it just adds to the it's, it adds to the the
suspicion here, doesn't it, Sean?
So it leaves the door open for foul play.
It definitely doesn't confirm it by any means.
And taking his place was Lord Gargon the guest.
This is definitely not a man you would put murder past like, Oh
no, Lord Gargon. He's too nice of a man to murder
his family. This was a horrifying man who
would terrorize new brides and their families around his
domains for the next 28 years, along with all the women in his
all the serving women, and like women married to his own people.
He would just have his way with them, especially on their
weddings. Hence the reference to first
night, which is the right of a Lord to sleep with a bride
before she gets married on her wedding night.
This is probably not a thing that existed in the real world,
though it's rumored to have, and there are some people that will
tell you that it has, that it did exist.
It's just not well documented. I don't know, but it was
certainly featured in the movie Braveheart as a main early plot
point. So it's certainly caught on as a
thing, whether it's historically accurate or not.
And and George probably is aware of that, but he found it as a
useful thing to put in his world.
But I think this is a pretty big oversight like Aegon's.
Like I want to keep the peace, so I'm going to allow this.
Thing that clearly. Causes discontent and and
revenge and blood feuds and and does not keep the peace.
How is it this guy got? Put in charge of this Gorgon
Gargon. He's the Heron Hall.
No, he's the he's the grandson. Of Lord Co Harris.
Oh, he was. In line.
Yeah. Remember, remember.
That's why. That's why it's suspicious that
his both of his father and his brother were killed or died
young and so passed on to to Gargan at a relatively young
age. And yeah, he's a very greedy,
very suspicious that his. Name was Gargon.
A very evil name, Gargon if his name was Gamgon.
You wouldn't be worried as much. Yeah, you'd sound sweet.
Or GAM Gok. Or or Gok.
His name wasn't Mukduck his name.
Wasn't mukduck. Yes, that's right.
And the I mean. This brings back to the point I
made. About the Ironborn, the old way
was basically banned, right? No more carrying off women, but
this is still OK. This is basically, well, you're
not carrying them off, so it's OK Like what?
That's a pretty small point to it's not really that big of a
differentiator, right? I mean.
None other than. Allison herself, good queen.
Allison points out later how blatant this is from a peace
perspective, let alone honor and ethics and parental rights and
such. I mean, all sorts of other
problems besides the ethics of it, which alone is gigantic.
She basically says, what kind of man let's that happen to his
wife? Come on, you Lords and you brave
Knights and Lords of the Seven Kingdoms, what would you do if
that happened to your wife? Be honest, they'd be like, yeah,
I'd, I'd have to go kill the guy.
Like, exactly our culture. Dictates that response.
Yet how so? How is this supposed to help
peace? It's a pretty blatant some
crimes are forgivable by the mere passage of time, like
against a family. Like if my great grandfather
stole your horse, are you going to come at me 200 like 50 years
later for that? You might, but probably not.
And if you did, it's probably because there were further
crimes committed in the name of that it it became some sort of
cycle of violence. But if that's the only thing
that happened, the horse was stolen 50 years ago and nothing
else has happened since then, I I think it's forgotten.
But this, the first night business, someone coming on your
wedding night and raping your wife, the family's going to
remember that for a long effing time.
They won't and they will remember it violently and will
want to do violence to the people who did that.
It's just pretty blatant, right, You know?
If you're trying to imagine. From Aegon's point of view, he's
like, well, if I take this right away, these aren't common folk.
I'm taking a right away from, which with the old way was
taking away from both Lords and commoners to be, you know, it
was taking away from the entire culture, like it was a good
thing to take away. But still he was worried that
they would go to war over it. And he's like, well, if I take
this away from all these Lords, will they go to war with me over
it? He he thought it was the lesser
of two evils, I think, which is maybe hard to swallow, but I
think that's maybe his angle. It's still perplexing to me.
Because who is they like it. It say this Lord Gargon, you
know Aegon takes us right away. And Lord Gargon's like what?
You can't do that Call the banners every banner must be
like no, I'm not fighting Valerian, yeah.
What did we just go through when?
I'm fighting Valerian. You raped my wife.
Yeah. I'm not fighting for you.
Yeah, like who is going to go fight for this guy?
Yeah, yeah. So again.
It is a little perplexing, like why they thought they had to
keep that. I guess Aegon was just convinced
of it somehow or it's pretty bad though.
Yeah, he was letting them keep something that was pretty awful
but apparently. But here's another angle to it.
It was more, more. It wasn't such a horrible thing
on Dragonstone. It was more of a like a semi
revered tradition. So maybe that was in it.
Maybe Aegon thought other people thought that way too.
He was just blind or naive about it.
I don't know. It's hard to it's definitely
hard to square, but maybe not impossible to square.
But you don't obviously don't have to agree with it.
I certainly don't. I know you don't.
Who would really? Very few people would.
I think my best attempt is. It it's something that existed
in theory that no one really did except.
This guy? Really.
Did, and maybe many people were barely aware it was brought to
Aegon's attention, but it with all the stuff in his plate, he
didn't have time for it. I mean, these things don't
exactly justify it, but they make me understand how it could
happen. I I have a hard time
understanding how the scenario existed.
That's my best attempt to understand how the scenario it
doesn't make it OK, but I don't even understand how the scenario
existed. So now Aegon may not have.
Been worried about any of this. Like you said, he's not worried
about him changing the laws to a point that they're going to come
at him, and especially not to feed him.
I don't think he's worried about that.
It's also not really in his personality to be worried about
that he's not really someone who he doesn't act on fear, he he
inspires fear, he doesn't really act on it on his own.
But he had to keep his descendants in mind too.
If we're looking at another angle here, he's like, well they
might not come after me for first night Banning, but what if
I die tomorrow and my 8 year old son has to deal with this
problem that that he's not going to be able to handle it even
even when 80s is older? It turns out he's not so capable
of dealing with these problems, but he certainly wouldn't have
been when when he was still recovering from the death of his
mother and wasn't even an adult yet.
So, Aegon. Had to keep that in mind.
He's. Like, he's not.
It's not just about what I can handle, it's what my descendants
can handle, which maybe is an argument for him being the one
to to pull the bandage off so that he deals with it and not
them, right? So I I think maybe this is,
maybe he did this one backwards. Maybe he shouldn't have let it
live. Maybe he should have taken it
head on while he, a strong personality, could deal with the
fallout from it and not his descendants, because his
descendants, if he's being honest with himself, Well, are
my descendants really going to be as strong and capable as me?
Well, they're going to be my children.
Of course they are. But really, really, Aegon, Are
they really? Will they have a dragon as big
as Valerian? Will they?
Yeah. I don't know about that, man.
You're pretty special. So I don't know, I wonder how
the? Ego of a really powerful man
works in that spot. Is this ego?
Tell him that no no one will ever be as great as me, or
because they're his children, his descendants.
Does his ego cover that base too and says no, they're my
children, they will be as great as me.
Like I don't know how that kind of.
I don't know how to work pride into ego and the the the mind of
someone with such supreme authority and someone who moves
through life with such extreme privilege like that.
I don't. Yeah, it's hard to put yourself
in that mind. Which is why probably part of
why George doesn't give us a lot of insight into his personality,
because it would. It is a hard thing to nail down.
I want to back up to. One quick thing from that quote,
a Lord should know the Lancey rules.
The conquer told us on Amy's da da da da da.
Another value of him traveling around with his court is not
only. That's what on the surface it
seems to be saying you gotta learn about the people that
you're ruling, just you should know their traditions or customs
of people in different positions of power.
You need to be familiar with it all.
But also he can size up their capabilities, whether it's for
fear of having to quash rebellion or for how to employ
them. If if we need to go to war with
someone like, these guys have good ships, these guys have good
fishing technology, these guys have what, you know, good
Spearman or whatever it is, You know, he could just see when
when all the places he go want to show off to him.
Oh, now he knows what their different capabilities and
values are and how to employ them.
So yeah, well, said another. Mentioned by Gil Dane here.
That's important coming from the quote here is the laws of of
inheritance and succession remained unchanged.
That's important to note because it's going to matter later, soon
and later about within the Targaryen family themselves.
Of course. A lot of the civil conflicts
that come are about inheritance disputes and primacy disputes.
Who comes first and lines of succession, all that business,
You know what I mean? And if we Fast forward to the
end of the Targaryen reign, Aries, the second you look at
what was laid down here and what was falling apart, then it's not
just the loss of Dragons. It's not just the fact that
Aries was an insane person and Aegon wasn't.
It's the fact that Aegon's policy was pretty clear.
The first law of Westeros is peace.
You go up against that and you go up against the Dragons.
But Aries violated his end of the bargain.
He went after them. He went after his Lords.
He ordered executions of people who didn't do anything wrong.
So he violated the feudal contract in in expense like the
target. That's the heart of the feudal
contract. I protect you, you give me money
and soldiers. I enforce fair laws, you know,
back and forth. It's a it's a little give and
take. Obviously one has authority over
the other, but there is a deal that has to be upheld even by
the greater power. And if that power is violated,
then the lesser power is team up and go against that greater
power. Which is exactly what Robert's
Rebellion was. The the Targaryens betrayed
their feudal oath and enough of their vassals teamed up to
overthrow them. There you go.
Aegon didn't want that to happen.
And to be fair, it didn't for 282 ish years, which is a pretty
darn long time. It's a pretty good length for a
dynasty to go. All right, we'll come back in a
minute with a few more points about Aegon.
We've got a lot more to say, but I've been really having a great
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Yeah, yeah. And I'm.
Definitely drinking less soda, as I pointed that out a couple
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I have a question for for you all, just kind of an idle
question about Aegon. What?
What do you think he was maybe the most proud of?
Obviously, no way we could know what was he most proud of having
children. It's he cried when his first
granddaughter was born. Which is kind of a kind of a.
Hard thing to picture what's? That the size of his dragon the
size. Of his dragon.
Very proud of that. He.
Didn't have anything to do. With that himself.
But he could be proud of it. Maybe King's Landing.
Maybe just the iron, maybe forging the realm together.
Maybe he didn't have a thing he was most proud of.
He's a euphemism. I would say.
It may be King's. Landing I would it is a good
question, but I feel like King's Landing might be the thing.
I would. I guess I might be more proud of
it if I had supposed early on. I I think even before I read
Fire and Blood, that he might have had some intent for it.
That he might have done some scouting, like his visits to
other cities before he even declared that he was taking over
the Seven Kingdoms. That he might have been like
talking to masters and then looking at how cities are
designed and kind of contemplating the idea of
creating a new city and what it might take.
But then there's this line in here that says no one planned
King's Landing. Yeah.
If he did do that. He's not getting credit for it,
so I don't know how proud he would be if he didn't actively
intend to build that city up, but it's something I would be
proud of. It's it's something that
thousands, millions of people would be benefiting from.
You know, it's and and and a more direct way, like indirectly
everyone at 70 Kingdoms is benefiting from the peace that
he's brought. But there's still some people
who are just running a farm. They just keep running a farm.
They don't know or care who the king of the land is.
They're glad that they're like. They look back and go, you know
what I've had 20 years of? Of uninterrupted.
That's pretty good. You know, they might, it might
be one of those things that the dawns on them that you know
what, I haven't had my no one's come to my farm to take my food
in a long time. That's that's pretty good.
Maybe I'll give Aegon some credit for that.
Proud of the. Throne of his idea to make the
Iron Drone just like, yeah, it's just metal.
That's a very cool idea. I mean, if I'm George RR Martin,
I'm proud of that idea. So yeah, egg on.
The conquer probably was, too. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
I know, I know a few. People that were like, when they
heard that was like, that's how the throne was made.
They're like, OK, I got to read this series like, that's pretty
sweet. Yeah, just that kind of
cleverness. Yeah, Anthony de Palma sends a
super chat, says I do wonder if maybe the Blackwood Bracken feud
started because a filthy Bracken tried first night on a
Blackwood. You never know that could be.
It is supposed to be a very ancient tradition and the
Bracken Blackwood feud is also very ancient.
Yeah, you never know. I wouldn't doubt it.
Wouldn't wouldn't throw that guess out, that's for sure.
Dornish Dame, frequent commenter.
We appreciate that Dornish Dame says building good relationships
with non Lords Paramount could be a warning to those Lords
Paramount that they had had to stay loyal or be replaced.
Kind of like the Stannis Solis marriage as a warning to the
tyrels. That's a great point, because
East, West, and the very briefly existing Warden of the Sands,
those are additional prestige ranks that people can aspire to
or, yes, could have taken away from.
And if you want to hold on to that, better do right by the
king. Better prove that you're worthy
of that. Yeah, and Tyrell's a good
example. Tyrell's with Warden to the
South, but they better act right if they want to keep that.
And Joe Magician says, most proud of scribbling a dream into
a dagger with ambiguous language.
Yeah. Like, I'm going to.
Here's what I'll do. I'm going to.
I'm going to scribble this on my.
Dagger Yeah, that's what I'll do.
Yeah, he had. A flair for the dramatic.
I'm going to make an ancient. I'm going.
To make an artifact couple artifacts, I'd say the throne is
an artifact. Yeah, that's true.
Like. If you're a king with with the.
Supernatural legacy. And you don't make artifacts.
Like, what is it? What are you even doing?
You know, come on, you got a dragon.
You got. You should be making artifacts,
man. You got all those jewels.
You got Valyrian steel, you got. Obsidian, you got.
Yeah. It's like, what was it?
The, the bit about if you're a billionaire, what are you doing
Not buying all the baseball teams and making them wear
dresses, you know, why are you not doing that?
Like, what is your problem? I agree, though I really.
Agree Like what? If you're that rich and you
don't just choose chaos on a daily basis, you're you're
doing. Life.
Wrong. So let's.
Talk about the first law the most.
Basic Tenant was simple enough quote The first law of the land
shall be the King's peace, King Aegon decreed.
And any Lord who goes to war without my leave shall be
considered a rebel and an enemy of the Iron Throne.
King Aegon also decrees regularized customs, duties and
taxes throughout the realm, whereas previously every port
and every petty Lord have been free to exact however much they
could from tenants, small folk, merchants.
So it's another rare direct quote from Aegon.
But this was most likely a statement he took proper care to
word before uttering. Because it's it's the first law
of the land. You don't want to be imprecise
with that, right? It's a law, you These things
tend to be worded carefully, even in settings that aren't our
own, Especially in our own. I mean, Dang.
I mean, that's why there's so many lawyers, right?
Standardizing taxes is a pretty important move.
It's a it's a bit of a departure from or an exception to his
policy of leaving local traditions in place.
Although it's arguable that you know fleecing people is a
tradition so, so that's a very important thing.
This is a very pro commoner and and pro like merchant type move
that that takes powers away from from the Lords.
Even more so than the powers of Private War which we'll discuss
in a minute. In general.
Pro stability, yeah. Like even the the the Lords are
probably better off when their people can plan around how much
they're going to be taxed. That makes sense.
Like, and that's probably part of why King's Landing was able
to grow so fast, because everyone kind of knew what the
expectations were. Everyone can make appropriate
investments and not be worried that if I invest X in this,
don't just kind of come take it all from me.
So I'm not going to bother. But everyone knew it was just
going to be 8% or whatever it was and so they could invest and
plan accordingly. Yeah, that's a great point.
I think to add to that, I think King's Landing was.
The place that change was happening, King's Landing was
the spearhead of change, and the other cities around the realm
would have had to kind of pick up after it, even though it
wasn't as large as them yet or became as large as some of them
during this phase. Because those as soon as Aegon
makes a decree, it's going to start locally first.
Of course it takes a while for it to travel around the realm.
This is not the Internet era obviously.
And let's talk about private war.
This is a big deal, It's a very big deal.
This the sort of right to private war was a problem in the
real world as well. It's a huge problem amongst
various kingdoms and whether or not the Lords within that
Kingdom have this right or not. The 15th century Diet of Worms
for the Holy Roman Empire banned feuds amongst its various
Princess. It's a it's at the beginning of
the Accursed King series that's a beloved favorite of George R
Martin, and also a big favorite of mine.
And Nina, who wrote this particular note, when the Iron
King Philip the Handsome took over, he really reformed French
nobility, and that was the one of the things he took away was
the right of private war. And it's such a big deal.
These private wars were just a horrible thing.
They just at any moment 2 great houses could go to war with each
other and would spill over into neighboring counties and the the
pop local population would be just shredded or brought into it
or both. Finally a king was powerful
enough to stop that. Because of course remember what
we just said about the feudal system.
If the if the lesser Lords could all gang up on the king, then
the king is limited in what he can do.
And this is one of those things where like no, you can't take
away our right to private war. Most of the kings prior to
Philip, Had they tried to take that right away, they would have
gotten. Ganged up.
On and overthrown. But Philip was in a position
both powerful enough and had enough control and enough money
to say, come at me, you guys want to stop me changing the
law, We'll fight over it. And they were afraid of him
because, well, his nickname was the Iron King.
So yeah, he didn't just, he didn't just give himself that
nickname. This guy was a serious boss, but
just like Aegon, could that change hold after his death, or
could people get away with it in certain cases, like exceptions?
Well, maybe I could have my own little private war and the king
will allow it because I'm so powerful and he won't be able to
stop things like that in Aegon's case here too.
It's understandable there might be.
Times when two neighbors, you know, someone burns someone
house down or rape someone's daughter or whatever it is that
you would see why they might want to go to war.
But sometimes the reason might not be justified, or the the
common people who get involved shouldn't be subject to the
vengeance of these two Lords or whatever, but the but the idea
that the Lords feel like they need to do something?
Well, if you go to Aegon, well, he'll do something.
He's got a freaking dragon. So, like, and probably Aegon
probably only has to. Do something a couple.
Times before there's less. People aren't as willing to
infringe on their neighbors rights because their word Aegon
will get involved and he'll get in trouble for it, right?
So sometimes when someone's just a bully or has more soldiers or
whatever, they could push around their neighbors.
But now if Aegon's going to intervene, they're not even
going to do it in the 1st place. So it's another thing that if he
institutes this well enough in the beginning, it might not need
as much enforcement in the long run.
Well said, yes or well point, Sean, very good I think.
Also, this is very important in A Game of Thrones.
Notice how Tywin does this. He doesn't openly send Gregor
Clegane to raid the Riverlands by declaration.
Everyone knows he sent Greg or just like pretty much everyone
knows he sent Greg or to kill Elia, even though he claims I
didn't do, I didn't do that, you know.
So when Ned calls Ty went out for raiding the Riverlands.
It was like, but Ty sells like but he didn't do it.
It was Greg or and Ned's like come on man, we know who sent
him, he says. Ned says Tywin has to answer for
his crimes and breaking the King's peace.
This is this is private war. He's engaging in private war,
which is expressly illegal and Tywin knows it's illegal which
is why he doesn't. He sends someone else to do it
and never and and has Greg or not show his banner and all
these other sort of sneaky but not that sneaky things like we
know what's happening but he's Tywin's trying to give himself
an out or give himself cover and also he's Tywin who Robert
wouldn't want to go up against. So he's like, look, I covered my
ass. This should be enough for you to
let me get away with this. You know politically speaking do
you really want to go to war with Castley?
Rock Ned's like, yeah, 'cause that's what the law says.
That's Ned for you, right. He, he doesn't have that
flexibility within the law like a lot of people would.
He's like Ned's like, if this causes civil war, so be it.
That's the law. Pisal, yes, is a.
Lannister, toady. But he's also kind of like,
maybe we shouldn't go to war, you know?
Maybe just give? Him let me back down a little
bit. Ned and Ned's like, Nope, Nope.
He broke the King's peace. That's the first law of the
land. He doesn't say.
Ever since I've gone to conquer, it's been the law of the first
law of the land. But it but it has been like Ned
didn't say that, but it is the case.
It's hard to know how things will play out, 'cause I don't I
want to believe. Ned wouldn't be completely rigid
cause Tywin has to want to go to war against the King now, right?
So is Tywin really going to do that?
So they might have found a compromise if Tywin said OK, you
know Gregor, come back, you guys can penalize Gregor in some way,
I'll pay reparations. They like it there.
I think there is some middle ground between the Laners to go
into war with the Crown Winterfell.
I don't know how it would have played out, but I I think that
Ned would have been willing to negotiate.
It wasn't like war or nothing for Ned.
Just like I don't think it was war or nothing for Tywin either.
I think you're right. I think that's very well said,
because I think what Ned was doing.
Yes, it looks a little obstinate, But he's also sort of
calling Tywin's bluff, and he's doing exactly what you just
said. Tywin's saying you don't want to
fight me, do you? And Ned's saying, no, you don't
want to fight me, do you? He's like, exactly.
Yeah, Like, actually neither of us want.
To fight each other. Yeah, that's.
And that's not going to let him get away with it really doesn't
necessarily want war. He doesn't.
Want to be bullied around? He's like, well, we can't let
Tywin push us around. But we, he can't let this
president be established. Yeah, exactly So.
Yeah, so is this a? Standard thing meaning Aegon's
approach to be chiefly concerned with peace like that.
To be so consumed with enforcing the peace that maybe it causes
or sets the stage for war later, maybe in the next rain or a
little farther down the road. Like for example, look at look
at the Roman Empire. It's kind of a thing that said
about the Roman Empire that the Romans would kill everyone and
call it peace because, well, there's no.
War. But there's nobody at all like
you killed all the people in this region and that's how you
dealt with the the uprising here is, well, there's nobody here at
all. Now obviously I'm not saying
that's what Aegon would do. Well, he might he he did do that
in Dorm. So he he is capable of doing
that. He's fully capable of doing
that. He doesn't.
It's not his first choice. But what I'm asking a a bigger
question that I don't fully expect an answer to.
This is something for you all to ponder on your own, perhaps,
Yeah. How often historically in the
real world and maybe in Westeros is is this carried forward?
Do other monarchs prioritize this as heavily as Aegon did?
And do they do so because Aegon did or because they also see the
same logic in it that he does? Is it just kind of a standard?
Of course peace has to be #1, you know?
But it's there's a difference between peace is #1 and how you
get there, right? There's the whole soft piece
versus hard piece that I discussed before.
There's the the piece of killing everybody that I just described
from the Romans. And there's an actual quality
piece where there's you're not killing lots of people and
everyone's actually getting along and society's doing pretty
well. That's the the real goal, right,
of that's like, that's a good piece.
And how does it relate to the prophecy, if at all does?
Is Aegon chiefly concerned with like, Well, OK, I just need
stability. That's what the prophecy tells
me. Doesn't stability at any cost?
For when this comes? Whenever this is evil?
Whenever this winter descends upon the realm?
Whenever that's going to be, whether it's in a few years or
in 100 years or 200 years? As it turned out, it's about 300
years. But what exactly are the
dictates of the prophecy within his mind?
It's it. It doesn't have to be
straightforward. It's a prophecy.
It can be like the Suns must be aligned.
Well, does he mean, is it Suns like the Suns in the sky or the
Suns like my children? You know, prophecy's weird like
that, right? And it's a dream.
He's not going to wake up with exact, precise details.
And it's not like he has a schematic or a blueprint to go
from or even writings. And if they are writings in
their, his own writings, probably that he scribbled down,
you know, after waking up or something.
So it's tricky. Not a question we can answer,
but worth asking. Worth throwing out there.
And as we discuss things like the supernatural, well, it's a
good segue, a good pivot to matters of the faith, Matters of
the the faith of the Seven. There's the laws of the various
kingdoms, but the laws of the customs of the Faith of the
Seven are different, and they span geographical and political
borders and have to be dealt with separately.
So let's have a quote on that. He also proclaimed that the holy
men and women. Of the Faith and all their lands
and possessions were to be exempt from taxation and
affirmed the right of the Faith's own courts to try and
sentence any Septon, sworn brother, or holy sister accused
of malfeasance. Though not himself a godly man,
the first Targaryen king always took care to court the support
of the Faith and the High Septon of Old Town.
Oh boy. This seems maybe like not a big
deal, but it's a very big. Deal both in world and IRL,
giving holy people a different court system was a key issue in
the time of Henry the First, who was the father of the first
Plantagenet king, the dynasty that is the closest parallel to
the Targaryens. They lasted for 300 years.
They ruled England, which is, you know, kind of like Westeros.
And of course House of Plantagenet eventually features
the cadet branches York AKA Stark and Lancaster AKA
Lannister, while also including the Angevin dynasty.
Henry the First was also the fourth son of the biggest egg on
the conquer parallel, William the Conqueror.
So all sorts of parallels here. Now Henry the First, in his
time, same thing happened. They had different laws for the
church and for regular folk. And this became a problem
because church people started to learn that they could really
abuse this like a Bishop could do all sorts of awful crimes.
And then they wouldn't have to face murder charges or rape
charges or extortion. They would just get, like kicked
out of the faith. That would be the penalty.
And Henry's like that's not enough penalty.
And the church, who are devout believers in God and think that
it's all about that, are like, what could be worse than being
kicked out of the church? You know what's worse than that?
You know? And it was like, well, actually
a lot of things, really. If you aren't as devout as you,
you know, let me show you. Yeah.
And another. Problem was, laws weren't
written. Down the king decided the
interpretation. He's like, well 'cause that
would 'cause then you can't get around them.
Like you could use legalese, you could you could use the detail
of wording and be like technically, semantically this
says this, it allows an exception.
There's a carve out here because of the way it's worded.
So if you have a king that doesn't write things down, the
king can't go. Nah, that's not an exception.
I make the call. The law as intended shouldn't
allow things like what you're describing.
Yes, that the way it's worded, you should be allowed to do
that. But I'm the king and I say no,
no, the world we live in, these exceptions work like you go to
court, you go to like, the way it's worded often is the final
arbiter of how it works. Henry realized that he's like,
no, I don't want to write things down because it's exactly what
it's going to lead to legalese arguing over semantics and the
spirit of the law being ignored for the letter of law.
He thinks the spirit of the law should matter more.
So it was a double, double edged sword here it's a it's the the
church started to get corrupt in that they wouldn't give quote UN
quote real punishments to people that did severe awful crimes,
and because the way the laws could be interpreted allowed too
much room to wiggle free from them.
So there's too many ways to get out from under the law, and it
sounds like unfortunately, Aegon set things up a little
similarly, minus the part about him having, he was more powerful
than the Church of England was. Like Aegon's relative power over
the High Septon is greater than Henry's power over the Pope, but
it's still very power. They're still very powerful, and
Aegon had to tread carefully, as it shows.
Here he was it says he was careful with all of them.
Six different High Septons reigned during his time, like
the one that crowned Aegon in his coronation passed in 11 AC,
and there were six more after that, and Aegon just kept being
nice to them. He didn't resolve any of the
problems. He didn't deal with the incest
or the polygamy, things that the church doesn't accept.
He just kind of like, well, we're friends, right?
We're not. You're not going to bring that
up. Well, of course they did
eventually after his death. So yeah.
So this is maybe the best example of Aegon just kicking
the can down the road and not dealing with a problem that was
definitely going to be foisted on his descendants, especially
'cause he's the one that's going to arrange for the marriages of
his sons and all that. Like, he's in charge of all
that. And and some of the choices made
therein are part of the problem that he could have baby headed
off ahead of time. Like, yeah, polygamy.
Like, they, the polygamy issue kind of became moot because
Rainey's died, so he wasn't really married to people
anymore. They never accepted the double
marriage. They never publicly said this
marriage is OK by us. And it could have become up.
It didn't, but it could have come up like, well, OK, well, if
the double marriage isn't OK, then which marriage was valid?
How do you choose? And if you're choosing one
marriage over the other, does that put one Prince over the
other in a way that it wasn't before?
Like, if you choose Visenya, does that mean Megor comes over?
Anis? Yikes.
That's a whole ball of wax that no one wants to get involved in,
so you can see why they didn't go there.
But then you have the incest marriages too, so it's also an
incest marriage if they're not OK with either marriage.
So how do you pick one over the other?
How do you allow it when incest marriages aren't permitted?
And how do you deal with the with the succession with all
that mixed in? Like Egon married them both at
the same time. It was one ceremony, so he can't
even use like, timing as well. Who did he kiss first?
You know, like, which one did he hand his the ring to 1st?
Like, oh, Speaking of getting technical with the legalese.
Right. Well, maybe.
They did all that simultaneously.
Yeah, it was a three-way can. And like, put it on your fingers
at the same time. Really kissed right together at
the same moment. That's clever.
Yeah, that's right. So, so he didn't.
Rock the boat, but the waves were coming.
Right. This is this was an issue that
big waves I think. So what do you think Sean and
and maybe Shea if you carried away and do you think this is
the most obvious like problem that he just left for someone
else or or is maybe they're more to it.
Am I missing something? Well, for one, like I said
earlier, is it to? Deal with this problem might
have created other problems and just had to pick his battles and
it maybe he's kicking us down the road but if you dealt with
this problem he might have been kicking some other problem down
the road like a general rebellion.
You know like getting in trouble with the church is harder to
deal with because it's it's kind of like Dorn.
It's not like 1 castle or one Lord you can go burn down and
everyone's like OK we'll obey you.
Now it's people scattered all across everywhere.
So I can see him just not quite being sure how to do it or
worrying about creating a bigger problem And it, you know, I I
guess that's sort of kicking the can down the road.
But I think it's better than like planting a time bomb down
or starting a fire right now or I don't know what the
missionology is, but you see what I'm saying.
Yeah. And I'm brought back to what I
said earlier, which is it's a gamble.
To say that it'll be easier for the next generation to deal
with, but I think it's a reasonable gamble to make that
you're you're kicking it down the road for someone that's
going to be a 5 difficulty to deal with potentially and for
you it's like a nine. They might be, yeah.
They might have more. It might still be a 7 still.
But I don't think it's going to be hard or nice.
I don't like. I think that's a pretty
reasonable guess that it won't necessarily be much harder.
They won't be more entrenched, They won't be.
Yeah, as it turned out, they did become more entrenched, but
that's. Because of the.
Actions of people like Megor, and not necessarily because of
things it would have been hard for for Aegon to.
Predict and things that could have gone another way, like his
own family is responsible. This has a big role.
In making it worse. And he didn't necessarily see
that coming. Maybe he should have because he
should. He would have again he should
have seen these rubs like this incest polygamy issue is going
to matter. It's going to come to a head.
It's it's not addressed. So yeah, so yeah, but I see what
y'all are saying. It's fair to think that maybe he
guessed it was the lesser of two weeks.
A little better way to handle it is to let a little time pass,
let people maybe get more used to this and then maybe address
it later and especially again when you consider it's not as
simple as this. Or that it's not like instead of
dealing with the church, I'm gonna go party, right?
If I'm dealing with the church, I need to go visit Winterfell.
Right he had. He was doing other responsible,
difficult things through the course of his whole reign, and
one of those would have been sacrificed in order to deal with
the church. So even if he found a way to
deal with the church, that didn't create a bigger problem
down the road. He might have been neglecting
some other thing that would have become a bigger problem down the
road. Or immediately.
Yeah, and Nina points out a really something really useful
and help. And insightful that I didn't
think of is, which is that the faith was actually given a boon
here. Aegon's conquest in a lot of
ways benefited the faith like it solidified the official religion
of the Seven Kingdoms, which was more of an unofficial by weight
of its popularity. Now it was like official the
state religion in a sense, like Aegon accepted the other
religions, but it wasn't like the state religion, it wasn't
the one he was crowned under. Like he didn't go, he was.
He accepted the crowning at the that Old Town, you know at the
high at the Sept, the great Sept or whatever.
But he didn't. He didn't re crown himself in
Winterfell and in Pike under the other gods right?
He just that was kind of just assumed to be part of the whole
package I guess. So the faith had more room to
operate. Maybe under Egon they might have
had a easier time, like collecting their taxes and
establishing chapter houses of the sons of the warrior and all
that. So there were a lot of
institutional benefits to the faith being sort of
grandfathered in under Aegon's conquest.
Like their profile was raised in a lot of ways, especially given
Aegon was going to allow them to do their own laws separately.
That did eventually change and that caused more problems, but
it's certainly in the short term it certainly was like, well
yeah, why should we go up against this guy.
He's actually, yes, we hate the polygamy, we hate the incest,
but we're getting lots of money and power.
So which is makes sense because in the long run it's the common
folk that really get uppity about it, like the nobility get
more and more corrupt with vis A vis the seven and the tenets of
the faith, whereas it's the common folk who are the hardcore
like. No, we obey these rules.
We obey these rules that you laid out, and now we see you not
obeying them, and we're just going to obey them even even
harder, which is going to put us at at more and more at.
Odds which is going to? Be a big problem under Amy's and
Megor's reigns? I also want to point out that
that I don't know Decree Aegon made.
About the court being able to manage itself, basically, you
could argue that's part of him not kicking it down the road.
He is sort of addressing his problem by doing that.
They were at least temporarily, OK, and maybe that's sort of
kicking down the road. But it is an attempt to address
this issue. He didn't just totally ignore
it, right. That was sort of a maybe a
compromise that maybe it was even discussed with leaders of
the church to come to that because he knew that they were
upset about the polygamy thing. He was like, how about this, you
know, And like Shea was saying like once you do that, maybe
further down the road it gets easier to deal with it.
Maybe both the people land and church itself gets more used to
it. Like it's such this blasphemous
idea to marry your sister or marry to women or whatever.
But maybe when you see the people that did this brought
peace to the land and gave autonomy to the church, and
they're doing all these positive things like, oh, maybe it's not
as bad as we always thought, you know, And the more time it has
to become normalized, the less of an issue it is down the road
to deal with one way or the other.
So yeah, well said. Yeah, it's interesting to look.
At Usually we don't see such big divides amongst belief like
that, but it's also that happens in the real world.
There's a quote here that gets us even further on this
subtopic, so let's have that here.
Yet the question of incestuous marriage remained simmering.
Below the courtesies like poison.
Whilst the High Septon of King Aeons reign never spoke out
against the King's marriage to his sisters, neither did they
declare it to be lawful. The humbler members of the faith
village Septons, holy sisters begging brothers poor fellows,
still believed it's simple for brother to lie with sister or
for a man to take two wives. Hagan the Conqueror had father
no daughters however, so these matters did not come to a head
at once. The sons of the dragon had no
sisters to marry, so each of them was forced to seek
elsewhere for a bride, so circumstances kicked that
particular can down. The road there, it just didn't
come up. There were no incestuous
marriages proposed in the short term later.
That did happen and it was a problem.
And by that I mean, Vicenia proposed marrying Megor to
Reyna, and that was rejected by pretty much everyone.
So yeah, a lot of perhaps. Most of the nobility.
Adhere to the faith because it gives them power over the
commoners and otherwise believe less in the doctrines than they
say they do. They uphold that because it
gives them power over the masses.
We kind of like the real world. And OK, of course there's
exceptions. There are Lords who are very
devout, very much believers, have strong faith also in the
real world, but it's definitely not always as it seems.
Take that with a grain of salt and maybe there's Nina makes a
point that maybe there's a little too much extremism in
Westeros, that maybe there aren't enough moderate believers
as the people who seem to be very into it and people who
aren't in it at all in terms of their worship.
Maybe that's true. I I haven't thought about that.
It's an interesting point to make.
She uses cattle as an example, as someone that is kind of in
between a middle ground person who has is devout enough to pray
but maybe not every day. She does certainly prays when
she's worried about something. And the they these commoners
that are held, the power held over them is because the
commoners often do sincerely believe in these doctrines
because they were taught to the nobility.
It's like a guide to holding power that you might choose to
believe in also, but it's taught to more common folk.
Like yeah, this is how the this is how the universe works.
These gods are real, and if you don't do what they say, you'll
go to the seven Hells or whatever, or you'll just be
ostracized or something like that.
So yeah, when things come to a head, when the nobility's like,
desire to gain power is at odds with their ability to show that
they care about the faith. So when when these things come
to a head in a way that they can't hide and they have to
openly choose, actually, I don't really care about incest and
polygamy. And people can see that they're
like, wait. You're supposed.
To care about incest and polygamy, like you've been
teaching me my whole life that that matters.
And now you don't care about it because you're getting paid.
Yeah, so that you can see why that would cause unrest when
it's multiplied by hundreds of thousands of commoners.
But it's still the full fear doctrine, still rules.
I mean, who wants to be recognized as a ringleader of
malcontents when Visenya exists, right?
You don't want to be. You don't want to be like
Singled out as the ringleader of A of malcontents like she will
not treat that kindly. But zealots, people who only
fear punishment in the afterlife, even Vicenya, doesn't
really intimidate them. You know zealots and people
that. I mean, we're going to see
people literally take on Dragons, like face to face
humans, and it's, it sounds crazy, but I mean, we live in a
world where people fly planes into buildings and ships on
purpose. So it's not that hard to believe
that fictional people could could die for A cause that's,
you know, intangible. So they're fair game, you know?
Not so much during Aegon's reign, though, because, again,
this issue was kicked down the road like a can because there
were no Targaryen princesses. The incest and polygamy stuff
was was delayed, but he had to see it coming.
Again, Aegon had to see this coming.
He's like, what? My descendants will never have
incestuous marriages again. He didn't make some law against
it. He didn't tell them not to do
that. So it it was clearly going to
come up again. Maybe he counseled Anis on how
to handle it and it just wasn't recorded.
It was behind closed doors. Maybe Anis just bungled it.
He was like my dad told me what to do, but I screwed it up.
He did a lot. Let's not be Let's be clear that
Agon did a lot to facilitate the faithful.
He built Seps, all those trips to Old Town, granting
protections. He had a nice marry his cousin
and Megor marry a Hightower, which that was sort of a bone to
the faith there. Having one of his sons marry
into the house most closely aligned with the faith, didn't
have any, didn't allow any polygamous and incestuous
marriages to happen. They did happen later, but not
under his watch, Anita reminds us, Like, what's he going to do?
Just start changing the faith doctrines like yeah he's the
king. He's the Conqueror.
But that's still I mean goes to show there's limits to even his
power Like I think a lot of you would would would hear that and
go yeah that would be hard to do even though you might be
thinking but he's got supreme power.
We all know how hard it is to change church anything in the
real world. It's the type of thing like say
he did through. Force or negotiation, Whatever.
Get the leaders, the the High Septon or whatever to change the
actual wording of their religion to say it's okay.
Does that mean that every person in the land I was like, oh, I
guess it's okay now. Like the Catholic Church at this
point has conceded that they misjudged Galileo or whatever
that evolution is, is not opposed to their beliefs in God,
that the Son is the Sinner of the souls, all this other stuff.
But there's still people who don't believe that.
There's still people who don't. Even when the Pope says
something, every Catholic doesn't immediately believe
those things. So I agree, and we'll see that
it is. It's going to come to Jairus.
And Alice and to make these changes and they're going to do
it in a clever and smart way. Clever and smart in a way that's
effective, but they are gonna basically have to change some
rules, maybe more like adding rules rather than changing them,
which is better, probably, probably a little easier way to
manage it. But I mean, the reason that
there's so many versions of so many major religions and other
religions, like let's use Christianity example, there's
thousands of versions of it. It's because of rules changes.
A lot of it, someone changed the rule and some people were like,
no, we don't like that rule change.
We're doing it our own way. Or they changed it a different
way and became a different version, a different sect,
etcetera. You know, And yeah, like I said
that that applies to pretty much every religion that's ever
existed. And there's been versions of it
and people disagreeing over what the rule should be.
That's the problem when you don't have a central authority,
like unless God comes down and tells you what the rules are,
which people have claimed has happened.
For all I know, maybe it did. I would guess it didn't, but
what do I know? So then people argue over that
really happened or not or yeah, like what they meant by what
they said. Did you really interpret God?
Correctly was that? Are you sure?
That was God, you know? So it's really.
Interesting how much of this stuff is.
Very much. What happened in the real world
and then some of it still happens today.
The way, like, we deal with religion and politics, the way
those two things intersect or religion and culture.
Even now, we have to be careful with what we say to religious
leaders or religious people about on certain topics, right?
Like, yes, whether you're powerful or whether you're a
regular everyday person like me. Yeah, that's true.
As for Megor, by the way, I mean Megor, the guy who's going to,
we're going to spend a lot more time on later.
The guy who's going to have the biggest problem with the faith
of anybody. He's already showing red flags
in his personality and extreme prowess.
Age 8, he's already a Squire. I mean, wow.
And he may have already killed a cat and a horse just because he
could. We're not sure about that.
He may have also stabbed a stable boy who reacted to him
stabbing the horse. This is the year 20, by the way,
So it's it's still well before the end of Aegon's reign.
And that's another thing I maybe criticize Aegon for.
Megor had a lot of red flags. I don't see a single bit of
evidence Aegon did. I darn thing about that.
He's just like, well, yeah, this kid of mine will inflict himself
on the on the realm and that's they'll just have to deal with
that, you know? Did he not see his brother, his
son, as a threat to his other son?
I guess not. But he may have just not seen
his son. He's off.
Traveling around and then meetings and all this stuff and
like, again, you know, that's kind of sad and maybe a failure.
But say he had spent more time with his son and his son grew up
to be a better leader, right? But say because of that, his son
now is dealing with a rebellion in the North because Aegon never
got the North under control or whatever.
You see, like a something is always happening instead of
something else. And it's hard for him to take on
so much and be perfect at all of it.
Yeah. Yeah, that's well said, yeah.
And I and I it's. Hard to disagree with that.
I think you're right and and also it's worth noting that some
of these red flags when a. Kid is 8.
Might not have panned out the way you think.
Like Amy's thought everyone thought he was going to be
feeble. Oh, maybe not after all right?
Like there were like rumors about about him even being
Aegon's son at first, but then he grew up a little bit and
seemed more normal. Or maybe that would have
happened to Megor too, but it didn't.
But you could see why Aegon maybe blew it off.
So yeah, or maybe Aegon tried in ways that no one saw.
Or. Talked about and it didn't work.
That's another possibility, so that is true.
Megor got Dark Sister around age 25.
When he was 13 years old, so another five years after this
last note about him becoming a Squire, he had already had
Gaywin Korbre who was probably only the wielder of Lady
Forlorn, the Valyrian steel blade that that belongs to House
Corporate. He was master at Arms chosen by
Vicenia to Megor. They may have graded on Megor
and and Vicenia as well that the less Marshall Prince Aenis was
the one getting personal training from Aegon and the
Kingsguard. It was always on all these royal
progresses and getting all this attention.
A lot of like a lot of the things that can arise, the
problems that can arise with the second son getting pushed to the
side and getting ignored, It's a particularly bad set of
scenario. A bad scenario here because you
have a character who's pretty paranoid, pretty prideful, a
mother who's the same and maybe an extreme version of everything
going to the first son and and the second son getting kind of
left out of it. And those elements combining to
create a big problem, you know, pride and being left out and the
ability to do something about it.
Because Megor is a really strong warrior and he's going to be
looking on his brother like some weakling, you know?
And yeah. And not a lot of people around
to keep him in check either, Correct.
And. Vicenia, probably encouraging
him like she the kind of. Personality.
She had hardliner hardcore, you know, ambitious.
Might makes right kind of mentality ruthless.
Yes, ruled by fear. Bit very.
Interesting person, but but hard, but very but hard.
But not to be taken lightly. Highly relevant too, is the
notion that Viceni was on Dragonstone a lot, so she was
not running King's Landing anymore.
She had been for a while, and that seems to have been given
more over to the hands of the king.
Now she's eventually going to return to King's Landing, but
when she does, Aegon moves back to Dragonstone.
So it's kind of suspicious that it's like he's keeping her away.
What happens is this is a little bit of a jump forward.
Is that Aegon's going to get, he's going to decide that the
Aegon Fort is too pitiful. It's wooden.
It's like this is no proper seat for the king, so he's going to
order it torn down and the Red Keep's going to be built in this
place. Of course, the Red Keep will not
be finished by the time he dies, but the process of building the
Red Keep, he's going to hand over to Vicenia and hand to the
King Alan Stokeworth, I think is the name.
And while he goes back to Dragonstone because he's no
longer got a place to live because he just had his place
torn down. So yeah, which we'll come back
to that to discuss the the building of the Red Keep and all
that as a separate topic. But in terms of this topic, it
just goes to show how it really seems like Megor and Visenia
were really not with Aegon a lot.
And maybe that goes back to why he spent so much time with
Reigns. It wasn't just that he liked
Reignes more. You might not have liked Vicinia
that much at all. Like this is the woman that, you
know, slashed him in the face when she just he disagreed with
her. She was probably right, although
maybe not to to slash him in the face.
She was right about the Kingsguard every time.
You're right. It doesn't mean you get to
attack someone violently. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So this is just.
Like kind of personality. She has.
She's not slashing him in the. Face left and right.
But this is the kind of, like attitude, the kind of like
personality she has. She's like, no, I'm right and
I'm gonna do what it takes to prove I'm right.
I'm gonna argue with you. We're gonna have conflict over
this until it's resolved one way or another.
I'm not gonna back down. I'm not soft, so maybe didn't
bother her that much that she was left out, but she was still
very powerful, very dominant, and maybe it did bother her and
it maybe bothered her son too. So who are the usual suspects of
this era? Who are the big houses at this
time? It's not the same houses that it
is during A Song of Ice and Fire, although there is
certainly a lot of overlap, right?
I mean, the Lannisters are powerful then and now, but the
Lannisters were not amongst the houses trying to ingratiate
themselves with the Targaryens. They were not trying to get in
good. They were not sending a lot of
people to court. They were not trying to get
favors. And this.
They were too proud to do that. So again, we see the the
different faces of pride. You can be the proud type that
tries to outdo everybody else and winning the King's favor, or
too proud to even do that in the 1st place.
Like I don't need his acclaim, you know.
You know, it's just the same coin, but different, different
approaches. To be fair, they were also
physically farther away. And now then, pride aside, maybe
really didn't need the favors. They were wealthy and powerful.
They were going to What are you going to do for us anyway?
You know, it's like even if someone had been in charge, it
wasn't prideful. They still might not have been
butting up as much as you as others would be.
Yeah, and some just maybe didn't have the chance.
They maybe weren't allowed. Or there's too much else going
on in their own area. Like the Ironborn.
You don't hear about a lot of Ironborn at court at any era,
really. And again, too far away, Very
far away. You're right.
Different religion? Different cultural issues.
Maybe some just didn't want to because they were mad like the
Starks, like the Stark Suns, weren't a God to let go there on
purpose. They might have, you know, been
forced to or something. But the sound like that happens.
The Manderlys, as we said before, they might be all for
it. They might be like ready to find
an opportunity there. And they did.
There are a lot of Manderley Targaryen connections later.
There were even going to be a marriage that didn't actually
happen, but it was planned before the bride died.
So there's a lot going on there that was a major connection.
Stark Targaryen didn't go so great early on, but manually
Targaryen did and held for a long time.
The veil cozied up pretty nicely as we as we've discussed during
the Dance of the Dragons era, a lot of connections between House
Aaron and the House Targaryen. I mean, the Sarris's wife was
half Aaron, and they had had a that was because of a prior
marriage. And the Tyrells and Tully's were
grateful for their rise and esteem.
But the Tyrells were a little occupied.
They were trying to establish themselves as the new rulers of
the Reach. A lot of houses weren't happy
about that. Plus, and maybe a bigger factor,
they suffered huge losses in the First Ornish War.
Just massive losses. They had a lot to deal with they
might have had. They may have struggled a bit
with the harvest because of all the loss of manpower, I don't
know, but it wouldn't have been easy.
They were definitely things that needed management.
The high towers, as we know, they made all sorts of plays to
get in good with the Targaryen through this faith through
marriage. Cerise Hightower is a big one.
They had made marriage offers before that the whole not
participating in the field of fire thing with the We had a
prophecy that said, you know, don't do that, Yeah.
So there's a they. Were they were making moves?
Well, they were maybe the most ahead of the game in terms of
getting in good with the Targaryens.
And that goes to show how far back some of these seeds were
planted. Right The high towers that truly
came to a head in the Dance of the Dragons.
But it started back in this era, so you have these factions
burgeoning within the Targaryen household, the Anis and Megor
factions, the two, the split Princess there and different.
Great, but one step down. Houses were associated with them
in various ways, like Baratheon, Celtagar and Valarian.
Baratheon particularly notable because the immediate blood
relation. But Celtagar and Valarian were
also Valyrian origin, so there's that.
By this Time, Lord Ori's had what seems to be three sons with
Argylla Durenden, and it's a kind of a rare case where we
know the name of the second and third son, but not the first
one, the one who who things continued through.
It's kind of unusual but we know the name of of who it continued
through of of the first born son of that unnamed, the first son
of Orias. Because Orias's first grandson
was Rogar Baratheon, born in 17 AC.
And Rogar is a big name, huge name.
Presumably he he was going to go on to be Lord Baratheon, of
course, Lord of Storms, and he's going to be hand to the King.
And yeah, we're we're going to have plenty to say about him.
Unfortunately, we don't hear anything more about Argylla,
even though she was such a big personality in that moment where
she was captured. Yeah, we hear, we hear nothing.
But clearly she's haven't she had children?
So where's that Alton Celtagar was important.
He was the hand since 9:00 AC and had been Master Coin before
that. He died in 17 AC.
So the same year Rogar was born, there was a hand, a change at
hand. I remember Ori resigned as soon
as he came back to King's Landing after being in captivity
at the hands of the widow lover. So we had again real quick Ori's
Baratheon hand from 1:00 to 7:00, Edmund Tully hand from 7
to 9, Alton Saltagar hand from 9 to 17, and now Osmond Strong
takes over. And Osmond Strong is going to be
in charge until about 35 AC, at which time he'll be replaced by
Alan Silkworth. Now, Osmond Strong is
interesting because he is hand for so long and he is the Hand
for the longest during Aegon's time, and he has the most to do
with a lot of these building projects.
And Speaking of those building projects, we had originally
planned on discussing the continuing story of King's
Landing today, but we had such robust discussions today.
We got so deep in these rabbit holes that we don't quite have
time for that, So we'll save it for another time.
King's Landing maybe is best handled as a standalone episode
someday, anyway. But regardless, we'll be coming
back to talk about it. How it grows and bustles and how
important that is, and how the need for greater protection and
the creation of walls and other things about it.
It's it's pretty darn interesting.
And there's more to it than just building walls.
There's a there's a sortie. There's a mission to the step
stones. Yeah, so we've got a lot more
coming, folks. This is good times.
It's a good time to be a fan of history of Westeros podcast.
We call this sort of the it's like the doldrums.
It's still the, it's still super fun, but it's a it's the longest
time out between like a TVA new TV show.
Like we know two are coming, but it's been a year and a half
since House of the Dragon, and that means we have fewer
listeners at this period. It's a real ebb and flow.
It's very seasonal and I don't mean like winter, spring, summer
and fall. It's like when things are
happening in the fandom, there's more of you listening to us and
it's yeah, it comes and goes. So we we appreciate those of you
who are here. Even when things are at their
lightest, we still have just our enthusiasm is the same.
We have the same level of fun. But you know, it is nice to see
those of you who are are here even in the the most hardcore
times when we get the deepest of our topics, some of the most
nerdy subject matter, some of the most in the weed stuff,
that's some when we have some of our best discussions, right.
I mean, we get at topics that are hard to get at.
It's hard to you don't always have answers, you know.
Some of these things are about human nature and and politics
and and belief, things that we never have truth about.
We only can do our best. And when we do get new material
from a show or the book or whatever, we'll have a.
Lot more insight and preparation going into it.
That's true, yeah. But we will certainly keep them
coming. We will next time regale you
with tales of the first Royal House of the Dragon, because
I've long argued that Valerian was one of the main reasons for
the Conquest. Without such a particularly
mighty dragon, the ambition might not have been so lofty, or
the success might not have been so lofty.
But clearly it wasn't all about Valerian.
Because as we'll see with this first royal house, the dragon,
and as you may already know, the minute egg on the Conqueror
dies. The realm erupts in a number of
ways, and Valerian didn't die. Valerian was still sitting right
there. So that really argues a lot for
Aegon being the reason people were keeping their cool and
waiting, or bidding their time to unleash their vengeance.
Slash violence, slash opportunism on a weaker king,
One they saw coming because Amy's had plenty of time to
demonstrate his less strength than his father, the fact that
he wasn't as powerful or dangerous or whatever, they saw
it come. So that'll be a main topic for
us next time, and we hope you join us for that.
It will be great and fun. The trivia answer the question
was the first king of Aaron Hall died?
Thanks to Valerian. The first Lord of Aaron Hall,
Quentin Coharis, died of a fall from a horse.
We talked about that as a possible code for murder.
We don't know for sure that it was, but it might have been.
So yeah, next time Aegon's the rest of his family, all his
grandchildren and his sons and Vicenya and his daughter-in-law,
his other daughter-in-law. And then his death and how that
transition, assuming we can fit all that into one episode, which
I think we can, but if not we'll just go where the material takes
us, continue making our way through fire and blood, having a
great time with the material and with each other.
I've mentioned a couple episodes that you might more than a
couple episodes that are in our back catalog that might be good
for you all to listen to Before the Dragons of Weather and Under
the Dragons. The episode on Valerian, the
episode on Dragonstone. The episode's on Valerian and
Celtagar houses. Maybe you're interested in the
Hardcore Houses episode that we did recently that talks about a
lot about some of the Dornish houses and houses in the North.
Or perhaps you are interested in something completely outside the
Targaryen dynasty, like say the Reigns of Castamere episode that
we mentioned last time. We talked about the Lannisters a
bit this time, so why not throw that in there?
Yeah, and Highgarden. We have an episode on Highgarden
which reminds me of what I just said about maybe doing a full
episode on King's Landing sometime.
If you have ideas for topics that you want us to cover, let
us know at History of Westeros or rather Westeros
history@gmail.com or anywhere you find history of Westeros on
social media. Do you all have any last bits to
add? I know Sean, you wanted to give
some shout outs so we can pivot to you for that.
Yeah, I always have fun naming all some patron names, I hope.
Everyone out there appreciates it.
Whether you have one or not, I hope you appreciate hearing
these names. We've got This is Sir Glennon of
House Leanne called Lion Cloak and we have Lord Captain
Commander. Hema.
Helmet. The Cell Sword, Sentinel.
And here's one a lot of people might recognize.
The Radio Westeros dancers. One of our patrons, you have to
say it a certain way. It's the Radio Westeros dancers.
Oh, yes. If say like a 1960.
Carney, 1960s Carney. There you go, Westeros Dancer.
There you go. Or radio.
Host Yes, that was good. I got practice from that from
Kora. Series.
They had a character like that, the narrator, the intro.
Each episode was in that style. Yeah, Sarah.
Peter, the Stoic Who? Looked the drown.
God in the face, Gabe the Jade Blade, whose foes are skewered
and grilled, and finally, Sir Ben the Green.
Bear who? Sees victory.
I see victory. The bear sense.
Thanks as well to Nina for her great takes.
Lots of good discussion points from her today, which is as it
often is. That's right.
Thanks as well to Joey, Jesse Bran and Michael Klarfeld for
our video intros and music. You guys make us look so fancy
and professional and and sound fancy and professional as well.
We appreciate that for sure. And those of you who support us,
whether it's on Patreon or Spotify, if you want to do so,
go to historyofwesteros.com. We've got links to all the
various ways you can support us or engage with our sponsors, or
just find any one of our episodes.
A Shaya has made our great episode searcher, which you can
also find there. So everything we talk about
should be available, or you can find the links to it on
historyofwesteros.com. It's kind of the catch all, if
you will. Until next time, my friends and
fellow W Orians, you know what to do.
Valar Reritus.