The story of Jaharis the Second is 1 of unfulfilled
expectations. He was named for the king with
the longest rule in the history of the Targaryen dynasty, yet he
would have one of the shortest reigns of any Targaryen king.
His father and grandfather LED armies against subsequent Black
Fire pretenders, but while he did not lack for courage, he did
lack for health and thus had to rely on his vassals and their
forces to face the Black Fire threat.
Jeharis the Second insisted his son and daughter Mary so that
the Prince that Was Promised could be born, but didn't live
to see whether one of his descendants could actually fit
the prophecy. With such a short reign, was
Jeharis the Second only a stop gap between the reforms of Egg
and the tyranny of the Mad King, or is there more?
With this penultimate Targaryen on the Iron Throne, did he have
his own prophetic dreams or destiny?
What did he think about Summer Hall or the end of the Black
Fires? And if the Prince that was
Promised is his descendant and saves the world, how much, if at
all, do we have Jahari the Second to thank for that?
Today we shall speak to the Life and Times of Jahari the Second,
the red comet of Targaryen kings burning brightly but briefly,
bringing both beginnings and endings, for better or worse.
Nina Kruseling, our favorite guest, and I will break down all
that and more on this episode of History of Westeros Podcast.
Hello and welcome, everybody. It's a prerecorded episode of
History of Westeros Podcast. We did this one in the studio
with no live viewers. That's fun.
We do that every once in a while.
This is a nice lengthy episode about a Targaryen king who
doesn't get a lot of press but has a lot to be said about.
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Hey Nina, how's it going? You are the main writer for this
episode so it's good to see you back again.
And of course, we want to plug your good queenalley.tumblr.com
home base there. Thank you, I am I am glad to be
back. I life is good.
Life is very, very good. I wish I had more time to write,
but that's the chronic story of everyone.
But yeah, I absolutely love whenever I have a a spare
moment. Love writing on on the Tumblr?
Awesome. So folks, if you have questions
about this episode, e-mail them to westeroshistory@gmail.com or
hit us on any of our socials. We're pretty much on every
platform. At the end of this episode, I
will mention some that have overlapping topics, ones that
relate to this one so you can continue to be immersed.
Here are the section headers that we'll give you for this
episode. We have our setup that includes
the first description and the first mention, his early life,
then the main course here, the marriage prophecy and Summer
Hall a section, and then his reign.
Then we have his death and his legacy, which are pretty
substantial as well. You might be surprised at what
he's had an influence on and who so we'll get to all of that as
throughout the course of this episode.
Let's get to it with the first description.
A nice resource we have is George's descriptions that for
the Targaryen kings, and I mean they were written as
instructions to the artist Amuck.
And this is what we have for Jaharis the second, per the So
Spake Martin quote. Amiable, clever, sickly.
He died young, pale and frail, with very large purple eyes,
shoulder length hair, a silky beard, a tired smile, one arm
concealed by the drape of his Cape.
Where's Makar's crown? The armpit is interesting.
The implications being that something's wrong, maybe he's
hiding it from view. I've seen a few other artists
run with this and include it visibly in pieces where it's not
hidden. So they have to kind of run with
whether it's withered or missing some fingers or something like
that. It's it's.
It's unclear, but hiding it definitely is suggestive.
It makes me think of Wilhelm the second, who's the last German
emperor. He had a disability from birth.
His left arm was about 6 inches shorter than his right arm.
That very physically weak on it. By non professional medical
understanding is that it was basically ripped out of its
socket at birth. And so when you look at images
and photographs of the time of Wilhelm, almost always his arm
is behind his back, or it's resting on a sword, or it's
within his other hand, or he's holding gloves.
And it's always just sort of hide this fact or disguise this
fact that he's got this disabled left arm.
And so I don't know if maybe that's what George is going for.
I also kind of see it as sort of sartorial representation of
Jaharis being not quite ready or prepared for this role.
Like the clothes are literally too big for him because
politically and dynastically, this is not his role.
These are these are literally not his clothes.
So I think it's maybe a little column A, little column B too.
I like that, yeah. I like the I like the idea of
interpreting what George is going for by just how he dresses
him. Here's the first mention of
Jairus. The second it comes in Eddard 5A
Game of Thrones quote this illness that took him.
Said Ned. Had you ever seen It's Like
Before in Other Men? Near 40 years I have been Grand
Maester of the Seven Kingdoms, Paisal replied.
Under our good King Robert and Aries Targaryen before him, and
his father Jaharis the Second before him, and even for a few
short months under Jaharis's father Aegon the Fortunate, the
5th of his name. I have seen more of illness than
I care to remember. My Lord, I will tell you this,
Every case is different and every case is alike.
Lord John's death was no stranger than any other.
That's right, he's the grandfather of Danny, Viserys
and Rhaegar. This is also a good reminder
that while we call him Aegon the Unlikely and a lot of the common
folk did, many others called him Aegon the Fortunate.
It's a bit more noble sounding, a bit more proper, you know?
We would guess that Jaharius and his siblings preferred that
epithet too, as it, you know, reflected on them.
Though honestly, while the realm benefited, it's a, it's a
philosophical question. Whether you're actually
fortunate to become king, I don't know.
I mean, that's not a question for today, but it's not always a
fortunate thing. No.
And I again, it's, that's beyond the scope of today, but I think,
you know, to me it's sort of representative of, and again,
I'm going to go back to Tudor history because that's where I
live is, you know, the difference between what tutors
would have generally referred to as happy versus Mary.
You know, when they talk about happy, it's really not happy in
the way that we would say, you know, joy, people are having
fun. That's really their word, Mary.
When they say happy, it's really more something along the lines
of fortunate. You have a good fortune,
something good has happened to you, sort of the opposite of the
word hapless. And and so with Aegon the
Fortunate, I kind of think of it as he might not be personally
fortunate in the fact that he's enjoying kingship, but he is
fortunate in the sense that a crown has been bestowed on him
who was born the fourth son of a fourth son.
Yeah, that's for sure. That is very fortunate in that
sense, no doubt. Early life.
He was born in 225 AC, the second son and second child of
Prince Egon and Lady Betha Blackwood.
Of course, this is Egg from the tales of Duncan.
Egg grown up, but not yet King. He'll be Egg on the 5th.
Of course. Egg had married Betha Blackwood
in 220, a year after the third Black Fire Rebellion, when he
was 20 and Betha was 19. Now, Jaharis had an older
brother, Duncan, who would be later known as Duncan the Small
and the Prince of Dragonflies. We don't exactly know when he
was born, but it was between 2:20 and 2:24, so he was up to
four years older than Jaharis, but as little as one year older.
Jaharis would also have three younger siblings as well.
There'd be Deron born in 228, cause of course there's a Deron,
right? There has to be a Deron and two
sisters, Shara born in 226, and Rael.
We don't know exactly a range of 229 to 234, so not very clear on
that one, but it's not super important at this point.
It's very likely that Jaharis was named after King Jaharis,
the most successful, perhaps you could say most beloved,
certainly longest reign, as we said in the intro, and they may
have been hoping for some kind of giving him that kind of
wisdom. I think there've been a few
other Jaharis's that were named in the cradle that didn't make
it right, but this is the only other one obviously who there
wasn't even one that wasn't. Prince.
That didn't become King I. Was going to say Agon, the
second son was Jaharis, but I'm, I'm not, I'm trying to think if
there was any other Jaharis's before.
Obviously Eris the second, who's this Jaharis's son will go on to
have his own son Jaharis. But obviously that's in the
future. But no, I think you're right.
I think that he is likely named after Jaharis the 1st.
And I think look, my feelings on Jaharis is a character aside.
I have many of them and very few of them are kind.
I think it's fair to say that in the world of Westeros, the
popular concept of Jaharis the first is this king who was the
best of the Targaryen monarchs, who looked out for his people,
who brought peace and justice and stability and prosperity to
Westeros. And even though I don't, I don't
think anyone assumes at this time that Egg will automatically
become king when his father dies.
It doesn't mean that Egg isn't thinking about what sort of
models do I want for my sons, what sort of models do I want
for the next generation of Princess.
And I think Egg is looking to someone like a Jaharis and
saying this is a good king. This is a king who looks out for
his people. This is a king who we hear Egg
himself cite the example of Jaharis and Alison to dunk in
the sworn sword of abolishing the right to the first night.
Egg is aware of this legacy of Jaharis, and I think that's
something he wants to bring into his own sons and the next
generation. I'm House Targaryen.
Yeah, Jaharis wasn't just born as a Prince of the royal family,
which of course he was, but it it was wasn't a standard
marriage that he was born from. Almost all of the marriages in
any noble family, but especially the royal family, are dynastic.
Either they're the standard Targaryen incest pairing, or
they're made for some alliance reason.
This is not the case. He was born of a marriage made
for love. Of course, they were given some
leeway, in part because no one ever expected him to inherit in
the first they they figured no problem, go ahead, it doesn't
matter. But that it it turned out to
matter quite a bit. So that's quite an unusual start
to life as compared to other Targaryens, isn't?
It it is and I think that that's going to be I mean, look, not to
give away the plot here, but the marriage is made for love and
marriage is made for dynastic or supernatural prophetic reasons
are going to be a major factor in the story of De Harris the
second. So the fact that he is born of
this love match of a marriage that was not intended, that may
have even broken up a betrothal that Eggs could have had before,
there's certainly at least the barest suggestion of that from
Young Egg in the tales of Duncan Egg.
The fact that Harris is born of this union, No, it's not
completely unknown, but it's rare.
It's unusual. It's something that's commented
on in his own time. And I think Jaharis would have
had that example in front of him of parents who are together
primarily because they loved each other and really not for
any other reason. The baby Jaharis was born during
the reign of his paternal grandfather, King Makar so.
Jaharis's own father would, you know, become to be known as
Aegon and likely after he became king, the fourth son of a fourth
son, him being that other, that first fourth son, King Makar.
So you argue maybe that he should be called Makar.
The unlikely to I agree with that point.
He's he's sort of he's he's Makar.
The possibly slightly less unlikely.
I'm not sure. I'm not to the level, but really
I mean, and when Makar is born and growing up, I don't think
anyone would have assumed that Makar would eventually become
king. He's not just a fourth son,
which is already farther down the line of succession, but he's
a fourth son where two of his older brothers have a son or
multiple sons of their own. So no one looking at the
Targaryen dynasty as those other Princess are growing up is going
to think, oh, of course Makar will become king eventually.
That would have seemed pretty unusual, if not totally out of
the realm of possibility. And yet here we are when baby
Taharis is born and Makar has been king for the better part of
five years. Yeah, I think if Egg hadn't
become King Makar's, the unlikelihood of his reign or
rule would have been noted a lot more.
It's just something way more unlikely happened.
He's always getting overshadowed.
Makar is right. That's just the story of his
life and apparently his his death, you know?
So, yeah, there's a lot of like family traditions here, things
that were kind of regular for the Targaryens in this era and
some things that were changing so that we'll go over some of
those during during the episode. And one of those that's perhaps
the most famous is the black fires.
They had just not really stopped.
They kept coming. And that was true in this era,
too. Wouldn't, isn't it?
It is. I mean, again, De Harris is born
in 226. We're 30 years out from the
first Black Fire Rebellion, which in Westerosi terms is not
that far along. When you're talking about
families that have existed for the better part of 8000 years,
30 years is the blink of an eye. And in this era, the Black Fires
are still very much an active threat across the Narrow Sea.
Again, we talk about Makar being king at this time.
Makar was one of the great victors of the Red Grass field,
and he didn't just stop. Then Maker also went to war
against the Black fires again in the third Black Fire rebellion.
Eng fought in the third Black Fire rebellion.
So did Aryan unfortunately. But, and, and again, that's give
the game away, but there's going to be 1/4 Blackfire rebellion
and Jaharis is going to be present for that.
So this is not a case where the black fires are sort of this
theoretical possibility that, oh, maybe someday there might be
a claim by one of them. No, this is a branch of the
family that is very much extant. It is out there.
It wants the Iron Throne and it's going to try to take the
Iron Throne. Yeah, they weren't shy about it.
They pretty much made it known they wanted it and would say so
often and loudly. And yeah, it wasn't a
underhanded attempt. It was a, you know, overt
attempt. They wanted everyone to know it.
But in a way, things were a little more tenuous for House
Targaryen, even though none of the black fires after Damon were
nearly as formidable. So that in that sense it was a
little less of a threat, but in another sense they had more of
an internal threat because their own problems were happening.
Huh. That's absolutely true and you
know the 2 are sort of intertwined as well.
I mean the when the fortunes of one are declining, the fortunes
of the other are going to seem perhaps potentially on the rise.
But, you know, I think when Jay Harris is born, it's this period
of, I'm not going to call it crisis for House Targaryen, but
uncertainty, dynastic uncertainty.
Maybe, maybe a better word here. I mentioned before when we're as
readers looking at House Targaryen during, let's say, the
attorney Bashford at the start of that, it looks like a very
strong and stable and secure dynasty.
You've got the four sons of the ruling king.
Baylor's got two sons of his own, Regal I, I don't know if
Aylor was born at that point, but he certainly would go on to
have Aylor. Makar, of course, has his four
sons. There's so many Targaryens that
Eamon actually has to be sent to the Citadel because Daron is so
worried about having too many Targaryen Princess around.
Too many Dragons is as dangerous as too few.
So it goes from this surplus of Targaryen Princess.
Nothing could possibly touch the stability of House Targaryen.
And then you get to early 15 years later and all of a sudden
Baylor is dead. His sons are dead, Eris is dead,
Regal is dead, Aylor is dead, Aylor's sister Elora is dead.
Yes, Daenora is still alive, but the only male male lion branch
of House Targaryen left is Makar and his sons.
And we don't even know if Daron was still alive at this point.
Daron the drunken. He could have already died by
226 AC. It's it's unclear, but at at
most it's Makar. It's Daron who has no sons of
his own, it's Aryan who as yet has no sons of his own, It's
Eamon who's at the Citadel and obviously will not have any sons
of his own. And then it's Egg.
So once again, House Targaryen is sort of dynastically
collapsing in on itself. Yeah, even the candidates that
were there, and they were a shrinking pool of candidates,
weren't good candidates. So only maybe one or two of them
were good candidates, and that's not great.
That doesn't give a lot of people the warm and fuzzies.
It's interesting to consider some of these relationships that
are hidden, right? Jahari's Aryan and him existed
at the same time. Was he picking on him like he
picked on egg? Or is that a little too far
apart, you know, Or is he a little bit more mature by then?
Was he worse, you know? For for Harris's sake, I hope
their interactions were few, if ever.
Yeah, right. Yeah.
That's not an influence you want, I imagine, like his
parents keeping it. Don't don't talk to Uncle Aryan.
You had to stay away from him. So what would the general
reaction to the family have been to Harris's birth?
It would, would it be more like positive because like, hey, this
is just a, you know, we a regular Targaryen, you know,
maybe not madness or anything like that.
Well, I mean, I think that, you know, obviously we're getting a
new, a new male line male of House Targaryen and that's
almost always A cause for celebration and any hereditary
aristocratic dynasty, you know, Targaryens are no exception.
But I think even though no one is looking at baby Caharis when
he's born and saying, oh, he's obviously going to be king
someday, I I think absolutely no one would have been saying that.
I don't think it would have escaped notice of at least some
of the people becoming aware of his birth or witnessing this
birth to see the branch that is populating helps Targaryen for
lack of a better term. This is eggs branch we've got
again. Darren may already have been
dead. He certainly only had the one
child. It's a girl and she's supposedly
simple minded. We've got Aryan, he is not
married. Everyone is aware of Aryan's
cruelty and violence. No one, I think wants Aryan's
child to succeed to the extent he even will have one, which no
one knows at this point. Eamon is a maester.
He's sort of out of the running at this point.
The only branch that is continuing here is is eggs.
And now with Caharis's birth, Eggs got his heir in his spare.
So I think it would have been at least intriguing for people to
look at Caharis's birth and think.
You know what's going to happen when make our dies?
Are we going to potentially look to egg?
Yeah, he's, you know, quote UN quote, half a peasant, but he's
also married to an aristocrat and he's got these two boys.
He's got the air and the spare. That's that's dynastic stability
right there. And that may be worth overcoming
that, you know, again, quote UN quote, half a peasant attitude
toward him. So I, I think it would have been
interesting to think about to Harris less about himself and
more about what he meant for his own branch within House
Targaryen. And of course, we're not
entirely sure what eggs other children looked like physically.
There's a drawing of his sons in the World of Ice and Fire, but
how canonical that is, I'm not really certain at this point.
But we definitely know from George's own words that Jaharis
is very Targaryen looking. He's got the silver gold hair,
he's got the purple eyes. So even if Prince Duncan looked
more like the Blackwood side of the family now, it's no question
that the Targaryen look is populating in the next
generation. We've got this baby Prince who
is showing he is a Targaryen, if you're judging by looks alone.
So what else was going on around the realm when he was growing
up? Things that he maybe would have
remembered from his early childhood or things that would
have been an impactful things along that line.
A lot. You know, it's unfortunate that
the world of ice and fire doesn't devote a lot to makers
reign for makers perspective. I'm hoping we certainly get a
lot more of that in future tales.
But there's a lot that's going on around the realm that doesn't
necessarily have to do with the Royal Court.
So we know that roughly around the time of De Harris's birth,
there's an outbreak of great plague in Old Town and it's
apparently really devastating. It wipes out half of the city.
And considering Old Town is the largest city in Westeros, that's
kind of a problem. That's a major, major, major.
You know, we all lived through a pandemic.
We can understand just how devastating something like that
would have been. Jay Harris is also born at the
beginning of a seven-year summer, a summer that goes on so
long that there are even people at the Citadel who think that
this is the great summer, that, oh, we've done it, this is the
summer that's never going to end.
We're all good now. Obviously that's not true.
Autumn is going to come and then there's going to be a
particularly bad winter. But in that way, we can think of
Gaheris as almost a brand like figure.
You know, Bran is born at during the long summer.
He never knows winter until, you know, the story starts.
He's a summer child. And I don't mean that in a, you
know, pejorative way. I mean that is quite literally
he is a child of summer. And that's the same for to
Harris. He only knows the sort of peace
and plenty that come with a Westerosi summer.
We don't know if Dagon Greyjoy was still active.
I tend to think make our head already sort of taking care of
the Dagon problem by 2:26. But it's very possible that
Egan, either Dagon himself or people who are following in
Dagon's name among the Ironborn are still reading at this point
that there are still sort of active problems among the
Ironborn. And we know that there's
problems also in the North because when Jaharis is 2 years
old, William Stark dies, turning back Raymond Ray Redbeard at
Long Lake. It's a it's a major incursion
into the North that is only stopped by the combined efforts
of the Starks and Umbers on one side and the Nights Watch on the
other. And then in the West, we've got
Gerald Lannister and Rohan Weber.
You know, we meet Rohan in the Sworn Sword.
She's going to spoil alert, go on to marry Gerald Lannister.
Their grandson is going to be Tywin.
They're ruling at Casterly Rock. So these are figures that
Harris's father certainly would have known, but Rohan's going to
disappear by the end of the decade, which is a mystery that
is as yet still unanswered. Hopefully we get a whole tale
about that, but there's a lot going on.
This is a very active decade, despite the fact that we don't
get a lot about it in the description of Make Ours Rain
itself. Yeah, it's like he maybe saved
it, like you said, for Duncan Egg, just like he's not giving
us much detail on the 3rd Blackfyre Rebellion, but on
either side of it, we get quite a bit.
Definitely very interesting times.
I agree there's a lot more detail in this era than, say,
the 50 years before that. But the Black Fire rebellions,
as we will come back to several times in this episode, because
they are such a constant, ubiquitous threat.
They're out there, you know, they've probably lived in not
fear of them, but in constant awareness that there was
somebody out there that was powerful and tenacious, that was
trying to house them and probably kill them.
That's an interesting thing to have hanging over you when
you're a young man. Absolutely.
And again, we talked a little bit before about Makar as this
figure that really I think represents the fight against the
Black Fires. Makar is there for the 1st and
the third Black Fire rebellions, and it's entirely possible that
Makar's death is also connected to the Black Fires.
He dies in the peak uprising. The peaks are major supporters
of the Black Fires. So I have a feeling that was, if
not a formal Black Fire rebellion, some sort of proto
black fire rebellion. But they are they are they are
very much an an active threat. And Suja Harris is growing up
with this idea of to be a Targaryen in this era is to
fight the black fires. That is something that goes hand
in hand with being part of this dynasty.
His grandfather did it, his father did it.
And someday, against spoiler alert, it's going to be his job
as well to do it. We have things like Hagon being
defeated and killed while his son is still alive and they
dished immediately after his escape.
Bittersteel crowns him just openly.
Like they don't they hadn't regained their strength, they
hadn't re established themselves.
But they're like throwing that hand in the air immediately.
They we're not, we're not done here.
There's some uncertainty here as well with the Blackfyre family
too, right? Like we, we don't know who of
them was still alive and how big that family was.
It's potentially A reasonably big family, but it's also
potentially as thin as the Targaryens became a little bit
later. Yeah, it is.
It is confusing because we get, you know, there's the first two
sons of Damon. They obviously die on the red
grass field. There's Damon the younger, he's,
you know, arrested after the abortive second Black Fire
rebellion. And then we don't know what his
ultimate fate is. There's Hagan, who dies during
the third Black Fire rebellion. There's Amy's who we'll talk
about in in just a moment here. We don't get a sense of who the
other two sons of Damon were. And after that, the Blackfyre
family tree gets real spotty in terms of where everyone falls.
You know, we know about Damon the Third, who is Hagon's son,
but who Hagon's wife is, whether or not any of the other sons had
sons of their own, what Branch Maelis is going to come from,
how he's related to the Damon, his cousin that he kills.
These are all kind of open questions that I assume we will
get in future Tales of Duncan Egg or whatever the sequel will
be to Fire in Blood, but at this point it's kind of a big
question mark. It is.
But what we can say about the time period, even without
knowing, nearly all we could know about the black fires in
this era is Jaharis and the rest of this, his family would know
all of that stuff. These are, again, things that
wouldn't be hidden because the black fires weren't being shy.
They were very open about all this.
They were trumpeting their intentions.
So. All they wouldn't have.
Hidden Scions out there, I don't think, other than the ones that
were just really, really far down the ladder in that sense.
So he would know that he has these distant cousins.
Just and would have. Specific names and maybe even
hear about some of their deeds. Like, you know, eventually they
would have heard about Maelee's twisting his cousin's head off.
And like, what was the reaction of the Targaryen court to
something like that? Like, whoa, Like whoa.
I mean. You know, I, I kind of think,
you know, if they heard about that, maybe they're thinking,
oh, well, these black fires are more total themselves than they
are to us. You know, if they're, if they're
fighting themselves, then, but who cares as long as they're not
fighting us? You know, if they're squabbling
over who gets to lead their free company, great, fantastic, let
them. As long as they stay off
Westerossea shores, we don't really care.
Yeah, right. Yeah.
But this is this is very interesting for Jairus, though.
He's aware of all this. He knows it's a responsibility
of his family. And as he gets older, you know,
he's getting a little closer to the little higher in the line of
succession. Shall.
We say, but he also. As we mentioned at the
beginning, he doesn't really have the physical capability to
be a warrior himself. So how does those two, how do
those two things go together? How do they interact?
A boy, a Prince who wants to help his family with this
problem that's been around for so long, yet he he can't really
do it with a sword, can he? No.
And it's, and it is an interesting question.
You know, I, I tend to think that he probably wasn't ever
formally trained as a knight, or if he was, it was much less so
than his brothers were. You know, we know that Prince
Duncan the Small is competing in tournaments.
We know that Prince Daron is going to be described as the
splendid soldier who lives for battle and tournament.
And maybe in that way, there's perhaps almost less pressure on
Jaharis to perform in that way because he's got these two
brothers on either side who can do that.
So, you know, and he's also not the oldest son.
So there may also be a lesser way where it's, you know, maybe
not quite as expected that Jaharis is going to take up that
mantle. Obviously, there's going to be
some level of expectation, Westerosis and martial
aristocracy. So you're going to expect that
your leaders are a male and B, can lead in war.
That's patriarchy is going to patriarchy.
But I think that perhaps there's less pressure on Jaharis because
he's not that eldest son. And on the flip side, he's
consistently described as clever.
And so I think maybe what Jaharis decided is I can't be a
warrior, but I can be a scholar. I can be someone who reads a
lot. I can be someone who has an
understanding of our world, of the history, of our world, of
the prophecies and our world of the supernatural.
And I can figure this out through text and literature what
my brothers can do on the battlefield.
Yeah, you're right about that. I don't think he would have too
much pressure. He would want to participate in
the battlefield because it's just not only a thing that his
family would have sort of built into their ethos, but all of
Westeros, you know, young boys are supposed to learn to fight
with their swords and all that. There's maybe a little bit of
Bran here without the without the quite intense ability and
powers here. But but but definitely a little
shades of that for sure. We've also got some similarities
to certain pair of Lannister twins, don't we?
Yeah, a little bit, a little bit.
We know that Jaharis is said to be close to his sister Shara,
you know, the one that he will end up marrying.
And Yandel says that he loved his sister from a very early
age. Now, we don't get a lot of
detail as to what that meant. We know that Egan and Betha had
tried to separate them once it became obvious that they loved
each other. But without being too crude
about it, we don't get the same level of detail that we do about
young Jamie and Zercy's interactions.
And on a practical level, it's a lot.
I should say this. It means a lot more on a
physical and logistical level for Jamie and Cersei to be
separated than it does for Jaharis and Shara.
Jaharis and Shara can be housed at opposite ends of the Red
Keep. When Jamie and Cersei are
separated, they are living on what is the equivalent of
opposite sides of San Francisco like that.
That is the level that we're dealing with in terms of in
terms of distance here. So I think without knowing what
their interactions look like or what Aegon and Betha we're
seeing, I think there's clearly this development of affection
that will turn into love between these two siblings, but not
necessarily something that anyone knows is going to be that
in the future. Right, right.
It also isn't as unthinkable, you know, for for Targaryens to
do this. It's people are a little more, I
suppose, acclimated to this sort of behavior, even with the the
parents trying to separate them. And we should point out it's not
like this was the expectation even recently.
Let's look at look back a few generations or look up the
family tree. So we have their father and
mother were not both Targaryen. That was a Targaryen and a
Blackwood. Go back to Makar, you have Makar
and Deanna Dane, not a Targaryen Targaryen pairing either.
Go back again and you have dare on the 2nd and you have Mariah
Martel. So that's again not an incest
pairing. You have to then one more.
You do have one Aegon the Unworthy and Nary so, but that's
a lot, right? So it wasn't the standard
anymore and it it it hadn't been for a while.
But you know, some people are traditionalists and obviously
it's not just about that, is it? There's there's a lot of other
reasons. I suppose it could be.
Well, and, and to be fair, I mean Egg mentions to Dunk, you
know, oh, my sister put a love potion in my drink once so that
I would marry her instead of my other sister.
So I think and and Dunk comments that it sounds so bizarre to
him, meaning Dunk for Egg to talk so casually about this.
But Dunk realizes Egg is a Targaryen, so this is natural to
him to talk about eventually going on to marry a sibling for
the Targaryens. Yes, it had not been common in
those prior immediate generations, but yes, this is
something that was very common within the family on a grand
scale. And again, I think there is a
way where Egg's marriage to Betha may have been breaking off
a marriage between Egg and one of his sisters.
Yeah, that's that's entirely possible.
What about the rest of his family?
There would have been the children of egg sisters and a
few other, you know, dangling branches that are not as well.
Known. What do we have to say about
that? Well, so we we know that we know
that Egg has these two sisters. Eamon says that they married and
had children. So I think it is extremely
likely, if not basically confirmed at this point that one
of them married into Housetharth.
And so Gay Harris would have presumably had some turf cousins
that he could visit, know about, interact with.
We don't know who Rael would have married or who her children
are. They're never mentioned.
So to the extent that they're out there or right, excuse me, I
don't know where they would have gone, but it's very possible
that Jay Harris would have interacted with them as well.
And then they obviously know their Uncle Amon because we know
the eggs daughter Rael will call Amon Uncle Maester.
So there's clearly this like like friendly familial
relationship with Amon. For a time during Make Ours
reign, Amon is working as maester for their brother Daron.
Again, I don't know if Daron was alive by this point, but it's
very possible that Amon was a physically close as well as a
personally close figure that they were interacting with on a
regular basis. And that's part of how he was so
knowledgeable about Daron's dreams and how much they
affected him, and which of course, got him involved in that
in its own way. And in 233, Jaharis's
grandfather Makar was killed in the aforementioned peak
uprising. And that caused a problem that
gave us a a great counsel, didn't it?
Well, it sure did. And that's because again, even
though the king had these four sons, by the time the king is
dead, it is wildly unclear what the succession should look like.
His oldest son is already dead and he's left only a daughter
who is simple minded. His second son is dead and he's
left a newborn son, this this infant baby.
And then you've got the third son, Eamon.
Again, he's been a maester for a number of years at this point.
He's obviously unmarried and has no children.
And then there's Egg, who is the only son that is Egg still
living and dynastically available and has married an
aristocrat and has, as you know, older sons of his own.
And yet at the same time, he's got this sort of quote UN quote,
half a peasant attitude about him.
So it's not automatic that he's going to get the throne beside
the fact that he's the youngest son.
And so the result is that there is a calling of a great council,
this gathering of as many Lords and ladies of the realm as there
possibly can be to acclaim a new king, to say who should be our
new ruler. And because Jaharis is Egg son,
because he's about 7 years old at this point, I think it's
entirely possible, if not probable, that Jaharis and his
brothers were there, that they would have been watching their
father at this, if they would have been watching these
proceedings and it would have been smart for Egg to bring
them. I mean, this is this is part of
his resume, so to speak. This is saying, look at me, I've
got heirs of my own. I've got these Princess that can
succeed after me. And so I think for young
Jaharis, again, put yourself in the mind of someone like Bran in
A Game of Thrones. They're about the same age.
They're seeing this off the first time.
And so Jaharis is seeing this assembly of the aristocracy of
Westeros, this gathering of power and prestige at Harrenhal
and just this absolutely massive show of feudal power and feudal
feudal power politics. And so it's interesting to think
about, you know, what does this mean to him?
What, what is he thinking as he's looking at this?
Is he thinking, look at this, the, the crown's vassals,
They're, they've got power, they've got real power, they've
got real retainers they're bringing with them.
They, they have in this moment the choice to say who is going
to be king. And those same vassals that have
the say today could say very differently tomorrow.
And it's a real show of for certainly the first time into
Harris's life and for one of the first times in the history of
House Targaryen, it's this real show of the Targaryens are not
absolute. They they can be replaced.
This is something that theoretically could happen in
the future. But not if they had Dragons,
right? That's another seed we plant
right here. But sticking with the Great
Council, where there were no Dragons to be found other than
the metaphorical ones, and also sticking with the example of
Bran, who in his first chapter witnesses an execution.
Now we don't know that Jerry's witnessed this execution, but
one of the contenders at the Great Council did meet that
fate. And that would have been a
lesson of sorts of a very similar type, wouldn't it?
Absolutely. So we know that Amy's Blackfyre,
who's this fifth son of Damon Blackfyre, comes over and says
I'm going to plead my case. And Bloodraven actually says,
yeah, I'll give you safe passage.
Absolutely. Come on over.
You can make your case to the assembled Lords and ladies of
Westeros. And Amis does.
And immediately Bloodraven has him assassinated.
He literally has him killed once he lands in Westeros.
It's interesting to think what is Jaharis's reaction against
your point. I don't think Jaharis literally
saw this happen, but he certainly would have heard about
it. He certainly would have been
aware that this happened. And is he thinking, well, you
know, my grandfather fought the black fires, My father and my
uncle fought the black fires. And so now if there's a black
fire, well, we can't let him have the throne.
So is this OK? But at the same time.
What does this mean? You know, are the black fires so
dangerous a threat that we can't even just to beat them on the
battlefield if they so much as step foot in Westeros, even with
our say so we can kill them because they are that much of A
threat? Or, or is he thinking, you know,
in the future, thinking back on this moment that well,
Bloodraven had Amy's assassinated and it still didn't
work. There's still more blackfires
that came that you know, again, spoiler alert, there's going to
be 1/4 Blackfire rebellion pretty soon after this.
Susie Harris thinking back on this moment and thinking, well,
what good did that really do us if we can kill one of the sons
of Damon. And the black fires are still
pushing for this to happen, still pushing for their right to
the throne. So it's interesting to think
what would have been going through his mind then and then
reflecting on in the future. Certainly it would, especially
perhaps how it ended, which is that his father got chosen and
that's for an 8 year old. I don't know how he would take
that, but I think he would be happy.
I think it would be happy for his father and, and, and you
know, the way an 8 year old could and maybe very curious
about what would come next, maybe a little anxious also in
the way an 8 year old could be anxious.
And so he goes from all that to all that uncertainty, shall we
say, to being second in the line of succession.
And he has now gotten a demonstration of the power of
the crown and the power of the great Lords and even some of the
lesser Lords. And all that's culminating for
him very early in his life. What do we suppose that he
thought of his father becoming king?
I mean, I think to your point, it's this sudden, almost
literally overnight transformation.
Jaharis goes from the second son of the fourth son of the late
king to now Jaharis is second in line to the Iron Throne.
Again, he's not the heir in this moment, but he is a few
heartbeats away, and it's far from unprecedented, either in
the history of House Targaryen or in Westerosi dynasties more
generally, for a second son to become king.
That is not unusual whatsoever. So is Cahar's thinking in this
moment that I've become not just the son of a king, but I could
be myself king someday. Again, not because he certainly
wants to be king in this moment, but because he knows this could
happen. This is just a thing that could
happen is I am my father and older brothers heirs.
If they die, I become king. And again, I think to go back to
Bran and to some extent Rickon as well, they go through a
similar transformation. They go from Sons of the Lord of
Winterfell to all of a sudden they are new Princess of how
Stark, how Stark hasn't seen Princess in centuries.
And then all of a sudden they are it and they are Rob's heirs.
If anything happens to Rob, that's it.
They they become king in the North instead.
So I think it's this, on the one hand, this privilege and
excitement of becoming the son of a king, but also potentially
the sense of responsibility that now more is going to be expected
of you and potentially someday you could become king yourself.
Absolutely. And we can be very sure that
even if he didn't realize it on his own, he would have been
told, he would have been brought up to have this expectation that
this would be a possible outcome for his life.
Whether Yeah, like you said, there's a lot of ways he could
end up being king, even without anything too unlikely happening.
There was another problem going on in this era, however.
It wasn't happy times in the realm.
There wasn't necessarily a lot of war.
There was a little bit with that peak uprising there, and of
course the 4th Black Fire Rebellion was looming on the
horizon. But constantly, at all times was
this really bad winter. Because we had a long summer
during Makar's rain. And as we know, the farther the
pendulum swings one way, the farther it swings back the
other. So I think there was an
understanding that the winter would be several more years and
that the king that they chose would, that's the one of their
first problems they'd have to deal with and it wouldn't be
something that would end anytime soon.
Absolutely. I mean, Aziz, are you suggesting
that the winter that's here in the current books might be
really bad because we've had a really long summer?
It's almost like foreshadowing. Anyway, the no, I, I think
you're absolutely right. This is a winter that has
already lasted for three years and it doesn't show any signs of
slowing down or stopping. And of course, Darius is the
King's son, so he's not going to necessarily want himself.
He's not going to go hungry because again, he's he's the
King's son. It was very possible that egg
would have imposed restrictions on his family.
To say, I'm recognizing the suffering of my people.
I'm going to devote resources that would have gone to the
royal family to others throughout the realm, because I
know that the realm is suffering.
You know, we think about something like, you know, the,
the winter rations that Bowen Marsh recommends to John in a
dance with Dragon for the Nights Watch.
He's like, look, we're we need to go on winter rations because
we just don't have enough food to last as long of a winter as
we might have. So we're going to have to start
limiting all what we're doing because otherwise we're not
going to survive. And we do know from yeah.
No, that Aegon did what he could, especially to help the
North. And it's it's possible that part
of this and part of what Jaharis may have understood at this
moment is that Aegon isn't just being sympathetic to the North,
although he certainly is, but he's also thinking of the North
particularly as his kinsmen because he's married to Betha
Blackwood, who is a presumably sister or cousin of Melantha
Blackwood, who is the mother of Lord Edwile Stark.
So whether or not the Harris ever knew these possibly distant
Stark cousins of his, he certainly, I think, would have
been aware that he has these kinsmen via the Blackwoods in
the North. They are suffering and his
father is looking to help them. Yeah, he and his brothers would
have an unusually nuanced upbringing with regards to the
old Gods having a mother who very likely was a follower of
them from birth. So that's pretty unusual within
House Targaryen and very noteworthy and pretty cool
actually. So there's, as we've been
building onto here, very gradually, there's a lot of
different things that were part of his upbringing in his his
education, some of them intentional, some of them not,
but a lot of them very meaningful.
The next chapter in that education was the looming
aforementioned 4th Black Fire Rebellion, which finally
happened and I suppose because Blood Raven was gone and maybe
there was an idea that Aegon wasn't so strong.
And of course the aforementioned winter I'm I'm using the word
aforementioned a lot. But hey, we're, we're talking
history that happens, right? And that's a big deal.
This could have been a big problem.
They may have expected that Blood Ravens murder of of a nice
got them some sympathy, but either way or whatever their
expectations actually were, they certainly did invade Damon the
third Black Fire with Bitter Steel and the Golden Company and
the rest. What happened with Jaharis in
this year? We've talked about other
characters in this spot, but never so much this guy.
And it's interesting because, and this is something that I
almost forgot or or didn't realize until I was doing the
research for writing this episode, Jaharis was actually
there during the 4th Black Fire rebellion.
This is something where Yandel specifically mentions that the
king brought his sons to the battlefield.
Now I think it's it's very clear Harris is 11 at this point.
His brother Duncan probably isn't that much older.
And, you know, Darren's obviously younger, so they don't
think they're in the midst of the fighting actually picking up
a sword, especially given, you know, to Harris's physical
frailty. But that's not really the point.
That's not why they're here. They're here, number one, so
that Agan the 5th can make a very clear statement both to his
own vassals as well as to the invading Blackfires and Golden
Company. He's saying, look at me, I am so
confident in victory. I am bringing my children to
this battlefield. I am bringing my heirs because I
had no doubt that they will be safe and I will succeed.
And he's also saying you don't get to claim this legacy of
Damon Blackfyre. One of the famous stories of
Damon Blackfyre is Damon bringing his twin sons to the
red grass field and how they're shot down by Blood Ravens
arrows. And Damon has to nobly stand
over them, according to the Blackfyres and take this reign
of arrows because he doesn't want to leave his son's side.
So I think Egg is sort of appropriating that a bit and
saying no, no, no, you're not the only one who can bring your
sons to a battlefield. We Targaryens have valor too.
We bring our sons up in that as well.
I'm going to bring my sons to the battlefield too.
And of course, Egg himself had been on the battlefield with his
own father up. He was older of course, than
Daerys was, but he fought with Nakar in the third Blackfyre
Rebellion and at least according to a semi cannon source, he was
there at the uprising at Star Pike.
So I think Egg is thinking this is a great opportunity to start
my son's Marshall education. They're gonna have to be
blooded. They're gonna have to understand
what it is to be on a battlefield.
They're gonna have to experience this.
You might as well start now. Right, yeah, it's a good
opportunity to learn and to see things like their enemies
tactics, getting used to what it feels like.
The just the qualities of the tension and the anxiety and the
fear that are all around you and the noise and everything.
Just getting used to that. The horses and the the dirt and
the blood. There's a lot to get used to.
Having not experienced it myself, I couldn't speak to the
specifics, but I'm sure it's a lot.
We don't know exactly what he saw.
I wasn't exactly a long war, but if he was close enough, he might
have seen a prime example of a Kingsguard not for once being a
shield, but a sword. Do we think that he actually
actually could have witnessed Sir Duncan the Tall killing
Damon the Third in single combat?
It was that were they were saying they were not that close,
but maybe, maybe they were on a hill.
I don't know. It's possible, right?
I think I think it's possible at bare, bare, bare minimum, he
definitely would have heard about it.
He would have heard this story because that would have been I
think the moment of this battle. You know, the idea that this
major figure, this literally larger than life figure on the
Kingsguard who's been the King's best friend for as long as
anyone can remember. And now he's doing the work to
slay the invading black fire pretender.
You almost can't write the story better than that.
So I think to Harris, if he he doesn't see it with his own
eyes, I think he definitely would have heard about it pretty
immediately after. And it's an interesting idea
that he will certainly revisit or think about later in life
when he himself has his own black fire rebellion.
And it's going to be another future stellar member of the
Kingsguard who is going to end the Black Fire pretender there.
Yeah, what a what a great example.
What a thing to see if he got to see it.
Also, no word on whether or not Sir Duncan slew Damon the Third
with his foot, but surely his foot helped.
He may have also seen bitter steel retreat.
That's unclear, but it's hard to miss like an entire enemy army
running away. So he would have seen to some
extent that. And with the Golden Company
banners being rather distinct, yeah, yeah, he might have.
He might have been able to spot his cousin.
Bitter steal. Yeah.
Cousin. Right.
That's he's not like a great uncle all.
I'm thinking of is now I'm all I'm thinking of is Bart versus
Australia where they're going to, they're going to give Damon
the third a booting. He got booted right off the
yeah, right off his horse and into the grave.
Oh, that's a that's a joke for my husband.
I'll appreciate. That dunk was definitely
speaking in an Australian accent when that went down.
So even if Jairus was isn't literally on or near that part
of the battlefield, he definitely would have seen a
lot. Amis would have seemed like a
vague figure. But this is just this.
Damon the 3rd is a different thing, right?
Like this is two different. You saw two opposite ends of the
black fire spectrum there, you could say maybe.
Absolutely. I mean, you know, it's, it's
easy perhaps for Jaharis to think of Amis as almost a
theoretical threat because he never really becomes a threat.
He never makes his grand speech. He never leads an army.
He shows up to be assassinated. It's not even clear if Jaharis
ever physically saw him, may have just heard of this
happening. Whereas Damon, the third Jaharis
would have seen him or at very least seen in his army.
He was there for this. So I think Jaharis would have
realized as he's on this battlefield, even as a young boy
assassinating Amy's, that did not stop this rebellion
happening. The way to stop the black fires
is on the battlefield. That's the way that you defeat
the black fires, and that's something that I think to Harris
is going to take with him when he himself becomes king.
So within the 1st 15 years of his life, he had witnessed truly
monumental changes to his family, to his dynasty, things
swinging back and forth and within the realm in terms of
extreme weather. He had also seen his own
fortunes change as far as his position within the dynasty and
the line of succession. There were more changes to come
later in his life, and some of them he would cause himself.
You may be noticing A trend here that yes, this guy isn't going
to be on the throne very long, but he didn't die young.
He had a fairly full life before he became king.
That's something that very much separates him from some of the
other kings that had very short reigns is for the most part,
those were people that were also younger.
Not not say, Visceris the second, but Daron this Daron the
First is a great example of that.
Super young. His whole reign was, Yeah.
What? By the time he was dead, by the
time he was 20 or so, not so much.
Jairus the second. No, absolutely.
I mean he's he's the opposite spectrum of someone like an
Aegon the Third. They die at roughly the same
age, but Aegon the Third has been king since he was a young
boy virtually his entire life. He is king, whereas someone like
the Harris spends virtually his entire life not being king.
It's only a very small portion of his life, relatively
speaking, that he actually reigns.
Yeah, I don't think anyone would call Aegon the Third fortunate
either. Marriage, prophecy and Summer
Hall. After Aegon the 5th became king,
he began to institute sweeping changes to law and justice
within the Seven Kingdoms. He was a lot more focused on the
lower classes. So of course these changes were
not popular with the nobility, their ancestral powers, which in
their world have been held for really absurdly long times
compared to our own lengths of time that we're we're working
with in the real world. So they would just be that much
more stubborn about holding on to what they considered their
rights. So that was quite a situation
for Aegon the 5th. And we see him doing some things
like making advantageous marriages like the kings and
Queens would often do, but it didn't really go the way he
wanted. They had Joharis and his
brothers, that is, his own family, as a role model and as
an example. So it's not too surprising that
after a while, these things started to break down.
But let's go into some detail here.
In 237, Aegon the 5th and and Betha, Queen Betha arranged
these betrothals and Jaharis's was to Celia Tully, daughter of
the Lord of River Run. And what can we say about this?
It's an interesting betrothal. You know, we don't know too, too
much about this Celia Tolley. She may have been the daughter
of the same Lord of River Run, who's the boy Lord of River Run
when this one's word is taking place, but that's a little bit
unclear. It's probable that she's maybe
an aunt of Hoster and Brendan, so she would be great aunt to
Catelyn and Liza and Ed Muir. But again, we don't exactly
know. I think it's an interesting
match and there's a clear, I think, political calculus to
this. The Tolleys were never kings in
their own right, even before the Conquest, but they had always
been very powerful aristocrats within the Riverlands.
And so this marriage between a daughter of House Tolle and a
son of House Targaryen is by all means very suitable.
No one is going to look at this and think that Celia Tolle is
too low ranking to marry a Targaryen.
And in fact, it had been Aidan the Conqueror who had raised the
Tolleys to be the paramount Lords in the Riverlands that had
not been their position prior to the conquest.
And so I think there's always been, if not quite spoken aloud,
this bond between the Tulleys and the Crown.
And so now Agan the 5th is strengthening this bond.
He's saying, look, my ancestor, my namesake raised you up.
And now I'm going to strengthen that bond.
I'm going to underline our connection by uniting our
families. And I think it's, it also goes
to eight of the 5th's political goals.
You know, what we hear about so much in the Sworn Sword and to
some extent in the in the mystery night as well, is this
breakdown of authority and especially breakdown of
authority in the Riverlands. That's a, a major facet that
we've learned about in in the sworn sword.
So Bracken and Blackwood are almost coming to war.
And spoiler, I think that's going to come in a future Duncan
egg tale. And you know, we hear about Doug
says, well, what's going to happen?
Can't Lord Tolley do something and Sept and Sept and says,
yeah, Lord Tolley's eight, He's not going to do anything about
this, that this is there's no authority to govern the
Blackwoods and the brackets here.
They're just going to go to blows and it's going to it's
going to spill blood. And we know that at this point,
penny trees become a royal thief roughly around this time.
So I think that by betrothing Jaharis to Celia Tully, it can
isn't just emphasizing the Tullys and the Targaryens are
connected. He is planting a branch of House
Targaryen in the Riverlands to say, look, my royal authority,
that's paramount. You, you don't trespass against
the royal authority. You don't have the right to have
these private wars and to spill the blood of your peasants for
no reason. And I'm going to put my second
son in the Riverlands so that you all are aware this is
something, this is my presence here.
I am watching over you. You need to understand royal
authority is paramount. Yeah, that's a good point.
It's really like a a soothing measure using your children,
your your Princess and princesses to resolve
difficulties within the realm. And I think that you make a very
strong case there that it's exactly what was happening.
So of course, we have to keep that in mind in reverse because
this marriage isn't going to happen.
We can see the reasoning behind it and why they would have been
looking forward to it, maybe even counting on it.
And of course, it raises their status.
Regardless of any of these other considerations, becoming an in
law of the Targaryens is a huge deal.
But you know, plans don't always go the way they were planned, as
they say, or as I just said myself and no one else ever has.
That's right, Jeharis and Shara, it doesn't seem like it was A1
sided thing, right? They were kind of of one mind
about these betrothals not happening.
They, they probably talked about it and and maybe schemed and
planned and well, they got they, they succeeded whatever,
whatever they did, right. That's absolutely right.
I mean, we, we set up at the beginning, even from a young
age, these two are very clearly drawn to each other.
And we know that Egan and Betha recognized this and tried to
separate it. But what Yandel says is that
distance only seem to inflamed the mutual passion of Jaharis
and Shira. So I think the two of them were
very much of one mind. I think they were both very
aware. We do not want these arranged
betrothals to happen. We want to marry each other and
so we are going to do what we believe is necessary to marry
each other. And it doesn't really matter
that our parents are arranged these betrothals for us.
Very much the Jamie and Cersei vibes all over this one.
As we said, they just, they just wouldn't, wouldn't, didn't obey
the puppets, don't obey the puppet master, as we've seen
explained a few times. So what?
What else was going on besides love here or, or was there
anything else going on besides love?
And of course, the specific question that is perhaps the
most tantalizing is was it at all related to prophecy or any
sort of supernatural ideas or beliefs?
I mean, you know, it's, it's such an interesting question
because on the one hand, it could, it could just very simply
be love. And Jordan Martin loves that
theme. It's his favorite theme in the
whole world, the human heart in conflict with itself.
The idea of choosing between love and duty.
He he demonstrates that again and again and again with
character. So the idea of having the future
to Harris the 2nd and his sister torn between the duty to marry
these advantageous political fiancees that their parents have
arranged for them and the love that they have for each other,
that a tug of war between the two.
That could very well be it. And that's an interesting story
in itself, especially as children all day love match that
was made only for love and not for, you know, political
advantage. And I so I don't want to say
that oh, it there has to have been something else behind it.
And I also don't think this is mutually exclusive either.
I think both can be true at the same time.
And I do think it's interesting to consider, was there any
element to this? Again, not mutually exclusive
with the love, but the Caharis has in his mind by marrying my
sister, this is going to be either the start of or the
fulfillment of a supernatural or a prophetic legacy.
I mean, we know that later down the line, Caharis is going to be
very receptive to prophetic direction when it comes to the
marriage of his own children. And we also know that Caharis
seems like a very similar to an 80s like figure, someone that is
clever but sickly, so clever but physically not imposing.
And so like Harris the 1st, is Caharis taking an interest in
prophecy? Is he reading these arcade
materials? Is he starting to think about,
well, what is our future, supernaturally speaking, for
House Targaryen? It's possible that as Chaharis
is potentially doing this, as he's potentially thinking about
prophecy, is he thinking about, I need to marry my sister
because that's the way to bring back Dragons, or that's the way
to fulfill a different prophecy? You know, I made the point back
in the Bay lore, the blessed episodes, that the Dragons and
the doctrine of exceptionalism are inextricable.
You know, once you have the latter, you can't separate it
from the former. And, you know, I made the point
in that episode, I think Baylor saw the doctrine of
exceptionalism as saying, oh, incestuous marriages were a
heresy and that's why the gods took the Dragons away from us.
But I think to Harris may have grown up believe in the
opposite, that it's been almost a century by the time of his
birth that the Dragons have been gone.
So is he looking at this and thinking, oh, wait, we abandoned
incestuous marriages and that's the reason why we didn't have
Dragons anymore. We should have kept marrying
incestuously and then we could have gotten the Dragons back.
But because we abandoned that, we don't have Dragons.
Maybe. Certainly he's growing up in a
court where Dragons and prophecy are more present than you might
think. You know, Darrell the Drunken is
dreaming of the return of Dragons.
He may have even been doing this while Jaharis was alive.
Eris the verse is dead by the time Jaharis is born.
But he himself was also reading about the return of Dragons in a
prophecy. And Egg is also trying to bring
Dragons back during the course of his reign.
And so I think it's possible that, again, not mutually
exclusively with love, Jaharis may have seen this marriage to
his sister as saying, by doing this, maybe I put the dynasty
on, prophetically speaking, the right track.
Maybe I'm going to get us back in line so that we can have the
return of Dragons, so that we can fulfill some other prophetic
end. I agree with that.
And maybe just to add 1 little point here, I think that
something about Jaharis the second will see that's a little
more direct with his his engagement with the prophecy
only when like perhaps Rhaegar was so truly engaged with it
that it consumed them or that they believed in it that deep a
level. I think in my head cannon, Egg
was never a true believer but someone that saw the
practicality of it. But of course, who knows what
kind of person he became as an adult.
That's just my maybe it was some of my own bias in there.
But regardless of that, Jahari was extremely hands on with it
in ways that other members of his family weren't.
And we even have characters like Blood Raven who may have had
something to say here and there. Even though Jairus wasn't around
as an adult for Blood Raven, his influence would have been still
there if it had been such a short period of time.
So there's an enormous number of people that could have
influenced him. Enormous amount of positive
vibes around it. Like people think, hey, this is
a good thing. This is what this is what we
Targaryens are trying to do. And it's also a overarching
theme of the post draconic era for them is just whether it's
latching on to the faith or latching on to something like
this like prophecies they're trying to get back to or a level
of power that they had before or at least something resembling
that. And the Dragons would be the
best possible results of all that.
But coming back to the realm of the more mundane, the natural
rather than supernatural, the the politics here, oh boy, this
was this caused a big problem, didn't it?
It sure did, because you know to Harris is planning and
eventually orchestrating this marriage to his sister,
obviously with Sahara in on it. Immediately after his brother
had also abandoned his politically advantageous
betrothal for a marriage for love.
Duncan had been betrothed to the daughter of Lionel Baratheon,
and in 239. Instead he marries Jenny of Old
Stones, a commoner from the Riverlands.
And this is shocking. Not only that Duncan has married
a commoner, but instead of giving her up he says fine I
will abandoned my role as Crown Prince.
I give it up. I do not want the throne
anymore. I only want Jenny.
You to Harris you can be heir now you can be Prince of
Dragonstone because I would rather be married to Jenny.
This is a bombshell politically speaking, because not only is
Jaharis immediately made the heir to the Iron Throne, but now
the crown has to manage the hurt feelings of Lionel Baratheon,
which turned into a rebellion where Lionel declares himself a
new Storm King. And this is a short, bloody
rebellion that follows. According to Handel.
Yes, the crown comes out on top, but it's not a good look for
anyone. Egg eventually has to give his
younger daughter to Lionel's heir in order to assuage her
feelings, and they're left with this legacy of the heir to the
Iron Throne snubbing A Baratheon maiden to marry a commoner.
That would have seemed unthinkable until it actually
happened, but it it certainly did.
You're right. This is quite a a lot at once.
There's these dynastic marriages, multiples of them
falling apart. And while Jerry see how he he
wouldn't have fought in the war, as we said, he wasn't really
capable of that, but he may have been on the battlefield again.
And even if he wasn't, he certainly would have been
involved in both councils deciding the course of the war
and how to establish the peace and the all these negotiations
and all that. That would be right up his alley
regardless. What do we think his mindset was
with regard to this? Do we think he was aware of the
problem he would cause or that they would cause really and just
figured he could they could get away with it, It wouldn't be
that bad. Or maybe they could make up for
it later or something like that. I mean, at this point they knew
they were going to be king and queen because like you said,
their brother had already done his thing.
It already set aside the crown. So that's a huge change in it of
itself, them being the the heirs.
Maybe that's it. Maybe there's a little bit of,
hey, once we're king and queen, we'll make up for all that.
Well, whatever harm we cause. What do you think was in their
heads? It's.
Fascinating and you know, you, you, you wish we would have a
POV or or something inside to Harris and Shara's head because
this is a you know, very weighty moment for them because you're
absolutely right. They would have been aware what
they're going to be doing is another bombshell because now
they're insulting 2 aristocratic families by by marrying each
other. So Jaharis knows I'm going to be
king after my brother. I will have my father and I will
have to deal with this political fallout if I marry Shira.
It's very possible that the Tullys and or Tyrells go to war
over this and yet they do it anyway.
They are fully aware of what could happen and they still go
through with it. And again, I think part of it
may be that theme of favorite theme of George is, you know,
the love versus duty that when it comes to love, characters
will do anything and they will break any sort of duty they
might have for the sake of other characters that they love.
I think it it comes down to that, but I think also it in a
practical sense, Jaharis may have been thinking well.
My case is different from that of Duncan.
Duncan married a commoner. Shara is a Princess.
So no one can say on a dynastic level that Shara is an insult
compared to either Celia Tully or Luther Tyrell.
I think also Jaharis may have thought, well, Egg wasn't
personally that hard on Duncan. He's he, you know, implored
Duncan to give Jenny up. But once Duncan said, I'll I'll
abdicate as Prince of Dragonstone, I will forswear my
claim Egg let him keep him, let Duncan keep keep Jenny.
And that's very different from something we see like Tywin with
Tyrion and Taisha. Tywin did not care that that
marriage had been consummated. Tywin did whatever Tywin did to
make sure that that marriage was put aside.
So the fact that egg theoretically could have done
something like that and didn't may have given some hope to
Harrison sharer to say, well, dad, and hopefully won't be too
mad at us. He won't be too hard on us
because he wasn't that hard on Duncan.
And I think that maybe he's, you know, he's thinking if we do
this and we present it as sort of this say accompli marriage,
and we say we're in love and Shara is a Princess and we can
be a good king and queen will accept it and the realm will
accept it. Yeah, it it certainly was a risk
and maybe I agree with you that maybe they thought the risk was
was smaller than it turned out to be.
But then of course, the other marriage didn't happen either.
So Daron did not marry his bride to be, which was Olenna red
wine, by the way. Y'all, that's a, that's a fun
little trivia tidbit for you. So indeed it wasn't also not the
first time either. There's a few examples in the
past, aren't there, of Targaryen's pulling something
like this, And one of them is particularly parallel, isn't it?
It it is, and I think that as Jay Harris and Shara are doing
this, I cannot think that they were not themselves remembering
the example of Jay Harris and Allison because it is almost a
perfect parallel. They are almost exactly the same
age that Jay Harris and Allison were.
Jay Harris and Allison were both, you know, betrothed or
about to be betrothed to politically arrange fiancees.
They both loved each other, loved each other from an early
age. And what did they do?
They ran away together and eloped on Dragonstone.
And I think that that's what Jaharis and Shara had in mind,
that we are going to be the new Jaharis and Allison.
And hey, they lasted and they became a great king and queen.
So why won't it work out for us? And they may have also been
thinking of. Well, after that, we see
something like Rayna Targaryen. She marries Andrew Farman in
secrets that she doesn't have to have a, you know, politically
arranged marriage. We get Rainiera, she marries her
uncle Damon shortly after they are both widowed or or become
become a widower. We have Baila Targaryen, she
marries Alan Valerian because her half brother's counsel is
trying to arrange a marriage for her.
And so they may have been thinking, well, there have been
on these other marriages, there have been these other examples.
Let's just do that. If if we are truly in love, then
let's do it. And we could look at the other
side of this coin, but there's nothing there because we don't
have an example. When a couple was separated like
this and the separation was successful, they always got back
together. Even when we're talking Jamie
and Cersei, who were separated by, you know, a San Francisco
amount of length there, it just took them longer.
So they were 15 and and 14 as far as we know, and the year 240
when they got married and we don't know where though we
don't. We were lacking some details.
It it may have been kind of a a runaway thing like their
namesake there or like one of their namesakes.
It's not it's not Alice Ann again.
But hey, like you said, definitely a very strong chance
they were influenced by that story and wanted to repeat their
famous ancestors actions there given the similar circumstances.
So what do we basically think happened though as far as the
getting married? Like the logistics of it?
I mean, you know, it's to your point, we, we know basically
nothing other than it happened. I would like to think that this
happened on Dragonstone not only because Taharis was now Prince
of Dragonstone. So it would have been very
natural. If Taharis says I want to go to
Dragonstone because that is my seat as Prince of Dragonstone,
no one's going to necessarily look at him and say that doesn't
make any sense. And also, I suppose as a on a
practical level, it's somewhere that they can run away to that's
relatively close to the Red Keep and yet far enough away that by
the time that news gets back, it's going to be too late for
the king and queen. But we don't really know.
It could have also been it just friend's home or castle.
They could have just run away to someone who was sympathetic to
them and, you know, gotten married there.
We think of something like Rob and Jane Westerling.
They get married at the Craig because that's where Rob is and
that's where, you know, he, he and Jane get together.
So it, it's very possible it could have been somewhere else
as well. I, I think really the important
point is they're going to need a septon and they're going to need
witnesses. And as long as they have those
things and the marriage is consummated, you know, by
Westerosi standards, that's a merit.
That's really not something that you're going to be able to
successfully put away, at least not without a lot of effort.
Agreed, they would definitely need to have some witnesses.
That's something that matters one way or the other.
That would make sure that the elopement is successful.
We don't get a full sense of the fallout from either the Tullys
or the Tyrells. We obviously get plenty in the
terms of the Baratheons. We do delve into some of it in
our House Tully history episodes to check that out if you're
interested. But this is something where
there's a lot of room to imagine and guess that it certainly
affected things in the future. For example, the Tullys were
very staunch throughout history. The first time they ever turned
against House Targaryen was Robert Trebellion.
So maybe this is part of what led to that.
You think that's possible or even likely?
I I feel like I'm looking at that meme of the guy who sets up
all the bricks and there's like the one brick at the beginning
and it's like Harris runs away with his sister and the end
brick is House totally replaces the Targaryens with.
The Baratiens. It's a little bit of that, but I
do think, you know, could there be this is the beginning of her
feelings? Yes, absolutely.
I think that, you know, we know obviously the king has no more
children to give over like he did with the Baratheons.
We obviously would have had to do something.
I'm going to assume it's a combination of making some sort
of payments to them, giving them some sort of court functions,
maybe giving over some additional lands, maybe marrying
them to extended members of the family.
So again, we talk about the marriages of egg sisters.
It's possible that they would have married, you know, some of
the tarts or some of raised children.
And I do think it's worth noting that Daron meets Jeremy Norwich,
who's later appears to be his his partner when they're Squires
together at Highgarden. So I think it's possible that
Daron was sent to Highgarden as a way of mollifying the
Terrell's to say, look, we know that you were wrong by the
breaking of this betrothal. So here you can have Darren as a
Squire. He will live there.
He will be raised by you. He will grow up, you know,
treating the Terrell's as sort of his brothers and sisters.
Jerry's and Shara would go on to have two children, Aries and
2:44 and Rae Ella sometime between 2:45 and 2:47.
So there's a short range there, but we don't know exactly.
And it's certainly an interesting choice to name your
child Aries, given what the previous Aries represented.
And what has been an big theme with this episode is the the
supernatural interest that Jaharius the Second had.
I agree. I mean, I don't think it's
coincidental that the first heiress who reigns in the
history of Targaryen dynasty is this figure who is physically
weak but intelligent and interested in sorcery and the
arcane. And then a generation later or
two generations later, the future Jaharis the second names
his son and the future King Aries.
I think he is definitely thinking about prophecy.
I think he's thinking about the supernatural.
I think Jaharis is thinking this is going to be someone who
fulfills what the first Aries was doing.
Not just, you know, regularly, not just in terms of being the
next Aries in in regnal number, but also fulfills that in a
prophetic sense that what Aries the first looked at, this is
what the second Aries is going to do.
So there's a decent amount of time here after Jaharius's and
Cher's marriage, and that would have been part of their lives
during their father's reign here in 245, Rael married Ormond.
That was, of course, the fallout from the little Laughing Storm
rebellion there. He wasn't laughing during that,
though. He was.
He was pretty mad. He was frowning during that.
And do you think maybe there's a connection between this name
here? It's just Rael and Rael here.
That might have been a connection.
I think that's that's very, very possible, if not probable.
I mean, there's any number of rays and rayels in this era.
So it could just be that this is just a common name in House
Targaryen in this era. But the fact that Raela is born
right about the same time that Rael is getting married, I think
that may be a bit of a tribute by Jaharis to his sister.
Yeah, yeah, I believe that. And what about here in 247, when
he got to witness a certain coming out of a future famous
night, didn't he? He he did you know, this is the
the origin story of Barristan. Tell me so 247 Barrison attempts
to joust against Prince Duncan at at Black Haven.
Barrison is a young boy. And Barrison himself, thinking
back on it later, thinks, you know, I, I looked ridiculous.
I was ridiculous. Someone should have just did you
know, taken me out of that. But instead they let me do it.
And of course, he fails almost immediately because he's just a
young boy and he's going up against an, an adult knight.
But that's when you know, he, he gets his moniker, he's he's a
brave boy. And while Jairus probably wasn't
jousting, again, I don't think he was really trained in or, or
formally knighted. I think it's very possible that
he was there as a spectator to support his brother, to be there
as a representative of House Targaryen.
And I think that, you know, if he's seeing Barristan, Harris
obviously doesn't know what's going to happen with Barrison in
the future, But it's interesting for him to think many years
later this this, you know, bold boy who's dousing when, you
know, he's barely even Squire age and going up against my
brother. He's going to be the one to help
save How Stargarius. Yeah, it it does come around
nicely. On the not so fun side for
Jairus and the rest of the family, there was a rebellion by
the mysterious Rat, Hawk and Pig, one of the most hard to
understand enemies of House Targaryen.
It's really unclear who these people were, but they certainly
did some damage. They did.
I mean, this is a uprising that we really don't get a lot of
detail about. We do know that the Crown is
victorious, but unfortunately Prince Daron is killed during
this uprising. Again, I don't think Harris was
on the battlefield. It's possible he was, but I
don't tend to think he was there.
He was the heir to the throne at this point, and he certainly
wasn't a physically imposing figure in the same way that his
brother, who loved tournament and battle, was.
And we also don't get a sense of how close, personally, Daron and
Jaharis were. But it is interesting to think
about what Jaharis would have thought about Daron's death.
I mean, Daron had followed his two brothers and saying, I don't
want to have this politically advantageous betrothal, although
he himself never married. He said, I I'm not marrying.
I'm going to spend my life as a warrior and with Jeremy Norris.
And so Jay Harris would have known that when Daron, when
Daron dies, that's it. There are no more brothers
there. There are no more Princess of
House Targaryen who are going to continue on the dynasty.
His branch is it that that's who will be House Targaryen in the
future. It is just his line.
And I think also, Jay Harris may have been looking at Daron and
thinking, Darren dies a warrior's death.
He's 23 years old. He can always be remembered as
this young, dashing Targaryen martyr, someone who dies
fighting the enemies of the crown.
And Harris may be thinking, well, what's my future look
like? I, I, I will never have that
future. So can I in a strange way, live
up to that? Can I, you know, if I ever fail
as king, if I'm ever not doing well as king, the natural
thought is going to be, well, you know, who would have done
better? Daron.
Daron would have done better than this.
Oh, but Daron died and now we've got you.
And so I think that it's potentially to Harris thinking,
well, I not only have to live up to that, but also maybe this is
also confirming some ideas supernaturally that if Daron is
never going to have descendants and there's not going to be any
dynastic descendants of Duncan, then it's my line.
If something's going to happen with House Targaryen, it's going
to happen with my descendants. So maybe in a in a strange sort
of way, it's reemphasizing the importance of my descendants.
These are going to be the ones who bring back the Dragons or
fulfill some sort of other prophecy.
Yeah, it really narrows it down even more.
It's like, how else could this even happen through if it's
going to happen for House Targaryen, well, it has to be
our children, you know, even when that's confirmed later by
seemingly confirmed later by a certain smallish person who we
will discuss in a moment. Also, given the Black Fire
threat, you know it would have been nice for Jairus and Cher to
have their brother Darren around to lead their armies and do all
that sort of thing, but alas, it was not to be.
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One event that we don't have a specific date for, not even that
much of A range for, is the prophecy of the future Ghost of
High Heart. What we're told by Yandel is
that Jenny of Old Stones was accompanied by to court by a
dwarfish Albina woman who was reputed to be a woods witch in
the Riverlands. In some ways it's kind of
unbelievable that any of this mattered, that this was advice
that they took. But the Ghost of High Heart has
the ability to prove herself very easily and quickly, so it's
not hard in that sense to believe she's convincing.
And and I think that, you know, there may be this sort of almost
mystique, I guess for for lack of a better term, in terms of
having this woodswitch because we hear about Jenny.
Jenny's obviously a comma from the Riverlands.
But Jenny herself is saying, well, actually, I'm a descendant
of the the first men, kings of the Riverlands.
And even in her own time, she's thought of as this sort of half
wild girl who's sort of living alone mysteriously.
So I think when Jenny brings the ghost of high heart to court,
it's it's really just sort of part of that appearance and aura
and mystique about Jenny herself.
And that, well, if you're going to be this mysterious descendant
of the kings of the first men, this sort of ancient time of
heroes, well, of course, you'd have your own prophet with you
who who herself looks sort of supernatural and and to your
point, can prove what she's dreaming about.
You know there are. The credentials are there for
her. It almost validates Duncan and
Jenny. They're like, well, you, we
don't need to have kids. It's going to be your kids that
right? Yeah, that's it.
But why would he listen to her in the 1st place?
This isn't other than her ability to predict things that
we said like she does in the books.
These are still not far ranging grand things on this scheme, I
suppose. I would guess that maybe he
needed some more convincing. Or was he maybe just that into
it that he was ready to believe he was being told what he wanted
to hear? Something along those lines.
I mean, I think it's sort of meeting in the middle.
I think it's, it's someone who has genuine prophetic ability
meeting someone who genuinely wants to believe in prophecy and
is living in a court where the prophecy and the supernatural
are very much out in the present.
And so the idea that I again, I do very much believe that at
this point to Harris is interested in prophecy, is
interested in the return of Dragons, is interested in
fulfilling the supernatural destiny of House Targaryen.
I think it's very possible that Gaharis is meeting the ghost of
high heart and thinking, well, this just confirms it.
Of course, I mean, if if she's saying it and she's a genuine
real, for real Seer that that makes sense that that fits with
everything. Because I've been reading about
it, I've been hearing about it. My great uncle was prophesying
about it. My uncle was dreaming about it.
And now we've got a woman talking about it.
So the idea that now he's hearing the ghost of high hearts
say the Princess that was promised is going to be born of
Heiress and Rayela's line, I think Heiress is thinking, yeah,
that adds up because Dragons are supposed to be hatching.
We've all, you know, so many members of the family have
foreseen this happening, dreamed about it happening, right about
it happening. And that Prince that was
promised is going to need Dragons.
So yeah, that all adds up 123. Yeah, and it kind of does,
doesn't it? You?
At least you can see from their perspective why it would.
But what would they be thinking in that moment, hearing that it
was their descendants that would fulfill this destiny?
Do you think that gave them a sense of pride or of duty?
Or was it just something like you said?
They were kind of already expecting it.
They'd already maybe figured a lot of it out, and this was more
of a confirmation than a revelation.
You know, I think that it's an interesting question because on
the one hand, I think you have this idea of potential
excitement because how would you not be excited if you're
thinking that a hero who has been prophesied for thousands of
years since the time of Valyria is going to be born potentially
in the next generation? That's incredibly exciting.
You're living in your own new age of heroes.
How could you not look forward to that?
And yet at the same time is Jaharis thinking, well, this is
kind of a big burden on me because now not only am I going
to have to be king someday, but now my potential grandson
grandson is, is going to be the apocalyptic savior of the world.
Like that's not just being raised to be Lord of the Seven
Kingdoms, that's being raised to literally save the world.
And I have to arrange that. Like I have to make that happen.
I have to make sure that that happens, because if I don't, the
world ends. No pressure.
Betty, I don't know how you process that.
Right. Just OK, Yeah.
OK. So yeah, we can handle that.
Right? Whoa.
Yeah. And it's also really interesting
to compare the scenarios that happen fairly close together or
maybe happen close together. This did probably happen before
Summerhall, almost certainly, but it also shows a different
approach. This also doesn't seem to
necessarily connect to the events of Summerhall.
Maybe the thinking behind it, but not the process.
And what I think might be at work here is not only did
Jaharis and Shara differ from their parents on marriage
strategy and, and the importance of perhaps traditional marriage
in this sense for what it means to Targaryens, but in how they
interpret the prophecy, things like that.
There might have been a difference, a substantial
difference in what Aegon the 5th believed was the way to bring
Dragons back in the world versus what Jaharis believed.
And that could explain a bit more of why they didn't seem to
be turned off by the pursuit, even after Summer Hall.
You might think that would slow them down a little bit, but it
didn't really did it. When the fate of the world is on
the line, are you going to be stopped by a little thing like,
you know, a big fire? Everyone dying.
No, that's not a problem. We're there already.
Hey, everyone's going to die if we don't do this.
So it's, you know, it's why not? So what do we think as well
about the revelation that Aries and Rael had to marry?
Do you think that was probably just no big deal?
They did it themselves. They were kind of already like
that, but maybe Aries and Raela weren't so thrilled about it.
They may have had to have some convincing, you know, like
neither Aries and Raela later in life seemed to, from what we
know, be like prophecy people, you know, I mean, Aries was had
all sorts of other problems, but it didn't seem to be a prophecy
guy, didn't seem to be a big area supernatural guy.
So I'm not sure that. They they were behind the
reasons. For their own marriage.
What do you think? Well, and I mean that's that's
the thing, which again comes into the love versus duty in the
human heart and conflict with itself that I think Dorjar
Martin loves exploring here. This is a couple to Harris and
Shira who have married for love. Like no question whether or not
there was any additional supernatural element to it.
They have married for love in defiance of their parents
wishes. And now Jay Harris and
presumably to some extent Sarah as well, are telling their own
children, you don't get to marry for love.
You, you in fact, you have no choice in who you're going to
marry. You're going to marry each
other. You don't like it too bad.
That's what's going to happen. And so there's a way in which I
think, and you know, to some extent validly, this this is
hypocritical on on its face. This is them saying, yeah, we
don't really care that we married for love.
You're going to do as we say. And I wonder to what extent did
you Harris Russell with that? Did he think about is it fair
for me to do this? Is it right for me to do this?
So is he thinking it doesn't matter because this is what
prophecy demands. This is this is what I have to
do it again. If the fate of the world is on
the line, are you going to get a little thing like love in the
way? No, you're not going to do that.
You're going potentially, according to Harris, you're
going to say it doesn't matter. I'm going to tell you to do
whatever you need to do because if you don't, the world's going
to end. And I, you know, to what extent
Eris and Rayela appreciated that or thought about that or agreed
with that, we don't know. I agree with you.
I don't think they have a lot of interest in prophecy, at least
from the little that we know. They certainly don't seem to
have been interested in each other because that's, you know,
Barristan is very clear with Danny about that, that they did
not wish to marry each other. But I don't think Gaharis cared.
I think Gaharis thought that kind of thought is secondary if
the question is the apocalyptic savior of the world.
Yeah, I think it's a a tough thing to have to manage, even
even though as you said it, it comes off as very hypocritical.
But it is what it is and that's what happened and they had to go
along with it. It wasn't like Aegon the 5th and
and Beth aware they caved. This is a a forced marriage that
definitely went through. There was no eloping or anything
like that. And Aegon himself was still
alive at this point. This is before, of course,
Summer Hall. So he was alive and he was not
happy with this. He did not like it, but he not
only had he gone along with it for his own kids, he went along
with it for his grandkids. So that sort of tracks.
I suppose he's not going to protest the the second one so
much if he let the first one happen.
I guess that. He believed that the Targaryen
incestuous marriages did more harm than good.
But maybe he was, like we said, open to other possibilities and
maybe some of this was related to prophecy.
It is kind of interesting to note how, yeah, Eris and Raela
don't seem to have had prophecy interest, but obviously Rhaegar
did. And obviously Daenerys is the
the person that it's all spoken of or about.
So she's living it. It does mean that there would
have been a nice connection between them.
Jahari's, Rhaegar and Danny, they could have all had some
nice conversations, you know? It, it really is.
It really is too bad that Danny never knew her grandfather.
I think they could have had some very interesting conversations.
Yeah, and I think we might not even get her grilling of
embarrassing about it. Like that dude may not live long
enough to tell her the things that she put off.
She why did she put it off? Do you know?
That's the thing here. Joe Harris is like the I
mentioned I made the the metaphor that he's like the red
comet of Targaryen kings, but he's also like George's
interruption method where he's explaining some supernatural
lore and then someone interrupts it and we don't get the end of
it. This was his life was like that.
This dude was all about the supernatural and then he just
dies. Yeah.
All right. Before he could get that deep
into it. So, yeah, you said it pretty
well here that Eggs Rain had a lot of frustrations.
Both in what he was trying to do politically and what he was
trying to do with his family, who really did not help his
political goals at all, given not just because of the breaking
of the betrothals, but for some other reasons as well.
I think by, you know, the late, you know, mid late two 50s, I
think, I guess just tired. I honestly I I think he's just
tired. He's getting middle age, if not
even, you know, close to old by Westerosi standards.
He came to the throne probably very idealistic, very much
thinking. Look at all these reforms.
I'm going to make I'm going to make life better for everyone.
I'm going to bring justice to everyone in Westeros.
And what has he found? Pushback argument, rebellion,
fighting even from his own children.
He can't get them to do what he wants.
And so by, you know, 20 odd years later, I think he's just
tired. I think he thinks I'm done
fighting. I, I can't, I can't pick so many
battles anymore. The battle I want to pick at
this point is Dragons. Like if, if I can get Dragons,
if I can just do that. Fine, Jaharis, you want your
children married? Fine, fine.
I won't argue as long as I can get Dragons, as long as I can
get this moving, because that's the thing that will make all of
this make sense. I think that's Daniel.
Only what was in Aiken's mind. I agree, and I think that we
have to look at this like a family.
These aren't 2 ideological differences playing out at a
distance. These are arguments played out
at a dinner table, right? These are things that they would
have, like you said, he might have gotten tired of because
Jaharius would have been very sure of himself.
It's what he comes off as, very sure of himself on these things.
And perhaps Shara was as well. So he might have been getting
double teamed by his children here over what they believed the
proper steps to take here was with regards to the
supernatural, with regards to prophecies.
And he may not have been so interested in any of it.
He may have been very opposed to some of their ideas.
It's hard to say, but it does seem that there were disputes
beyond the fallout from the betrothals.
It seems like there were some other troubles at home, shall we
say. And this might in fact be why
Aries and Rayella weren't that interested in prophecy.
They grew up hearing people argue about it all the time.
They might have been quite sick of it by the time they got
older. Like man, father and grandfather
would just go at it over that. I'm so over it.
And Rhaegar's like, what? I'm so interested in this
because he wasn't. He didn't have to grow up with
any of that. He only grew up in a, you know,
in a, in a fire, you know, having been born in a cataclysm.
That's a bit of a different thing, huh?
It's not exactly clear when Aries and Ray all are married,
but it was before Summerhall and they weren't exactly very old.
So the the window is pretty narrow.
It was around 258, Summerhall being the the next year.
So either way, that's pretty young.
But on the other hand, the dynasty is thin at this point.
You can understand why they were maybe.
Pushing it, And they may have been literally pushing it
because as we said, it doesn't seem like Aaron Arias and Rayla
wanted this, so they weren't exactly jumping into bed eagerly
here. So yeah, it's a lot of pressure.
No, I, I absolutely agree with you.
I mean, this is and I think it's, it's hard, at least at
least for me. It's hard for me not to feel,
you know, the sense of anger or resentment against De Harris
because Rayla is so very young. Why are you pushing her into
this, this young? It doesn't make sense.
I I think the only potential explanation, which is not a
justification, is that the Harris genuinely believes I need
to get this going. I need to get the Prince that
was promised going because clearly if this is being
prophesied, but as the descendant of Heiress and Raela,
that means potentially the apocalypse is nigh.
Like it is coming soon. And I need to get this going
because we can't have a baby being the leader of the world
during an apocalyptic crisis. So Rayla, you got to you got to
get this going. But whatever, you know,
explanation to Harris used again, Rayla is extremely young,
even by Westerosi standards to be pregnant and giving birth to
her first child. So it, it's, you know, I, I
think there is a, a sense of, of callousness on Jaharris's part.
And, you know, maybe in the kindest reading, which is,
again, not particularly kind in my in my feeling, we see him as
someone perhaps like a radar who is marrying Elia and having
multiple children. It's despite the fact that it's,
you know, extremely difficult for Elliot after her first child
because Rhaegar believes I need these children.
And if I've been prophesied to have them, then it'll be fine.
Yeah. And clearly everything should be
fine if I've been prophesied to have one.
So, you know, get to it. I think that may have been
something similar to Harris's mind.
Not a justification for me, but that I think is what is what
he's saying. Yeah, I agree.
I think that's very likely. And I think there's a bit of
arrogance in that because, yes, he believes sincerely that the
Prince, the Prince that has promised that we born of their
life. I said Princess because that's
who it turned out to be. But there's no reason to rush it
if it's going to happen, you know why take the chance of
screwing it up by having your daughter pregnant too young?
It's very much rogue Arbaratheon and Alyssa Valerian again, but
in reverse. She was too old for it.
Same concept though. Or the TV shows version of
Viserys and Emma. So it's a theme that's been used
a few times. The pushing of the prophecy too
much and perhaps overconfidence bordering into zealotry.
Or maybe that word is too strong.
Maybe, maybe arrogance is is a better word to settle on.
Because yeah, it doesn't happen to, it doesn't have to happen in
their lifetime. It it just has to happen at the
end of Aegon the 5th reign, the end, meaning the end in flame,
the Blackfires rose again to become a threat.
They took advantage of what they thought was an opportunity, and
I guess it kind of was an opportunity.
Not as much of one as they hoped, but certainly it was a
close run thing, as we're told. Absolutely.
I mean, we hear about the this band of nine who's gathering in
the Free Cities. Maelis Blackfire is the
representative and this point presumably the last member, last
male line member anyway, of Black Fires.
And he's gathering with these other adventurers, for lack of a
better term, and they're promising.
We're going to get each other kingdoms, we're going to get
each other crowns. We'll all band together as this
band of nine and we will make sure that we all are wearing
crowns at the end of the day. And we hear from in the World of
Ice and Fire that eight of the 5th and Jaharis initially don't
think very much of this, this band of nine of and especially
of of may list. And I think there's maybe a few
reasons for that. It had been the better part of
20 years since the last black fire in Beijing, and that had
been stopped very quickly. So I think that this had been a
very long stretch of time where the black fires really hadn't
appeared to this as a threat. Yes, they still existed.
Yes, the Targaryens were very much aware of them.
But I think they, the Targaryens, may have decided our
guys are done with us. They've realized that invading
isn't going to get them anywhere.
So, yeah, let them have let them have their little Kingdom over
the sea. That's fine.
As long as they're not touching our soil, we don't really care.
And I think that Jaharis may have any some extent a, the 5th
as well may have seen Malus as by this point, a a true
foreigner, someone who is both physically as well as
dynastically just too far away to pose a threat to the
Targaryen dynasty. I mean, there are no other black
fires left as as far as we know, Malus is the last of of that
male lion. And so Taharis may have thought
problem will solve itself in a couple of years.
Malus will, you know, get killed in some battle in the disputed
lands and then that'll be the end of it.
That's the end of House black fire.
We really no one's going to follow a female black fire to
sit on the Iron Throne. We'll be fine.
And it's also possible that to Harris thought, well, my dad's
not old. Yes, he's, you know, almost 60,
but that's not ancient by Westerosi standards.
It's very possible Egg still has 5-10 years of life left, if not
more so Sure, this really isn't going to be my problem in the in
the in the near future. I can let my dad deal with this.
And if the black fires are still a problem in 10 years, well,
that's 10 years from now. His problem?
Yeah, he was probably more focused on Summer Hall.
That wasn't something that probably just popped up
overnight. It was something that was
planned for for quite a while. Most likely the set up, the
whatever that involved, the planning, everyone traveling to
be there. Jahara's having an interest in
the supernatural. Well, he would certainly be more
interested in this than the black fires, even though that's
something that's been with him all his life.
This is something that he wants. This is something that he's
excited about, something that he assumes is going to happen at
some point, and he might think it's going to happen here, but
for different reasons. What do we think his general
sense would have been? Coming up to Summerhall?
What? Have you been optimistic, or
maybe are we of more than mine, that he didn't agree with his
father on these methods, as we alluded to earlier, and that he
just thought it would be maybe more of a regular failure, not a
spectacular failure like this? It's hard to believe anyone
predicted this exactly. I genuinely think that Jay
Harris may have been excited about Summer Hall, may have been
encouraging Summer Hall because I think Jay Harris genuinely
believed my grandson. Grandson is going to be the
Prince that was promised. This is a gathering ostensibly
to celebrate the birth of that grandson.
So yeah, why not? This will be sort of the, the
grand literal and figurative coming out party of the Prince
that was promised. This is this is this 1st
celebration. This is a hero has been born a
savior for the world has been born for House Targaryen and
it's my grandson. And because Egg is clearly
focused on hatching Dragons at this, he's gathering not just
dragon eggs together, but also all the members of House
Targaryen that he can together to have them, you know, to add
whatever supernatural power that does.
I think to Harris is thinking, yeah, this makes sense.
My grandson, the Prince that was promised is going to be born at
the exact same time the Dragons are going to hack into the world
again. They're obviously both links.
The Prince that was promised in Dragons, this figure and Dragons
are always LinkedIn these prophecies.
So yeah, makes sense to me. Let's let's go, let's do it.
This will be this will be a big celebration.
This will be the start of the fulfillment of this prophecy.
It's possible we should be considering that you Harry's had
a bigger role in Summer Hall then we've prior theorized
because yeah, obviously it's Aegon the Fifth decision and it
was probably his idea in the 1st place.
But a lot of the details and the working through it all may have
been on Jaharis or just from his influence.
He may have pushed a lot of it or had a lot of ideas.
Certainly would fit. We, we obviously can't be sure
of something like that, but I think it's an idea that has some
merit to it. But of course, what actually
happened was a horrible tragedy that Jaharis and Sharad were
able to escape. They were among the people to
get out along with Aries and Raella.
We're not entirely sure if there were any other members of the
family who weren't there, but we certainly have a long list of
people that were and died there. So that changed his perspective
quickly. What you said a few moments ago
is that he thought he maybe had some time.
Very quickly, he learned he did not.
I don't know what exactly the Harris expected to happen at
Summer Hall, but whatever he thought was going to happen, it
definitely wasn't a conflagration that was going to
claim the lives of most of the attendees of Summerhall and
honestly, probably almost claimed his life too.
This seems like a really devastating fire.
So I can imagine that Harris was afraid for his life as well,
although obviously he got out. And so it it's it's hard to
think about, you know, what was his reaction to this, that I
think in a way he may have thought like this, this isn't
right. This isn't what was supposed to
happen. What was supposed to happen is
that the Prince that was promised is born and everyone's
excited and we've got Dragons in the world again.
And this is the beginning of prophecy.
And now instead we've got, yes, his grandson has been born.
Yes, his grandson is healthy, but his father is dead, his
older brother is dead, his sister-in-law and Jenny is dead.
There are presumably other members of the family who
attended who also died. He and his wife and their two
children and now their baby grandson are among the very few
survivors. And now also he himself is king
and he has to take over. So I think that this is going
from what should have been this Acme for Jeharis, this
celebration of I was right about the prophecy all along.
Look at that. And now it's wait a second,
what? What is this supposed to mean?
How? How do I interpret this in the
context of prop? Because clearly the prophecy
still has to be true somehow. So how does all of this make
sense? How does this all fit together
that we get the Prince that was promised in the end?
Yeah, it it must have been at least a mental set back of lack
of understanding, unless we had the right of it when theorizing
that he didn't agree with what his father was doing here in
terms of methods, even though he certainly agreed with the
hopeful outcome there. So, yeah, it was a hopeful
celebration of life at the very least.
They expected. OK, well, maybe our Dragons
won't be born, but we'll have a Prince born or, or a Princess,
and that's a good thing. But instead, yeah, what happened
happened. Rain.
It must have been a really sad return to King's Landing.
I mean, you have the untimely death of a king.
That's bad enough, but this was so much worse.
The expected outcome versus the bare minimum, right?
Like they could have gotten a dragon or two out of it.
Maybe that wasn't the widespread expectation, but at least the
birth of a new royal. They thought that would be a
nice thing to celebrate, but wow, just nothing good at all
about that. No, absolutely not.
And I can only imagine the return not just, you know,
obviously physically, but also psychologically to King's
Landing. After Summer Hall, the party
departs. It's literally a party.
Everyone is celebrating. They're anticipating this new
great grandson for the king. They I don't think I can
advertise this, but they're anticipating Dragons.
It's going to be a big triumphant return when they come
back. Look, we've got a new baby
Dinos. Oh, and by the way, we've also
got a hatchling dragon or two. And instead summer Hall quite
literally explodes and this Yep, in self explosive news reaches
the capital and all of a sudden they're thinking what happened?
And this almost funeral Cortese returns where it's Jaharish and
Shara and their children and baby Rhaegar.
Very few members of the family left, definitely no Dragons.
And now it's, it's this, you know, physically weak, not
imposing second son Jaharis, who suddenly has to take up the
manslaughter government. And as soon as he does, the Band
of Nine makes their move. He may have thought they were in
the background, he may have been wanting to continue focusing on
the prophecy and what had gone wrong.
But now he had a existential threat of source.
Someone that wanted to to overthrow the dynasty and the
hero of the prior rebellion was one of the casualties of
Summerhall, that being Sir Duncan the Tall.
And of course his father had been preparing for some of this
but wasn't expecting it at the time it came.
So this was a rather sudden and well, they had to react quickly.
But you know, Jairus, not a warrior as we said, but also,
you know, not a coward, right? And.
Certainly not a coward. And I think that I can see where
on the one hand, I think Jaharis is feeling a sense of terror,
Probably would have been feeling a sense of terror because he's
always been the least Marshall of, of Aegon the Fifth Sons.
And now this least Marshall of the Sons has to face what is
potentially the biggest Black Fire invasion since at least the
third, if not the first Black Fire rebellion.
And I think Jaharis may have been thinking, why is this me?
Why am I the one who is leading this?
Why? Where is my brother Darrod?
He should be here. Where is my father and my older
brother? They should be here.
Why is it on me, this least martial?
I can't lead the armies myself. I can't go out on a horse, sword
in hand, Lance in hand, try to defeat Maitless myself.
Why is this falling on me? Why is this what I'm dealing
with? I like.
Why am I the last of the adult males of House Targaryen?
Who and facing down this crisis? Must have been a little bit
nerve racking if not for him for the realm that Aries went on the
step stones. But they did have a good plan
and they had good leaders even though they didn't have a lot of
Targaryens around. Certainly some capable folks.
And well, he would have to sit back and just wait for news and
and hope it went well, huh? He would, and I think that
that's, you know, probably a frustrating aspect of of J
Harris's reign for him is that he can't be there on, on the
battlefield. You know, he, he can send
capable commanders, He can send capable leaders, he can send his
armies. But he himself is sitting in
King's Landing and he can only do so much from a writing desk.
He can send the instructions and then he has to hope that
everything goes well. And I think that, you know, I do
think that Harris has a sense of what to do.
You know, obviously, again, he's not a battlefield dental.
He's not going to take up sword in hand.
But I do think that he has an understanding in terms of how to
fight this war, how to progress in this war because I think he
realizes well, I need to take the fight to the steps shows.
I can't let them just land in Westeros and #1 it's not good
for my people. I can't have them just ravaging
my subjects. But also #2 I can't have them
rallying any kind of pro black fire or anti Targaryen sentiment
in the in the Kingdom. I can't have them landing and
saying, do you want this weakling on the Iron Throne or
do you want a powerful warrior on the Iron Throne?
And hey, do you want the guy who who's the son of the man who
just blew up his entire family? Seems a little unstable if you
ask me. At least Maelis has got an army
he can lead. Kaharis doesn't want that.
He doesn't want that kind of propaganda being put out from
for his people thinking, thanks. Let's you know Maelis is a
foreigner. Let's treat this as a foreign
war. We are going to land on the step
stones. We're going to take the fight to
him. We're going to make sure he does
not step one toe onto Westerosi soil.
Now, in terms of his image, and I think this is a good segue to
that, we mentioned earlier that he maybe concealed something
going on with his left arm. Yeah, he needed to project an
image, and perhaps more so than a lot of the other Targaryen
kings, because he was trying to engender a certain view or
prevent people from seeing him as weak, maybe is a better way
to put it. And part of that is his choice
of crown, I think. Right, that.
Let's talk about that briefly. You can't use the word briefly
because when it comes to me and talking about crowns, I could go
on for about an hour, but I will try to keep this anyway.
I mean, here's the thing, on a practical level, I don't think
Jaharis has a lot of choices in terms of the crowns that are at
least that are already accent in terms of what to wear.
Aegis crown was the crown of Aegon the Third and the crown of
the Sarah's the second. It was probably destroyed at
Summerhall. I'm going to assume if it was a
massive massive massive conflagration that crown was
probably destroyed. The Harris also can't wear the
crown of Egg and the Conqueror because that was lost with
Darren the first Endor. Although whether or not everyone
has it till this day is a great theory anyway.
But what? And, you know, I think on a on a
personal level, the Harris really isn't going to be drawn
to something like the crown of Aegon the unworded, this sort of
gaudy, over the top statement of Aegon the 4th's own ego.
And so there's not a lot of choices for Jaharis, but I think
he makes a very clever choice and he chooses the crown of his
grandfather Makar. It's this, you know, band with
the iron spikes on on top, actually a little bit like the
Stark crown. Interesting.
Like it's always sort of depicts that way, which is which is
interesting to me. But you know, I think I think
it's a clever choice for Jaharis.
Makar is obviously Jaharis's most immediate predecessor after
his own father. Yet if Jeharis can't have his
father's own crown, well, Makar is the next in line.
So he can take Makar's crown and convey that sense of continuity.
But more than that, Makar, as we mentioned, a very famous
battlefield commander and a commander against the black
fires. This is a king who time and
again went to war against the black fires.
And what this was someone who was not afraid to take up the
sword for House Targaryen and say, no black fires, you do not
get the Iron Throne and I will stop you at the point of my
sword. And so I think J Harris
realizes, look, I'm personally not a warrior king.
I will never be a warrior king. But I can sort of take some of
the legacy of that most famous of warrior kings.
I can take that on and say I am not literally going to be on the
battlefield, but I am bringing in the spirit of my grandfather
by wearing his crown. I am saying I am stepping in to
make our shoes. He was willing to take the
place. The black fires, so am I.
He would bravely face them down, so am I.
He did not let them take the Iron Throne and neither am I
going to do that. And of course, he had to give up
command to someone else, as we said, and that turned out to be
Orban Baratheon, who of course is the grandfather of Robert
Ranley and Stannis. And this is notable for a couple
of reasons, at least. And some of them are a little
subtle, aren't they? They are.
And yeah, this is a point that I, I, I, I talk about a fair
amount on various Tumblr posts and I, and I really, I really do
believe in this. I think this is a more important
moment than it might seem on face, because for the first time
in a major Westerosi war since the Conquest, there are no
Targaryens commanding anywhere in the field there.
You know, it's not the king, it's not one of the adult
Princess. No Targaryens are leading the
charge here. Obviously Ormond is a joke, a
descendant of a Targaryen bastard son.
Obviously he's married to a Targaryen, so it's not like
they're completely divorced from the Targaryens.
But he's not a Targaryen himself.
And I think that's such an important distinction because
even after the Targaryens lost their Dragons, they were still
leading troops on the battlefield.
Kings and Princess of House Targaryen were still leading the
armies. They were still claiming that
title of protector of the realm, the sort of what I like to call
the Warden of Wardens, the one who will, you know, defend the
realm and protect it. But now the power of command on
the battlefield, it's not in the hands of a Targaryen.
It's in the hands of a Targaryen vassal.
They're not just bringing the troops, they're leading the
troops. Jaharis is directing the war.
Again, Jaharis is giving commands.
But when it comes to decisions on the battlefield, that's not
in the hands of the Targaryens. And I think this is a crucial
moment. You know, when we talked a
little bit earlier that I sort of made the mean reference about
the, the line of dominoes when we're thinking about the origins
of Robert's Rebellion. I think we need to look at this
moment because I think this is a moment where remember, this is
all of the aristocrats of Westeros.
This is Westeros's really only united war where everyone is
coming together to fight a foreign enemy.
All of these aristocrats from all over the country are
gathering together and I think they're thinking, guys, what are
we doing? Wait a second.
You know, when when our ancestors bent the knee to egg
in the Conqueror, what was the arrangement there?
Yes, we gave up our crowns. Yes, we gave up our royal
titles. Yes, we agreed to pay their
taxes and fight in their wars and do them homage.
But what was the agreement from them in return?
They agreed to protect us and they agreed to protect our
ancestral rights. And what have we gotten in
recent memory? Are they protecting us?
Well, not if you're living under Eris the First, 'cause he left
them punfully intended, high and dry against the Ironborn.
And are they protecting our ancestral rights?
Well, not if you're living under Egg in the 5th.
Because he's trying to take them away.
He's trying to implement his own reforms.
And so I think for people especially like Hoster and
Brendan Tully and Richard Stark and John Aaron, I think they're
looking at this moment and thinking, guys, we've got the
power here. We are the ones with the armies.
We're the ones leading the armies.
We're the Targaryens. They're nowhere except for
heiress who's a Squire. We're the ones with the power
here. We're the ones who can say
something. So why are we living in the same
arrangement that we had when the Targaryens had Dragons?
It, it doesn't add up, it doesn't make sense.
To be clear, I am not saying that it's the War of the 9 Penny
Kings that makes them want to replace the Targaryens with the
Baratheons. That is not what happened.
But what I'm saying is when we're thinking about the origin
of this dispute between the crown and its vassals, and that
really is at the heart of Robert's Rebellion, I think we
do need to start here. And I do think we need to think
about this moment where maybe there's the beginning of this
self-awareness that we really are the ones with the power
here. We're the ones who can to
enforce the rule of House Targaryen or not, and if we are,
then we're also the ones who can enforce Cagus.
And that is an interesting way to consider Jairus's thoughts on
the matter. He may have not just been
wanting to put himself on the battlefield for optics, but he
may have realized this facet as well.
That without Targaryens on the battlefield, people might look
around and realize they don't need Targaryens anymore.
So he may have been noticing that, especially given that his
head was all was very deep in the idea of getting Dragons back
and what that would mean for them.
So he would have an understanding, a thorough
understanding, I think, of the insurance and outs of what that
level of power would mean with or without Dragons.
And extending that to with or without notable warriors.
I mean, previous generation, they had some pretty big names.
Right. Aiming the dragon knight.
Baylor breaks beer. King Daron.
Yeah. There's nothing like that in
this era. And there hadn't been a whole
lot in a while other than young Prince Daron, who was killed by
the rat and Hawking the pig and and his career was cut a little
short. So that affects people's ability
to remember him and for him to rack up the deeds might be a
little. Why?
The replacement commander for Ormond when he was killed was
Sir Gerald Hightower, so that's interesting.
He was named by Jaharis and then became the commander in
replacement here. So that's an interesting little
subtopic, isn't? It, it, it is.
And I think the I do think that it's a very purposeful
designation that that Jaharis gives him to, to name General
Hightower as the, as the new commander, because I think that
Jaharis believes this is as close as I can personally get to
being on the battlefield. I can't personally go.
And my son is far too young to name him as commander.
But if I name the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard that is the
representative of the crown, he's not acting as a member of
House Hightower. He is acting as a representative
of House Targaryen. He is my sword arm, so to speak.
He is the person who, when you look at him, you are looking at
me. I am there on the battlefield,
just not physically. And it's interesting because we
really don't get a huge sense of what Gerald's back story was or,
or, you know, why Gaharis names him, how they become aware of
each other. Presumably, you know, Gerald did
know him. You know, presumably he's
already on the kindergarten. We don't know exactly how long,
but I think that maybe Gaharis is looking at him and thinking,
well, first of all, he's A at least a relatively speaking
young man. Although I don't know exactly
how young he was because Dope was around 70 when he died.
So anyone who's appointed after that is probably going to be
considered young by comparison. But he's a relatively young man.
So he's he's vigorous, he's healthy.
He can sort of administer this war in Gaheris name.
And I think that Gaheris may have also thought, well, he's
he's an aristocrat and he's an aristocrat from a very old
blooded family. So he knows what it is to
command other aristocrats. He knows what it is to work
among aristocratic circles and give orders.
He's been trained to do that, you know, probably since
boyhood. So, you know, it makes sense
that Gaheris is looking at him and thinking, if I can't be
there, then I want the next best thing, and that's Joel
Hightower. Yeah, and it's an interesting
evolution of Targaryen power as well, if we're thinking, well,
they no longer have their own great warriors.
They certainly don't have Dragons.
Well, at least they can have the Kingsguard and they can put the
very best of the best in there. And that manifests much later.
I think maybe we can trace this to that to this as well this
time, which is that Aries was known for having a particularly
strong Kingsguard. At least some of those were
Jairus's Kingsguard because of course he inherited them and
Jairus reign was so short they didn't have much time to get
killed. So in fact it may be most of
them. I know Arthur Dane came along a
little later, but certainly the culmination of the Fifth Black
Fire Rebellion or the War of the 9 Penny Kings was due to the
next man to join the Kingsguard. And what a story that is.
I mean, it really is. And and again, we we mentioned
this at the beginning, Joe Harris may have been there when
Barrison sort of made his debut on the chivalric scene, so to
speak. And now it's Barrison who saves
House Targaryen. It's Barrison who steps into the
sabaton, so to speak, of Doug and the tall and cuts down
another black fire pretender. And you know, to what extent to
Harris was there when young Barrison gousted against Doug
the tall or Doug the small? Maybe, maybe not.
But I think he would have been very justified in noting this
boy and seeing look how he's come up.
This is someone who is devoted to the crown, who wants to spend
his life wearing that white cloak, serving the crown,
defending the crown's honor. You know, Barristan is a legend
in his own time. He is someone that is spoken
about with other legendary figures of the Kingsguard, like
I am Redwin and aiming the Dragon Knight, and it's Jaharis.
It's Jaharis who puts that white cloak on him, who singles him
out and says yes, you have earned this spot.
You get to defend House Targaryen for the rest of your
life. Yeah, yeah.
I like that. And I mean, Barristan, as far as
we know, he wanted to be a Kingsguard all his life.
He grew up dreaming of that. So it really does fit.
It really does come together nicely.
And it is pretty much perfect for what Jaharis needs around
him at this time. He seems to have done a pretty
good job after the war, right? He had to start with that.
So it kind of was a stunted beginning to his reign.
He had to focus on a war. But once the war was settled,
which wasn't super long, he got to ruling and it went pretty
well, right? Mostly pretty well, Right.
Yeah. It seems to have been fairly
well. Now, again, part of that is a
function of time. There's not a lot of time
between the end of the war and the Harris's death.
So, you know, had he lived another ten, 20-30 years, would
people have been as happy with Jaharis as king?
Maybe, maybe not. But he doesn't have to live that
long in a, in a strange way, like his brother Deron, he gets
to die as a sort of war hero. He gets to die with the memory
of this war. Sort of the last thing that
people remember about him is, well, at least Jaharis, you
know, helped us win this war. At least Jaharis was king when
we won this war against the Blackfires.
But no, it seems pretty stable, pretty secure.
I think that the most notable part about Daharis's brief reign
after the war is that he makes sure that he reconciles these
houses who had been unhappy with the Iron Throne because of his
father's attempted reforms. Now, we don't know what those
reforms were #1 and so we don't know what Daharis might have
done to reconcile those houses. But I think this speaks to the
point that I was just making a little bit ago, which is that I
think Jaharis realized correctly, this is not the time
for me to antagonize my vassals. This is not the time that I can
say, right? And now let's go right back to
what my dad was doing. And you give up all of your
ancestral powers so that I can look after the small folk.
This is not the climate that he wants to do that in, because his
vassals have just shown they've got power.
They've got armies that can defeat a foreign enemy.
The armies that can defeat a foreign enemy can also defeat
the armies of the crown lands and replace you if they very
much want to. And I think Caharis realizes I
don't have the strength personally, draconically,
militarily, to fight off my vassals.
So let's just not antagonize them.
Let's just keep things at a status quo and everyone will be
happy with it. And we won't.
Yeah, we'll try to make sure everyone's everyone's OK with
the Targaryen sitting the Iron Throne, since they've just been
presented with the opportunity to crown an alternative.
Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. They their gratitude over
stopping melees would only go so far.
They would still want what they want there by nature drawn to
power and don't want to lose what they had as you say.
So yeah, reforms don't work when you're not very strong.
That's very true by the way. Speaking of their alternative,
if melees was crowned, would there have to be like 2 crowns?
Like 1 little crown. Weigh in in the comments.
Would there be two crowns? From melees to monstrous.
Yes, Jerry died in 262. He was only 37.
His reign was only about 3 years.
Aegon the Third also died at 37. We mentioned that earlier as an
example, but he had been king for almost 30 years.
So it goes to show how just because they were the same age,
that's not a really great comparison otherwise because of
so many differences in their life.
Besides that, he just apparently.
Just had a. Shortness of breath and then
that was it. He had a short illness and then
passed normally. We have a good reason to at
least consider suspicion here, but it doesn't really fit here
very well. There's nothing big happened
after his death. No one seems to have a lot of
motive. I don't know, it just, yeah, it
seems like maybe this one's just mundane.
I agree. I, I don't think there's really
any suspicion here. And I think the fact that, you
know, usually when the author wants us to be suspicious or
think about something, he'll usually layer in a clue.
He'll, he'll, he'll tip us off. He'll say, hey, something's not
quite right about this. There's really not anything
there. I mean, we know that Jaharis is
frail and sickly throughout his entire life.
And we know he's just gone through the biggest war,
certainly in the last two to three decades, if not longer,
that Westeros has experienced. I mean, you look at any look at
any given president or head of state, you know, when they come
into office and then after they come into office and look at
just the physical change to that individual.
I think that was probably true to Harris as well.
For someone who already wasn't physically robust.
And then to go through the stress of managing a war, a very
big and important war against the last of the black fire
pretenders. I I think that took a toll on
him. I think that he just really got
broken down by the stress of that.
You know, I think that the comparison here is maybe someone
like George the 6th. So George the 6th is also a
second son and he comes the throne after his brother
advocates to marry a commoner. And he also is gets pretty
quickly, not so immediately, but pretty quickly thrown into the
Second World War. And so he is he is king of Great
Britain when the Second World War is happening, when the Blitz
is happening in London. And he's managing this.
And I get he doesn't die quite so quickly after it as as the
Harris does, but it does take a toll on him physically,
psychologically. And so I think that's maybe the
the thought that George is going for here is to Harris is not
robust to begin with. He goes through a really
stressful period. It's it kind of just is too much
for him. He's not going to live a long
life after that. It's almost a little bit like
the the concept that blood Raven and the children tell Bran,
which is that a lot of the the most powerful wielders of the
old gods magic for lack of a better term, are not around very
long. Like Jojen got his was open to
his powers after illness and Bran after his fall, things like
that. So this isn't like that because
he isn't literally endowed with those same powers, but it is
thematically very similar man, very interested in power, very
interested in supernatural power, but also burdened by it,
as you say, because that would be part of it.
Not only the political, not only the dynastic, but the
expectation of the world savior coming from his line.
As far as people who had shorter reigns, we said that he didn't
quite have the shortest one. Aegon the second and Viserys the
second, that's it right? I guess being the second isn't
so great in Westeros. Although Deron the Second did a
pretty good job. He lasted for a while.
Eris, the second lasted. For a while.
Too, But that's not a good one. Yeah, legacy.
The memory of King Jaharis has had quite the impact on Sir
Barristan since he got his white cloak from Barristan, and it's
something he's cherished his whole life.
So that's got to be an important moment, something very memorable
to him. And well, Barrison cites Jaharis
when defending his career as a Kingsguard to Joffrey after the
death of Robert. Sansa watched as the knight
peered up at his new king. She had never seen him look his
years before, yet now he did. Your.
Grace. He said.
I was chosen for the white swords in my 23rd year.
It was all I had ever dreamed from the moment I first took
sword in hand. I gave up all claim to my
ancestral keep. The girl I was to wed married my
cousin in my place. I had no need of land or sons.
My life would be lived for the realm.
Sir Gerald Hightower himself heard my vows to ward the king
with all my strength, to give my blood for his.
I fought beside the White Bull and Prince Louis of Dorn,
besides Sir Arthur Dayne the sword.
Of the morning before I served your father, I helped shield
King Aries and his father Jaharius before him. 3 kings.
Yeah. Danny's really moved by this.
She never even considered that Barristan could have known her
grandparents. It wasn't something that crossed
her mind. As we alluded to earlier, she
may never actually get the chance to hear these stories,
and that's kind of a bummer. But hopefully she does.
And if she does learn about those things, well, that's
really interesting. Like she may learn some things
about him that affect her decisions which will in a way
justify or at least extend his legacy in a way that he maybe
didn't predict but would have maybe been happy to see.
I mean, it's, it's interesting and I think that, you know, it's
very obvious from from that quote where, you know, Barrison
is kind of talking about his career and, and his life as a
Kingsguard. He he's still thinking about the
Harris. He's still thinking about this
is the person who gave me this cloak that he hasn't.
He he doesn't think of himself Barristan as someone who sort of
emerge into the white cloaks fully formed.
He thinks about this is something that was given to me
and it was given to me by Jaharis the second.
This is someone that I will always have a personal
connection with because without him I would not be Barrist in
the bold legendary commander of the Kingsguard.
And as the only person that witnessed to Jaharis this next
take of his, which is in the context of Hisdar's reaction to
grow Leo's head being revealed, which of course is a big
provocation. Grolio was a hostage that was
supposed to be not killed. And that's not what you're
supposed to do with hostages when you want to maintain the
peace. So Barristan had a very
interesting reaction to this. And here it is quote.
Sir Barristan glanced toward the throne.
He had served so many kings, he could not help but imagine how
they might have reacted to this provocation.
Aries would have flinched away in horror, likely cutting
himself on the barbs of the Iron Throne, then shrieked at his
swordsman to cut the youngkish men to pieces.
Robert would have shouted for his hammer to repay Blood Beard
in kind. Even Jaharis reckoned weak by
many, it would have ordered the arrest of Blood Beard and the
youngkish slavers. So he acknowledges that Jaharius
may have been considered weak by others given his physical
sickliness, but he absolutely doesn't agree with that view.
It's just pretty clear, even though he doesn't come out and
say it, that he doesn't see it that way.
He he had some admiration for for Jaharius.
In fact, that may stem in part because he had some physical
setbacks. He may have looked on that as
something that he overcame and respects him for.
It I agree with that. I mean, I think that Barristan
is clearly turned off by how his daughter reacts, which is which
is you know why why he's thinking about this.
This is to your point, this is a shocking move to not just kill a
hostage, but then to throw the head on the ground.
I mean, that is just like it is a deliberate provocation.
They are, they are looking for war here.
And so I think as Barristan is thinking about this, he's
thinking, well, any king worth his salt would have to respond
to that. And yeah, you could be a king
like a robber who is very much a warrior king.
He wants to go into war about this, right that very moment.
And you could be a violent king like heiress and say, well,
someone else has to cut him down.
But I think. Barristan realizes even someone
like a Jaharis, no, he's not going to pick up his own sword
or call for his own sword. He's not, you know, either
warlike like that or violent like that.
But he's got to recognize this is not right.
This is not what you do with hostages.
This is something that has to be responded to.
And, and I think that it's interesting that Barristan says,
well, Jaharis would have ordered the arrest of Blood Beard and
youngish slavers. Is Barristan thinking of Jaharis
as following in his own father's footsteps?
Because what does Egg do when Bloodraven has Amy Spotfire
murdered? He arrests him.
That's the first thing that he does.
I think that if Barristan, Barristan may not be literally
thinking about that moment, but in thinking about Jaharis in
this way, he may unconsciously be comparing Jaharis to his own
father as someone who, when he sees an injustice done, he's
going to prosecute that. He's going to make sure that the
wrongdoers are promptly and properly arrested and brought to
justice. I agree.
One final very minor character that might have a connection
here is Squire Dollbridge. Now if you don't recall who that
is, it's one of Corin's band, Corin Half Hands.
He was the elite Archer that guarded the past, that helped
them make their attempted escape, and he was supposedly
the Squire for a king. Now Aries wasn't likely to be
possible because of the age, and that also eliminates Robert from
contention because Squire Dalbridge is not a young man.
So Jaharis is probably our best bet.
And we know that Jaharis was on the battlefield at least once,
and he would have worn armor at other times, perhaps for stately
events or other occasions, so he would have needed help dressing
up. That's the thing, even even if
he wasn't on the battlefield very often, he still would have
a Squire. So it's a pretty interesting
connection and a possible fit. Not a whole lot to say about it,
but a fun little piece of world building that adds some
connections between places you wouldn't expect it.
I agreed and I think well, and and I'll know, although it's
obviously semi canonical, the worldwide inspire app does
explicitly identify Jaharis as the king that Dahlberg squired
for again, semi canonical, but take that for what it's worth.
I I do agree though, that that that just makes sense for for
every other reason that you lay out.
And I think that, you know, it doesn't have to be the case in
Westeros, although it's typical, if not, you know, almost always
that a Squire is going to Squire for an anointed knight.
Doesn't have to be the case. We've got Oliver, Fred, who
Squires for Rob. Rob is not an anointed knight,
but he's a king, He's a warrior. And so it's it's no shame for
Oliver to Squire for him. Similar story.
Well, perhaps not so similar, but similar in the sense that
not a knight with Podrick painting Tyrion, Tyrion is
obviously not an anointed knight.
He's never going to be an anointed knight, probably, but
Podrick is still squiring for him him because while he's sort
of a tangential Lannister retainer and Tyrion is a
high-ranking Lannister. So I think even if Saharis was
never formally knighted, even if he was never trained formally in
knighthood or fully in knighthood, it's only been very
possible that he had Squires simply because he was a Prince
and a king. And that's what a Prince and a
king does. He has Squires.
He has Squires that he at least nominally trained in the arts of
war and and I like the idea that especially if Jaharis was not
knighted and so couldn't knight Dollbridge himself.
Maybe Dollbridge took the black either after Jaharis's death or
after, you know, Robert's Rebellion, because he says I I
don't want the honor like I squired for a king so no one
else can do the honor for me. Like no one else could be as
high as to Harris tonight. Me, I won't accept that for
anyone else. I don't want to accept loyalty
to anyone else because that would be degrading in my eyes.
Stepping down because I squired for a king like that was, that
was the height of of what I could do.
So anything else is lesser. I'm either going to devote
myself to the Targaryens and then go to the Wall after, as so
many, you know, Targaryen loyalists were, or I might just
go to the ball directly and say my life, my life ends with
Jaharis. If he's dead, then I'm just
going to resign myself to the ball.
And if Jaharis, if he perceived Jaharis as someone that was
really giving himself to the realms, one that was genuine
carer for the realmi of compassion for his subjects or
really wanted to do right by them, then his Squire might have
that same attitude and would see service to the Night's Watch as
a very good way to continue that work in a in a humble way
befitting a Squire. Yeah, I like that a lot.
It's a good it's a very good small story.
A very has a beginning and A and a tragic end, but a heroic end
of his own. So yeah, he had his long career
and hopefully they're united in death.
Squire Dollbridge and Jaharius the second having a beer and an
ale in the afterlife. There in the somewhere there
with the 7 overlook. If only.
If only Stone Snake had squired for a day or so, we could have
some more information. On He's still out there.
He's still. Out there somewhere, yeah.
Hopefully he got all the information from Squire
Dollbridge. They did a info dump, right?
Like many key figures from the decades just before Song of Ice
and Fire. There's a decent chance, if not
a strong chance, we learn more about Jaharis the Second as the
story unfolds. Because, well, Barrison could
think about him again. Or the prophecy could be spelled
out to us in ways that validate his beliefs or expand on them.
The Ghost of High Heart could have some more say in it, or we
could hear more about her. Rhaegar information, Summerhall,
the Blackfires, Queen Shara. There's a lot of characters that
have connection to him and a lot of plot lines that have
connection to him. And yeah, that gives us a sense
that there's more to tell someday.
Let us know what you thought of this episode and this character.
It's a very wide open subject and we would love to hear from.
You about it? The size of the list of
connected episodes is further more tangible evidence of how
important Jerry's the second is. I mean, we did 2 episodes on the
War of Ninepenny Kings, like 8 episodes on the Black Fire
Rebellions, an episode on the Ghost of High Heart, 2 episodes
of Summer Hall. So these are really important
topics, not just a nice variety of them that he was hooked into.
So I think that's a noteworthy as well.
Well, thanks Nina, this is a lot of fun.
We had a great time talking about this episode.
You wrote a lot of great things for us to discuss and I was able
to add a few things myself, of course, and I hope folks are
happy with it. So I.
Do I do? Too People can find you at
People can find you at good queenalley.tumblr.com as usual
with that 1L in alley. If you want to hear other
episodes that we did with Nina, if you haven't heard them
already, we have the Ryam red wine one most recently and a
trio of Baylor the blessed episodes that we had a great.
Time way too much to say about Baylor the Blessed so you can
go. Well, he reigned for about 3
times longer than Jerry, so it's about you.
Get you get as many episodes as you had at Rainforest so.
Yeah, we, we, it's, it's roughly like an hour per year or
something. We'll do it.
We'll do A10 part series on to
Harris the first someday. It'll be fine.
Oh God. Thanks to Joey Townsend for our
theme music and to Michael Klarfeld for our intro video and
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the Bastard of the Wolfswood, First Forester of the Old Gods,
sworn to House Ironware wood. Listen for the silence.
Lady Mara of House Stark, arch mistress of apothecaries and
woodswitch. Her castle features weirwood
doors with painted moons. Lena Snow, the Twilight Star
bastard, daughter of Dane, wife of the Trickster and Lady of
Castle Rivia. Aminda Pink Wolf, lady and ruler
of Castle Whitefast. The ice emboldens Lord Benjen of
House Hornwood, Lady Rebecca Stark of Castle Aurora, wielder
of a weirwood bow and Valyrian steel tip arrows, and friend of
Short Round. The direwolf Aurelian Mattheus
Rhesus, Lord of House Aurelian, ruler of Domus Aurelianus and
the Valley of Tanasi, wielder of Sol Invictus, possibly Valyrian
steel, keeper of the largest collection of books outside the
Citadel. We restore the world.
Lord Derian, the daring wielder of the Valyrian steel sword.
Wisdom, Lord of House Hollingsworth and the Hollihold
in Dorn. Power in Knowledge.
Gabe the Jade Blade whose foes are skewered and grilled.
Lady Maria of House High Tree, Lady of the Castle.
Fair Oak on the Crooked Lake Sigil is a long Grapevine with
dark green leaves and purple grapes winding around a
greystone pillar on a white field bordered by gold.
Ever watchful Lord Abelard of House Harkonen, Michael, Master
of the Grand Library, Patriarch of House Fine, Keeper of
Histories, Lord Samwise Kimchi of House Chronic, Higher than
Honor. The Queen's High Council has
Grand Archmaester Rennie, whose rod and ring and mask are quartz
Crystal, wielder of the Valyrian steel pen, fire and ink.
Lady Wolf Bird, Mistress of the Eastern Rivers, Gatekeeper of
the Northern Skies, Daughter of the Silver Sea, and our Master
of Coin, Devorah Lynn Blackwood, maker of the Frozen Fury muscle
bomb, eucalyptus and mint leaves washed with Dornish Peppers and
sealed by fire ants. Our Master of Laws, Lady Jane of
Driftmark, Guardian of Dragonstone.
The circling flame Burns Master of Ships and Lady Sonia of
Sunspear, keeper of the Martel Menagerie, Master of Castle
Tormira, Topanga tame and keep well, Master of whisperers.
Our Kingsguard includes Sir Dean, the White Knight of the
Black Star, Sir Bateman The Dark Knight, Lady Ani, Bringer of
Winter's Warning, Watcher in the Weirwood, Bearer of Wrist.
Wolves. Lord Jonathan of House Tanner.
Lord Ray Detto of House Avocado, Protector of the Royal Kitchens,
Green in the morning, Dark by evening, Lady Katie Cat Herder
of the Tobin Terrace and Royal Feline Advisor.
Our Queens guard is led by Lord Captain, Commander Hema, Hellman
the Cell Sword Sentinel, James the Green, Lord of the Meadows,
Keeper of the Trial of Grasses, Archmaester Vena whose ring, rod
and mask are made of steel not pudding, and Laura Boros, the
Lady of Infinity. Our beer guard features Lord
Commander George the Golden Lady, Rita of the Copper Maine
The Unbound Dance. The fervor.
Bloody Ben Blackwood and Big Brian Blackwood and Davin Mack.
Night of the Reeds. The Bog Night Our Northern
champions include J Wilson, Winter's King, Lady R Ardross,
Mother of Wolves, wielder of the Valyrian steel Claymore
Manticore, Lady Bobby of House Mitchell, Adalard the Wanderer,
wielder of the Valyrian steel axe Frost.
Fall. Aaron Snow, the Evergreen
bastard who made a vow to defend the North with his weirwood
handled axe. Timber fell.
Sir Peter, Knight of the Gallows Wood.
Lyanna Snow, the Raven in Winter, Tony of House Walowitza,
a family of war scouts. We scout the Way, the Bitter
Steel, Gandalf the White, Lord of House Seymourn, Jake Snow AKA
Jacob Ice Eyes, The Bastard of the Last River and Winter's
King, Lord of the First Men, and last but not least, the history
of Westeros. Night's Watch, led by Lord
Commander Richard the Liger, Heart wielder of Barry's ankle
Breaker, a flail with blue and silver Valyrian steel spikes.
Motto go blue. Sir Kobe of House Stonesmith
returns. Words are when deeds are stone.
He's the legitimate grandson of the Bastard of Runestone, First
Steward, Sir Zach of House Wild Lord Shredder of the Spiral,
wielder of the Valyrian steel axe Grail.
That's it for us, everybody. Until next time Valar reread us.