None. The murder of young Prince
Jeharis is one of the most shocking and painful scenes ever
written by George R Martin, and it was adapted in part for
Season 2, episode one of House of the Dragon.
Blood and Cheese, when paired with the death of Prince Luceris
at the hands of Amond and Veigar, ensured that the Dance
of the Dragons would be a bitter civil war.
As opposed to, you know, just a regular civil war, which is
usually flowers and fairies and fun stuff, right?
But it also had a long term impact on the Red Keep.
That in turn had an impact on Arya's plotline, an impact which
may not yet be fully realized. So we had a rare chance to
discuss both House of the Dragon and A Song of Ice and Fire, and
that'll be fun. And yes, the impact I refer to
for Aria does include cats, as the title of this episode
suggests. So cat lovers, which that
includes all three of your hosts here, by the way, we're all cat
lovers here. You might like this one a bit
extra because the cats come out on top.
Cats prove their worth, and no cats were harmed in the filming
of the steps. Of course we wouldn't harm cat,
am I even saying? But we'll explore the foul
murder from book and show perspective, discuss some of the
immediate and long term fallout, plus these connections to a song
of ice and fire. And we've got all that and more
on this episode of history of Westeros podcast podcasts.
This time perhaps is more accurate or at least partly
accurate. Yes, hello and welcome everybody
back for another episode. These episodes that we're doing
on Wednesday, let's say this. This episode and the ones like
it on Wednesdays are our weekly deep dive into a topic of notes,
usually something that's been prominent lately.
We kind of saw this one coming ahead of time because we knew
the episode was called A Sun for a Sun.
That made it pretty obvious what was going to happen from book
perspective. We didn't know exactly what.
We didn't know how it would be adapted, but that's what we're
here to talk about today. We do our regular non spoiler
reviews of each episode on Mondays at six Eastern and we do
spoiler filled prediction episodes on Saturdays and we
also do game streams at six Eastern on Fridays.
So check those out if you are so inclined.
Hey Sean, how's it going? You got to read the little bit
of blood and cheese that exists before, you know, in between now
and our last live stream. You you'd watched it and now
you've read the little bit and it's only, it's only 8
paragraphs. You were expecting it to maybe
be a little longer, huh? Yeah, especially the, you know,
again, I, I, I try to keep things that are at a distance.
I, I, I don't want to dig too deep because I'm trying to keep
from being spoiled and I feel like I'm generally pretty good
at that. But still a certain sentiment
comes through the people around me and Twitteros or whatever.
And it seemed like there was a lot of expectations for this,
which, you know, maybe we kind of my my role here is to have
the viewpoint as someone that doesn't have expectations from
the. Yeah, absolutely.
And so I thought this might have been something, it was a
chapter's worth, you know, of, of intrigue.
You know, there's still bits of this that I'm, I'm wondering
about, like, do these get caught guys get caught?
How did they get caught? You know, maybe, and some people
seem to think that it, maybe it was more vicious in the book and
I it was, I suppose, but it wasn't extremely more and it was
only a, a page worth of material.
Like it's there, you know, you know, maybe people want to
compare it to something extreme like the Red Wedding or
whatever. And I, I, I kind of get that
maybe relative to fire and blood.
You know, if you look at the the extreme events of Fire and Blood
versus the extreme events of A Game of Thrones, I think the
real difference is you know those characters better.
In the Oh yeah, that makes sense, yes.
It really comes down to so that that that like the idea that
this might have been a chapter worth of material.
Well, think how many chapters Caitlyn had and Rob had.
You get to know them. The the Red Wedding itself was
only a chapter, but it was still a chapter about a bunch of
people that you've come to know really well over multiple books.
So. Of all the episodes for you to
still call her Caitlyn? Cat.
She's Cat. Anyway, you're absolutely right.
I 100% agree with that. It's we we get so much more time
to learn those characters and we're so much deeper in the
story by the time it happens. There's, there's vast amounts of
foreshadowing for the Red Wedding and Caitlyn's chapter
alone where the Red Wedding happens is longer than the
section of blood and cheat or a section of fire and blood where
this happens. In fact, it's vastly longer.
It's like 2 minutes. I to, to get Sean ready for
this. I screenshotted the three pages
from the fire and blood ebook and send it over to him.
It's three ebook pages, which is phone sized pages, which means
it's less than one full size page.
That's the entirety of Fire of of Blood and Cheese.
It's 8 paragraphs. I think some, some folks maybe
don't realize just how, how short the whole thing is and how
quickly you can just read it and go through it.
And yeah, I also agree with you. Like it's not, it's definitely
more vicious in the books. The, the, the things that are
said and the way it's set up and conducted is, is nastier.
And technically there's a couple more victims too.
There's like two random guards that get killed.
So there's even a little bit more death.
But it's not fundamentally different.
It's not going to have a bigger or smaller necessarily reaction.
The Greens aren't going to be like, oh, this is so much
better. You know, fans of the, if you're
a fan of the Greens, it's the result is basically the same,
you know? I I will say that there were a
couple of the differences like they captured Allison.
That's a big difference, yeah. She also witnessed the beheading
of a child like. That's.
Really awesome and gruesome and one thing that let's say awesome
and gruesome. Awesome and gruesome.
Awesome, depending on your perspective.
But like, awesome that that head just went flying.
It was awesome. One thing I was speculating on
is the impact this is going to have on Helena, who already
seems to be, you know, I don't know what word to use exactly
out of swords Abnormal, you know?
She's not a divergent man. Yeah.
So how this might affect her is is difficult to predict, but
probably not going to make her suddenly a happy, cheery person,
right? But it would have a terrible
effect on out on any person you know.
So I I don't know how well that was reflected in Fire and Blood.
They don't get a lot into personalities and characters.
A. Little bit more just like
sequences of events, whereas the show will.
And maybe that's even a reason why they didn't do it 'cause
that might have been too difficult to really portray and
her character might have been too distracting from all the
other events that are going to occur.
I I'm not sure. Yeah.
I guess one reason is it keeps her from hooking up with Kristen
at that moment. Well, that's and that's an and
that's an interesting comparison because instead of her
witnessing the event, which is obviously super traumatic,
instead she has this secondary trauma of potentially being part
of the reason the guard wasn't in the right place or this is
what she's she's going to forever associate sleeping with
him with the death of her grandchild like that.
These there's a lot of ways they could do this in the show that
still, I'm sure Allison's going to be very traumatized one way
or the other witnessing it. Yeah, that would probably be
worse, but it's still going to be awfully bad.
And of course, the other main difference, which is arguably a
a bigger difference is the difference the lack of Malor.
There's a younger son in the book version that doesn't exist
here in the show version, at least not yet.
There's some suggestion from Ryan Condall that Naylor may
come later, but we'll we'll leave that aside for now.
But it's an interesting possibility.
And one thing we're going to talk about today is the
difference in book versus show succession issues, which is
deeply affected by the lack or presence of Naylor.
So that's something to discuss today as well, Sean.
I was going to say that I do think that is a pretty big
difference, like how the succession is going to go and
we'll talk about that more. But that I think that that leads
me to think that Maillor is going to come because I feel
like for the show to keep the same momentum as the book, even
if some details are different, there needs to be.
I don't quite know how this plays out.
So maybe it doesn't. Maybe maybe the Blacks win and
it doesn't matter if the Greens have an error after Aegon.
I don't know. But but there is another key
difference. I think in the show it seems as
though Damon goes to these guys and says, hey, I want you to
kill Amon. And they're like, well, what if
we can't get Amon And we don't see it on screen?
But there's a pretty clear implication that he, well, just
get one of the other Princess. A son for a son.
Yeah, they know that phrase. So yeah, they have, yeah, have
been told it. So in the book though they
planned the plan was that they never mentioned Amon one bit.
The, the, the idea is like, well, we know we can't get to
Aegon, but we can get to the Queen, so we'll get to the Queen
and wait for Helena to show up. Like we know, like that seemed
like the plan from the in the from the get go, not what they
ended up doing. Whereas in a show it seemed like
what they ended up doing. So yes, exactly how important
that is I don't know, but it is a key difference.
I think it's a key difference for us.
It's not a key difference in the world in terms of how people
will react 'cause they won't know.
And that's kind of how the the cleverness of how the show did
it there. It's like they don't know what
the plan was either. They don't.
None of this, none of this dialogue should be known by the
maesters. Even they don't know what was
said and what wasn't necessarily.
They weren't there. They didn't interview Allison.
Although, and and again, I don't know how this plays out in the
book and what the show's doing different, but there was one
little snippet of the show that I meant to bring up in our last
episode that might maybe is more relevant here.
There was one of the. I don't know what term to use.
Yeah. Chambermaids.
Whatever. Yeah, exactly.
That was twice featured 2 times they kind of made a point of
showing her face. One was when Aegon came in to
get Jahari's and he checked and he had to see which twin they
kind of look showed her face when Helena made the comment
about the rats and then it she was present again when Blood and
Cheese showed up she. Was the one person there?
Yeah, yeah. Yes.
People call her Emma Stone. Yeah, she's the Emma Stone
there. She did have those like thick
dark eyebrows and I don't, I wish I could remember what she
was present for, but Bloody Cheese were having dialogue
about like he said, a son for a son.
No head, no, no gold or whatever.
I don't know. She.
She wasn't there for that. She might have been like around
a corner, but she was gone when he like he like put the trap
down and then she was gone. Yeah.
So she might not have heard some of that discussion, but she was
a witness to who these guys were that they came in.
Well, she saw one of them. She might not have seen both of
them, but she may have seen both of them.
And it's also interesting that she kind of suddenly
disappeared. I feel confident she's going to
tell Loris. Yeah, she's probably hired by
Loris. Put in place by him and probably
more loyal to him. So she's not running to get the
guard. She's not running to tell
Allison. She's running to tell.
Either tell Loris or tell someone who can't tell Loris.
I think you're 100% right. And I think it may have even
been a deliberate casting to give someone with such like a
very noticeable physical feature that people would catch.
She would catch our eye that this person with the with the
9:50 eyebrows that we're going to give us a notice, a feature
that you catch that you might not normally notice because it's
not a like a person that doesn't have any lines.
But because this, this stands out.
You see, because I think she was in more than those two scenes.
I think she was also in one of the like the bath scene where
Allison dismissed everybody. Oh I didn't even think of that
probably, but I but I did wanted to say she was featured.
I felt like the camera lingered on her two times specifically.
She may have been shown multiple other times, but IA. 100% agree
with that. So let's talk get into a little
more about what we're going to talk about today.
We got off on a nice start there with the discussion, but I
didn't quite finish all the set up that I wanted to say nothing.
No problem with that. Let's just say it now.
The the other bit I wanted to talk about is the how this
impacts the dance and how we're not going to cover a lot of the
immediate impact. We're going to cover the short
term impact a little bit, but mostly the set up and the long
term impact and some guesses as to what might happen on the show
'cause we don't we don't know. And to point out how to
reference your earlier point about the in world impact of it.
Yeah, it's not like a violation of guest right.
It's not it doesn't change the direction of a war.
It may be help start a war that was probably already going to
start. And but in terms of like how
much of A violation it is and how people tend to view the
characters, it definitely changes how people are going to
view Daemon, just like it changed dramatically how people
viewed the phrase. The phrase will it probably
won't ever be forgotten that they did this.
It's a like a permanent stain on them.
And this is probably forever tied to Damon as well and might
stain other members of his family if it's connected,
depending on how people view that connection.
Say blame. Do they blame it on Rainiera?
Do they blame it on just Damon? Like who?
Who takes the fall for this? And what happens in Fire and
Blood is not what is not necessarily our guide for what's
going to happen in the show. What?
What other? Not to take away from any of
your points, and I'm probably beating a dead horse here, but I
also want to point out there will be less total people that
take this personally, as with the Red Wedding or some other
events, because it's it's it's bigger and the people who do
take it personally are more powerful, but it's still just
one person, right? Like at the Red Wedding score
hundreds of it, hundreds of people were killed and they all
had families, right? And all those people are going
to remember and take it personally and pass the story
down. And it won't just be this lore
that happened in the capital between these dragon riders.
It's more real now. The dragon riders are very
personal and they're the ones that are gonna take this
personal or, or they're very powerful and they're gonna take
this very personal. And it's gonna I, I, you said
earlier this won't necessarily turn the course of a war, but I
think it might. I think it might make this.
They are now willing to do the same thing.
All right, You're gonna kill our son if you're gonna hire
assassins. They.
Didn't hire soldiers on the field anymore, right?
Didn't that already happen though?
Isn't that why they did it? Because of the death of Luceri.
That's true. That's true.
Yeah. Yeah, that's.
So, and there's only so many children on either side and
someone has to survive, right? But there is one other thing
that's not part of the Red Wedding that is a factor here,
that that's, I think, pretty huge, which is it's a common
born person killing a Targaryen, killing a Prince slash king, a a
member of the royal family. That is relatively unheard of.
And even that doesn't happen at the Red Wedding.
That's, you know, Robb Stark is a king, but he wasn't killed by
a commoner. He was killed by Ruth Bolton.
He was killed by. Yeah.
Well, even if he's not, he's still not killed by a commoner.
Whatever title he was, he wasn't killed by a commoner.
That's the part that matters. And that, that that's a big deal
in Westeros society. It's like you there.
The Targaryens are close to gods.
They have the doctrine of exceptionalism.
They wrote a book to explain how they're better than everybody
else. So they would so the laws
literally wouldn't apply to them.
Like, no, incest is OK for them. It's not OK for anyone else like
they. So this is shocking in the sense
that it breaks that barrier that that isn't real.
It's not a real barrier, but it's this cultural belief that
this is unthinkable. It's like, no, this is this is a
child. Of course a person can kill
this. It's it's easy.
Actually, they don't fight back at all.
I'm. Going to read Blood and Cheese's
book. Yeah, right.
So let's back up to how it gets started.
Mazarian knows these two people through her long term dealings
and collecting of secrets and collecting of people's
weaknesses, collecting the things that allow you to move
them, their levers, their their weak points, their temptations
to get someone to do something they normally wouldn't do or to
entice them to do something that you want them to do.
In Blood's case, it he doesn't seem like he needed much
encouragement. This guy just seems very greedy.
He's he's, he's violence is nothing to him and money is is
great to him. And seem to have a grudge
against the Hightowers already too.
Yes, now we don't know what that grudge is.
It's not hard to imagine a grudge against the high towers.
That's easy to just of course, some he he they did him wrong at
some point, like maybe it's not even a fair grievance, but it's
it's not hard to imagine something there now in terms of
cheese. He seems a little more has a
little more sense of this is a dangerous thing that we're doing
here. He needed a little more
encouragement. The money mattered to him.
He needed it. He was broke, he had debts.
And that was the lever that Mazzari already knew to leverage
and could tell Damon, this is what you do is you go in and
tell him how you know, how much money do you owe?
He's going to be like, yeah, I do owe a lot of money.
And and then probably from the dangerous.
People too, right? Good point, good point.
This is the underworld we're talking about and in in a place
that is pretty lawless in the 1st place.
So we've already seen how this regime or the previous regime,
which I doubt it's any different now, at least not in the short
term since it's been like just a couple weeks at most since Aegon
took over. They never, they weren't very
good at handling like crime in the city.
We already saw like they appointed Damon to be in charge
of that and his way of handling it was just hacking people up,
you know, in in one go rather than like steady justice, you
know, it's like. No trials, no explanation of the
law. So it's.
Already a very lawless place. It's through Damon that people
like Blood got hired, presumably, right?
Like he was a gold cloak. That's what Blood was.
Very good point. That's who hired him in the 1st
place. Excellent point.
Like this is the the institutional corruption, the
damage that was dealt long time ago.
It's not Aegon's fault, or even necessarily Otto's fault that
this guy was in this position to do this, although as we said
before, Otto was aware that there were loyalists to Damon in
the City Watch, and now he appears to have dilly dallied
too long about replacing them. Something you said a minute ago
about imagining ideas why blood might not like the Hightowers
reminded me of another thing I took note of.
There were a lot of the soldiers, guards, whatnot
manning the tower, the Scorpion, just all around.
We're in High Tower Green and I imagine they probably brought in
some soldiers from Old Town. And those guys might have got
put in positions of authority over blood.
I was a Sergeant, I was on the King's Got These guys come out
of nowhere and now they're in charge me.
Screw these high towers. They could be, could be, yeah.
I like them telling people what to do and getting the point
they. Don't know my city, they don't
know what I've been through. And that is actually one of the
things that happens in the book, one of the high tower sons.
There's, I don't even think there's going to be multiple
sons of Otto in the in the show. There's just Gwane I think, but
there's multiples in in the book and one of them is given
captaincy of one of the gates and it's probably was someone
else got demoted because of it. And that character does have a
grudge. So it's it's almost like they
mashed that character up, which they might still use him.
His name is Luthor Largent. They might matter.
He's sort of an amalgam of the book version of Blood.
Season one just in a minor like oh someone was credited as being
Luther Largent am I wrong? Oh, really?
Maybe. Thought there was.
I thought he was one of the gold.
Clubs. Oh, no, we thought it was.
That was our theory. But then we saw that guy talking
and his name was like Captain Bennett or something like that.
Yeah, the, the the subtitles gave it away.
Yeah, we're like, oh, that's not Largent.
He's not Largent. It's coming later, I guess.
Or maybe they won't use him at all.
It's not the biggest role ever, but, well, he's a really big man
anyway. We get into even the little
rules we're. Yeah.
Details here. So, so a couple of these things
we mentioned in our Monday review, but they were so funny.
I want to just make sure everybody hears it.
The actor who plays cheese said I never ate so much Manchego,
'cause you know that you have to film these scenes like multiple
times, do multiple angles. So like every single time he's
just like slicing up another chunk of cheese and eating it
and then doing it again, doing it again, doing it again.
Shout out to our our friend Mark Swan, who also ate an entire
block of cheese during the performance of Queens.
I was just talking about Queens in the chat, actually.
That's funny. But yeah, Mark, he played
Illyrio and Illyrio is a cheesemonger.
And so he he just ate like Aziz was in awe in the audience, like
he's going to eat that whole blog.
Is that why they call it audience?
Whoa. Just blew my mind.
We just learned a new word. Origin or made it up.
Yeah, that's more it. We made it up.
Yeah. So the cheese eating the cheese
and the dog kicking, it's so funny to see the reaction to
people like everybody, so many people are way more affected by
the dog kick than the, the child losing its head, which I kind of
get it 'cause one was like more visceral.
You see the dog get kicked. It look, they made it look so
realistic where the the child is.
All you hear is the sounds. You know, it's a little, it's
easier to just not think about that.
But that dog kick, you couldn't avoid it.
It happened so fast. You couldn't.
Anyway, the dog is fine, y'all. Now, coming back to Helena, this
is going to be really interesting in the long term
because maybe she saw this coming.
Like she's obviously had dreams of things to come and she's got
drawings and sketches that we're going to do a deep dive on once
we can decipher some of it or maybe get more information on it
somewhere. What did you think of that?
What do you have any takes on that, Sean?
Like what's what this means and maybe how the set up for a
prophet with massive tragedy in her life and how that could
really have a be a big deal going forward.
And and for in case you're wondering, I will remind you
this isn't like a set up question because again, she's
not a dreamer in fire and blood. So it's really just, we don't,
we can't predict Helena's plotline in terms at least some
of these intricacies and details because that that stuff is just
the butterfly effect of changing her character is is makes that
very difficult. Yeah, I feel like they're trying
to be true enough to the books that they won't do anything to
extremes that makes sense. They're adding some flavor and
some context and some some some things that are interesting or
entertaining, but that won't change the big picture and that.
Sounds right. And I think that her prophecies
quote UN quote so far have been sort of vague enough and even
quiet enough that they're just going under everyone's radar.
So I think there might it's I think it's possible that someone
might start to key in to what she's saying or what it means.
But I think it's a stretch because it's like Aegon heard
her say, I'm scared of the rats. But now that I don't think when
he finds out that that Jaharius is killed, he's like Helena
predicted it, like he that's not a very direct correlation to
make, you know, maybe if he hears it was a rat catcher that
did it. But I still think he's going to
be more overwhelmed with sorrow and vengeance then tracking down
whether or not Helene is, you know what I mean?
Maybe even if the speed was already in his mind to think
about that, then he might go there.
But I don't think it is. And I'm not sure if it is in
anyone really so. Or at least anyone that's been
present and often enough to hear them or has power to do anything
about it. I, I, I'm more for better,
worse. I'm more worried about her
psychological wear being than OK.
Yeah, fair enough. Yeah.
And it's, it's, it's true that it's pretty hard to predict.
And I definitely agree with you that nothing so far has shown
that anyone's caught on. Ryan Condell did in our
interview with him, hint that there would be some something
along those lines. We're on the we're definitely
keyed in to look for it. But I I'd have to say I agree
with you that it certainly doesn't seem to have happened
yet. One more thing on a on a sort of
a bigger, bigger picture analysis, it doesn't matter
anyway. No one ever understands or does
anything about prophecies. When they try, they do it wrong.
Like it just doesn't matter. Yeah, it's more for us than for
the in world characters. And if they actually listen to
her it would be interesting. But yeah, we know they won't.
Like, they may listen, but they won't listen, you know?
I can only think at one time in his whole world that someone
heard a prophecy and did the right thing, which was Danny the
Dreamer. Leaving.
Valeria that's the only time someone had a vision, understood
it, told someone else, and they did the right thing about it.
I there's no other example I could.
Think of. It's a pretty good example.
There might be others, but that's definitely one, yeah.
And it's one out of 30 or something.
Right. Yeah, They don't have a great
track record, do they? Yeah.
So one thing I really loved about them passing the throne
room was that it had multiple things that it accomplished.
One, it refreshed ourselves on how people like this can just
walk around with their heads down and in servant's garb but
doing their servant stuff and people ignore them.
That was was set up before and then continued in this moment.
But it's also passing through the room.
They're discussing what kind of king Aegon wants to be and it's
all about to change. Like whatever king he's going to
be is different now. The full effect of his trauma
and anger and revenge etcetera is is yet to be seen.
But it's no one's going to be calling him Aegon the Generous.
I don't think Dragonheart, probably not.
Probably not even Aegon the Dragon cock.
I don't think they'll call him that either.
Untamable beast. That might be the closest that
we get. Who knows?
I like how Cheese tells them to keep their head down, both of
them, and they neither of them do.
Did you notice that Cheese looks at Egg on a Throne 'cause I
mean, he is a spectacle. And Blood looks at the new
statue of Osiris, which that's cool too.
I mean, you know, it looked neat.
It's pretty recognizably him. He's got the crown on it, you
know, like, hey Patty, how's it going?
You look pretty good in marble. I guess that's probably not real
marble, but it it looks close enough, right?
You know he's holding, it's cropped in this particular
photo, but in behind the scenes stuff you can see better.
He's holding a part of his Valyria model, like each
person's kind of holding. Like he's.
Got the inaugural on OR or something I believe.
I could not see that at first. Now that you describe it, it's
like very clear. That's awesome.
So it's interesting also to point out that not every king
gets a nickname that sticks. And you know, sometimes you're
trying to come up with the name that that's not how it works,
right? You don't come up with a name
for yourself. That's never how it works.
Aegon didn't call himself the Conqueror.
Megor didn't call himself the Cruel, right?
Baylor didn't call himself Baylor the Blessed.
Yes, you with with sufficient propaganda and with a good PR
team, the medieval equivalent of that.
You could probably generate a reputation for yourself if you
put the effort in. But like, you can't just give
yourself a name. That's not how these things
work. So it's just another example of
of Aegon's inexperience and just does his doesn't know what he's
doing. He's king.
He wasn't taught how to do this. And he's he's got some positive
instincts, but overall he's just lost.
And this is a good sign. You can't sit with us.
So they they move through the room, right?
They pass through and they have this kind of slightly comedic
moment where they're like, OK, there's the stairs up.
He's like, right. And they're like, OK, like,
yeah, take me up there. Now he's like, oh, I don't know
how to go up there. I don't know my way around up
there. That part apparently was true.
But he did know how to get up there.
We saw him in the council room in the beginning of the episode
in the small council chambers. And this is something that I
find very interesting. And and I wonder if it's going
to be what they do in the show to explain or maybe just to have
a fallout between these characters.
I don't know. Like blood was was threatening
Cheese, right? He's like, I'm going to just
take your money and go. And when they were when Damon
was giving him the money, Blood stared at the gold that Cheese
was given. So it's kind of implied that
blood might just turn on Cheese and take it all for himself.
We'll see. That is not said in the book.
I this is my own guess for the show.
I don't know if that's going to happen in in the show or not,
but I like the idea because we we don't know what happens to to
tease in the book. And that would explain why he
just vanishes so that there are places switch when they go
upstairs and they find the room that Eamon and Cole are.
Eamon and Cole and Otto were just in.
And it's kind of funny to think about how Otto interrupting them
might have saved save something from happening.
Like if if those two walk in the room when both Cole and Aymond
are there, well, they're gonna lose.
They're gonna lose. Yeah, Cole and Aymond will have
no trouble with those guys. But if it's just Aymond, well,
that would be interesting. If it's just Otto, well, he's
toast. But I don't know what they would
do if they walk in and just found Otto.
They would just would they kill him and or they take him
hostage. That just a a what if that we
don't really need to explore but.
I I thought about that too because I feel like they made a
point last season of showing Amon be a badass.
They showed him holding his own against Kristen, right?
But it's still a little different if he's in his room
without a sword or armor or just in a chair, and these two dudes,
bloodthirsty dudes, show up. He might take one out, he might
grab a dagger, he might make enough noise to draw all the
people in there or something. But.
Well, Kristen had his sword, Kristen definitely had his
sword, and I think I think Eamon had his sword too because Eamon
is pretty much always with Aimon.
Was in there by himself. If Aimon had been there, OK, I
think Aimon had a. Sword, his sword, But he's
fighting. He's like sitting in his chair,
holding it in his hand. It's probably in its sheath on
the other side of the room. You know it would have been a
he. Probably has time to draw it
before they get to him because he's going to hear the door open
and be like, who are you? But anyway, yeah, who knows what
would happen? I agree.
It would have been it would have been tough.
It would have been who knows? It's hard, hard to handicap
that, that fight like that's. Why?
It's kind of kind of speaks to Damon maybe not taking Damon to
that seriously. If he thinks Blood and Cheese of
all people can go kill him, he must not think he's that good of
a fighter, right? That's a good point.
He knows that Eamon's never been in a real fight, so he does have
that going for him. He knows he's only ever trained
like the the only real violence he's ever been a part of is
losing his eye and then dragon riding against air Axe, which
was kind of an accident. So.
So it's fairpoint on Damon. He's wrong.
Damon's wrong. But given on paper, Eamon
doesn't look like he necessarily would be super capable.
But yeah. But yeah, again, Damon's wrong
about that. It seems like Amon is kind of a
natural and he's worked hard at it.
So while they're in this room, the roles kind of reverse.
And while Cheese is mesmerized by the mural of Harrenhal
instead of Blood, being mesmerized by the statue of
Osiris. And blood is of course, sees
coins on a map and he's like, oh, coins, I'm going to get the
money again, another indication of where this guy's headed.
Anytime there's money he takes, he takes Helena's necklace.
Also. He's like, Yep, I'll take that.
But this is this is not a son. You know, it's that was almost
comedic too. It was like, it's such a trying
to add comedy to this dark moment as we are by putting cats
into this episode. We are definitely trying to make
it a little friendlier. So I thought it made sense to
frame a lot of it around Helena. It, it focused on her face and I
know some people didn't like that because because she's
neurodivergent, she had a, a reaction that some people didn't
understand. They're like, why isn't she
screaming? Why isn't she?
Why isn't her? Like to me this is totally
completely cromulent, normal ish whatever like like expected or
within the range of of outcomes because shock is very common for
people to respond to trauma did. You actually see anyone that
didn't like Helena's reaction? Yeah, a lot of people are like,
why didn't she scream? Why didn't she try to throw her
body? Like, yeah, I don't agree with
any of that. Yeah, it's silly.
You could be completely, completely neurotypical.
You could have nothing at all different about you.
You'd be the most normal, average person in the world and
you could have that exact reaction.
Yes. Like in combat, that's like,
it's thing like people go into shock.
They yeah, like shell shock, whatever you want to call it.
There's lots of versions of this where it's not necessarily what
you would expect, but it's it's very common.
I think there's another thing. Part of the explanation for this
at least potentially also explains another thing I saw a
lot of people questioning is, especially when they said it,
why didn't they just check to see if it was a boy or girl?
And I think the answer for that is that if they wake the kids up
and take the clothes off, imagine this little kid wakes up
with two men, knives and a mother, the baby's going to
start screaming. Like if they check the girl and
they're wrong and now they also have to wake up now and it's
just going to be too much noise and chaos and commotion.
These kids don't understand that they need to be quiet or they're
all going to get killed. Helena does.
Helena understands that if I make a commotion here, me and my
kids are all just going to get killed.
I've got to steal myself and protect at least one kid.
That she's just got to hope that she can save one kid.
And I think that's why she was honest, because after they kill
one kid, then they can check without waking it up.
And if it's the wrong one, if she lied then they'd just kill
the other one and kill her anyway.
So I think that that's why she told the truth, it's why she
didn't scream, it's why they didn't check.
Her she's minimizing the damage by by doing what they want, she
ensures that it only she only loses her son, which is a
horrible choice. It's it's, it's a true Sophie's
choice. I mean, the movie Sophie's
Choice, it's the, IT is a choice between the daughter and the
son. And that's what makes it kind of
similar in that sense. So we've ever heard someone
refer to it as a Sophie's Choice.
That's why because it's, it's like a, it's an.
Impossible. Choice, an impossible choice,
but a choice that must be made or, or you lose both children
and which was part of Sophie's choice is she loses one or she
loses both. And of course, in the book
version, it's lose one son or both sons and the daughter.
So it's even more urgent to minimize the damage there.
And there's also the possibility here in the show only version
that she knew it was coming on some level, she'd already
grieved before because her sense of time is, well, her own.
Whatever that means. I don't know what that's like.
What whatever the perception of time you have when you're when
you're a person that can perceive the future, sometimes I
don't know what that does to you, but she may have already
processed it in part on some level subconsciously.
I have no idea, but I think that's entirely possible.
And what else? Yeah.
So that's entirely possible. And it's also possible that
there's just meta reasons, filming reasons why they did it
this way, like having an actual scene where those words are
spoken, where, you know, choose your Mama doesn't love you and
stuff like that in front of actual real life 4 year olds.
I don't know if they want to do that, you know, like I don't.
Maybe they can. Maybe they can put cloth in
their ears so they don't hear what the actors are saying.
I don't know how they handle children on set for for extreme
dialogue like that. Maybe they just don't have them.
They just don't have them. They do a trick where they're
not even in the room at the time when those words are spoken, but
you can see why. There's all sorts of things with
children and filming scenes that have violence in them.
I think you can watch the rehearsal and see the answer to
your question there. I think they could film it and
it would be deeply problematic and parents would eat it up and
do it instantly. They would bring their kids for
that opportunity. If anyone's ever seen the Will
Ferrell bit with where is his daughter is playing the landlord
coming to get rent, they don't. She doesn't hold back in a cuss
word with. This little girl Julia, makes a
good point that the necklace is a particularly strong way for
the show to potentially have him get caught.
That's a a keepsake that would definitely give it away.
Not the the head, of course. It's an even bigger giveaway,
but he might not have that. But he's supposed to deliver to
Damon. That was the deal.
Like he may not have it later, you know, he may get caught
after delivering the head and he still has the necklace.
So if he's smart, he'll sell it, but he doesn't seem smart.
So also, where do you sell something like a where do you
fence goods like that? Have no idea where you do that
in the real world. I really don't know where you do
that in Westeros, in Kingsland. Maybe in another country,
another continent, you gotta go to Pintos or something.
Maybe someone in his line of work would have connections to
that, I don't know. I suppose maybe if it's just
made out of gold, like you lose some value if the heirloom or
ornateness of it, but it still would be worth a bunch of money
if it's just made out of gold or has a Ruby or something.
Sure. So yeah, we we got some egg
warmers under the bed there. That's kind of cool, right?
And the people are wondering what I'm talking about.
There is egg warmers under the Prince and princess's bed there.
They've got little little cozy for their little dragon eggs,
Jaharis and Jahara. And that makes you even more sad
for for them. Don't, doesn't it?
I never take note of that. I see that now.
Isn't that cool? Yeah, it's pretty hard to see
even even in that. Yeah, I didn't notice either,
Fox and Brambles pointed out in our Discord Surfer.
And I was like, Oh my God, you're right.
I think that's such a cool little detail.
We know that that it's a very distinct shape for the egg
braziers, the egg warmers and it's a Targaryen tradition to
have eggs for for the young children.
So it's it's really a great touch.
Yeah, good job show for that one.
I, I appreciate that detail very much as well.
All right, these, the Wednesday episodes will not be quite as
lengthy as a lot of our regular reviews 'cause we're trying to
just focus on one topic. And so this is roughly the
halfway point. Certainly send us any questions
you might have and he takes any insights.
We love to hear from y'all. And especially with as quick as
we're turning around the material, it's a little more
likely than usual that we might miss something.
You know, it's so hectic during the show season.
We've got so many things we're trying to analyze with so much
behind the scenes stuff and Helena's drawings and cool stuff
like that. We're we're trying to analyze
the intro. It's it's there's a lot.
It's great. We're having a fun time.
If you want to support our efforts, go to
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us. You go there to check out our
cool content. Good place to have bookmarked
for sure. All right, so on our first
review and on most of our reviews, I like to point out
that we noticed a lot of Easter eggs and callbacks.
There's one I missed very directly related to this one.
It's Cheese's line about knowing the red keeps tunnels as well as
the shape of his cock. That's straight from Mushroom
and Fire and Blood, that almost exact same wording.
So yeah, that's pretty cool. So Mushroom was right.
How did he get the exact wording?
It was of of Cheese's doll. That's amazing.
That's really good reporting by Mushroom there.
It just raises his esteem in my eyes there.
No, but seriously though, something I think that makes
book Blood and Cheese fairly unique and it's pretty unique
show wise too. But trying to come up with
historical parallels for it. I got nothing.
I really got nothing there. I mean, it's kind of hard to
find because usually when you're reading about history and
murders, it's amongst Royals or nobles, it's almost always
politically motivated. Someone's trying to kill someone
else for power. And that's the stuff that gets
the headlines. That's the stuff that's written
about most of history books. So I suspect there's maybe a few
more of these out there that I just couldn't find 'cause when I
was searching for it, I kept coming across the same things.
The Princess in the Tower of London just kept coming up and
I'm like, y'all I this one was definitely politically
motivated. These are nephews of of the
these are the heirs of the throne and under the care of
their uncle, and then they vanish and he becomes king
instead. It's like, hello, that's yes,
it's similar in that their young heirs killed, but it was
definitely political and not personal.
I mean, this guy wanted to be king, apparently, or very
conveniently, they died in his care and he became king anyway.
But yeah, there's countless examples of monarchs, Princess,
princesses, whatever, being killed for a title.
But this during a war or at the outset of a war, killing someone
for revenge is unusual to say the least, you know, And of
course that's it makes sense on some level because there's these
Targaryens exist on a social strata that doesn't have a lot
of real world parallels. You know, they've, they've,
it's, it's hard to you got to go to like God kings and things
like that in the real world to find parallels to how far above
they were, how powerful they were, how like not human.
They were viewed by a lot of people.
So maybe that's part of it. Just their cultural differences.
They think they're above everybody else.
They, they operate on a different level.
But still I, I can't really find examples of you've got the whole
half the royal family in your clutches and you just kill one
of them and then leave. You take all the political harm
by doing something awful and get none of the benefit from just
wiping out the enemy. It's like, oh, 'cause if you
kill the entire royal family, people will think that was dirty
and and cruel and violent, but you've won.
It's over. Yeah.
So, yeah, they might look down on you, but you've got the rest
of your life to recover your your reputation.
I mean, this is how a lot of people think of us.
Like, yeah, I'll apologize later.
Let me just win this war first, but in this case, it's just
let's kill this guy and or kill this kid in the book version and
then we'll keep going with the war as we were.
You know, just carry on. As of now that we're even, we'll
carry on about our business in the show, though, I kind of
appreciate that it's a little more sensible and and and it's
like, no, this is a military target.
Eamond is the rider of the dragon that's stopping us from
attacking King's Landing. Kill him and the entire strategy
around the whole war changes. So it just makes so much more
sense to target him, even if it was sloppy, even if it wasn't
necessarily with all those thoughts in mind.
If only they had. Done that.
Yeah, they had done that. And and but to be fair, Damon
was already on that tip. He was like, let's go kill
Veigar. Then they don't He he was
thinking of it. This is the the similar thing.
Just, well, kill the rider and then Veigar will just sit there.
By the way, can I, can I make a dig on Damon here you see.
Always. Coward.
Coward was he? He knows he needs to get Amon
and Veigar, and he wants to do it, but he can't do it by
himself. Rainey's, will you please help
me? I'm not enough of a man to do it
by myself. I need your help to kill my
little nephew. Why didn't he go in the tunnel
himself? He knows those Red Keep tunnels.
He didn't need blood for that. He didn't.
Well, he didn't. Need Jesus escorted Ranira
through there like I mean. Yeah, he could have done it.
Yeah. He knows his way around up there
better than they do. He was better equipped for it.
Yeah. That's that's AI mean.
You know, he's obviously showing he's.
Confronted Amon, he would have been able to beat him with Larry
and Steel's sword. Like there's another reason he
should have just done it himself.
Yep. Now as I said, it's revenge
mostly. There is a political angle to
it, but it mostly it's book version most comes off as
revenge. The show version also comes off
as revenge, but it has more of a purpose to it and how it's going
to be viewed by the populace. We'll see.
But there's a secondary angle to it because of the succession.
So let's talk about that now. The book version, there's very
little to say because the succession isn't changed by
Blood and Cheese. You still have male or it's just
like a well instead of a six year old boy is the heir, you
have a 2 year old boy is the heir.
That that's hardly anything in terms of the short term impact.
It doesn't affect the Greens politically other than they're
really mad at you now and you may have lost political support
from houses that think your ACT was dishonorable.
But other than that, so we can leave the book side for now.
The show is where things are a little uncertain.
Murdering Jaharis arguably makes Eamon the air.
Is it Jahara or Eamond? Right.
Then that's a real conundrum because of we're not going to
are they going to really have a female heir?
That's tricky. Right.
Some of them can or can they like well, let's review.
Hang on before I want to get your take on this, but let me
set up one other thing, which is that back in season one, episode
one, even Otto wanted Renira because it was Damon, though,
not because of custom. He's like, no, because we just
can't have Damon. He's like, screw custom.
We can't have Damon on the throne.
That's just terrible. That's just a bad idea.
That's suicidal for all of us. Like we we, it's better to break
the law and dishonor ourselves than have that man be king.
And he might have had a point there.
Still, that aside, the point is that lots of people were like
leaving. Carlos was like, no, the king
has an heir. They're like, well, who's your
heir now? And they're like, well, it's
Damon, you know, I'm like, well, yeah, it's Damon.
You know, like one person's like, well, how about Rainier?
Like a girl? You know, if you want a war to
start, that's a surefire way to make it happen.
So think about all those conversations and how they're
going to look now and how Aegon will not probably not be as
nuanced about. He's like, maybe not be as
nuanced about it or maybe not be as open to making it politically
acceptable for everybody else. More like, no, they're going to
do what I say. Or is he going to see the the
sense in see the hypocrisy? But what do you think?
I don't even know what I think Eamon's reference would be.
He he does he does like his brother.
He also doesn't seem to just be a massive sexist who hates his
daughter. I don't think it's crazy for him
to put forward his daughter. I think he has no reason to say
he's against Eamon's being his heir though either really.
During war too, it's worse, right?
Like when you have a war, it's like, do people what you want a
four year old girl or any or a four year old anyone as the heir
to the throne during a war, you want an adult, especially a
competent adult. That's often why children are
passed over. And it's not nearly the first
time we've seen it in the Targaryen dynasty where you're
like, well, we just don't we it's it's just inappropriate.
It's just wrong. It would be terrible for us to
have the situation just like what Otto was saying.
Sometimes we just kind of got to fudge the law to avoid a really
bad outcome. This is obviously a a problem
with monarchy in the 1st place, but I I see like if you.
One of many. One of many.
But Otto's right that it's better to just like Juke the
outcome to make sure you get a good.
And of course he started thinking more along the lines of
gain rather than what's best for the realm.
But his initial take had some sense to it if you ignore his
ambition. I mean, Jaharis kind of did the
same thing, right? It wasn't clear if you have this
thing you could do to fall tradition.
Well, let's just have a council. Let's say that was his way to do
quote UN quote the at least. Have it be.
Really established or even written or whatever.
But yeah, but yeah. And it's also worth noting that
I, I if there's some angle that he would say Jahira, that's her
name, right? The the twin Jahira before she
would be queen or the heir, not just Amon Elena, right?
Like if you're going to name her, you got a lot of people you
got to name first. I think so.
There it's it's tricky, yeah. The the things they've already
done versus the things they might want to do are two
different things and what they can get away with.
And the fact that it's war changes the outcome.
Like naming Rainier air in peacetime is one thing when you
can get people used to it and have time to build that up.
But if you just in the middle of a war, you're risking people
taking the other side, joining the other side because of that,
like, well, I'd rather be on the side that has adults, you know,
that are next in line. Like one person, this guy falls
off his dragon and now we have a girl in charge or a boy in
charge. Like that's not good because
who's really going to be in charge in that spot?
Who the people behind throne. And that itself is, you know, an
interesting and touchy situation.
So it's very interesting to see how that's going to fall out the
the long term effects of the succession and how that's going
to be viewed, both how Rainier's cause has impacted.
We've already seen her in the trailer saying, you know,
you've, you've weakened my claim.
You know, like I'm a basically a child murderer now.
You know, we were the they were the child murderers and now
we're all child murderers. You know, that's we should have
used this to leverage support. Now it's yeah, it's gonna be.
Leveraged. Because some people would say
this was worse. So you could say O2 Dragons went
at it and one of them came out ahead.
Not everybody knows the whole picture there.
It's not clear that Veigar just swallowed air axe basically.
And it was, you know, this is very as well.
Obviously the four year old didn't.
The six year old didn't start. Something here like the six year
old is more clearly innocent than Luceros.
Yeah, that again, it's I, I still feel like in a lot of
ways, at least the way it's kind of looked at people, that what
the Blacks are doing is more underhanded or less honorable
than what the Greens are doing. Like, you know, Otto wanted to
send the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard to go arrest Damon
and Rainier, kind of knowing he was going to execute them.
That's still different than hiring assassins to come kill a
boy in front of her mother. You know, like it's still and
two dragon riders going to battle in the sky.
That's still at least cool, if not honorable compared to
assassins in the night sneaking into.
I agree. Yeah, it's it's underhand.
It's not what Westerosi people are taught of his honor.
You're supposed to meet your foes in the battlefield
frontally. You're supposed to go head to
head and see who's stronger. That that's Westerosi courage.
That's Westerosi honor. Now, there's one more thing I
want to point out that it's a big problem for both sides
before we move to the the Aria slash cats portion of this
episode, which is that there's so much arrogance here.
First there's the arrogance of thinking that they're safe
because they have Veigar and not thinking that just ignoring the
the commoners and the servants so much that it doesn't even
occur to them that one of those people could have a knife.
One of people could be carrying poison.
Like it's pretty darn obvious when you think about it.
But no, they're just like, well, we no one's, I've never, no
Targaryen's ever been killed by a commoner.
Why would we think of that? But now, Now that's in their
heads. I I don't want to take away too
much from your point, but they might have a little more
confidence, at least some of them than they would even a few
days ago because Laura is just fired and killed a bunch of
people and rehired you so. He didn't.
He didn't hire new guards, though.
What's that? But then he didn't hire any new
guards only, only servants. That's what they were.
That's what they were short on, it looked like.
Or maybe he fired some guards that hadn't been replaced yet.
That's possible schedules around, that's entirely
possible. That would explain some of the
lack of of guards around. But but I think just they
didn't, they weren't that worried about it and they got
slacked just like their slack on the city watch and the slack on
the there's a lot of arrogance here and just not doing the
work. And it it's not just one
example. If it was just the one example
of being sloppy with the guards in the castle, that would be
like, they'll be like, oh, they're just, that's just a Deus
Ex machina. They just took the guards away
to make the scene happen. But no, there's lots of examples
of their sloppiness of their arrogance, of their
unpreparedness for this And now. But on the other side, the
arrogance is Damon. Damon has the arrogance of a
Jaime Lannister here, which is he doesn't care about what other
people think. And you should often, especially
when it's comes to politics, he's like, oh, he's not even
considering the, the how it makes them look to do this
murder. He wasn't considering.
Well, what happens if they do don't kill Amon and kill one of
the kids? He didn't think that through it
all. Or if he did, he did not
consider the consequences and how bad that looks 'cause he's,
he's very arrogant. He's like, well, the lion does
not consider concern itself with the opinions of the sheep.
Well, you, you should be like mushrooms, said the rats can.
Rats can kill a person, you know.
Bernara didn't say I want a son, any son.
I don't care, she said. I want Amon Targaryen.
Yeah, she was very. Specific and Damon just doing
whatever he wants. He just wants revenge.
He wants to take action. He wants to be violent.
He's not thinking about the political implications or
justice or anything else. Right.
Yeah, He's just like I'm finally I get to go do something.
I get to kill and and and take action.
I get to hurt Otto. I get to.
I get to strike them back. Yeah.
For what they've did. Did to us.
Yeah. He's just chomping at the bit
for revenge. Champing at the bit for revenge.
I'm never going to. I'm always going to have to give
both takes. Champing and chomping.
It's they're always they they, they always come together.
You can't separate them Champing and.
Chomping both sides. I always come out.
On top, I always come out on top.
I wanted to. There was another like line of
thought that I had about the culmination of the Blood and
Cheese bit with Helena. 1-2 or two or three points here.
One at some are kind of interconnected to other stuff
we're saying. As Helena left that room and was
walking down the halls, there weren't any more guards there.
Like I don't know how many guards, Kingsguard or otherwise.
That's been consistent in in all the other scenes.
We've seen so many scenes in that in those like hallways and
rooms, there's there's never guards there.
But that might add to your point that they're arrogant and or
disorganized and or shorts that whatever it is.
And I also thought it was interesting.
I had a different take. I think some people thought that
she like saw someone or something in the hall at some
point. But I think I mean, already
she's probably like trying to hold in her scream and her fear
and she's confused and doesn't know what to do.
But I think she got to like a a decision point where this
hallway goes to my husband, this hallway goes to the guards, this
hallway goes to my mom. I'm going to go to my mom.
I think that's what was part of it.
I. I think you're right, because
she kind of did hesitate, kind of look around and not kind of
just wasn't sure what way to go. And then, yeah, she went to her
mom's room. That that does make a lot of
sense. Actually to think about the fact
that she in that moment, she was like, I, I'm going to my mom.
That's the safest place she think of.
And I, I don't know. Yeah, I I agree.
And another thought too, by the way, in the same way that she
might not want to scream because she might draw attention and
will get these assassins to kill herself and her kids, she
doesn't really know what's going on in general.
She knows the whole castle's infiltrated, every one of her
family members has people in there with knives about.
You know, she might have been really confused and, and, and
scared about anything and everything that was going on.
That's a great point. Why would she know that there's
just this one or two intruders like she it's it's it might be
like upon thought it'd be like. Well, yeah, there probably is
just these two. But why is she gonna have that
thought? That rational?
Thoughts and a lot of emotions. And yeah, there's no way she's
gonna. Be and then she quickly, swiftly
picks up her daughter, leaves the room and with haste and
silence find somewhere to hide. Like I, she did exactly what she
was supposed to do is while they're distracted, take her
child. Yeah, it was the best thing she
could have done. I agree.
This is the only thing like the the smartest thing she could
have done. The wisest thing.
So when she gets to Allison with her daughter in her arms, I
thought it was very interesting what she said There was they
killed the boy, not they killed my son or Jeharis is dead or any
number of other things that she might have said there.
But the thing that she said, I felt like I, I have a lot of
different thoughts on why that was it.
I'm so curious to be in the writers room for how they
decided for those exact, that exact line, because one of my
thoughts was it's she's sort of dissociating herself from what
happened. I, I even when I was a kid, my
younger sister, you know, you know, you're getting grow up.
You hate your parents with her, right?
And at some point they stopped being mommy and daddy and they
became mother and father, you know, and it's a way to
emotionally distance yourself from these people that you're
upset with or this. And maybe that's not quite the
way I want to say it, but but but from this thing that you're
having a hard time dealing with emotionally, right, to say they
killed the boy on some level, I wonder if it's an indication or
attempt on her part to remove herself from how awful what
really happened was. Not my son is dead, but they
killed the boy. It's also I, I think Harkins to
Amon Amon Targaryen's comment to John about kill the boy.
Like you got to grow up. You got to get past your naive
ideas about the world. You got to take on some real
responsibility. You got to face your fears and
that and it's maybe kind of what's happening to Helena and
maybe Aegon. I think more to her husband,
yeah. Yeah, a lot of these kind of
young, born with silver spoons in their mouths, everything's
given to them. Naive about how tough this war
is going to be. Everyone now is like, oh, whoa,
they killed a little boy. We're just getting started.
We're going to have to grow up a little bit here.
We're going to have to take this more seriously.
We're going to sheds our innocence, you know.
And I like how it parallels Luceris's death at the end of
season one. They killed the boy.
And here we have you know, the death of the innocent, the death
of you know more. How that changes rain era and
and how that yeah, like her change is we haven't seen it
yet. The full like she's evolving now
after the her first major trauma there and Aegon presumably will
as well. You're that's a great point,
cause and that weaves in so well with what we discussed before
about how against looking of a name for himself, like what kind
of king am I gonna be? But now, which is very boyish,
right? Like we just talked was like,
you don't get to choose your own name, like, and you have to do
the things to be get to get the title.
Like you can't just choose the name.
You have to earn it, you know, and.
And so here he so. Yeah.
It's naive, entitled and impatient.
He's bringing his son to their. Own name right away.
Yeah, bringing his son to counsel, like he's not really
that good of a he's like more enamored with the thought of
being a dad than really being one 'cause he doesn't seem to
know his son that well, you know?
So yeah, now he's, yeah, the boy has been killed and it's, it's
got a lot of meanings. That's a great, great point,
Sean. But what one last little thing I
wonder about is if her saying they killed the boy might have
been to protect Jahara. Her might not realize that her
brother was just beheaded and so she might not want to traumatize
her daughter by saying hey, your little brother just got.
Murdered. They killed my son or something
like that, yeah. She killed the boy, at least for
the moment the daughter is protected from.
That she's not like two years old.
She's supposed to be, I think 6 there.
So. So she should could, should be
able to perceive those words. Yeah.
So you do have to be careful what you say around a, a person
that age like, yeah, she could perceive some things, yeah.
We said six. In the book, they're six.
Oh, in the show, are they? Four, I'm confident they're a
little younger. I think they're closer to four.
I think you're right. I think con doll did say they
were four in the show. I think I had some sometimes I
think I once or twice I've said five to just kind of average it
out. But yeah, it doesn't really make
that much difference in terms of the the plot.
So yeah, let's that was a great that was great takes there,
Sean. Let's let's talk about Arya and
how cats might have prevented blood and cheese from happening
in the 1st place. And we start, as we often do
when we get into A Song of Ice and Fire material with quotes.
Hey, a quote. Yay.
The Red Keep was full of cats. Lazy old cats dozing in the sun,
cold eyed mousers twitching their tails, quick little
kittens with claws like needles. Ladies cats all combed and
trusting ragged shadows prowling the midden heaps.
One by one. Arya had chased them down and
snatched them up and brought them proudly to Serio Pharrell.
All but this one, this one eared black devil of a tomcat.
That's the real king of this castle right there, one of the
gold cloaks had told her. Older than sin and twice as
mean. One time King was feasting the
Queen's father and that black bastard hopped up on the table
and snatched a roast quail right out of Lord Tywin's fingers.
Robert laughed so hard he was like to burst to stay away from
that one child. And I say two things about this
quote. One is I sat here fidgeting and
stuff in my lap. I have a pile of cat nails.
I trimmed my cat's nails. So I actually just a minute ago
was was playing with a needle, like cat claw as it were.
But two, I have had that happen to me not once but multiple
times where a cat has snatched not quail right out of my hands
in my mouth, but chicken or some other meat, including our own.
Jakin has just recently he swiped.
I was reaching to my mouth with my food and he swapped, swiped
right at it. I think you were in the room as
he's and saw it. You're getting bolder.
Just like, yeah, just like this so-called black bastard who was
named Valerian. Apparently this cat was
apparently owned by Rain E Not obviously not Rain E, the Queen
who never was, but Rain E, the daughter of Ilia and Rhaegar.
And this is awesome, right? I mean, this is this is this.
You could easily immediately see without further explanation how
we got from allowing people in Megor's tunnels to deal with the
rats to a much more elegant and less dangerous to you, the
Children of the Red Keep solution, which is cats, right?
The cats are a huge part of this.
Arya has a very early scene, I think it's her.
It's either her second or third chapter ever where she chases
this cat through the tunnels. It's this chapter and she runs
into both Dragon's Gulls and Virus and Illyria talking about
a Targaryen restoration. So there's this very strong
connection to Arya and Targaryen's stuff, and this cat
is also our connection to Blood and Cheese.
So first, let's look back really briefly.
This is the one, a very mild fire and blood spoiler I said
would be in here. Sean, this is your 1 mild
spoiler. Here it comes.
It's a one of the many things the Greens do, but only one of
them. Like I said, and here it is,
quote. In his grief and fury, King
Aegon the 2nd commanded that all the city's rat catchers be taken
out and hanged. And this was done.
Sarah Otto Hightower brought 100 cats into the Red Keep to take
their place. We'll discuss the other parts of
this later the, the, the rest of Aegon's reign.
We have so much time to discuss that throughout the season and
and later we're we're going to focus on just this part right
now, mostly that parenthetical part, Otto bringing in the cats.
The cats and I just say like, there's a lot of hate on Otto.
This should wipe it all out. It should be everyone's.
Hero, right? This is a great move by Otto, I
got to say. It's just one of his finest acts
of all time. You know, it wasn't done out of
ambition. It wasn't done out of greed.
It wasn't done out of cruelty or any sort of jockeying position.
It was just a smart solution to a problem that we maybe should
have thought of before. I mean, he had been, he's been
the head of the king for a long time, so, you know.
I thought he, I thought he did it just 'cause he loved cats.
Oh, well, yeah, there is. Yeah.
So. So those 100 cats, I mean, let's
keep in mind this is a medieval setting.
Nobody's spaying or neutering these cats.
That's why the Red Keep is full of cats even, you know, 170
years later. Like, just like you aren't
getting rid of the rats, you're not getting rid of the cats.
Now you got a lot of cats and this is better.
It's better to have a lot of cats than they just have a lot
of rats, that's for sure. And the cat population will
depend on the rat population quite a bit.
Like the more rats breed, the more the cats will will feast
and do their thing. I I seem to remember there was a
section of fire and blood earlier under Jaharis's raid
when the Shivers was sweeping the land, and I wish I could
remember the lion a little better, but it said something
like a cat was as worth as much as a horse or something like
that. It was worth their weight in
gold. Yeah, because of the the rats
were carrying the plague and the cats were were used to, but they
didn't keep it as a permanent solution.
They didn't use them. They didn't keep it in the Red
Keep. So yes, you're absolutely right.
I wrote a a Blood and Cheese video for for Robert in Deep
Geek and I brought that the shivers up there 'cause it was
also the child that died to the shivers amongst the Targaryens
was Daenerys was was actually Harris and Allison's first
child. So which had she not died, that
would have been a whole different since succession issue
'cause she was their first child, not Aegon or Amon rather,
whose daughter Rainey's became part of the conundrum there.
And yeah, so Arya is caught when she finally catches this black
cat Valerian, if you recall, she's she's caught by Tommen and
Marcella. Now Tommen, of course, also cat
lover who has three cats also probably from the same origin.
The 100 cats that Otto brought in are probably those are
probably the the progenitors of Boots, Lady Whiskers and Sir
pounce like I forgot the the most famous one of the three.
And so so of course they were like Tom and defender of cats is
like, what are you doing? Boy?
You know what's happening here, and here's what happens in
response quote. The old fat septum moved
forward. Boy, how did you come here?
You have no business in this part of the castle.
You can't keep this sword out, one of the red cloaks said.
Like trying to keep out rats. Arya So it's keeping keeping
rats out is still a problem in this era, but less of a problem
than it was clearly. Like all these scenes we see at
the Red Keep in a song. Licensed Fire.
I can't recall a rat actually being spotted.
Probably has maybe one or two there, but it's constant.
In season one of House of the Dragon, there's rats.
Everywhere. OK.
Yeah, there is a, you're right about that.
And of course, there's much more to this too.
Arya finally finds her way out after hearing Virus and Illyrio
and the dragon skulls and sneaking around in the dark
where she can barely see. She exits through a drainage
tunnel. Now, it looks different in Game
of Thrones than the the version that Blood and Cheese walk
through, but I think we're supposed to associate these two
things, right? It's the drainage.
It's the way in. The way out is similar, and it
goes into parts of the castle that a highborn person kind of
forgets even exists because they're not going to go near the
sewage. And that's the business of, you
know, the common people who take care of that.
You know, it's it's beneath them.
And so Arya comes out of this smelling pretty horrible, right?
She's unkempt and dirty, and that's putting it mildly.
So she definitely doesn't look like who she is.
She doesn't look like the Hand's daughter.
And of course, this is already, this isn't even the first time
in the story, even though it's like one of Arya's first
chapter. She's already gone missing once
and come back all dirty and, and all that, you know, with the,
with the whole thing with losing Nymeria and and Joffrey and all
that. So it's already, it's already
happened twice to her by this point.
And and she's already called boy by people who are when she's a
girl. Tommy and Marcella and the red
cloaks think she's a boy. And then here, when it comes
back around, she exits the drainage ditch, walks all the
way around the city, comes back to the front entrance of the Red
Keep. And once again, they see her as
a boy, and she's all dirty and unkempt.
And she's like, hey, I let me in.
And this is what happens. The older scowled.
Who's this father of yours, boy? The city rat catcher.
So rat catchers do exist in the city again, but if they were
allowed in the Red Keep, the guard wouldn't suggest a
profession that isn't allowed in the Red Keep.
If if his point is you don't belong here, he's saying you
don't live here. Why would you become an you
know, you can't, you don't live here, which is a, a place rat
catchers wouldn't exist. So it it's consistent in a way
that I love. It's a great little hidden piece
of the world building that connects across these two main
stories that I find very satisfying that it's consistent
and these threads connect. So frankly, Arya is capable of
doing a lot more damage than blood and cheese, though of
course she's not likely to kill any children, but the death of
children might be why she goes. There, right?
I just want to say she's already killed a child.
OK, you're right. You're right.
I mean, she might kill another child or, or six, but I, I think
it's more likely what brings her there is to kill an adult or
two. And it might be because of the
death of children. Like Cersei's already on her
list. So that's one straightforward
way to go there for her. Varus and his little birds too.
Those little birds are children who have had awful things done
to them. If Ari ever finds out about that
virus is on notice. And it's fun to think about how
Arya has all the elements to beat Varus at his own game.
Not political intrigue, but the tunnels of the Red Keep
disguise, right? And she has something he
doesn't. Skin changing, right, she's
already and she also has this I don't know she's an interesting
relationship with people who teach children how to kill and
do things 'cause that's what the House of black and white is
doing with her and that's what virus is doing with his child
slaves that he, you know, has people kill has them kill Kevin
and things like that. So there's lots of like
parallels here with how virus treats children and and how Ari
has been treated by the House of black and white, which she might
turn on at some point. I've I have that theory too.
I've been my head cannon is that Aria is going to turn on them
kind of not, not like the show, but in a way vaguely like that
they'll have a falling out because she disagrees with their
methods or something like that. It's not hard to see why that
would happen. They have pretty awful methods
and uncovering corruption within the House of black and white
wouldn't surprise anyone, you know, And here's the other big
advantage she has. This is huge one.
And I think this is maybe makes the point, or at least puts the
exclamation on it. Let us recall the very animal
Aria has begun to skin change in as of A Dance with Dragons.
Here's a quote from the Blind Girl chapter.
I know that you're the one who's been hitting me.
Her stick flashed out and cracked against his fingers,
sending his own stick clattering to the floor.
The priest winced and snatched his hand back.
And how could a blind girl know that I.
Saw you. I gave you three.
I don't need to give you 4. Maybe on the Morrow she would
tell him about the cat that had followed her home last night
from Pinto's. The cat that was hiding in the
rafters, looking down on them. Or maybe not.
If he could have secrets, so could she.
It's important to note in that moment there that in the Shea
read it well, but it you still might have missed it that when
she says I saw you, that's not her saying that.
That's her thinking that. She doesn't say I saw you, she
thinks I saw you. And then she says I gave you 3.
'Cause I did my best effort at making it seem like a thought.
You did, you did it well, but I wanted to make absolute certain
that people got that cause most folks probably haven't read that
line in in quite some time and and might not remember it.
So she's clearly skin changing through the eyes of a cat.
She's seeing the kindly man through the cat's eyes and is
obviously using her skin changer power to do that.
Who amongst you thinks that she will only skin change of this
into this one cat and never again?
If you think, if you're amongst the group who thinks that I have
an advance copy of the wins a winner to sell you once I
receive my $5000 payment, I'll send that to you.
Yeah. So yeah, obviously Aria is going
to skin change. More animals and cats are very
likely. And the one place we know
there's a lot of cats is the Red Keep, a place she's already been
in total darkness where she couldn't see if she could see
through the eyes of a cat. I know two more places with
cats. OK, tell me, tell me.
I'm. I'm curious.
It's. Called Sean's house and Aziz
Inishaya's house. The house three of Westeros
household. There's like 7 cats between us.
Aria is very welcome to come here too.
And the cats. But yeah, don't bring needle.
Yeah, don't bring Needle. Yeah, you can leave Needle at
home. So I really think that's not
unlikely that Arya returns to the Red Keep, goes through the
same tunnels that Blood and Cheese went through that she
herself has already been in, this time with a purpose because
she went in there by accident the first time and with the
ability to find her way around by skin changing into the cats
that are all over the Red Keep. And with that, she could not
only find her way through the tunnels, she can find any person
she's looking for in the entire castle through the eyes of a
cat. Just take one cat, go around,
look around, maybe jump to another cat, look around.
Like, I don't know if it would really go to that level where
she's just like, skin changing, like 20 different cats, but
really it only takes one or or two or three, I don't know.
But not many, right. It's it's all the elements are
there. She's been there before.
The Targaryen stuff is down there.
It could relate to Vara. She's already seen Vara.
She's got all the training Varus had, but she's got the magical
bonus on top of it. Yeah, it's it's great.
I love how well that fits. And I love how well it connects
to to blood and Cheese. And here's a Kitty.
This is my boy Casanova. He's a very handsome buddy with,
with a silver tuxedo. He's very well dressed.
Oh yeah, so he's more docile. How nice.
This little guy loves to rub on my beard.
He head butts my beard. He's a beard loving cat.
If you're going to get a cat. You better go get one too.
I'll be right. Yes, this of all of our live
streams is the most vital to have a cat on.
We can't not have cats on an episode where we talk about
cats. So what do you think y'all did
having cats and the element of cats and the connection to cats
that help take some of the sting out of the horror of blood and
cheese? Did it work or is it just, you
know, not enough? Is it?
I think it works. Cats can fix anything.
Cats solve all problems. Yeah, sure, occasionally they
may cause a problem, but yeah, you know, it'd be amazing if,
you know, Bran thinks one day how he wants to be a knight and
how maybe if he takes over Hodor, he could sort of fight
like a knight. But what about Arya taking over
Sir Pounce? That's a knight.
That's a cat knight already. She could.
She could take over a cat knight and be that.
Oh, I had Xerxes for a second, but he just kept moving.
Xerxes is not having it. Hey, Sean's got a cat now too.
A jet Kitty, all black like Valerian herself, himself.
We've got it all. Right, look at this.
That's a very good Kitty. This cat is much more open to
staying on camera for a few minutes.
And Sean's cats are well trained from Kitten Hood.
They've been on camera at the end of our episode.
They're very good. We got a super chat from Zach.
Remley says. Hello, Sean.
Hello, Aziz. Hello, Ashea.
I love History of Westeros. Thanks, Zach.
Well, hello. Yes, thanks, Zach.
Appreciate that and we love you all as well.
We love going through these seasons with you all and you
know, we also love going through the books with y'all, but we
haven't had anything new in that front for a while.
And the future is very bright for the the TV show aspect of of
this fandom. You know, we obviously have we
got some fresh news on Duncan Egg recently, more castings.
And we've planned at the end of the season to update y'all on
what's happening with the the night of the seven Kingdoms and
the other spin offs. We'll have an update on on
everything that's going on there.
We'll do it one episode of that's variety of discussing the
what's on the shelf, what's being developed, the latest on
that front. And yeah, that's going to be
nice because we'll have, we'll have, we should have at least
one show a year going forward. And in some cases, maybe
occasionally we'll have two, not as soon as next year, but in the
future. And that's great.
I'm excited. We have a lot of fun talking
about the show and we have so much more to come.
So I think that's it for today. Sean or Shay, if you have any
final thoughts, say it. But otherwise, you know, thanks
for coming, everybody. Thanks to Bran for the awesome
intro. We love our new modified new
slash improved intro outro for House of the Dragon.
Bran did such great work with it.
My mother is part of it as well. She played some Viola and Bran
added that to the music. It's part of the the Symphony
that you hear. The symphonic sounds are partly
real Viola from my own mother add into that.
So that's pretty sweet. And we'd like the real intro of
the show. We will see some changes to ours
as time goes on and we have a lot more content coming this
season. Y'all, we're just getting
started. It's only week one.
We can't wait to talk about more.
And you know, it's funny, I always say Valerie made us and
Valerie watch us. And it occurred to me that
that's a little perilous. Actually, don't rewatch Game of
Thrones right now because it's got spoilers for House of the
Dragon. Really.
They mentioned like definitive ending points, things that
happen, like pretty big things in the in the Dance of the
Dragons during Game of Thrones. I guess at the time they didn't
perceive that. Maybe one day that'll be ATV
show too. And you know, for the same
reason you can't really read a song about some fire right now.
It also mentions like the fates of certain characters.
In this story, I mean, even just like looking at the Targaryen
family tree can can kind of screw you up a little bit if
you're trying to stay unspoiled. But I know most of you aren't.
But you know, it's still important to to throw that
warning out there for those of you who are unspoiled or have
forgotten. More likely, I think is that you
have a family member or a friend who's like, I'm going to rewatch
Game of Thrones and you're like, maybe you don't watch this
episode or something. I think that's the more likely
scenario here from our Die Hard listeners.
I, I have made the point about my, the nature of me being
unsullied is it, you know, even having read through the books
and read most of Fire and Blood and watched the show and so on,
there's a difference between having read that one time a year
ago and having read it and reread it three or four times
and written out the timeline and studied it.
Because I still barely keep a track of the names of all these
Targaryen kids and whose dragon is who.
That's a lot of data to, to, to learn and associate and put into
context and everything. And I, I'm hoping to get there
'cause I know there's people out there that are way more
knowledgeable than me. Just reading at one time doesn't
mean you know it, you know? True that.
OK everybody, we'll see you next time.
And happy House of the Dragon season and Valar re Redis with
caution. None
the.