The very night Daenerys Targaryen was born, one of the
worst storms in living memory struck.
This earned her the nickname Stormborn, a moniker that has
spread far and wide alongside news of her deeds.
And it's when she's carried before her like a standard, she
uses it. And why not?
It's a potent name, a portentous name, a name that carries a lot
of weight and meaning. Also, it just sounds cool.
Storms, like other extreme weather, are fairly common
literary devices to indicate something else going on,
something deeper with Danny. There's a lot to say about that.
Storms represent emotional turmoil, AKA conflict and
madness, and change the trope. It Was a Dark and stormy Night
stands out as such a classic overused example that it's the
example of overused examples for an opening sentence.
Now, George doesn't actually write it that way, of course,
but Danny was born on a dark and stormy night.
He still wanted to use that vibe, just without the the basic
version of it. He did a much more advanced
version. It's loaded with symbolism and
meaning and foreshadowing. Much of that we've already seen
unfold, right? Danny's adventures have gone
quite a bit. We've seen a lot of what she's
done and and she's living up to that nickname, but much is yet
to come still. So these are all fitting things
to say about Daenerys, or to speak of in reference to her.
They're all part of her. The pastiche of her character.
All the people she's encountered who have felt her presence,
whether follower or foe, could say that about her.
She has that presence, she has that strength.
One example of each, a friend and a foe, comes in Kingsguard
POV 4, Barristan and Jamie, and they're a big part of today's
story 'cause they're witnesses to a lot of this.
And so is most importantly and least known Queen Rae Ella, who
gave birth to Rhaegar during Summer Hall and then to Daenerys
during the storm, where she derived that nickname.
Danny's mother is a compelling and highly tragic figure, deeply
intertwined with House Targaryen, supernatural, and
final days on the Iron Throne. We've got all that and more on
this episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Hello and welcome back everyone to History of Westeros.
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podcasts for the audio version and if you listen on Patreon,
it's ad free. Thanks to our good friend Nina
Good queenalley.tumblr.com 1L in alley.
She had a lot to say about this episode.
Today we discussed Rayella quite a bit.
That's a topic she's considered a lot and the latest post on her
blog is about Robert Aaron and the issue of how they're
actually step siblings and how Robert wants to marry her.
And is that just because he's a little kid or how do step
siblings marriages work in the Seven Kingdoms?
That's it's a little odd, right? So, yeah, it's a good question,
frankly, one I hadn't thought about myself.
So check out good queenalley.tumblr.com if you
have questions for us. You can hit us with them live
here during the stream or just e-mail us at
westeroshistory@gmail.com or find us on Blue Sky or on
Patreon or on our Discord. Lots of places to contact us or
our Facebook group. Yeah, we are out there.
At the end of this episode, I will list some that relate to
this one over topics that overlap a little or focus on
different things that we touched on.
That is a regular feature at the end.
So is the answer to the trivia question, which is in the Feast
for Crows prologue, which character points out that not
all the Targaryens are dead? And yes, it's the Targaryen
we're discussing today that is brought up as still alive in
this episode. We have the following sections.
Let me read those to you. We have Rayella, the last queen.
We have Ascent and Reign. We have War of the Usurper.
We have Flight to Dragonstone. We have our title section,
Stormborn. We have Flight to Essos.
We have What's in a name, we have self fulfilling prophecy,
and we have the legend and then an outro.
Let's kick it off with Daenerys at the start of A Storm of
Swords with a nice long quote. As she stood upon the
forecastle, watching her Dragons chase each other across a
cloudless blue sky, Daenerys Targaryen was as happy as she
could ever remember being. Her Dothraki called the sea the
poison water, distrusting any liquid that their horses could
not drink. On the day the three ships had
lifted anchor at Karth, you would have thought they were
sailing to hell instead of Pentos.
Her brave young blood riders had stared off at the dwindling
coastline with huge white eyes, each of the three determined to
show No Fear before the other two.
While her handmaids, Eerie and Jeeky, clutched the rail
desperately and retched over the side at every little swell, the
rest of Danny's tiny callisar remained below decks, preferring
the company of their nervous horses to the terrifying,
landless world about the ships. When a sudden squaw had
enveloped them six days into the voyage, she heard them through
the hatches, the horses kicking and screaming, the riders
praying in thin quavery voices each time Valerian heaved or
swayed. No squaw could frighten Danny
though. Daenerys Stormborn, she was
called, for. She had come howling into the
world on distant Dragonstone as the greatest storm in the memory
of Westeros howled outside, a storm so fierce that it ripped
gargoyles from the castle walls and smashed her father's fleet
to kindling. It becomes part of her identity.
The storm borne herself is at peace on the water.
Even the storms themselves don't bother her.
It's a milder version of what drove her to not fear the fire
when she jumped into it two books prior to this, and it's a
reflection of how even from the moment of her birth, Danny
literally and figuratively faced the worst that could happen and
the physical devastation of the royal fleet.
The storm symbolically wrecked the last dwindling hopes of her
house for either defense or rescue, and the newborn Danny
obviously didn't know about that.
She wasn't there for it. She didn't experiment.
She was there for it, but she didn't experience it as a, as a,
you know, functioning adult or someone that could remember it.
She was just an infant, but she would have grown up knowing that
it was, this is the moment of her birth, all that happened.
Now, of course, she's exaggerating a little bit.
It may not be the greatest storm in the memory of Westeros.
It may not have ripped Gargles from the castle.
It did smash the fleet, but only half the ships, not all of them.
So you know, but the the tale grows in the telling and Danny,
that's kind of the point here. Danny is using the story to pump
herself up. She's getting drawing confidence
from this this her birth from the circumstances of it.
And it teaches her to not be afraid of the storm or the fire
or whatever. So it's a it's a confidence in
her own identity and her own destiny.
It's it's anchored, perhaps most of all by the hatching of her
dragon eggs. Of course, that's already
happened by this point. But even before that, even
before she became the Unburnt, she had a lot of confidence, a
lot of belief in herself as a child of destiny.
And yeah, you could see why, right?
But Stormborn is a big part of that.
It it was a part of it before she established herself.
She was Stormborn before she accomplished anything, right?
It was like like a Tyrion makes that joke.
You know, my greatest accomplishment when being called
the sister, the the brother of the Queen, like Storm board
isn't something Danny earned, but it's absolutely part of her,
right? The other titles that we'll get
to later. She earned that.
And also before that, Danny is really our focus in the
second-half. In the first half of this
episode, we're mostly going to focus on the circumstances
leading up to that famous and auspicious birth, mostly
centered around the woman who bore her, and that's Raela, the
last queen. It's a bit of a dramatic title
I've given her, to be sure, but unless slash until Danny
reclaims the throne, it's 100% true that her mother was the
last queen of House Targaryen. If Danny learns more about her
family, she'll have to face what her father really was.
She hasn't come to terms with that.
She's heard bits and pieces, but it hasn't really been something
that she's been confronted with. But her mother, that would not
be difficult for her, other than the tragedies that her mother
faced, which there's a lot of that would be difficult to see
and learn what her mother lived through.
But she's not going to have to face that her mother was a a
terrible psychopath like her father was.
In fact, her mother's more of the reverse of of Aries, if
anything. While.
Yeah. And when I say that, I mean that
when while Aries burned people to death, she froze them to
death. No, I'm just kidding.
She didn't kill anyone, as far as we know.
That. Rae.
Ella Rail is often overshadowed by her mad husband and her
famous children, but her death came amidst so many other
deaths, and her story is as sad as it gets.
It's sadder than anyone. It's just about really.
And in writing all this, when we're writing this episode, kind
of realized that it really does have the making of a full
episode someday, perhaps. Daenerys began her life on the
run, but the running began before she was even born.
Like, she was on the run when she was, you know, an embryo
when she was a fetus, right by her mother.
Her mother was running. And her mother didn't live to
run with Daenerys. So like, her mother ran and then
stopped running, and then she died, and then Daenerys had to
start running. But a detail many of you might
not know is that Raela gave Daenerys her name.
Now, it could be that Raela had an angle here.
She's thinking of the Daenerys who lived in Dorn, the same
Daenerys who the Water gardens were built for, the same water
gardens that Doran Martel loves. So Doran might have been an
option for them to flee there. They might have thought, OK,
well, Dragon Stone's going to fall.
We have to leave. Maybe we can go to Doran now.
That's not what ended up happening.
Of course, other things prevented that outcome.
But at the time, she may have been considering that
possibility. And naming her child Daenerys
may have been like a a little way to sweeten things, to remind
Doran Martel of that connection. But as the news got worse from
the rebellion, plans changed. Or as they would have called,
they wouldn't have called it the rebellion, they would have
called it the War of the Usurper.
Nina is the one who gave me this thought, that she thinks that
there's a good chance that was why the name Daenerys was
chosen, maybe as a last ditch effort for asylum.
And yeah, she didn't have many options.
Rae Ella. She also didn't have a lot of
necessarily experience being in charge.
Aries was not really, as far as we know, didn't include her in
councils or anything like that. So she was kind of put to the
side, but once Aries was out of the picture, she was the de
facto royal. She was the head of the house
for, you know, about a year from the time she fled Dragonstone, I
guess about nine months. This is about the time Danny's
Danny was, she was pregnant with Danny the.
But about the minute she left. So yeah, you can almost nail it
down to exactly 9 months. But anyway, this is just a
sample of the underlying story we're looking at today for her.
Let's go back and look at some key aspects of Ray Ella's life
because she's where it starts. She was born somewhere in the
2:45 to 2:47 range, give or take, right?
That's that's it. It's somewhere in that
three-year range. It's actually not outside of
that range, but Aries was born in 244.
So they were pretty close in age, at most three years apart
and they had no other siblings. And that's really important
because it means that Ray all has no one else to turn to, no
one else who might have understood her position or
experienced what she experienced.
Even though Aries was awful, he wasn't awful at the beginning.
Remember, he wasn't awful as a young man.
He might have been great, but he wasn't a violent psychopath
either. So even though he's terrible,
she's still in a strange position where her brother and
future husband was one of the only people in this world, if
not the only person in this world that could understand a
lot of her life and her circumstances.
And well, that's, that's its own form of tragedy that the only
person that can you can trust or rely on or who understands at
least what you've been through becomes what Aries became.
So she lost even that. And that was being married to
him. But long before that, when they
first got married, it was under the auspices of prophecy, right?
Rae Ella married Aries because of Woods, which which was
probably the ghost of high heart who was brought to court by
Jenny of old stones said the Prince of the the Prince that
was promised is going to be born of your line, Jairus the second.
Of course, he wasn't actually Jairus the second yet he was
still Prince. But whatever, he made the call,
he said yes, this marriage is going to happen.
He believed the prophecy. So Rael is married under the
auspices of prophecy, married because of one.
It might have happened anyway 'cause you're thinking, hey,
Targaryens, they get married all the time.
But no, this was past that era. King Egg on the fifth was on the
Iron Throne at this point. He did not like the incest
marriages. He was against them for the most
part, but he was also pro allowing his children to choose.
He was allowed to choose. He married Black Betha Blackwood
and you know that normally Royals aren't allowed to pick
their brides like that. And so he kind of didn't want to
be a hypocrite. So he allowed it to happen.
He was frustrated, though. He didn't like that Jaharius had
arranged this marriage and Jaharius had already married his
sister because they were in love.
And so it was kind of continuing this pattern that they thought
they were getting rid of. Like God, he's we're trying to
get rid of the incest and here you go.
You all are just carrying it forward again.
And of course, that pair is the ones who ended up being king.
But thanks to Duncan the Spall, you know, forgoing the throne
because he chose his bride, right?
Jenny of old Stones, the aforementioned.
So Barristan, again, an important witness to a lot of
this, claims that Aries and Braella weren't that fond of
each other, the wedding wasn't loving or what have you.
Now, Barristan's not necessarily the best judge of things, isn't
a guy that's had, you know, any relationships in his life, but
he can probably tell the difference Despite that.
After all, he was there for Aegon the 5th and Betha to a
couple that really genuinely loved each other.
And Jerry Sanchera even more recently, the the couple that
put this pairing together is their children.
So I think we can trust him on this one.
And later evidence seems to corroborate what Barristan says
here. Now, she meaning Rayela was
briefly into Sir Bonifer Hastie, the guy who's currently in
charge of Harrenhal. He's a very he's leading the
holy 100, right? A very devout guy.
So that's just Jamie kind of thinks how that's an appropriate
sarcastic response to Harrenhal. Well, we got this cursed place,
send a holy guy there. Like, yeah, sure, that'll work.
Anyway, that's not here. We're not going to talk about
Harrenhal. We're here to talk about this
little connection. It was a brief 1, Sir Bonifer,
Hastie and Riella. I doubt they actually hooked up.
You know, he's a religious guy. She seems very dutiful.
That's a big scandal. So I don't think it was a true
relationship in that they, it was consummated or anything like
that. But her interest in him gives us
a clue maybe about her personality, the kind of man she
was into. Like he thought it was serious
enough that she never, he never pursued another woman.
He never loved another person. He just gave himself to the
faith entirely and real well, she had to give herself to her
family entirely. And but first that was Aries,
later that was her children. So it's unlikely, though, that
you go that devout out of nowhere.
He was probably devout before, maybe just, you know, he wasn't
fully committed to the faith, but he was already likely a very
Worshipful guy, which suggests that maybe that's what Raeela
liked about him, that he she liked that he was a man of the
faith. Or maybe that was something that
they shared. Maybe she was a very big on
piety. It's maybe like a micro version
of Prince Amon and Prince Narius here, a queen in love with a
devout knight. That love was returned, but
there's no way for them to pursue it because she's married
to her older brother, the king. Now, of course, in this case,
it's not an incest pairing with Prince Narius and Prince or
Princess Narius and Princess Amon.
Obviously Sir Bonifer Hastie's not related to Raela, but still,
the parallel holds. And it's another example of how
little agency or experience Raela had in life.
Yes, this is this is at this point, she's already living in a
gilded cage like a lot of Queens do.
But over time it gets a lot worse.
It almost becomes a gilded torture chamber.
The closest example Barrison can think of is this.
For her, having a relationship anything like that, it's pretty
sad. It's pretty sad.
She had ladies in waiting, Doran slash Oberon slash Elia's
mother, the unnamed Princess of Dorne, and it was one of them.
And so is Joanna Lannister. Now we don't know how the
relationship was with the Princess of Dorne, the eventual
Princess of Dorne, but she would have had to leave, presumably
because she became the Princess of Dorne.
She certainly wasn't the lady in waiting while holding the title
Princess of Dorne, maybe the heir or maybe it's another step
down. But once she ascended to that
title, I don't think she's the lady and lady anymore.
And even these so even these friendships, if they were
friendships, maybe they were just companions.
Even a lot of these ended prematurely or ended badly, like
her friendship with Joanna Lannister.
If if that was a friendship, they're such strife happened
between Aries and Tywin in the long run and Aries, his flirting
or attachment to Joanna, whatever that was, that wouldn't
have made Rayela happy either. And Rayela was, Joanna was
dismissed, you know, as part of that.
But long before that happened, she famously gave birth to
Rhaegar during the conflagration at Summerhall.
Now, this obviously had a big impact on Rhaegar himself in
thinking that he himself is the Prince that was promised.
So what impact did it have on her?
Well, how does she view prophecies and issues like this
based on how deeply she was intertwined in them?
And not just intertwined as the mother of Rhaegar and the
eventual mother of Danny, but her son, this very person,
Rhaegar, who believed that for a while that he was the Prince
that was promised and then who moved on to believing it was his
own son instead of himself. Did that stick with her?
Did she believe that? Is this like, did she support
her son in these endeavors? Did she say yes, son, you should
research this more, you know, dig, dig deeper into these
prophecies or did she say? Pursuit of prophecy is what
screwed our family up in the 1st place.
Look at what happened at Summer Hall.
You could easily see her having a strong opinion one way or
another. Or somewhere in the middle.
It's it's hard to know, but either way it would have had to
be very traumatic. There's no doubt about that.
Giving birth at a very young age is bad.
She might have been as young as 13, but also seeing her great
grandfather's palace burned down and various family members
burned to death and, and just other people.
It's not just her family that died there a lot of just regular
folk, Kingsguard. And I'm sure that was extremely
unpleasant. None of this was anything she
wanted or chose for herself. And it almost killed her.
You know, maybe the childbirth and the fire.
So terrible, terrifying. And if Danny knew about this, it
would be a connection, the way that she lost Rago and all the
supernatural elements around that, all the dreams she was
having, just a supernatural charged birth while her husband
is dying, right? Like just all this other stuff
is going on. So is that what Rails thinking?
She knew she had to marry Aries because of the prophecy, or at
least that's what she was told. Again, we don't know what she's
actually thinking here, but you might wonder if she thinks it's
all worth it. Like, if this is what it takes
to make a Prince that was promised.
My God, I mean, she had to go through so much 'cause we're
just getting started on all the suffering she went through.
Like, that's enough right there. But there's so much more to
come. And she would later face
Rhaegar's change of heart. Like, well, Rhaegar thought he
was the Prince that was promised, that he thinks it's
his son. Well, what does she think about
that? Does she think, well, maybe it's
someone he hasn't even identified yet.
Maybe the Prince that was promised is somebody else
entirely. Or maybe she just, you know,
constantly supported Rhaegar. If you say it's him, it's him,
right? That kind of thing.
There's a lot of lot of room here.
And that's that's a problem we face with a character that we
don't know super well. She's super interesting, super
compelling, but her personality is largely a mystery.
So we have to, you know, cast a wide net with our guesses.
That's part of the fun, imagining all the possibilities.
During King Jerry's the Second's reign, the War of the 9 Penny
Kings took place. Aries fought in it, so did
Tywin. Aries knighted Tywin.
They were close then, They were friends then.
This is also when Barristan became more of a great story
about a bold boy at A tournament and actually became a living
legend by cutting through the Golden Company to kill Maelys
the Monstrous in single combat. Shortly after, Barristan joined
the Kingsguard and in turn became a key witness for us.
Of course, because he's a POV character and because he was
around for all of Aries and Rayela's reign, and a little
before it. Now he wasn't at Summerhall, but
he did see the the wedding as we saw, so that was before he was a
Kingsguard, but after this, he's there all the time, he's
constantly around the Royals and well, his POV probably still has
some more to reveal in that regard, but we have quite a bit
in this episode already. So Ascent and Rain, let's talk
about that. Her father and mother only
reigned for about 3 years, and it was during the time the 9
Penny Kings attacked. So in 262, Rae Ella became queen
as perhaps as young as 15, maybe 17 at most.
So that's pretty young. She's already had a kid, she's
already gone through Summer Hall, and now she's queen.
She's already seen so much of her family die, both through
tragedy and just through whatever killed Jerry.
Second. He had ill health, but he didn't
even make it to age 40. So like, that's really young to
lose your father. And there was an expectation
placed on her because she was one of the few living female
Targaryens. They needed children.
They needed more Targaryens. A lot of them had died and that
was the expectation. And that's her duty.
Make more Targaryens. And Real is said to be dutiful,
so she probably took that upon herself and then took it
seriously. Aries declared he'd be the best
king ever. Well, he got close to being the
opposite of that, if not nailed it.
You know, I wonder if she believed that though.
Before he was mad when he said something like that.
He might, if she might have think, felt hopeful about that,
but you may have already been mature enough to realize that
this dude's all talk like she'd been around him enough to know
that he might have already said a lot of things that didn't,
that he wasn't willing to back up.
That may have already been a feature of Aries at a younger
age. What she thought of his reign
early on is maybe immaterial because she was doing so much
with so much on her own, you know, his policies and all that.
I doubt she had a lot of concern there because she had a
miscarriage the following year and then another in 264.
So she's queen of 262 and has one miscarriage per year the
first two years. 267, she has a still birth, a girl named Shana,
269, a Prince Darren who lived six months.
In 270 she has another still birth.
We're not told the gender or name doesn't exactly matter.
Around this time, Aries turned on her.
It shows the toll that it was taking on both of them.
She apparently handled it better.
It's hard to take it worse than Aries did.
He accused her of being unfaithful.
At first he was kind to her about it.
He was he comforted her throughout their their shared
losses. But eventually, as the problems
and tragedies mounted and his madness worsened, perhaps a bit
of a self fulfilling thing here. The the trauma was probably
fueling the madness to some degree, if not to a very extreme
degree. So in this year 270, after they
had already lost five children to miscarriage and still birth,
she turned on Rael or he turned on Raela and accused her of
being unfaithful. He couldn't believe that these
still bursts were of his body. He confined her to Magor's hold
fast with two septas in her bed every night, which is not unlike
what Cersei had put on her two septas in her bed every night.
This was followed by another miscarriage in 271 and there was
a Prince Agon born in 272, born two months premature, died the
following year. There was a Jeharis born in 274,
died the same year, and Aries just kept getting madder and
madder in both senses of the word.
He was getting madder in terms of insanity and madder in terms
of anger. For him, this was the last
straw. He had her wet nurse beheaded
after this Prince Jairis died. Think about this from her
perspective. Not only does each pregnancy
result in escalating grief because of so many bad results,
it starts to get innocent people killed, right?
You're supposed to feel good about getting pregnant.
If assuming you want to be pregnant, instead of joy from
that, there's just terror and death.
It's not at all what you're supposed to look forward to when
you get pregnant. Pregnant, you're like, hey, I'm
going to have a baby. We're going to have, I'm going
to be a mother. It's going to be great, but no
death. And then innocent people killed
because of that death. It's horrible.
You just can't possibly fathom what that's like.
It would have been so stressful and traumatic.
And it probably just made like, how's that going to help her
have children when she's that stressed out about what happens
when she's pregnant? Like the stress is absolutely
going to be passed on to the baby.
And yeah, it all all together, it adds up to 9 pregnancies in
15 years, six of which were went to term or close to it.
Just in terms of how physically taxing it was.
It would be insane. But the, the grief,
unbelievable. And then having her husband, you
know, pile on her on top of that.
Like, it's just, there's there's no way I can put myself in those
shoes. I don't suspect many of us can
or any of us can. So Aries, just being who he was
flipped around to some other ideas.
Eventually he decided it was own.
It was his own mistress's fault his mistress killed the child or
did something and he had her killed too.
Then he decided it was his own fault for being unfaithful.
So he fasted for a fortnight and did a walk of penance to the
Great Sept. Also a bit like Cersei, but he
wasn't naked. He declared he would only sleep
with Queen Rayella from then on. I'm not sure that was a relief
to her, and though the miscarriages and stillbirths
were not his fault, it's better than him taking responsibility
is better than him murdering servants.
So it's like the bar was really low for the situation to
improve. And it did a little bit, because
at least he stopped killing servants for things they had
nothing to do with. Things got even better though, a
little bit more improvement. In 276 Viserys was born and he
actually survived. As we know, Viserys didn't have
a great life, but he outlived his mother and she didn't have
to see another child of hers die.
Aries was so paranoid about Viserys that he had him guarded
constantly, wouldn't even allow Rae Ella herself to be alone
with the boy, which just continues to show him just how
paranoid he was. Like Rae Ella was no danger to
the boy, but Aries's paranoid mind thought that.
Then things got worse again, because the following year was
the defiance of Duskindale. When Barristan Selmy ponders
whether or not the realm would have been better off if he had
failed at Dusk and Dale or just not tried, well, I suspect
Rayela would affirm him in that one.
So yes, if Aries had died there, Rhaegar would have ascended.
Rhaegar could have been free of Aries forever, and before the
worst of his madness took hold, I might add.
Because the next several years will be the worst of them.
Well, the worst for Aries, maybe not the worst for reality,
because it's hard to be worse than losing all those children
and and at least that's not going to she's done with the the
still burst at least. So she could have been free of
her brother before the worst of that and had her son take over,
which would have been great. She could kind of retire as a,
you know, a not have to be a sitting queen anymore.
She could raise Viserys in peace, That would have been such
a better outcome for her. Not to be fair, not nearly as
exciting or entertaining as a story, but hey, right.
So instead of never seeing Aries again, instead of him being
dead, she was stuck in the same castle with him because he
became so paranoid. His paranoia went even higher.
He didn't leave the Red Keep for four years, which probably means
she didn't either thanks to his paranoia.
She wouldn't. He wouldn't want her going off
to plot against him, right? And she might he might have also
worried what other people might do to her, like it's a double
parent. He's worried that she will turn
on him and she's worried that other people will do something
to her like the the the mind of a madman.
It's hard to it's hard to figure.
And she also probably didn't want to leave because she
probably didn't want to leave Viserys alone with him because
she we're told that as Viserys as Viserys got older and Aries's
madness got worse, she placed herself between them, like tried
to shield Viserys from the worst of what Aries was.
And around this time also a little bit after Duskindale was
when Varis came into the picture.
I doubt she was a fan, but who knows, maybe Varis she liked how
he talked. Maybe he was good to her for
some reason, who knows. I I really no clue what
whatsoever, but a lot of people don't like Varis.
So it it I would guess that she wasn't a fan if she was a
dutiful person that's probably into the faith than the the the
seven maybe a pious woman that's not someone that's probably
going to be a fan of varies. This is also unfortunately when
Aries started having a sexual reaction to burning people alive
and he was grossly abusive to her after each victim.
This is why I'm like I don't know what's worse the losing all
the children or every time Aries burns someone he comes and and
sleeps with her and is abusive and and and forces himself on
her. So every time he has a burning
victim, she's the second victim. In that case, the first victim
changes with each burning, but every time she's victim #2 so
not only did each pregnancy become fraught with peril, but
her marriage bed became violent and abusive.
So many aspects of motherhood and so many privileges that come
with being queen weren't just lacking for Rayella, they were
entirely flipped and reversed. Again, I say not just a gilded
cage, a gilded torture chamber. And as an aside, how could this
not have affected Viserys? Yes, Raela shielded Viserys from
a lot of Aries's worst aspects, but how much could she have
possibly kept him from there's? There's only so much she can do.
It's a monumental task. Selmy confirms this without
details. But yeah.
Now we're not all created equal in the real world or in
Westeros, but Rhaegar was raised by Aries and and Raela when
things were much better. Before he had gone mad, before
Aries had gone mad. Not that Rhaegar's life was some
cakewalk, right? His his father hadn't gone mad
yet, but he would have been deeply affected by his mother
losing all those would be siblings for him.
By the time he was 15, he'd lost 8 potential siblings.
Wow. And at a pretty early age he
decided, quote, he must be a warrior.
Remember all that? So he was a very serious,
dutiful boy. Again, this is a clue that
Rayella was a similar type of figure, that maybe she had some
of that impact on him. And Danny and Viserys didn't
have to live through all those tragedies, didn't have to live
through all those stillborns and miscarriages and didn't have to
live through and Danny's case, didn't have to live through her
father's madness. It's pretty interesting.
There's significant differences in the upbringing of all three
of those siblings of Rael's children, like Rhaegar's
upbringing compared to Viserys's upbringing, compared to Danny's
upbringing. All three super different from
each other, unprecedented political and supernatural
conditions, how much exposure they had to Ares was all very
different and lots of other things you could name really.
But just in terms of their family life, massive
differences. Two major facets of Rhaegar's
life we really have to consider for Rae, Ella herself, which,
for example, what did she think of her son's interest in
prophecy? We brought that up earlier when
he was born and in in Summer Hall, and then he started to
start to take an interest in that and the ghost that was high
hard and he play, he would play his harp in the ruins of Summer
Hall. As he got older, his interest in
prophecy would have grown and that would have increased
Raela's chance of being interested or her involvement in
it potentially as he learned more.
Well, he wasn't going to talk to his father about it.
I don't think so. I mean, I kind of doubt he's
talking to Aries about these things.
We know he's sending letters to Maester Eamonn, but it's
entirely possible he spoke to his mother about it a little bit
or or a lot. She might have been very
supportive, she might have been very interested, but she might
have just had her mind shut to a lot of it.
She was heavily traumatized. If she she had her ears closed,
eyes and ears closed to what Aries was doing and her shutdown
may have been more total. It may have been just a complete
shutdown just focused on Viserys and that's it.
She just keep her son safe, not worried about much else.
The second question is whether or not she was included or
involved in any of Rhaegar's dealings with replacing his
father. Plenty of evidence that Rhaegar
was thinking of replacing his father, of forcing his father to
abdicate, and he didn't get around.
Do it soon enough. Maybe, but Raela might have been
involved. She might have been all for it.
She might have been against it. I kind of doubt that given what
a king Arias was. But maybe she just was had that
strong a sense of duty. Maybe she just thought tearing
the family apart like that was too even more risky.
Normally you'd need a lot of evidence to suggest a queen
would go against her own husband, the king, and in this
case, her brother also. But I think we've made the case
pretty clear here that this is not one of those situations
where you think, oh, she's going to be loyal to her husband, But
even with the abuse, she might because that's a realistic
thing. I would believe she favors
Rhaegar over Aries, if I had to guess.
Well, hey, I can guess. I don't have to, but I'm going
to. I would guess she favors Rhaegar
over Aries. And and that may extend to his
his delving into the supernatural, but but not
necessarily. I mean, she's her mother.
That's his, that's that's a mother, right?
Like many mothers would choose their son over their husband,
even when their husband is a decent or good person.
And Aries was a terrible husband, a horrible husband.
And to be fair as well, Aries suspected her.
She, he suspected Rhaegar, he suspected a lot of people.
And she was included in that. I mean his paranoia extended to
everyone except the Kingsguard, which is a peculiarity that we
delve into in our Summer Hall series that I think relates to
perhaps the the Kingsguard being the reason that Aries survived
Summer Hall that that works for me as a theory.
Now Varys as well could be a source on a lot of this.
He was around after Duskindale and and would have been a
witness to some of this. He would have listening through
the walls, his whispers, would have heard some things.
Problem is with Varys as in all things, can we trust what he
says? Well, we'll have to see when the
time comes if he tells us things about this.
We'll have to judge what he says based on context, circumstance
and other clues. Now, Aries didn't even go to the
Sept when his son got married. Rhaegar that is of course, and
didn't even allow Viserys to go. He's like no, I'm not going.
Viserys isn't going either. But I think, but apparently Rae
Ella was allowed to go. There's nothing.
We're not told that she was prevented from going.
We're told that Viserys was prevented from going.
So we can assume Rae Ella would attend her son's wedding.
You know, unless Arie stopped her and there's nothing that
says that she did. So that would have been one of
the high points of her life then, seeing her son get married
because she would not see any of her other kids get married or
have children, which Rhaegar would do both.
War of the Usurper. Aries finally left the Red Keep
to attend the tournament at Harrenhal, which was perhaps the
first time in years that Rayella herself had any respite from
him. Right.
Like they were stuck in the Red Keep together and who knows what
their day-to-day life was like. Obviously he would abuse her
when he burned somebody, but we don't know how often that was.
Maybe there were weeks at a time where he just ignored her.
I mean, he's a madman. His fingernails were longer than
his forearms and his hair was like, guys, it's crazy.
Who knows what he was doing, but it still would be maybe a relief
to her to know that he was miles away for a few weeks or
something. And we'd still love to know by
this point. This is much later and things
would have come to a head because at the tournament,
Rhaegar's supernatural delvings reached a new milestone right
after the tournament. He tells Elia that his son is
the Prince that was Promised and Danny has that dream where we
see this now. He was wrong about that, as it
turns out, just like he was wrong about himself being the
Prince that was promised. Do we?
Did Ray all hear about this? He also tell tell his mother
about any of this? It's quite possible.
The conditions for the war, of course, were laid during the
tournament as well. Leona and Rhaegar happened,
right? And then of course, Rhaegar went
back to King's Landing and then left again to meet with her.
Now, if he didn't discuss the prophecy with his mother or any
of the supernatural stuff, did he at least discuss Leona, this
girl that he maybe fell for? And what did she have to say
about that? If so, was she encouraging?
Was she worried that it would what their father would say or
what his father would say, what her husband would say?
Well, he should have been 'cause that was a problem.
But who knows, Rael? On the other hand, you might be
unhappy that he cheated on Elia. I mean, Elia's grandmother was
her lady in waiting, the Princess of Dorn.
And being a woman of duty, she might not look too kindly on
relationships out of wedlock, right?
On the other hand, maybe she was convinced of how important it
was. Maybe she supported her son
because bigger things were in play and she had been forced to
tolerate worse from Aries. Aries had mistresses, not that
that means she accepted it. You mean mother, not
Grandmother, Elia's mother. Oh yeah, you're right.
Elia's mother, not not grandmother.
Good catch. Good correction.
You're totally right. Not grandmother.
So either. Either way, a point stands
though with that correction that that she would have had a
relationship with that woman and it might have affected how she
saw this. A closer relationship could be
more like Elia was more like a a a daughter to her than anything.
That's true, which is why I I wonder about.
Maybe she would have looked unkindly on cheating on her or
but maybe, you know, she was convinced, like Rhaegar was,
that Elia can't have another child and they needed to have
more children. And maybe she was sympathetic to
the notion of creating more Targaryens, right, Because that
was a duty put on her as well. I was like, OK, well, we haven't
been successful in creating more Targaryens.
And now you are married to a woman that is not capable of
bearing lots of children. So yeah, it it's a again, we
have to cast a wide net here without knowing what Rayla was
was like. Now, Bereson was at the
tournament, of course, he famously lost to Rhaegar.
And here we get a reverse situation with him at Dusk and
Dale. He wondered how things would
have been if he had failed this time.
He wonders how it would have been if he had succeeded,
because if he had beaten Rhaegar, then he would have
given the queen of love and beauty Laurel to well, a Chara
Dane is what he says he would have done.
So we even know who his choice would have been.
But instead it was Rhaegar and Liana.
So this is like when a victory is a loss and when a loss is a
victory. So Barristan's like what is
winning? Actually?
He's must be very confused. Like I win here and it's
terrible. I lose here and that's terrible.
Like, I don't life is confusing, man.
Meanwhile, of course, Jamie showed up for the tournament,
was given his white cloak and then sent back to the Red Keep,
not allowed to participate. So that's him guarding Ray Ella
and Prince Viserys, something that he has a few takes on more
about Ray Ella than Viserys. Jamie doesn't really comment on
Viserys very much. He was just a little boy.
Wouldn't it be a whole lot to say?
But I, you know, I am curious what Jamie thinks of Viserys at
idly, you know, not a big plot point, but it comes up here.
We we always like to speculate on such things.
We also speculate on Ares continuing to trust the
Kingsguard again because of their heroism.
And that would be why they he continues to have this weird
sense that the white cloak puts them on his side, even Jamie,
like that's the son of the man that you're paranoid about.
And all of a sudden, this white cloak makes him.
Yeah, Well, that's madness for you.
Raela was probably not in the throne room, you know, a year
later or whenever it was. Or several months later.
Yeah, it wouldn't have been a full year, just a few months
later when Rickard and Brandon were burned and strangled in the
throne room. But she would have suffered soon
after because we know what happens when someone is given to
the flames. Aries would have gone to his bed
chamber and Raela would suffer for it, so she was aware of it
in that sense for sure and may have seen it coming like all the
other times, Like oh boy, he's burning someone again.
Hell, the war broke out relatively soon afterwards.
Of course after this, after the burning of of Rick Hart and the
strangler Brandon, that things escalated quickly.
The rebels were far more successful than many expected
though, and because of that prejudice, because of they were
slow to take the rebels seriously.
Aries had a council of yes men, so because of this they got
behind right the the rebels gained even more steam and that
proved fatal. Maybe they would have lost
anyway, but if they had to do it all over again they would
definitely have acted sooner. So first Aries fired Lord
Merriweather for his dallying, then he fired John Connington
for his failures. Then he promoted Lord Carlton
Chelstad, who had been master of coin and which that I don't know
why he thought that would work. Again, madness.
Not a bright man. He already had a council full of
yes men. So he just hires another yes
man. Yeah, this is gone were the days
of relative competence under Tywin Lannister, Right, Tywin.
When Tywin was Hand, he wasn't a a good meaning ethical hand, but
he was competent. And he certainly didn't just
tell Aries what he wanted to hear.
And yeah, like, he was a lot better than than this group of
guys, even even with all the complaints they have about
Tywin. And Jamie would have been there
for a lot of that. He would have been there to
witness some of the yes mannery, some of the back and forth, some
of the poor decision making, and he would just have to sit there
and listen and inwardly shake his head about how crazy and
stupid this all was. Now in terms of when the actual
battle, the Trident happened, Barristan was at the Trident and
Jamie was still at King's Landing, right?
Remember, he kills Aries, right? The whole Kingslayer business.
But before that, it happened before Jamie kills Aries.
Raela and Viserys fled after Rhaegar's death.
Aries named Viserys his heir over Rhaegar's baby Aegon.
I think a lot of people didn't know that no one objected to
this. I mean you got a you're naming
an 8 year old the heir instead of a baby.
So that on its surface makes a lot of sense.
But then came the wildfire plot. Maybe this was even the next
item up for business at discussion.
So as we said before, Raela was apparently blind to the wildfire
plot. She had enough going on.
What would she have even done about it anyway?
Like, she can't stop the man from abusing her.
What's she going to stop him abusing other people?
How's she supposed to do that? But Aries did discuss the
wildfire plot with his counsel. Again.
He's so crazy that he thinks this is a thing that people will
go for. Even even his yes men didn't,
though at least some of them didn't.
And and most importantly, this new Hand Lord Chelstead stood up
to Aries when it came to burning the city.
He finally found his courage, as Jamie describes it anyway, he's
like that was a weak man who was brave in that moment and was
burned alive for it. Wisdom Rossart the pyromancer
was named Han next. Jamie managed to kill him too,
but much later. But as expected, after burning
Lord Chelstead, Eris went to visit Riella.
Jamie remembers it and overheard it.
And it's a horrible moment for him, obviously way worse for
Raela. But we're experiencing it
through his perspective. And at the time, he says, aren't
we supposed to protect her? Like, what the hell?
He says this to his fellow Kingsguard, Jonathorderi, who's
far more experienced. He's been around a lot longer.
And he, Jonathorderi answers grossly but truthfully that by
law, by oath, their protection of her doesn't extend to him.
His abuses are the only abuses that are acceptable, but they're
so awful. And it really starts that
ticking clock on Jamie. It's it had already started
ticking. But his whole like questioning
oaths and what's good and and right moments like this really
stuck with him, I think, when it came to just thinking oaths are
a bunch of crap. This brings us to her exit from
the Red Keep for the last time. Quote.
Jamie had only seen Raela once after that, the morning of the
day she left for Dragonstone. The Queen had been cloaked and
hooded as she climbed inside the royal wheelhouse that would take
her down Aegon's High Hill to the waiting ship, but he heard
her maids whispering after she was gone.
They said the Queen looked as if some beast had savaged her.
Clearly, this wasn't that long afterwards if her wounds were
still pretty fresh. And it makes sense that because
of what happened, the news was was had come that Rhaegar had
died. That was all happened in a short
amount of time. Now, remember that one sentence
in this light and in this quote for later, her maids whispering
after she was gone. Because one thing we're trying
to keep track of, one thing I worked on with this episode is
who else might be witnessing some of these things.
We'll come back to that later. So this would have been the last
time that Rael ever had to deal with Aries.
Now. Still, she couldn't feel safe.
The they're losing the war. I mean, being separated from in
a vacuum would be good, but she had to understand that she was
being sent to Dragonstone because the danger posed by the
war was very real. That they were again, that they
were losing. She had to know that maybe she
didn't allow herself to think of that way, but probably did.
It was a bit of an inescapable conclusion, and she was very
sad. Of course, she had just lost
Rhaegar. They went from maybe plotting to
replace Aries with Rhaegar, and now not only did they lose him,
but they're probably going to lose the war.
And if she believed in his prophecy and any of that stuff,
that's a huge loss as well. Not just for her son, for as a
mother, but for humanity. Perhaps, though, she still had
hope in both regards. As usual, making educated
guesses. Again, we have to keep this
this, keep our guesses wide open.
The range must be wide, so lots of options there.
Also consider Barristan much later.
This is kind of a side topic but much, much later picture the
arguments that may happen in front of Daenerys.
Barristan is not going to be a fan of Tyrion giving her advice
and if it comes to argument it comes to like you are guilty of
this Tyrion. You did this Tyrion you did
that. Well what will Tyrion fire back
with? What did you do when Queen
Rayela, Danny's mother, was being raped repeatedly?
What did you do? You stood there and did nothing
right, Mr. Brave man? I'm not saying I agree with
this, but this is a thing. Tyrion can say.
I kind of do agree with it, but you know.
But that's not the point, isn't what I think.
It's Darian and Barristan going at it and what Danny will think
if she hears these points made. And Tyrion is much smoother
arguer than Barrison is. So the truth is one thing.
The compelling argument will more likely come from Tyrion.
This is a scene that may never even happen, but you can imagine
it. Now.
Danny has some some thoughts on this as well.
Not on what Aries did to Rae Ella, she's not really aware of
that, but she is aware of some of the details of the flight to
Dragonstone about their escape. And here's the quote.
The saris had been a boy of eight when they fled King's
Landing to escape the advancing armies of the Usurper, but
Daenerys had been only a quickening in their mother's
womb. Yet sometimes Danny would
picture the way it had been. So often had her brother told
her the stories. The midnight flight to
Dragonstone, moonlight shimmering on the ship's Black
Sails. Her brother Rhaegar, battling
the Usurper in the bloody waters of the Trident and dying for the
woman he loved. The Sack of King's Landing by
the ones Viserys called the Usurper's dogs.
The Lord's Lannister and Stark Princess Elia of Dorn, pleading
for mercy as Rhaegar's air was ripped from her breast and
murdered before her eyes. The polished skulls of the last
Dragons staring down sightlessly from the walls of the throne
room while the Kingslayer opened Father's throat with a golden
sword. Note that Jamie remembers her
leaving in the morning and Danny was told it was a midnight
flight. A little unreliable narrator in
here, probably on Viserys side and after all he was eight.
Maybe it was midnight when they arrived, they took ship in the
day and got there at night. Who knows.
Rhaegar dying for the woman he loved quote UN quote isn't
particularly true either. I mean, he probably did love
Lyanna, but he didn't die for her.
Stark didn't really have much to do with the sack either, and
Jamie's sword wasn't golden. So there's a lot of little
details here that aren't quite accurate.
I'm not sure he he cut her. That Jamie cut Aries's throat
either doesn't really matter, but the point is that the
unreliable narrator is probably Viserys.
Jamie was more of a true witness here as to some of these things,
but it doesn't matter. The the rest is pretty accurate
as far as what Danny remembers, but it's very lacking in
context, not just from the usurper side of things.
Obviously they were treated very poorly by Aries.
Their side of the story contains a lot of justice.
Not 100%, but Danny doesn't know all that stuff.
And she also doesn't know very much about the personalities of
her mother and her brother, who again may have been actively
plotting to replace their her father.
So for all she knows, what happened to Aries was a great
injustice, but she might find out that her own family was
conspiring against her father and that might change her mind
quite a bit. It wasn't just Robert and
company that were trying to take Aries out her, her own family
was considering it, if not planning on it actively so, and
for good reason. So she has a lot of romanticized
notions here. And to be fair, they came from
Viserys, who experienced all this as a child, so it makes
sense. So it turns out if we think
about that, that awful quote and think about Jamie in that
moment, he probably overheard Danny's conception, that moment
where he's complaining to Jonathan Derry about Aries
abusing Rayella. That was probably when she was
conceived. It's an uncomfortable detail
that doesn't exactly add shine to her legend, right?
She's she's like, yeah, I'm Stormborn, but yeah, that other
stuff the the, the night of your conception.
Storm born, but like rape, conceived, right?
Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, That's that's not
pleasant. There's nothing wrong with it in
terms of like, it doesn't make you a bad person, like, but it
isn't something you go and tell people as to make you sound
great. Right.
And Danny is big on titles. It's an important part of her
presenting herself. So if bastards are tainted by
Westerosi society because they're conceived via dishonesty
and lust and outside of marriage, you know this one was
at least marriage. But what does that say about how
Danny was conceived of dishonesty and lust as well?
This is abuse and violence and celebrating the burning of a
human. I mean, this is this is worse by
a lot. I don't think it would keep
Danny from thinking of herself as a child of destiny.
After all, she births Dragons. That's not going anywhere, but
it would take maybe a little of the righteousness out of her
'cause to know I just, my family deserves the Iron Throne.
If she were to find out how bad her father was, like, well, OK,
maybe we did deserve those. Actually, the rebellion actually
had a lot of justice behind it. The the rebels had some good
reasons, actually. So, yeah, we know why Viserys
was sent to Dragonstone. It makes sense he was the new
heir, right? But why not send Aegon and
Rainis as well, right? That just because they weren't
the heirs, they would be next. They would be second and third
in line. They were the only other
Targaryens other than the adults.
Maybe they didn't want to put all their eggs in one basket,
but leaving them in King's Landing seems foolish.
Send them somewhere else. Send them to, I don't know, the
Celtigars or the Dorn or something.
Or overseas, but again, Aries in charge.
Bad decisions make sense from him.
If he was making lots of smart moves, he'd be like, isn't this
the insane guy? Why is he making such clever
moves? And why wasn't he making these
clever moves before? No, so now bad moves by a bad
thinker. I wonder what Raela thought when
she realized she was pregnant because she didn't know when she
left for Dragonstone. The conception would have been,
you know, a matter of hours or maybe hours away, so she
wouldn't have known for a few weeks at least.
I don't think she would have been eager to inform Aries or
anyone outside of the castle really.
She couldn't keep it from the people in the castle.
It would be showing, but she would know her unborn child was
in danger. But then word arrived at the SAC
of King's Landing, the deaths of not just Rhaegar's children, but
Elia, which I suspect Raela would guess she could divine
that that was Tywin Lannister doing that.
And she would also understand that Eris's death was also,
well, she would understand a lot of that.
She would understand why, and it would increase her fears on top
of everything, understanding it perhaps is secondary, tertiary
to the fear of what would be next.
And again, mixed feelings. Her husband's death, her
brother's death. Of course, she had grown to
loathe him, if not just despise his presence, but we still have
to think back to the beginning when we talked about how he
would have been the only person that understood a lot of the
things she had gone through. Of course not counting the
things that he inflicted on her. But again, when they were
younger, the stuff about their father and about Aegon the 5th
and Summerhall and all that early stuff in life that they
would have shared, most likely that no one else could have
shared it with them. Again, they weren't necessarily
loving, but Aries wasn't mad back then, so the death of of
Arias would have been a strange combination of relief and fear.
And I don't even know, just again, it's super hard to put
yourself in the shoes of a person like this, especially
without knowing what kind of person they were fully.
And there wouldn't have been much time for her to get swept
up in that. The past, the fear, everything,
things were happening. She doesn't have time to linger
on any of that. Their lives are in danger.
Despite all that, she took charge.
Viserys had been named the heir, and so now he was crowned right
rail crowned Viserys just as Robert was being crowned in
King's Landing. Viserys likely remembers this.
This is part of why he considers himself king.
He's Viserys the Third 'cause he's already been crowned it, it
likely added a little bit of that petulance and intensity to
his obsession with getting the throne back.
And Danny doesn't experience that directly.
She experiences it through Viserys memory, which is
filtered through this very lens of obsession and and trauma and
and all that. So yeah, a lot of a lot of it's
informed by that, which is not the most accurate retelling
Viserys. That is the new Baratheon regime
planned to take on Dragonstone, but they didn't have the ships
for it so that there was a delay.
They can't take Dragonstone until they have new ships.
Dragonstone is, as Damon says during the Dance of the Dragons,
the Dragonstone is a great defensive spot, but it's not a
great instrument of conquest. So they, they were able to
hunker down for a while, knowing that the these ships wouldn't be
ready for a bit. Takes a while to build ships,
but they, they knew their time was limited.
Maybe there were messages exchanging back and forth, you
know, Ravens. But why would they surrender?
They saw what happened to Elia and her children.
They saw what happened to Ares. Why would they expect to be
treated well upon surrendering? So it's like, no, we can't do
that. We have to flee, you know, and,
and what else could they do? You know, Rael had a few men, an
8 year old son and a baby on the way.
She's pregnant. I mean, no Kingsguard.
Did she know anything about Liana?
Did she know that that Rhaegar had spent that time with her?
That that Rhaegar had been off in the Tower of Joy with her?
What did she know about that? Did she, would she have
suspected that there might have been another child out there?
Interesting. Not that you can do anything
about it, but she may have wondered, as we do, and if she
understood that Rhaegar's connection to Liana was related
to the Song of Ice and Fire, as we discussed earlier, well, that
may have bolstered her determination even more.
She's like, I got to hold on. My sense of duty is really
kicking into high gear here, despite all my trauma.
Because humanity, it might be resting on all this.
Something much larger than herself, right?
She's filled with trauma and sadness.
But the world needed her, and her child would need her.
Both her children, her unborn child, and young Prince Viceris.
The months passed, Danny's birth got closer and so did the
completion of Stannis's fleet and so did the the paranoia, the
fear, and the what would happen next?
Well, what happens next for us? I've been trying Magic Mind
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Magic Mind Bundle. Now, Danny's birth is one of the
first things we hear about her. It's a major part of her
identity. It's something that George wants
us to associate with her right away.
Well, this is her first chapter quote.
She had been born on Dragonstone, 9 moons after their
flight, while a raging summer storm threatened to RIP the
island fastness apart. They said that storm was
terrible. The Targaryen fleet was smashed
while it lay at anchor, and huge stone blocks were ripped from
the parapets and sent hurtling into the wild waters of the
Narrow Sea. Her mother had died birthing
her, and for that her brother Viserys had never forgiven her.
A storm that smashes ships is not the most surprising thing
ever. Even ships at anchor.
But stones torn from the parapets?
Maybe Gargles ripped down. As Danny put it earlier, I think
that's an exaggeration. The stones torn down might have
happened, but I don't know that's that's so hard to
believe. This is Dragon Stone.
Might not be like all of the gargoyles got ripped down, but a
gargoyle did fall. Off that might exaggerate to 5
or 10. Yeah, but like I, I believe that
one happened. It's I, I believe it, it's just
wow, 'cause it's a, this is a fused stone fortress.
This is, this is a really powerful well made castle.
And the wind is tearing things off like, yeah, that is really
strong. So that really must have been
something to live through that storm, to experience it even
from, you know, indoors. If you're outdoors, well, you're
probably screwed. You might not have lived to tell
the story. This is the kind of story you
tell your children and grandchildren and they tell
theirs. Jenner's like, yeah, you know,
your ancestor was in that storm, the storm of the storm born,
right. Rhaegar was born at Summerhall.
He was like fire born, wildfire born or smoking salt born.
And again, as a child of prophecy, it it drove him.
He thought he was a child of prophecy.
Anyway, now, Danny, during the worst storm ever.
What a terrifying and powerful omen.
I wonder if the maester who helped deliver Danny thought
about that at all. Right.
We don't know. It wasn't Crescent.
So we we don't know who this maester was, but this is the
Dragonstone Maester. But yeah, it wasn't Crescent.
So. Or if anyone else, not
necessarily the maester, but other people are going to be
thinking, I mean, this is a world of superstition, right?
The storm like that is a person being born.
Like people are going to notice that and think about it and be
like, Oh my gosh, this is this is crazy.
So Raela didn't die during childbirth, but she died maybe a
few days later. Roughly speaking, she survived
the childbirth but didn't make it much longer after that.
And again, as we said at the beginning, Raela gave her the
name Daenerys. George weighed in on this at one
point. That's why we know it isn't in
the text. It's something that George said.
And it's a very interesting, slightly off topic note.
So let's let's engage with this just for a SEC here.
What he said was Danny was named by her mother, Tyrion by his
father, John by Ned. Notice the wording John by Ned
not by his father, Tyrion by his father, Danny by her mother,
John by Ned, and in the inverse of that, Tyrion by his father.
Aries didn't name Tyrion, right? So Tyrion Targaryen fans, that's
a strike right there. That looks like Tyrion was named
by Tywin. Who George is saying his father
is Tywin in this case. So that's, that's the
implication. It's possible Raela herself
coined the nickname Stormborn. We don't know who actually 1st
called her that. I'm sure once it started, it
continued because again, it's such a good name.
It sounds so cool. It rhymes more on more on just
how cool the name is a little bit.
But yeah, that's that's that's a factor here.
And did she wonder in that moment, was Rayela thinking
about the Prince that was promised?
Was she thinking, oh, this omen, just like when Rhaegar was born,
this might be it. Or when she realized was it was
a girl, She's like, well, maybe not then, because I thought it
was going to be a boy. Is the Prince that was promised.
She doesn't know that the the gender thing is squirrely that
it could be the Princess that was promised.
The the gender of that translation is off.
She she doesn't know that even Amy Strayman didn't figure that
out till later. So she's not going to know that.
So with all that happening, did it SAP her will to live?
Was she dying? And that just fired her up even
more? Did she realize that, Oh my
gosh, I'm not having a boy? Rhaegar and Aegon are dead.
That's it. Humanity's doomed.
Or did the storm inform her that actually your daughter is
important? You know, it doesn't matter the
gender of this baby. Look at the storm, the auspices,
the hints. This is what you should be
paying attention to. And she has something to to
think about, you know, and in in her mind, she can say, well,
Rhaegar was wrong about him self being the Prince.
And then he thought it was his son.
And, and it looks like he was wrong about that.
So maybe if he was wrong a couple times, that gives Rael a
little wiggle room to say, well, maybe it's this child instead.
Well, one way or another, whatever she believed, she did
in fact birth a child of enormous destiny.
Daenerys, of course, is the most important Targaryen born ever.
I don't know. We're we're kind of rank those
things. But clearly she was a child of
prophecy, a child of destiny, however you rank them.
And it's easy to forget because of how much tragedy endures
during her early life that look at all this.
This is so tragic. Like Danny carries the banner of
Stormborn. Not literally doesn't.
There's not a big flag that said Stormborn on her, but she it's
part of her titles, her string of titles.
She always says that. People always says it, say it
for her. They announce her as the nearest
Stormborn, right? So she uses it like that, like a
banner, without full awareness of just how sad it all is.
She knew it was touch and go, that her family was on the run.
She knows a lot of it. But she doesn't know like how
people felt and how much build up trauma they had and how much
it took for them to get to that point.
And are the auspices actually good here?
Yes, Stormborn, the storm. It means Danny's important, but
that doesn't mean it's good or positive.
It it probably does. But we should consider other
options here. The storm damages the Targaryen
ancestral home in much of their fleet.
That's a sign that it's bad for House Targaryen.
Maybe it's violent towards the Targaryens.
It's not helping them. And maybe that's symbolic of
Danny herself in some way. I mean, she is kind of a storm
of her own. She's Stormborn and she is in
many ways the manifestation of a storm.
So she uses the name, but the truth behind it has a lot of
ugliness and tragedy to it. And she it could have easily
gone the other way. She might have had horrible
associations with her own birth, like it's the death of her
mother and her brother made her feel bad about it, made her
blamed her for it. But she didn't take that to
heart. She learned to use it.
She learned to be the Stormborn to to revel in that and to use
the power of that name, but only after others learned to use it
first. Because but while she was still
a young person, when she was 2345, well before she's capable
of speaking for herself or leading or anything, other
people are like Stormborn. We can call her that.
And it's so cool sounding and fancy and gives her more value,
which is what they're concerned with.
Value. They're trying to pump up
Daenerys's value very early in the story.
More on that in a minute. Couple of questions here.
Dornish Dame asks or says I kind of find it interesting that both
Cersei and Viserys, who blame their younger siblings for the
loss of a mother, both lost their mother and child bed at
the same age 8. Oh yeah, that's a good point.
Yeah, there's a lot of interesting parallels between
the Lannister family, Tyrion, not just Tyrion, but Cersei and
Jamie as well. And and the circumstances of of
the the Targaryens and to a lesser extent some of the other
families like the Starks, like John in in particular, who is
Stark and Targaryen. So I could see the overlap
there. Guilty undertaker, says Raela
realizing her daughter was the chosen one but not living long
enough to tell her is a very George twist.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, she may have realized
it, but what's she going to do, tell the infant?
Yeah, she's lying there slowly dying.
She's. Was she going to chew to tell
Viserys who? Could she tell Willem Derry?
Yeah, maybe Willem Derry. Maybe.
Didn't live long enough to tell her either.
Yeah, Willem Derry didn't last when Derry died when Danny was.
Probably about the age Viserys was at this point.
So too soon to be telling a kid about prophecy, if he even knew.
So next was the flight to Essos. Right after her mother's death.
Things moved very quickly. King's Landing was sacked.
Of course that had already happened and and the fleet had
taken all that damage from the storm.
This kind of began a new chapter of her life, her her mother's
tragic tale. It ended on Dragonstone, which
in story terms is like Danny's prologue.
Her entry to life is for her mother's exit is is like Danny's
prologue here. So let's listen to this quote.
She did not remember Dragonstone either.
They had run again just before the Usurper's brother set sail
with his new built fleet. By then, only Dragonstone
itself, the ancient seat of their house, had remained of the
Seven kingdoms that had once been theirs.
It would not remain for long. The Garrison had been prepared
to sell them to the Usurper, but one night Sir Willem Derry and
four loyal men had broken into the nursery and stolen them
both, along with her wet nurse, and set sail undercover of
darkness for the safety of the Bravosian coast.
An ironic aspect of the title Stormborn is that she doesn't
actually know much about it personally.
It's something we all, it's true for everyone.
We're all there for our own birth, but none of us can
remember it. We're not technically we're
maybe you call that a witness to your own birth.
You're present for it but can't remember it.
And for most of us, there's not much of a story to it.
You go to the hospital, you're delivered and you go home,
right? That's that's how it is for most
of us. And whatever details there
happen to be, if there's anything interesting are where
our relatives tell us about that, our mother or father or
both or who knows. But Danny only had Viserys to
tell her, and he was only 8 and not the most mentally strong
person. So his version of events are, as
we said, very off, very lacking in context, very misremembered,
just lots of lots of flaws there.
So things were getting bad at Dragonstone, with the Garrison
likely to sell them out, as she points out in that memory.
And you can understand why the Targaryens were beaten.
Robert had been named king. Dragonstone would eventually
fall. They knew it was nothing they
could do about it. Why die for them?
Why die for this? What's the point?
Well, Willem, Derry and those four loyal men answered that
question for us. They took an oath or they stayed
loyal. Whatever their thinking was,
they held to it. And so it looks like Aries at
least made one good decision, which was choosing Sir Willem
for this duty. He definitely was a ride or die,
but he did die. So let's recap the order of
events. This is we've gotten to
Stormborn in terms of the naming of her, acquiring the nickname
of the events that give her that title, the death of Rae Ella,
the storm that raged that night. So let's recap a little.
First we have the conception of Danny, probably after the
burning of Lord Chelstead. Well, almost certainly after the
burning of Lord Chelstead. Then we have news of Rhaegar's
death arriving and Viserys has made air over Aegon.
Then Raella, Viserys, William, Derry are sent to Dragonstone.
Then the sack of King's Landing and Viserys is crowned by Raella
nine months after sailing to Dragonstone.
Danny is born during the massive storm and Raella dies shortly
after after naming her Daenerys. Then not long after that Willem
Derry flees with Danny and Viserys and Rae Ella's crown
just before Stannis's fleet arrives.
So next would be the Sea Lord's palace where Danny develops the
memory of the red door. Because she's too young to
remember Dragonstone. This is her.
Her first memories are are at Bravos.
Now of course there's a lot of other story in there, but that's
not our focus for today. The power of her name is
something her elders pick up on 1st.
That's something I was saying before the break.
Not only does it sound cool and fancy, it's just it's, it's it's
an elevating factor to be born during a massive storm, right?
People just think that's cool. I think that's that's bad ass.
Euron can't claim to be born during a storm.
So he claims that he is the storm, right?
Like I am the storm, like Danny's like get out of here
with that. I was born in a storm.
You're just taking it over. You can't do that.
You can't conquer the storm. So let's talk about what's in a
name. One of the reasons Danny learns
the power of being called Stormborn and how much gravitas
that gives her is how other influential people wield that
name for her to make her sound special when she's young.
I love to quote The Wire. I think it's been a while.
Doesn't matter if it has, I'm going to do it again.
The name Stormborn rings out. That's a phrase you hear.
Like certain names ring out like you hear them.
They mean something. It's like a form of glory.
You could almost say if you've seen the Guardians of the Galaxy
franchise, names matter. If you knew nothing about them,
about Guardians of the Galaxy or House Targaryen, you would
probably follow Stormborn over Taserface, right?
Taserface got laughed at for his name.
Stormborn. People were like Stormborn, you
say? That sounds awesome.
Shay and I have this joke that she found on Twitter a long time
ago that's just really funny and really shows us the situation.
It really draws this comparison super well.
Credit to Danny Zucker. Danny Zucker?
I'm constantly amazed at how different my twin daughters are.
Lisa is so much more positive and confident than her sister.
Hog Face. Yeah, right.
Right. You get it.
Right. If people are calling you
Stormborn, that's awesome. But in A Song of Ice and Fire,
what was viscera? It's called Beggar King.
Like 1 is great and one is diminutive, 1 is an insult, and
1 is awesome. We could say I'm constantly
amazed at how different my children are.
Stormborn is so much more positive and confident than her
brother, the Beggar King. Like, yeah, yeah.
You get it right. It's just yeah.
Or the cart king, the Dothraki called him Sore foot king or
cart king. It's one is mocking and yeah,
the other is just awesome. So in terms of similar
nicknames, well, outside of A Song of Ice and Fire, Conan the
Barbarian was born in battle. He was battleborn.
He was born during a battle. Yeah.
And Eamon Battleborn, we have that parallel here in the Song
of Ice and Fire. That's the child of Dalla and
Mance Ryder, who is of course, masquerading as Sam and Gilly's
child after the baby swap, but still, his nickname was Eamon
Battleborn. All the Ironborn have that
nickname. They're all something born.
It sounds pretty cool. Ironborn sounds pretty cool.
The Skagosi call themselves Stoneborn, That's cool sounding
too. The Stormlanders don't call
themselves Stormborn, but I bet when they hear Daenerys's
nickname they they probably have already heard it.
They're probably like hey damn, we should have said that.
Why don't we call ourselves that?
Damn, what? We missed an opportunity there.
There's a lot more just willing to be taken, right?
Snowborn, Sandborn. Caveborn, Treeborn, Waveborn.
We joked about Shipborn during the Nymeria series, right?
You could be born on a ship during that odyssey.
Sunborn. Most people are just hovel born
or Manger born right? Or I was re watching the show
Russian Doll recently where a character's born in the subway.
Is she train born, subway born, you know, something like that?
I like Train Born, though it does have kind of a weird
connotation. It's like, who's the father?
God, you're right. Let's not do Trainworn, perhaps.
Anyway, also there's the phrase bastard born or base born, which
is the same thing and that appears often, though it's less
of a nickname and more of a designation.
But bastard born is the title of Alan Valerian Oakenfest's
biography, so names and titles can really stick.
And Tyrion, one of the best examples.
People should embrace what they are because the world won't let
you forget. He doesn't like being called
Imp, but he refuses to be triggered by it.
Now, it's easy to do when the world gives you a cool name like
Stormborn. Danny doesn't have to be told,
hey, lean into that. She's like, I, I want to lean
in. This is great.
Like, people were leaning into it when I was eight or seven or
whatever. Because, yeah, when she's young,
before she's even accomplished anything, they're already
decorating her with that name. Consider that she's a prize to
be offered to Khal Drogo. They want to enhance her value.
They want to exaggerate or make her seem as fancy and cool as
possible. And that means all her titles.
So here we go, Danny's first chapter again, a Game of Thrones
quote. They were escorted across the
entry hall, where a mosaic of colored glass depicted the Doom
of Valyria. Oil burned in black iron
lanterns all along the walls beneath an arc of twining stone
leaves. A eunuch saying they're coming.
The series of the House Targaryen, the third of his
name. He called in a high, sweet
voice. King of the Andals and the
Rhinar, and the First Man, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and
Protector of the Realm. His sister Daenerys Stormborn,
Princess of Dragonstone. His honorable host Hilario
Mopatus, Magister of the Free City of Pentos, So.
Can I tell you when it said a eunuch saying they're coming?
I asked Aziz to to sing it for me.
So I'd like to hear. I'd like to hear it now, Aziz.
The series of the House Targaryen of his name.
I like the song version you did. What was that you did?
Oh, I did a song version. I didn't Isaac, the series of
the House Targaryen the Third, I love his name actually did it.
It's a different song that time, but you could fit it to any
rhythm. King of the Andals and the
Royner, and the First Man Lord of the Seven Kingdoms.
Yeah, that's how you should sing it.
Or we could do it like the fala la or because that's what Roy
Dotris loves to do. It was like this saris of the
House Targaryen, the third of his name, King of the End, Dolls
and the Rhinar. I like that.
Keep going, it's too fun. I like.
That one or are you? What was the metal voice for me?
Oh yeah, the saris of the House Targaryen, Third of his name.
Gotta have the heavy drums going right for that one.
The End Dolls and the Ruinar and the 1st Man.
Perfect, perfect. That's right.
Stormborn isn't just meant to be said, it's meant to be sang in a
variety of ways, whether a high, sweet voice or a harsh, intense
1. So yeah, the moment we meet her,
she already has that nickname. It's already a part of who she
is, even though at this point she's still kind of meek.
It's early A Game of Thrones Danny, not yet possessed of
world sweeping thoughts and the power to pursue them.
It doesn't take her very long to get there.
But this is Chapter 1. So yeah, at this point, she's a
bargaining chip. They're trying to buy the
Dothraki. So yeah, they want to make her
sound as fancy as possible, embellish that name, add those
titles, and she catches that she understands that she's like,
they, they were propping me up by giving me big titles and all
the little accoutrement in my name they could do.
I'm going to do that same thing. So there's all this, there's the
Stormborn, there's the Targaryen mystique.
And we pointed out that Ray Ella's crown was something that
they ran off with, but they had to sell it to survive.
But if it hadn't been sold, Danny would have been wearing it
right in this moment. I bet as just to make her seem
even fancier, to wear the crown of her mother, the Targaryen
queen. That would be.
Yeah. That that'll fancify her an
extra point or two. So, yeah, she's not really seen
as a person here. She is an object of value.
Drogo kind of sees her like a high end horse and the Illyrio
and sees her as a, as a, you know, part of his overarching
plan with Varis and a Sarah Caesar is a bargaining chip to
get an army. He obviously says horrible
things to her about what he's willing to do.
He's like, I would let them all, you know, sleep with you to have
my Kingdom back. It's terrible.
But yeah, it just goes to show what we're saying here that they
aren't seeing her as a person. They're seeing her as, as a, as
an object, a valuable object, an exotic valuable object.
And this is a a great inversion of that idea by George.
They actually undersold it. She's way more valuable than
they than they realized and way more powerful and intelligent on
top of that. That's the part that is more
straightforward, like they have no idea what she's capable of.
But no, she's far more than even know what she knew.
She was capable of doing things that no one could have
predicted, like hatching Dragons, right?
No one saw that coming. But Danny's supreme confidence,
as we'll see in a moment here, came before the birth of the
Dragons. Obviously, that's the thing that
you, you've proven to the world and to yourself that you are a
child of destiny. You perform a gosh darn miracle
and act of faith enabled that miracle, and she was very
confident about doing it though, as we'll see.
Like I said, we're going to quote that and you'll see.
So let's discuss how Stormborn is a part of Daenerys, how the
event itself impacts her psyche, how it informs her confidence
and herself as that person of destiny and how it is spread
before herself. A fulfilling prophecy is what
this part's called. Given how often it's flaunted by
others and how amazing it sounds, it's no surprise Danny
takes strength from her birth circumstances.
She thinks herself as Stormborn as part of psyching herself up
in front of the pyre several times a day.
We've quoted Danny's first chapter.
It's been a lot of that introduction stuff has been
really relevant for us here. Right now.
We're going to quote her last A Game of Thrones chapter right
here. The fire is mine.
I am Daenerys Stormborn, Daughter of Dragons, Bride of
Dragons, Mother of Dragons. Don't you see?
With a belch of flame and smoke
that reached 30 feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and came
down around her. Unafraid, Danny stepped forward
into the firestorm, calling to her children.
Clever of George to use the word firestorm there.
And that is the only time the word firestorm appears in A Song
of Ice and Fire. It does appear three other times
in histories, but not in a song by fire proper.
One of those times it's Vergar creating a firestorm.
Another one is the Dragon's crushing Lorath with a variety
of Dragons all at once. So it's a firestorm of many
Dragons. So yeah, it's a very powerful
word. And George was careful to use
Daenerys Stormborn with firestorm here, born in a storm,
so she can enter the firestorm, Right.
So it's arguably, in my opinion, the most climactic moment of the
first book. It's the end of the book.
It's an amazing thing that you don't necessarily see coming or
understand how it's going to happen until you see it.
She is filled with this undeniable sense of destiny to
bolster herself, to do something that seems otherwise utterly
absurd. Yeah, Danny, just jump into the
fire. Surely that's a good idea.
She lists off her series of titles.
It's a burgeoning series of titles.
She doesn't have most of them yet.
She isn't yet Mother of Dragon. She's about to be other.
She actually does say Mother of Dragons in this quote.
No one else has called her that yet.
She's already feeling it. It's already in her.
The supernatural, the prophecy, whatever's driving it, it's
there. And like I said, she doesn't
have the noble and royal titles yet.
She doesn't have any castles yet.
She isn't the Breaker of Chains yet.
She isn't Queen of Marine yet. She doesn't even mention the
Iron Throne. She does start calling herself
Queen of the End Alls, but not at this point.
Stormborn is is the first of these many titles she has.
It's the first one and it's important.
It's basically her last name. She's she typically goes by
Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, not Daenerys
Targaryen. The fandom calls her Daenerys
Targaryen a lot, but in the books, she's called Stormborn or
Daenerys Stormborn about as often, if not more.
And yeah, she trusts in these indicators, the signs the
portents say she's special following and believing that
those leaps of faith have worked for her.
So she's just going to be more confident in that going forward.
And she's a very young person, so she hasn't learned otherwise.
The name is as old as she is. It's always been part of her,
and it continues to prove true from a symbolic perspective.
It's something we raised during the intro here and haven't
really spoken of too much yet. Storms are destructive, right?
The storm she was born under was particularly destructive.
Now she brought a metaphorical storm to Slaver's Bay and will
probably bring another one to Westeros.
And the Others are bringing a storm to Westeros as well.
So you could see Danny as a storm to fight a storm, a
firestorm to fight an ice storm perhaps.
But storms also allow growth. Not during, but in the wake of a
storm, life blooms again. The old is washed away, the new
grows up, the weaker trees are smashed, the life forms that
don't survive are replaced by new ones, etcetera.
Especially if evil is washed away.
That can be part of the metaphor, you know.
The storm comes, the rain washes away all the bad, and then life
can begin a new again. Storms are anger and death and
violence and madness. But yeah, they're also change.
Sudden change. Storms often come quickly and
pass quickly and and devastate during that quick moment.
So yeah, they don't linger. Storms usually don't they.
They pave the way, but they aren't around.
They don't live long by their nature, which is maybe an
ominous aspect to Daenerys Targaryen's arc, is that the
Stormborn isn't meant to have a long life.
She's a storm. Storms don't live long.
They they, they crush, they destroy, they change, and then
they're gone to be remembered forever.
But it's brief their time on this earth.
Now storm gods, that's a little different, right?
Storm gods live well forever, I suppose.
You know, that's a that's a bit of a difference here.
But you know, gods are kind of eternal.
Think of the storm gods of mythology like Thor and Zeus and
Indra and Horus and the like. They're temperamental, they're
dangerous, but they are very much these other things we've
said creators and and through chain, not necessarily direct
creation, but by changing the environment, they allow change
to occur. Storms can be punishments,
right? They can be the divine wrath of
the God or like they can be the divine wrath of God, like the
God of the Bible can manifest as a storm, the great flood
navigated by Noah. That's a biblical storm, right?
Jesus can calm the storm on the other hand, which is proof of
the other hand. You know, Jesus as the Son of
God can HAMP the the works of his Father, however you want to
put it. I'm not sure if that's the right
word choice, but I think the point is clear.
The calmness and protection from chaos that comes through faith,
that's what's kind of being translated or transmitted by
those notions. Even the storm God of the
Ironborn kind of fits with this, but he's more of a straight
devil. I mean, the Ironborn hate
change. So they don't want you, the
change part of storms. They don't like that they're
obsessed with the old ways. That's why the storm God is, is
the, the, the most antithetical figure because he brings change
and they hate, they don't like change.
Keep things the way they are, keep things the way they were,
right. A famous example from
Shakespeare is King Lear. And of course, it makes sense to
bring up Shakespeare when you're talking to George RR Martin,
who's heavily influenced by him. During King Lear, there's a
famous storm. It it shows the turmoil in
Lear's mind, and it serves as a catalyst for his eventual change
and redemption. He becomes redeemed in the long
run, or at least partly redeemed.
And you can't fight a storm. A storm isn't something you can
battle. It's something you take shelter
from and wait for it to be over, knowing that it will probably be
short. So that's the thing.
You can, you can manage that. You think, OK, well, this won't
be here forever. We can manage this.
So much of that applies to Danny, right?
The the coming in and changing and then leaving the the
conflict, the storm inside her. She does have a Targaryen
temper. She is very driven and she has a
lot of, you know, a lot, a lot of her origin was in tumult and
and chaos and trauma over time. She adds to her title, adds
deeds to her doing things that she's done rather than things
she was born with, like the Stormborn thing.
It's a part of who she is, not a part of who what she's done.
It's more intrinsic than than earned.
Everyone is in part of product of their environment and Danny
was born during an epic storm that happened.
But she doesn't get credit for it, right?
She doesn't It wasn't earned. She didn't make the storm
happened, although some people believe that she did because
that's how superstition and and poor tents work, right?
Just before Danny marries his Darzo Lorac, she comes to hear
petitioners and she is announced.
Like this quote? All kneel for Daenerys
Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of Marine, Queen of the and Dolls
and the Roynar and the First Men, Khaleesi of Great Grass,
Sea Breaker of Shackles and Mother of Dragons, Misande
called. That's what her title looks like
these days. That's basically the updated
version of it. Stormborn still right there in
the front, still the most important part.
It will only have additions. Obviously.
That's going to stay. Even after she dies, the name
will remain. People are going to forget that
name and the tale will probably grow in the telling.
The epic storm will probably be even worse.
Be like oh the storm leveled Dragonstone.
If she dies in a storm will they say stormborn and storm dead?
I guess so, yeah. She could die during die in a
winter storm, you know, fighting the others or something like
that. Yeah.
So I point out that the name Stormborn isn't earned, but it's
also inextricable. You can't take it away from her.
She was born in a storm, period. That is a That's a fact.
And when this quote happens, it's deep into a Dance of
Dragons, Right? This is, like I said, right
before she marries his Darzo Lorac.
The tales have made the rounds elsewhere prior to this, outside
of her control, outside of her knowing people have been talking
about her. Right, Because her legend has
spread. That's what we're calling this
next section. The legend since the end of A
Game of Thrones. Yeah, her tale of birthing
Dragons, even though it happened way the heck out on the Dusraki
Sea, it's had time to spread. She went to Karth.
She's gone to Slaver's Bay. It's people have heard about
her. People have carried news.
And not just powerful people, they knew of her.
The powerful people knew about her quickly because, well,
relatively quickly, because, well, they keep track of such
things. But now it's just people in
bars. You know, she's just out there.
She's just a name people are aware of.
It comes up a lot in Westeros from what we're given.
And given that we can assume it happens a lot more in places off
page that George isn't going to show us every bar in every city
and every place, but especially if you live in a city like Old
Town. Well, here's A Feast for Crows,
the prologue at the Quill and Tankard.
No dragon has ever had three heads except on Shields and
banners. Armand, the acolyte, said
firmly. That was a heraldic charge, no
more. Furthermore, the Targaryens are
all dead. Not all, said Alaris.
The Beggar King had a sister. I thought her head was smashed
against the wall. Said Rune.
No, said Alaris. It was Prince Rhaegar's young
son Agon, whose head was dashed against the Wall by the Lion of
Lannister's brave men. We speak of Rhaegar's sister,
born on Dragonstone before its fall, the one they called
Daenerys. The Stormborn, I recall her now.
So yeah, I mean, that's the thing that triggers the memory.
That cool name. Let's be honest, it's a it's
high quality marketing. I mean, that's a great brand
name, Stormborn. Like, I bet you could sell, I
don't know, storm gear, you know?
Something or a shirt that you're wearing, right?
Now I'm literally wearing a short that's a shirt that's a
storm board, but it is a Daenerys shirt.
But you could make like, I don't know, tents, something designed
to handle extreme weather. I don't know.
I'm not a I'm not a guy who makes storm gear, but you see my
point? It's great marketing.
It rolls off the tongue. It kind of rhymes even.
It's very memorable. Rune had forgotten about her in
this chapter here, this discussion.
But when Alaris mentions the details, she's like, oh, yeah,
Stormborn, because that's such a memorable name.
Even a peasant could hear that name and think of auspice and
destiny. It just has that ring to it.
And these are folks studying to be maesters.
These are learned people, Rune and and Alaris Sorella, of
course, and Armand the Acolyte. So yeah.
And of course they throw Viserys's name pops in.
The two know the Beggar King and Stormborn.
It's there again. It's the dichotomy.
It's like, Yep, Beggar King and the Stormborn.
Which one sounds cooler? It's going to be 10 out of 10.
Agree that Stormborn sounds cooler.
And it's. It's a name that makes you want
to know more, too. It's like, why is she called
that? If you didn't know already,
you'd be like, tell me more about that.
Tell me more about this Daenerys Stormborn.
What's the deal with the storm? What's the.
Yeah, tell me. And so it carries those
associations no matter what the truth actually is.
Star Born is not a soft, squishy name.
It's it carries weight, it's powerful.
Just as she is mentioned in the 1st chapter of A Feast for Crows
in Old Town, she's also mentioned in the final chapter
of A Dance with Dragons in King's Landing.
Quote. We have these tales coming from
the east as well, a second Targaryen and one whose blood no
man can question, Daenerys Stormborn.
As mad as her father. Declared Lord Mace Tyrell.
That would be the same father that Highgarden and House Tyrell
supported to the bitter end and well beyond.
Mad she may be, Sarah, Kevin said.
But with so much smoke drifting W, surely there must be some
fire burning in the east. Even in council setting, even
with these high Lords discussing matters of the realm, they still
call her Stormborn. The first example was just
people drinking in a Tavern. Those aren't people with control
over any events, they're just friends at a bar.
This is the Red Keep, the small council, the Iron Throne, and
they're calling her Stormborn. Yeah, in the back of their
minds, well, some of them, some of them are thinking about other
things. But the thought must be
something like her birth seemed portentous at the time and how?
And now she is here doing big things just as a portentous
figure would. The name Stormborn happened 17
ish years before and here she is doing storm borny things,
destroying King's, I mean destroying Slaver's Bay from
their perspective she killed her own brother and killed Khal
Drogo and all this other stuff. It was like wow she really is
impressive. So there's multiple things that
are funny about Mace Tyrell saying as mad as her father.
He's saying it does to denigrate her.
But Kevin's sarcastic thoughts on it is pretty funny.
It's like, well, you supported your house, supported that
madman until the end. And Eris was mad, that's true,
but he was extremely dangerous. He almost succeeded in blowing
up King's Landing. I mean, as mad as her father is,
he's like, we don't have to worry about her.
She's as mad as mad as the guy that almost blew up King's
Landing. That's super villain stuff.
That's not bumbling fool type stuff.
Pay attention Mace, because you're more of the latter.
Right, so this isn't an argument to not take him take her
seriously. It's maybe an argument to take
her more seriously. Eris never had real Dragons.
A mad king or queen with Dragons is quite a threat actually.
Mace Tyrell, of course, from our perspective, Danny is not, in
fact mad, but she has done things that might qualify as mad
and might do more. And certainly the perspective on
her is what we're discussing here.
This is the people's view of Daenerys, not the truth about
Daenerys. So put all that together.
Stormborn, Mad King's daughter. That's dangerous, that's scary
to them. They should be very concerned.
So Kevin wisely just chooses to evade the awkward utterance of
Mace Tyrell there and says, look, yeah, maybe she's the Mad
King's daughter, blah, blah, blah.
But surely there's fire behind that smoke.
The the metaphor is well used here.
Where there's smoke, there's fire.
And yeah, he's not wrong. She he believes she could be a
real threat. And again, yeah, he's not wrong.
Which of course, is a big part of why Varis kills him in this
very chapter. He's like, that guy knows what's
up, better kill him. And we need people.
We need more people like this Mace Tyrell in charge, this dumb
person here that's get him more power.
That'll set things up for us very nicely, says Varis.
So yeah, Storm board is coming. She's coming.
They don't know when or where or how.
And you wonder what the other council numbers think.
Obviously Mace is like, she's welcome to Slaver's Bay, let her
stay there. And like, well, is that is she
going to? Why would you assume that?
So Mesa aside, the other members of the council would probably be
like, I would have their concerns.
Some of them might think about it and be like, yeah, I remember
when she was born. I remember this.
I remember that. Like this is we should take this
seriously And and the name Stormborn might actually add
some gravitas. That's a word we've used a lot
today to to those thoughts be like, yeah, it might make her
sound even more dangerous. On the other hand, we have Euron
who's going to sue her because he is the storm.
He didn't birth her like a Stormborn.
I'm the storm, I'm not your father.
I do want to be your lover, however, So you know, now he
does want to control her. So that makes a lot of sense.
It is a thematic connection, and there's a lot of thematic
connections between Euron and Danny.
Not the sort that indicates that they will be allies, of course,
but certainly the sort that tells us their paths will cross,
that Danny will have to deal with him and that she, he wants
to deal with her. Now, that of course, became
obvious when he told the King's movement that he was
specifically targeting her and her Dragons directly.
But the signs for Euron and Danny's overlap or intersection
were there long before that, right?
Quaith told Danny that Crow and Kraken are coming.
She is the red dragon on black coloring.
He is black on red. And of course, there's that
line. I am the storm, my Lord.
The first storm and the last. He says that and she's storm
born. So there's the the storm
connotation is something they have in common.
So we already brought up how her storm will be dealing with the
storm of the others, but she has to deal with this one too.
And his storm might be more connected directly to the
others. He might have more of a pairing
there as the Super villains than than with Danny, although that's
not what he wants. So he's a compelling character,
but not someone I wish happiness upon, right?
So it's sad to think about the storm aspect of this in terms of
something temporary, powerful and fleeting for Danny, because,
yeah, I mean, I think a lot of us.
Probably don't think she's going to survive the series.
Some of us do. Some people think that.
I don't think she will, but I do think it will be after she saves
humanity. Her storm will be the storm that
enables that renewal, that prevents the others from their
storm taking hold, which would wipe out humanity and would not
allow renewal. Their storm would be the real
last storm, the one that doesn't actually cause renewal, that
doesn't allow new life to grow. That storm is truly death.
Danny's is the destructive storm that prevents the larger death.
So they both apply in different degrees.
The story of Danny's birth and the events just before is one
that should eventually have more detail.
There's Jamie and Barristan as witnesses with more to tell, and
Danny does want to know more about her family.
When she goes back to Dragonstone might open some
possibilities. She might learn about Rhaegar.
She might learn about her father, Aries.
She may learn about her mother, the one that she may have had
the most in common with. She might find more in common
with Rhaegar. I don't know, but I think if he
learns about her mother, she'll find that they had a lot in
common. She might lament not getting to
meet her because they would have been able to share a lot.
And again, who else could know some things here?
Who else has detail? Who else knows about Rayella?
Who else could tell Danny more about her birth and us more
about her birth? There's always Bran, obviously.
Bran can see everything, basically, or as far as we can
tell. But I don't know that Bran and
Danny will ever even have a conversation.
So John, not John directly, but John's circumstances may be
telling. We brought this up much earlier
in the episode, and here we bring it back.
The Tower of Joy had to have servants, other potential
witnesses to John's birth, like say, Willa, right?
Just so there are others who were Dragonstone when the storm
raged that night. And Jamie says her maids were
whispering about what had been done to Aiella.
So there's a lot of, you know, nameless individuals who were
around for that. And this isn't that long ago.
This is Danny isn't even 20. So we we're, we're talking
servants who might have been around for that, that are still
around now. They could you could have a Red
Keep employee who was 20 when that happened or 30 when that
happened. They're 50 now.
I could have several people like that.
It might take a lot of corroboration, a lot of
different names, a lot of different people.
But there's more, too. There's those who knew Willem
Derry. There's the captains of that
Targaryen fleet destroyed at anchor.
They didn't go down with those ships.
The ships were at anchor. The peasants who witnessed the
storm from outside the walls of Dragonstone.
Just hearing about the storm would be interesting.
Just more more detail, more like, wow, wow.
How did your hovel survive that? Did you have to flee to some
caves? What did people do?
They were the servants who lived at the castle inside, right?
We talked about those outside, but what about the ones on
inside? Like we, we talked about the
ones in King's Landing, but they would have been Dragonstone as
well. The ones who were around, the
ones who assisted with the birth, who?
The nameless maester that delivered Daenerys.
There must have been other people to help.
It wasn't just a maester and Queen Rayela and nobody else,
right? There had to be other people
there. Maybe Prince Doran was told
things about Rayella or just other things about through his
mother, the Princess of Dorne, who was Rayela's lady in
waiting. And of course, Varys.
Varys knows all kinds of things, perhaps.
Obviously, again, we have to repeat the the warning with him
that what he tells us may not be accurate.
But if George wants to give us some truths, Varys is a
possibility for delivering that. And he's an interesting
possibility because, yeah, we might doubt some of the things
he say, which will help us contain some of the mystery,
maintain some of the mystery, while simultaneously perhaps
giving us some answers. The house with the red door
might might be where she wants to go, but it seems her destiny
passes through Dragonstone. The House of the red door
represents the other path, the path not taken the the the
simple life, the non storm born version of her.
To go forward you must go back, Quaithe told her.
Going back in this case is Dragonstone the place of her
birth, the place she became Stormborn?
Doris Dame asks could Danny deal first with Euron and gain
support by doing so, echoing Egon the First, who started his
conquest by riding the realm of Hair in the Black, another Iron
born king. Great idea.
Yes, rather than dealing with the Others and then Euron, she
could deal with Euron and then the Others, which if she dealt
with such an important threat, a key villain that's menacing the
Seven Kingdoms, that would win her a lot of support, especially
perhaps the Reach, which they're somewhat predisposed to follow
her anyway, friends in the Reach, Young Griff stuff aside.
Like, he might be dead by then too, I don't know.
But yeah, that's a great thought.
Yeah. Like, that would be a cool
parallel and it's a way to it worked great for Aegon.
Like I took, I take on the biggest, baddest guy.
Not only does it win me respect, not only does it not make me
enemies because he doesn't have friends, but it proves how
strong I am. Because you're defeating a
serious badass, a seriously dangerous fellow.
Absolutely. All that applies to Euron.
Huge, super villainous guy. No one doesn't have a lot of
friends. Beating him doesn't mean you
have to deal with all his allies afterwards.
Stop him and you've probably just put the Ironborn in check
completely for a while. And that's that is what happened
pretty much when Aegon took down Heron.
So yeah, I like that a lot. That's a great idea to be
honest. Hadn't considered the order of
operations like that. And it fits in in some ways.
It does make a lot more sense from a literary perspective to
have the others be more final than Euron.
Neuron hasn't been the villain all along.
He's he is 1/3 act villain but he has He wasn't barely
introduced early on. He was technically introduced as
early as book two, maybe even the end of book one, I forget.
But he obviously isn't a big part of the story and until
starting book three book 4. The trivia question we had this
one was in the If he's for grows prologue, which character points
out that not all the Targaryens are dead?
If you guessed Alaris AKA Sorella, you are correct.
Yes, the person there who with the most knowledge of House
Targaryen because they are her family.
Alaris is related to Oberon, not you know, not directly related
to because of you know it was Elia, Elia who married not and
Oberon is her brother. But there might still be
Targaryen blood from the prior Daenerys in them.
So she might be related directly to this.
Daenerys probably is. So that's neat little connection
there. Our next episode is going to be
Stark Skin Changer. That's our next live stream.
We always have other episodes in the works as well.
I mentioned quite a few topics in this one that relate to other
episodes. We've done Tragedy of Summer
Hall and The Shadow of Summer Hall.
Those are very related. Of course, the those are more
focused on Aries and Radar. There's a good bit of Rayela in
there and we certainly cast the light forward in that one as
well. We touched briefly on The War of
9, Penny Kings, Embarriston and Meili's The Monstrous.
It's the last Black Fire rebellion by a lot of people's
reckoning, including ours. That's an episode out there for
us. We've got that one in our
catalog. We have an episode on
Dragonstone. That's a pretty important one
here as well. We have an episode on that Kevin
epilogue, I believe that's a patrons only episode if I recall
correctly. It's a thorough undertaking of A
Dance with Dragons as epilogue, which is an amazing chapter that
somehow manages to touch on almost every plot point that's
active in all of A Song of Ice and Fire gets brought up in that
Kevin epilogue. It's one of the most impressive
chapters for that reason to me. Plus it's also just amazing with
the the the the murder of Kevin, the reveal of Virus's connection
to Young Griff, which we already knew there was a connection
there but him having him stated aloud is great.
I think impressive not just that he he interweaves those plot
lines, but that he does it in an organic way that doesn't feel
just like exposition and ham fisted and all of that, you
know, just speaks to how complex and interwoven everything is and
how well he does it that it feels so natural.
Yeah, it's some of his best writing and it's a great way to
leave things, even though we've been waiting a long time for
more. The last chapter he wrote was
just what a way to keep us to to let it go for now to what a way
to to bridge that gap for us. So yeah, a lot of other episodes
you can get deep into and then continue to enjoy these topics
or related ones. We will be back with more next
time. Thanks to our good friends Nina
Good queenalley.tumblr.com. Joey Townsend, the composer of
our theme song, our original theme song we love so much.
We've been playing that for 12 years plus now.
And thanks to Michael Klarfeld, who created our video intro that
incorporates that song by Joey Townsend.
And we're going to be seeing Michael in person next month, so
that'll be a lot of fun. Michael's going to visit America
for the first time and we're going to show him all the fun
stuff that he can do over here. Worth noting he'll be here in
the Atlanta area at the, I think it'll be like February 22nd ish.
So if you're in the area and would like us to have a meet up,
send us an e-mail or message us on Discord or what have you.
But also we're going to drive him up to Chicago to and we're
going to go see friend of the show Tommy and take Michael to
Bucky's and just kind of road trip with him because that's a
nice American experience that you don't usually get if you fly
from city to city. So if you're in the Chicago
area, we might also do some sort of hanging there.
He flies out March 1st. That's right.
So yeah, just contact us if you want more info or want us want
to be included, or if you just want to say hey to Michael.
Either way, we'd be happy to hear from you.
And so would he. Until next time you know what to
do.