The combined lessons of the field of fire and the burning of
Harrenhal were heard loud and clear throughout Westeros.
There would be more violence, but there would be no more
battles, though there will be posturing for such, and there
will be those upset that no more battles were fought.
There won't actually be any. Before we speak of those
holdouts, we will speak of those who bent the knee thanks to
overwhelming force and or common sense, we might say, and how
this reverberated through the ages and in the immediate
aftermath. We'll start with a lot of
examples from A Song of Ice and Fire.
All 5 main novels are represented directly, plus
Duncan Egg, and these scenarios are paired with what's happening
in this phase of our Fire and Blood Crawl.
Each subjugated region must take stock of how the war cost them,
how much it cost them, or how much the decision to kneel
without a fight will cost them. For example, how will the Reach
react to a change in leadership for the first time in literally
thousands of years? How will the North react to a
Stark King who didn't fight at all?
These are all ongoing stories, they don't just play out in the
moment. These threads involve all the
kingdoms and unfold over multiple timelines because,
well, it affected the entire continent.
All that and more on this episode of History of Westeros
podcast Hello and welcome everybody.
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Looks like you got a nice house with a dragon shirt there.
What are you? Drinking today, got a a non
standard mixture. I got a monster drink and I
don't even know what flavor it is.
It's a blue. Can anyone know?
Blue is always the same. But I mix it with the blue.
Blue Machine, Naked drink and watermelon Mountain Dew.
It's pretty tasty. All right.
I doubt it. As usual, I'm I'm having a
triple shot Starbucks here. Can this is.
I'm going to be very energized now.
Nina has contributed as per usual.
She's got a lot of great notes on both the field of fire and
the lessons and the kneelings. But also you should check out
good queenalley.tumblr.com. That's of course 1Y in alley and
the latest post there is. She got a question about
comparing Queen Alice and Eleanor of Aquitaine because
George has made comments about that.
Now that parallel isn't quite what you think as Nina points
out, and she brings up a few other parallels, so it's great.
If you enjoy historical parallels to A Song of Ice and
Fire, you should definitely check that post out.
We chatted about it for a while and it was very enlightening to
me personally. If you have questions of your
own, you can submit them live during this live stream if
you're watching. Or hit us up on
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This is gonna be get ready for this.
Alright, so a couple newer ones. Sir Dane of House Dane.
Pretty straightforward there, Mance.
Wrestle nice. Mance Wrestle the Terracottan
Son of the North. That's a cool one.
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Tide. Resistance is futile as soon as
the Star Trek reference I appreciate.
Now get this one. This is one of our oldest
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Jesse, the Fallborn Lord of Bluespring and the Haunted
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Mouthful. Yes.
Well armed. Well, title, yeah.
It was a great name. Yeah, right.
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the job. And of course, I'll mention some
episodes at the end of this one that relate to this one if you
want to stay immersed. And let's get to a trivia
question that from now on, as we started I think last week, the
answer to the trivia question is during the episode.
Of course it'll be revealed at the end.
Unlike past episodes where it's just random trivia question,
this one's a little from now on, we'll keep it a little more tied
to the content of the particular episode we're dealing with.
So in light of that, where is the last place we saw hot pie?
The character, not the food. Although if you want to tell me
the last place you saw hot pie, the food, feel free.
Does my television screen count? No man sends a super chat and
says hi everyone thrilled to be able to catch the live stream
today for ones All right, glad to have you here.
We also got a last minute question from Amanda that I'll
throw in years when she gave us a super chat.
Sure. Sean, have you tried the Grape
Raspberry sparkling? Ice I think that I've tried all
the sparkling ices, even the ones I knew I wouldn't like.
Like I don't like lemonade. I don't like super citrusy tart
stuff, so but I still there's like a cherry limeade.
And AI think there's a straight up lemonade flavor one.
There's a bunch of different flavors, but.
I've settled on black Raspberry is my favorite.
I really don't like that one. That's one of my least
favorites. Favorite thing?
I do like a lot of their places. What's that?
Is your favorite the grapefruit? Probably grapefruit.
Yeah, it doesn't taste like grapefruit.
That's a good song. Like regular grapefruit.
Anyway, so okay. So our first section is called
The Legend and The Lesson we gave fun and thought provoking
examples from Harrenhal which are neat and unique in their own
way. Because Harrenhal is still
standing. Obviously the field of fire is.
There's no physical evidence of that anymore.
But we're going to, we're not going to include other times
it's mentioned in Fire and Blood.
In other words as we work our way through Fire and blood Fire,
Field of Fire will come up again and we'll we'll tackle that when
it happens. Mostly we're interested in how
it is referred to 300 years later or nearly 300 years later,
and it rings out through the series in a variety of different
ways, at which was the point at the time.
I'm I imagine Aegon would be pleased that his intended
lessons still stretch beyond the lifespan of the Dragons, which
of course are now coming back, which is relevant to what we're
going to talk about. So let's start with the Game of
Thrones, Sean. Do you think that the people at
Westeros think about the Field of Fire as often as we think
about the Roman Empire? You know what they might They
certainly think about the Targaryen as often or more.
That's a good call. So in A Game of Thrones, Harlan
Tyrell's surrender to Egon after the battle is mentioned in the
appendix, like pretty thoroughly.
It's like a couple paragraphs, and it's in every book, Every
appendix has Harlan Tyrell surrendering to Aegon after the
field of fire. And yeah, so it was something
that George came up with as part of the original details, and
it's included as part of the the description of House Tyrell.
There's one for Lannister and Stark.
There's like a little blurb for each of this, so you all maybe
have noticed that before. Are there similar blurbs that
are repeated in all the books or is that one unique?
That was a little unique because it's longer, but I believe there
is one for some of the other houses I like.
It's it's much shorter for Dorn and and the North I believe.
But yeah, I don't think it includes the detail like there's
no mention. I don't think it's mentioned
Brandon the Builder. I don't think it's mentioned in
the appendix for the Starks. So maybe he is, but not with a
big description about. Two paragraph long doing this
and that not kneeling to Aegon or whatever.
Yeah. So that's this is that is a
little bit unique that it's so specific and unlike other parts
of the appendix, it's it's more detailed, but before the
appendix because the appendix is obviously at the end of the
book. Theon compares the northern
victory at the Whispering Wood to the Field of Fire just after
the battle. He's so excited.
He's like point out the huge disparity in case like there we
we killed 10 men to everyone we lost.
Of course the field of fire was more like 40 to one but still
you know he said the most since then.
I don't think he's right about that.
But you know theon's a little naive and a little excited in
the in the he just won this battle.
He's excited. It's understandable to be
thrilled and survive a a battle. You're being your first battle,
but that's a key point here that Catlin makes in response to
Theon. He says battle, not the war,
right? This was a battle, not the war.
You didn't beat Tywin, did you? And he's like, no, we didn't
beat Tywin. Now this is where, another big
difference, because for Aegon, it pretty much was the final
battle. This pretty much did end the
war. So that's another thing that's
like Theon, yeah, you're not that good of a comparison
actually, Theon, But still he said it.
So we wanted to address. It yeah and does a lot worse
things. We'll let this.
This is OK. Oh yeah, this is pretty small in
the scheme of things. You're right.
And to be fair, you know there's a lot of details lost in the
shuffle. We probably know the Field of
Fire better than Theon does, and but still, it goes to show how
these things get exaggerated and people try to compare their
achievements or achievements that are part of to other known
achievements. Whether there's one of the
biggest ones ever known or just the one of the most famous ones.
It makes sense that Theon would think of a famous battle and try
to compare it to that, you know, even if he's kind of wrong about
it. I've always thought that our
podcast here was very similar to the Gettysburg Address.
OK, so Theon also starts listing all the captives they took.
This is part of what prompts Caitlyn to say but no Lord
Tywin, huh? And perhaps as a nod to the
Field of Fire, since Theon brought it up, George had one of
the captives to be named Sir Garth Greenfield, which is
pretty much the closest you can get to Garth Greenhand without
actually being Garth Greenhand. So this is some sort of kin to
Sir Preston Greenfield of the Kingsguard.
We're not sure what level, what
connection, and the greenfields are not a reach house, that's a
western house. But their sigil is all green.
And yeah, it would fit in the reach very well.
And Garth is extremely a Reacher name.
I mean, it's just a name that pops up all over but more
prominently in The Reach than anywhere else, so that seems
like a nod. Or maybe George just his his
mind took him there and he didn't realize it.
Should have made it Garth Garth. Crintest hand?
Yeah. There's also a Wayne Greenfield,
Yes, Wayne and Garth Greenfield. No, there isn't.
Oh. I would have missed.
Not yet. There should be.
The lessons aren't active at the
start of the series, meaning the lessons of the Dragons, because
what's the point of a lesson about an extinct animal?
Who cares? It's it's cool, it's legendary.
But you're not like, oh, what if this happens again?
But then of course it does start to happen again.
You're like, oh, by the end of the first book you're like, oh,
there are Dragons. Come again.
Think about that. In the real world, we don't
worry about velociraptors getting into our garbage cans or
how to keep dodo birds as pets because it doesn't happen.
Like there is no dodo birds and there are no velociraptors, so
you just obviously don't care about what they might do.
Nina points out that people in Sothorios might wonder about
that or worry about that because they do have some sort of
velociraptor type species there, which is like damn Sothorios,
just not a good place to live. People more worry more about
ghosts in Harrenhal than Dragons, right?
Because they think ghosts still exist and they know Dragons
don't. Now Dragons are back and ghosts
might not have ever been real, although they probably are in
some form. Kyburn claims to have seen one,
and if someone wants to make this claim that Ghost and
Shadow, Baby and Shade are all pretty much the same thing, I
wouldn't argue that. It's just it's there's small
differences there, but it's the semantics, and at the moment
we're not really concerned with that.
We're not concerned with what's real, actually.
We're concerned with what people actually believe, because their
beliefs is what drives them, not what's true.
They believe Dragons can destroy castles because of Harrenhal.
They believe Dragons can wipe out entire armies on their own
because of the field of fire. And that was, as we've been
saying for quite a while, very likely part of Aegon's plan.
He wanted people to learn that lesson.
So when Danny comes to Westeros, some of those dormant thoughts
will return. The Draconic power that
destroyed Harrenhal has returned.
That makes it a legitimate fear, a thing that could really
happen. Details like size and age get
lost in the shuffle. That's what I mean by that is
Danny's Dragons will not be able to destroy Harrenhal.
They might be able to kill lots of people and burn things, but
only Valerian was able to do that.
But that's exactly the kind of detail that gets lost in the
shuffle. The common folk don't know that
difference. They don't know that only this
one really huge dragon could do that.
They just think a dragon did that.
More Dragons could do that. It's it's a much to get to boil
it down to. It's much to its simplest
explanation. So we know that's not accurate.
But again, it won't matter. It's what people believe.
Also. It's not far from accurate.
It's not crazy, for it's a reasonable rule of thumb.
Dragons destroy castles? Check.
Got it. Like being a little wrong about
that isn't going to be like, oh, they can't destroy castles.
Well, they're not worried about. It's like at all.
Yeah, it doesn't all, it doesn't all hinge on that one thing.
But this is where Dragons being extinct for so long actually
helps the disinformation, because ignorance is at the
heart of disinformation campaigns, real life or
otherwise. It's a lot easier to mislead
people on a subject they're very ignorant of.
Common folk know diddly about Dragons.
Other than that, they're dangerous flying reptiles that
breathe fire. They really don't know much else
than. That like along the same line,
they don't know that much about Harrenhal other than it's the
biggest castle, so. A dragon destroyed the biggest
castle. Or maybe we know any dragon
couldn't do that, but some smaller Dragons could destroy
some smaller castles. Like.
So if if I was, if virus was actually on Danny's side
entirely, or if there was another virus, or if I were
someone like virus and I was on Danny's side, this is the kind
of information camp or misinformation or disinformation
campaign I would run. I would exaggerate the power of
Dragons. I would go tell my agents to
start spreading rumors in Taverns like Virus does, and in
other places where rumors will spread ports.
You know, places where the docks.
Just places where rumors will will go far and wide and just
start talking about how dangerous they are and how
deadly they are. Even though Danny's Dragons are
kind of small and they probably won't live up to that, it's it's
still sets the stage really well, so.
No castle is safe. That should be the yeah, yeah.
And Drogon is the color of Valerians that could really play
that angle up like, oh, and I mean AGO, Danny's Blood rider,
who knows who's not from Westeros, this dude, when seeing
Drogon, like weeks old said there sits Valerian born again.
Like really? Like that's getting ahead of
yourself, aren't you? But it's cool.
And it's that's, that's Danny 1A, Clash of Kings.
Like the first chapter of The Clash.
Her first chapter of the Clash of Kings.
Yeah, right after they're born, like they're born in the last
chapter of A Game of Thrones. And here in this first chapter,
I goes like, there's Valerian born again.
And Danny's like, yeah, cool, all right, Yeah.
But, you know, but we're not, this, this story's not going to
go long enough for Valerian or for Drogon to get that big.
I mean, Drogon. Valerian was, you know, over 100
years old, of like 180 years old when he died or something crazy
like that. You don't think Martin's going
to write that much? Someone else, Maybe.
So now let's go to a Clash of Kings.
Tyrion again thinks about the Field of fire when he's looking
down at Stannis's ships burning during another battle, the Black
Battle of Blackwater. That's going to go down in
Westerosi history and be pretty famous, So here's a quote.
The low clouds caught the color of the burning river and roofed
the sky in shades of shifting green.
Eerily beautiful. A terrible beauty.
Like Dragon Fire, Tyrion wondered if Aegon the Conqueror
had felt like this as he flew above his field of fire.
What do you think, Sean? I think that the fact that
George has Tyrion consider this idea, thinking about how Aegon
would have felt, that makes me think that Aegon probably did
feel bad. You know, I think that's like.
I I imagine as much as George has included this story, he's
got a thought about it some right.
He'd clearly had more and more plans for this.
And I I, I hope that if this is ever ATV show that that is like
a struggle that Aegon has that that some of his kind of, I
don't even want to say cold because it's not like we know
that his personality is cold. We just don't know what his
personality is, you know? But yeah, he's.
A. So I hope that it's presented.
Maybe he is stoic. But not made of stone.
Does that make sense? I I hope it matters.
I hope he feels remorse for all the dead death that he's caused,
and he's trying to find justification for whether it's
stability for the realm or stopping some existential threat
from a prophecy. Whatever it is, I hope he's not
just blindly murderous, you know?
Yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah.
So Aegon was looking down at Green also, like Tyrion was now
his. He wasn't looking down at Green
fire. He was looking down at Green
things that he had set on fire, like the order of the green Hand
and all those green sigils of the gardeners.
And the field itself was grass. You know, it was dry, but it was
still a lot of it was green and, you know, may have been
Browning, but still there's a lot of green down there.
So Yep, green things on fire. Now Tyrion actually gets
agitated during this moment. He starts thinking about all the
death and suffering and he blames it on Stannis, but he
also blames it on himself. He's like, you know, I'm partly
responsible for this, but so are you Mr., Attacker Mr. You know
Guy invading the the capital here.
Aegon as well may have had that may have been part of his
thoughts. He's like, why are these idiots
fighting me? Can't they see they can't win?
Are they like wouldn't he probably be a part of him?
Might just wish they had bent the knee and just not had to do
this. Another part of him.
I'm like, well, it's this might save more lives if I'm able to
just demonstrate how foolish it is to stand up against me.
And it's maybe good to have one person to to make an example of.
So, yeah, you're right, Sean. It's like, that's the kind of
thing he could be torn off. He's like, well, but maybe it
would have been better if I didn't have to make an example
of this many people and kill this many people.
He might not be pleased about that.
He might, yeah, it might be something that weighs on him.
He might be convinced it was right.
Like Stannis. Someone like Stannis is just
very concerned, very, like confident.
At least the way he projects it is what he's doing is right, you
know, and he's he's confident in that and he doesn't really
second guess himself too much. Aegon might have that level of
of surety of him, of his own actions, but but maybe not.
That said, it's hard for us to know that.
It's hard to really get in Stannis's head, but I I don't
think that he is ignorant to the suffering that's caused.
You know, and what's the line? You know when you're like
hundreds of men will be killed, thousands.
Response, right? Like he knows what's happening?
Yeah, But. But he's already made the
decision. This is what must be done,
however bad it is. Alternatives are worse.
So yeah. He wasn't saying that to be cold
or or snarky. He's just like, Nope, he's just
stating a fact. He's like, yeah, thousands of
people are going to die. I mean, he's not.
He doesn't seem upset about it. He doesn't seem happy about it
either. It's just a Yep, that's what's
going to happen. Like we can't.
It's it's unavoidable at this point.
Not to get too much of A tangent, but but it's it's sort
of necessary for him as a leader and but, but.
I'm going to say this, but he's he's still not sugar coating it,
right? Like he needs this subordinate
to understand that you are correct.
Hundreds will die. In fact, it will be thousands.
And we are doing it anyway. Get on, get in line, you know.
Yeah. Yeah.
Because the status is mine. Yeah.
The the laws of the realm are more important that those lives.
You know that he in his mind those laws protect lives in the
long run, even in the in the short term, you have to
sacrifice lives to uphold the law.
It's better than lawlessness or laws.
Should be made of iron, not pudding as he says.
Yeah, A Storm of Swords. Let's go there.
Here's another good one. Elena Tyrell mentions it in
Santa One, so this isn't that far after the Battle of the
Blackwater, since that's near the end of The Clash of Kings.
And since Elena is so quotable, let's not miss our chance.
You Starks were kings once, the errands and the Lannisters as
well, and even the Baratheons through the female line.
But the Tyrells were no more than stewards until Aegon the
Dragon came along and cooked the rightful King of the Reach on
the Field of Fire. If truth be told, even our claim
to Highgarden is a bit dodgy, just as those dreadful Florence
are always whining. What does it matter, you ask?
And of course it doesn't. Except oafs like my son.
That's great. Nina reminds us, yeah, Olenna's
funny here, but she's got a goal here.
She's trying to manipulate Santa or maybe encourage Santa, but
into talking about Joffrey and potentially marrying into their
family. So she's you know she's she's
trying to worm her way into Santa's good graces here and but
still it's a it's still a great quote it fits so well here and
and it's it's going to come up a lot this idea of who really
deserves Highgarden and rightful king and what what that means
these are things that get continuously debated over the
next 300 years are still being debated in the current times as
you can see she brings it up and the Florence are always whining
as she says and that's that's Stannis's in laws which who of
course didn't even fight for him first they fought for Renly and
then they switched over to Stannis.
Now Jamie and Sir Cleos also mentioned it to Brienne, but
we'll come back to that shortly and Barristan mentions it when
Danny is planning her Dragon Double Deal maneuver on the
Astapori. This is a great yet quick
exchange. Dragon is worth more than any
army. Aegon proved that 300 years ago
upon the field of fire. I know what Aegon proved.
I mean to prove a few things of my own, and damn right she did.
That, of course, is like seconds before she says a dragon is no
slave. Makes a field of fire of the
slavers, and it's a real rah rah moment in the books where it's
just a great Barristan has learned, educated, not easily
scared, not frivolous in the slightest.
He, along with Tyrion, will be awed by the Dragons as much as
anyone, but he's also far more knowledgeable about what they
can do, and knowledge helps them be less afraid.
If you know what they're capable of, they're still scary.
It's not going to change that. But you're not going to just be
subject to Wild Rumour and and maybe you might learn that no,
actually, they can't all destroy castles.
Only the really enormously elite giant ones can do that,
apparently. Now it's not mentioned in A
Feast for Crows, but think of that amazing first chapter and
how they're discussing rumours of Dragons, which is very much
in line with what we're talking about now.
It's the first word of the book, Dragons, said Mollinder or
whatever. Now, to be clear, I think
they're discussing regular rumours, not planted ones, and
these are fairly educated people.
These are students at the Citadel, so their rumor, rumor,
discussion touches on the fact that they need to be careful
with what they believe and what they don't.
These are somewhat educated people.
They're smart about it. They're not just repeating what
they heard or exaggerating what they heard and playing the game
of telephone. So that's pretty neat.
But the point is the saying Even though they're more educated,
we're all familiar with the idea of gossip turning out to be
false, if not completely fabricated.
And we're all getting more and more familiar with that every
day. Living in the age of the
Internet and AI and all these other things and, you know,
intentional disinformation campaigns, which is a thing as
old as time but is more easy to perpetrate in current times.
In some ways, now we're all familiar with the notion that
sometimes fabrications aren't revealed to be such until much
later. Sometimes years, sometimes
decades, sometimes 100 years. We'd learn the truth of
something. People have been doing this
wrong for 100 years. Like you knew scientific
discovery changes what we learned.
Like, oh, all along this is we've gotten this wrong.
The sun doesn't revolve around the earth, you know, whatever,
whatever scientific discovery you want to name, there's
infinite examples. Westeros would have them too.
So in the in that intervening time before the truth is known,
if it ever is, that's when misinformation, rumor, and
hearsay can thrive. Because without the light of
truth, there's all these shadows that this misinformation can
thrive in. Something that greatly enhances
both the spread of and exaggeration of rumors is fear.
When you're afraid of something, your anxiety sort of spills into
your description of it. Or your maybe that fear is
legitimate, but you might still be anxious about it, and that in
turn spreads to the next person. And that just keeps it's part of
the telephone game that we refer to so often.
Fear is a big part of that to. Justify your fear.
You want the thing to be scarier.
You know that will add to the legend.
Add to the myth, it's a great point protecting your own ego,
your own pride a little bit by because people, especially in a
world like Westeros where people just can manipulate entire
countries based on are you scared?
And you know like how often does that work?
Are you know? Are you afraid?
You're like, I'm not afraid, like how that will work.
So many times that has worked on someone in the story, like just
accuse them of being scared and they're like I'm.
Not nobody calls me Yellow, yeah.
Exactly. No one calls me a coward.
No one calls me yellow. No one calls me Chicken Marty
McFly effect right there. Yeah.
It's just so it's just enormously effective and it's
just like we're too as a species.
We've got to get over this, like, but they're not going to
get over it in Westeros anytime soon.
So yeah, and this comes back to the rumoring, right?
This has already played out quite a bit.
Set aside what the Dragons are capable.
Just look at the crazy rumors about Danny, right?
Burning babies, killing her husband, Ken.
Slang like she didn't kill Viserys.
She did technically kill Drogo, but that's really.
I mean, come on, that's that's really splitting hairs there.
I think there's the rumor that she hatched the three headed
dragon, which is close to true, but not at you know, it's not
accurate. She had three Dragons, not one
with three heads. So someone like Tyrion hears
that and he's good at dissembling.
He's good at dissembling what he hears and deconstructing the
rumor and sort of pinpointing or at least narrowing down what's
probably true about it. Not always, because sometimes
it's just so distorted that you can't figure it out.
But this is the kind of thing he looks at and and sees through,
and he he kind of susses out some of the truth from this
crazy rumor. She's like, she didn't do that.
She didn't do that. Well, maybe she did something
like that. You know, that's kind of where
he's at and that's where we're at.
And you can kind of, but we get to see, but we get the benefit
of seeing both sides of it. Tyrians more just figuring it
out through his own intelligence.
Even something like killing babies.
It's not like Danny took a baby and a dagger and cut his throat,
right? But she's the husband of a call,
right? Who kills babies like she's on?
She's part of this horde. She's she's almost half in
charge of the army that just killed many, many babies.
It's not crazy to hold her responsible, you know?
Yeah, I mean, every military leader in in West W we've seen
is guilty of that. Rob's guilty of that.
They've his orders have caused the death of babies.
He hasn't stabbed any babies directly himself either, like
Danny. But yeah, I mean, Danny's dragon
killed a baby. Like she's partly culpable for
that. She feels that culpability.
The mother of Dragons. The Dragons kill babies.
She kills babies. It's you know exaggerated or
unfair maybe but not people aren't just making up random
things. It's it's it's based in
something and that's Tyrion is probably figure out what is this
based in you know? So think about that.
In Aegon's time we see the rumors told about Danny.
What were people saying about Aegon?
Like the description of Valerian must have just gotten really
insane. Like this dragon is the size of
Harrenhal, you know instead of it burned Harren.
I was like he swallowed Harrenhal whole.
He took a whole tower and swallowed it like.
All right, y'all, I mean, maybe that one you could probably
figure out isn't true, but people would be saying some
pretty crazy things probably similar to this.
Like the Targaryens drink blood and the Targaryens are godless
demon worshippers. And I mean look at what Maccoro
says about the Drowned God. Now I'm unless inclined to
disagree with Maccoro about calling the Drowned God some
sort of demon, but still, I mean, it's what he's saying is
he has no more. He doesn't have any better
information than even we do about what the true nature of
the drowned Gods. So, like, it's all just all just
hearsay, right? You know, I can imagine, just
want to say real quick, that Aegon might have been a little
bit more aware of the way the world works and how rumors go.
And that's why he maybe is over the top sometimes and being just
or fair or honorable when he can, right?
He wants to make sure rumors don't spread of tyrannical
things that he's doing. So he's making sure to be good
when it's time to be good so those bad rumors can't spread.
And then he's young and inexperienced.
But. She's I I think it's something
that she's learning and people around her want her to be aware
of. You know, Yes, an unfortunate
cousin of fear is hate, and that is certainly going to be in play
here too. Probably hit Danny harder than
it ever hit Aegon, because Aegon's a man and Westeros is
much more accustomed to male leaders.
Much more accustomed to accepting male leaders by by a
mile. Right.
And Danny's also, and he's also a foreigner in their eyes.
Probably like she doesn't. She's barely from Westeros,
where Aegon at least lived there.
He was born there. I don't know if that actually
matters that much, but. There's no rumor spreading that
Aegon is a witch, right? Right.
But he just doesn't have to face half the rumors that a woman has
to face. But Vicenya and Rainey's
probably did have to face those things, So they are.
This element probably is present, it's just probably more
aimed at his sister. I mean, yes, Vicenya definitely
had black magic rumors. Now to be fair there seems to be
some some fire to that behind that smoke there probably was
some black magic in her side, but maybe not that it could be.
I mean I prefer to believe it because it's fun, not because it
says bad things about her. I think it's cool you know from
the world building. But yeah what that what people
believe in world about her is probably going to be a little
darker because of rumors like that and because she's a woman
in power. Now here is, like I said, not
directly mentioned in in A Feast for Crows, but it is in A Dance
With Dragons. Here we go.
Quote Viserys had told her all the tales when she was little.
He loved to talk of Dragons. She knew how Harrenhal had
fallen. She knew about the Field of Fire
and the Dance of the Dragons. This is sort of like a addition
to her first chapter, second chapter introduction stuff in A
Game of Thrones when she's thinking about all these places
she's never been but her brothers told her about like she
thinks of Harrenhal and the Isle of Faces and the Veil of Aaron
and all these things that are just names to her and which is
paired with Bran thinking about the Kingsguard.
He knew all the stories and he named all these famous
Kingsguard and all these famous examples of their deeds, which
is all part of the introduction of A Song of Ice and Fire as a
care, as a story with many different characters with a very
rich history that is a plays a very prominent role.
So George is introducing so many of these things early on, and
that's why even now, 27 years later, we still have ample
reason to refer to these very early part parts of the book,
which only get expanded on later.
I love that part. I love that quote.
It really does. It's like Denny's back in book
one when she's thinking about the tales that Viserys told her.
And yeah, just the Field of Fire.
She mentions the Dance with Dragons too, of course, which is
not, which is only a good comparison for us now since it's
still 130 years away in the actual timeline.
Now, it's not mentioned in the Hedge Night, and it's not
mentioned in the Mystery Night, but it comes up three times in
the sworn sword. It comes up a lot, and it comes
up in more, more than just being mentioned.
The most notable comes when they're passing through Watts
Wood, which had been burned like that.
Fire started there and it was the whole wood burn.
The description tells of extreme devastation.
It's referred to as a smoking wasteland, which there's a
description that will also be used about Dorn after the
Dornish War, so we'll be getting to that in due time.
Now that causes Sir Osgrey walking through the smoking
wasteland, have a coughing fit and once he catches his breath
he says quote. Field of fire must have looked
like this, Sir used to said it was there I was began 200 years
ago. The last of the green kings
perished on that field with the finest flowers that reach around
him. My father said the dragon fire
burned so hot that their swords melted in their hands.
Afterwards the blades were gathered up and went to make the
Iron Throne Highgarden pass from kings to stewards, and the
Osgreys dwindled and diminished until the marshals of the North
March were no more than landed, Knights bound and fealty to the
Rowans. A lot say about that quote.
So swords melting in their hands, that is a very that's
just a descriptive, a very poetic description there because
the sword is the the means at which they win this which they
achieve victory. It's the primary weapon.
It's a weapon. It's a tool only for killing.
As we've discussed before, a lot of weapons on the battlefield
are multipurpose or farm tools or hunting tools.
But swords are only for killing people.
Or Dragons, I guess if you're able to get close to them.
But no, not really. You're not.
Usually I don't. I can't think of an example of a
dragon being killed by the a sword actually, so never mind,
they might have thought that. Though you can try, you can try.
Yeah, you're welcome to try these.
These guys did, and they. You try with a rake or a spear
or whatever you want. Rake.
You might not think the rake is a weapon.
You might be that close that way, like I'm going to rake my
scales. It might feel good.
Like it's a back scratcher. Right.
Interesting that Sir Eustace's father told him this.
That's what he says is my father said the dragon fire burned so
hot that their swords melted in their hands.
Well, his father wasn't there. His father wasn't even close to
there. His father's father wasn't
there. His father's father's father's
father Wasn't there? His father.
I could go on for a bit because we're talking about an event
that was 196 years before Sir Eustace.
Well, Sir Eustace is in is old at this point, so Sir Yousis
will say he's 60 ish. So let's say he was born just
after the Dance of the Dragons. So he's still 130 years before
the Field of fire even happened, let alone being old enough to
process it or have even been there.
That said. Little did you know, his father
was the Green Seer before. Oh my gosh, I.
Had for my new theory, obviously.
No, he's a Gray Seer because he's an Osgro.
It's super super interesting though that the story was passed
down because the Ausgreys probably were at the field of
fire, like not used as his father, not his father's father,
but but some Osgreys or an Osgrey.
But probably multiples were there.
They were Marshall House, they were the Marshalls of the North
March. They're a house dedicated to
defending that part of the Reach.
So of course if there's a greater threat nearby within the
reach that their that their king calls them to, I mean they're
going to be one of the first ones to take the field according
to their own values, their own honor would demand that of them.
And there was no, we have no reason to doubt that they've
fulfilled their duty in that regard.
And they're a great example not only of a house that we know, a
lesser house besides the gardeners or someone like that
that would actually fought on the field of fire, unlike some
of these other greater houses, houses that are still big, like
Rowan and Oakhart, like they lost some prestige, but they're
still among the biggest houses in the Reach where Osprey faded
into obscurity. And the reason for that is
partly the conquest. They're no longer defend,
they're defending a border and no longer needs to be defended.
And that was their job for thousands of years.
So their position, their place in the hierarchy, they're just
not needed anymore, right? We talked about that a lot when
we covered the Sworn Sword, but what we didn't necessarily talk
about is how much that happened all over.
They're an example of what must have been happening all over the
Reach, all over the West. The Riverlands as well.
Just a lot of places. Well, maybe not the Riverlands
because of King Heron, but lots of places.
Probably the Reach. Most of all though, I think they
are the best example of this, where their position in the
world was taken from them. Not not on purpose.
Aegon wasn't like Baha Ozgreys. You know you're worthless now.
No, it just it was just a side effect of reorganizing the
entire realm. So and and they're not able to
stay relevant. Like you saw what Osgrae tried
to do, what Yustis tried to do to stay relevant.
He he did manipulations and intrigues and tried to join
different sides and his he's just he wasn't very good at it.
You know it's his house has a tradition of war, not of being
courtiers. I mean, there probably were some
Osgrae's at court, at High Garden, but it clearly wasn't
their specialty. It wasn't their, their angle.
It wasn't the thing that they were famous for.
They didn't develop that, they didn't work on that.
They didn't pass down secrets of court, secrets of like things
that Varys had kids, things that he would pass these things down
to, you know, that kind of thing.
But no, that's not the that's not how it went.
We're going to play. There's plenty of examples like
that. Many that we can imagine.
Many that we can just assume of the old order shaken up in a lot
of houses that had you know noble positions of of value that
they could be proud of. That's just you just aren't
needed anymore. Time to retire and and that's a
tough thing for a house that's been around for so long or.
Find value in a new thing. Be a farmer.
Be an engineer, Be productive. You know, like be happy for this
new scenario that you have the ability, which is what a lot of
them. Ended up doing something more
long term to make an investment to not be killers, you know?
And it's very much symbolic of what burning a forest down does,
right? This is a complete fresh start.
It's brutal. Everything in that forest died.
The immediate aftermath is gross and terrifying, and you choke at
the sight of it and you cough at the fumes.
And 100 years later, it's a brand New Forest.
It looks really nice. There's no sign of the
devastation. And it's pretty good.
You know, it's like, maybe you maybe it shouldn't have happened
that way, but the current state of affairs that it's become is
good. You know, it doesn't mean it's a
justification, but it's undeniable that this New Forest
is nice and there's new animals there.
And yeah, the osgraves were themselves like one of those old
trees. They're still, their roots ran
deep, but now they're just a stump.
I mean, I don't know, maybe that's kind of mean, but all
this is a parallel to Daenerys too, right?
Daenerys in Marine, she's trying to make changes, trying to root
out the evil and do good. But like a lot of the, a lot of
that involves uprooting people that are having OK lives, like
the older slaves that are now out on the street.
You know that that example played out both in book and show
and it was pretty heart rending. It's like, well, you understand
why Danny's doing it, and you understand that it's hard to
avoid things like this, but it's still like, damn these guys.
There's there's innocent people are definitely suffering here.
You know, these people aren't slavers.
They're part of this slaver hierarchy, but they're not
participating in it with force. They're just caught up in it.
You know, a slave within a slaver empire.
Like what? What power does he have?
Or she? So yeah, it's even if it's
worthwhile, there can be awful sacrifices to get there, and
it's just a really difficult position that both Aegon found
himself and Danny. It's probably going to be much
harder for her. The scenario is much different.
Westeros is already somewhat united and but is already at war
and in that sense is not united. And the clear and present danger
of this thing from the North is actually happening, unlike in
Aegon's time, where he's just preparing for it at some for
some later date. You know, it's an interesting
thought, by the way. Westeros is probably the least
united it's been since Aegon. Right.
Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, That's actually very true.
Yeah, I was going to say, even I wonder during a dance, I don't
know it as well, but I feel like the dance there weren't as that
there were really only two sides, right?
Like right now there's four or five sides or something, so.
Good point. Yeah, that's a good point.
There's more claimants. There's more claimants than
there's ever been, I suppose. Yeah, that's a good point.
I don't think there were. There were never that many
there. There's more ability for when
the dust settles, more likelihood I think, for when the
dust settles, for all the kingdoms not to be under one
throne anymore. Yeah, so the reason so many, or
so rather so few resist from here on out is because of all
these overpowering examples that the biggest and most powerful
had opposed Egon and his sisters and lost.
So think about will these people submit to Danny after she shows
overwhelming force, or will their prejudices or prior
loyalties or both prevent them from making the common sense
decision? Or will it be just other factors
that we're not considering that are mixed in it?
Who knows what kind of propaganda?
What kind of things people will believe about Danny that may not
be true or they've been misled on or whatever.
You know, we're also assuming Danny handles things well.
What if she just screws it up in multiple different ways that
that could, that could happen. So absolutely.
But we've talked a lot of times about how she.
Could make mistakes. Aegon seen a play just perfect
and it was the perfect moment for everything to happen.
That there's all kinds of things that could have been a little
differently and it wouldn't have gone as well.
So who's to say that? Danny Maybe even has better
intentions and better support than Aegon, but it's just the
wrong moment. She doesn't have the right
pieces to to to play, you know? And the optics, the optics are
different, Yeah, absolutely. So others will rush to bend the
knee. And it shouldn't be seen as
cowardice, though I I mean, I wouldn't call it that.
Of course I probably wouldn't have anyway.
In some cases it is probably, but in.
But in other most cases I don't think so.
I think it's more about wisdom or even ambition because.
Rarely in the history of Westeros is bending the knee so
profitable. There's gain and and climbing of
the ladder to be had by bending the knee at the right time or or
with the right circumstances. So yeah, it's interesting to
consider that it's not just saving your neck, you can move
up in the world by bending the knee here.
Best example we've seen is next. Here, as Aegon heads to
Highgarden quote, King Aegon parted from his sisters and
marched once for Highgarden, hoping to secure its surrender
before some other claimant could seize it for his own.
He found the castle and the hands of its steward, Harlan
Tyrell, whose forebearers had served the Gardeners for
centuries. Tyrell yielded up the keys to
the castle without a fight and pledged his support to the
conquering king. In reward, Agon granted him High
Garden and all its domains, naming him Warden of the South
and Lord Paramount of the Mandor and giving him dominion over all
House gardeners for more vassals.
Definitely one of the largest promotions we'll ever see
Westeros. I mean, because the Reach is the
the most populous and the largest.
This isn't just it's a little different than the Tully's
getting. Until Game of Thrones when Bron.
Gets the reach, Bron, yeah. That's a bigger promotion.
You're right. Because Braun was a real nobody.
Or a sword of nobody, You guys say yes, he he hit a few long
rungs on the ladder before. He didn't go directly from cell
sword to the Lord of the. But there weren't very many
rungs on that ladder. It was a step ladder.
Honor and a lot less a good goodwill towards him than the
Tyrells. Yeah, I got to think that the
the equivalent of Olenna saying our claim to high gardens have
been dodgy like but not as dodgy as Braun.
Yeah, this is this March. Isn't that far, right?
But it is kind of far. Like it's not right next door.
The the field of fire took place in the northern area of the
Reach, and Highgarden is, you know, more southwesterly.
And he didn't fly ahead on Valerian alone.
He took the whole army there, which is a little interesting.
Even though he was rushing, he still wanted to come in force.
So he wasn't maybe. Maybe not as as in a rush as.
It might have seemed it's a peculiar line, too.
Like, it says he's worried about someone else claiming it, which
is like, really, who's going to claim it with Aegon on Valerian
on his way? Like, who's going to jump in
front of that avalanche? Like, I'll stop here, Aegon.
I will like, like Chris Pratt in the Jurassic Park movie just
holds his hand out and Valerian stops.
Like, oh, a hand. I can't get past that, you know?
Should have. Should have thought of that
when? Well, they already did stop for
the green hands. It didn't work.
Yeah, we've already shown that the hands holding out of hand
does not stop Valerian. Unless it's maybe a real hand
works better than. A.
Punch him in the nose. Punch him in the nose like a
sharp. Said, Yeah, we talked about this
before, we just we got someone has to test this out.
So I don't know about that. This is a good example of us.
It just gives me more confidence in our deconstruction of some of
these histories, saying this probably isn't exactly what
happened or they've been probably misinterpreting some
things because, which is what Jars intended, right?
He's trying to sort of make it like a real history book, not
exactly like one. There's some things he didn't
include from real history that I'm glad he didn't, and I've got
a couple examples of that later. Nina disagrees with you a little
bit. She thinks it might be this one
may have. And I yeah, I kind of side with
her. I I 'cause I think that even if
it's not a smart person, someone might still do it.
And it would just be this new headache for Aegon.
So it's like he might have to, like, split his forces or bring
the dragon down. Or he wants to bring the dragon,
so he doesn't want to have to. Even if he can, he doesn't want
to have to deal with this. He wants the lesson to be made
right. He doesn't want to 'cause if
someone does this and it distracts him, someone else is
going to do it later. And if he has to, like burn
people to make him stop, then he then the negative rumors spread
about what he's doing. It's a lot.
It might be unlikely or unwise for someone to do it, but
there's a lot of unwise people. It's unwise for them to.
I'm gonna feel a fire, but they did it anyway, so.
Yeah, you're right. We can't assume just 'cause it's
a bad idea that they didn't do it.
Yeah, Dion took Winterfell like, it wasn't smart, it didn't last,
but it was a pain for Rob. It was a monkey wrench and
everything else is going on so I can see someone potentially
doing it and it being difficult for Aegon to deal with.
OK, yeah, that's fair. And, you know, and Nina uses the
example of Argylla, who even after her father's beaten, her
army's beaten. She's still like, I'm the new
Storm Queen, you know, even though, like, it was hopeless.
And they're like, no, you're not.
So you're right though. So that's that's a great
example. Nina brings a good point.
So yeah, so it is possible. It's also possible.
And here's one, Here's one I didn't think of until just now.
Given what we just said about opportunity and ambition,
someone could seize Highgarden. In order to be the one who
surrenders it to Aegon so that the Tyrells can't do that.
So like, I want to be the one to surrender Highgarden to Aegon.
And of course, they have very little time to do that.
That's part of it also. It's like, well, who's who's got
time for this? Like maybe someone had an army
in the field already, Like Tywin was waiting to see what happened
at the Roberts or at the Trident, and then he marched
immediately to King's Landing. There could have been another
army in the field like that, that Aegon wasn't aware of.
There wasn't, as far as we know. But it's a it's possible it's
extra valuable, the pointing out the the intelligence Aegon could
could have if he scouted out ahead of times and got people in
the right places and use the Dragons.
But say the high towers. What if the high towers all
right we're we're in charge of high guard now.
We'll see what Aegon says when he gets here, but we're going to
be in charge. They would have been more
difficult to negotiate with right than the Tyrells.
That was an ideal situation when the high Tyrells, yes, took,
took charge, sort of, and then gave in immediately.
It would have been a little different with the high towers,
yes. Because we know what the high
towers did. We know they had their prophecy.
We know they surrendered. We're going to talk about that
later. But does Aegon know that?
Because it seems it's the peculiarity of that scenario is
that yes, they had that prophecy, the high Sept, and he
told Lord Manfred Hightower, But it doesn't seem like they told
everybody else. It's not like they didn't send a
letter head to Aegon saying we already surrender.
No. They waited for him to show up,
so it was like they were. This was part of why we were
very sure that this wasn't just a vision, that this was planned,
because it's so perfect for them and all the little insurance and
outs are just so engineered, like they didn't announce it
even though they were so sure of it.
OK, well, if you're so sure of it, why didn't you say
something? Why didn't you surrender ahead
of him? Why didn't you show up on the
Field of Fire to help Aegon right, rather than just stay out
of it entirely? So from we when we covered this
before, it was from their perspective.
From Aegon's perspective, he doesn't know what they're
planning. Yeah, maybe they're just waiting
to see what happens and then pounce on the the weekend winner
like someone they beat each other up and this is their
opportunity. They hadn't used their armies.
Yeah. Maybe their army was already in
the field waiting to to to make a move.
So yeah, I could see that. Yeah.
Now imagine. So somehow he learned.
It's also the chaos of learning what happened.
Like we know all these gardeners were killed, but.
Did Aegon learn that immediately?
I don't know about that. Maybe he did, because a lot of
Reach Lords bent the knee to him, and they might have known
this already, but would they really know the chaos of
everybody fleeing and running in every different direction?
Would they really know for sure that all the gardeners are dead
right then? Would they really know that
there weren't gardener boys and old men still at High Garden?
They would probably assume that that's the case, even though it
turned out to not be the case. They probably would have thought
that, you know, they wouldn't have just assumed.
Well, yeah, Well. That was probably all of them on
the battle there. I probably killed them all
right. Yeah.
He could not have that kind of confidence until a little time
passed. And as we know, one nephew did
survive Quentin Martel of of of the of House Gardener here.
He died three days later of his severe burns.
So think about Quentin and how Barristan and and Massande were
kind of watching over him and it's really horrible because his
burns were just. Just the description of them is
horrifying. The hope placed in this young
burned man. The prayer vigils would have
been lit both both sides of it. In other words, people.
Some people would just be praying like just like put him
out of his misery. We don't If he's alive, that
causes all sorts of the war might flare back up again.
We don't want that Other people will be like, he's our hope.
He's the one living gardener. We need him to survive so that
he can propagate the house and continue.
It'd be a wide variety of opinions and and hope placed
under this child but or this this young man.
But either way he died. As for how Aegon handled
Highgarden when he did get there, yeah, coming back to the
Tully decision, it's a very similar strategy but even more
bold in that sense. Cause yeah, the Tully's had
never been kings neither the Tyrells, but they were Lords and
they were Lords. River run a substantial
important castle. The Tyrells do have descent from
the Gardeners as. Olena says.
But they don't have land. They didn't have land.
Still, let's not think of them as lowly.
Steward can be thrown around as like Steward, right.
And you, if you've watched Lord of the Rings, you've got that
same thing, like sit down steward.
They insult, you know, Dennis Thor for being a steward, But
that's not because the steward is a low position.
It's because he was acting like a king.
The same thing here. The stewards are very powerful.
I mean, here's a good real life example, Secretary of the Navy.
Right. In the USA, that's one of the
highest military positions there is.
The secretary includes the Marines.
The secondary Navy presides over the Navy, and it's the civilian
post. But it's one of it's presented,
it's the presidential cabinet position, it's one of the
highest positions in all the military.
But some people misconstrue that because they hear the word
secretary and they think that's like someone who types and takes
notes and stuff like that. So Steward should be thought of
as secretary, that type of secretary here.
This is someone that runs the finances of the entire reach,
you know and they have enormous power like it's and knowledge
they yeah, they would have. They would know all the
insurance and outs, have connections with all the people.
They would have awareness of budgets and manpower and on and
on. Yeah.
Yeah, it's part of the reason they're denigrated is because
the other nobles see that level of power.
But want to point to the thing that they don't have which is
their nobility like you don't have land though you know so
they want to put themselves above them because even though
they arguably are more powerful so minor minor correction
secretary of Navy isn't actually a presidential cabinet position
it's it's under the Secretary of Defense which is but it is a oh
OK but still they're in like anyway a four way tie for third
most third highest ranking after president Secretary of Defense
then Secretary of Navy secretary Army chairman don't choose the
staff it's it's not to take away from your point Yeah.
Way up there, Yeah. Yeah.
It doesn't change the point of the example.
Yeah, you're right. But a good but a good
correction. Thank you.
So yeah, so Nina makes the same point.
She points out, yeah, the the Tyrells are very powerful.
Don't get lost in the shelf. Don't believe what you hear
about other nobles looking down on Stewart.
And in fact Nina gives of another great real world
example, the Stewarts or Stewarts do different spellings.
STEU or. EWARTS and the Stuart the the
common name Stewart those were those were the high stewards of
Scotland before becoming Kings of Scotland.
So they even the name Stewart, Stewart, there's a real life
example of them ascending to King Hood.
So that's yeah, this is less than that by comparison, even
though Scotland's a lot smaller than the Reach, so.
Aegon's choice was a way to demonstrate how serious he was
about remaking the realm as a single Kingdom.
In his vision, Aegon was not joking when he said he would
reward those who bent the knee and destroy those who resisted
it. He kept proving that over and
over. Whether you're the oldest,
grandest family like the gardeners he'll that doesn't
stop you from being destroyed. Or if you're a house that's
never held land like the tyrels, that doesn't mean you can't be
promoted to one of the highest positions in the realm.
It's a new world, new world, y'all new big shake up.
It's like those of you who are fans of The Expanse.
You might be familiar with the term the churn.
This is the churn. When the big changes happen at
the top, the most powerful people change the world as we
know it. Little people like everyone
else, whether you're in even really powerful people, have
very little impact. When when world, the world
changes and you just got to hope you survive it, there's nothing
you can do. It's the world's about to be
different. Best thing we can do is keep on
keeping on and and hope it. Doesn't ruin us, but we don't
have any power over it and that's the same.
That's the way a lot of these rich Lords found themselves,
like Aegon is making this decision, and they have no
ability to change his mind. They can argue, they can
complain, but it is not going to matter.
Oakhart, Florent, Rowan Peak and Red Wine, those were the five
houses, apparently the most upset about the Tyrol elevation.
Recall Oakhart was one of the four commanders of the battle.
All five of those houses were at the field of fire and the tire
rolls were not, So that's probably something annoying to
them as well. Like, we actually fought for the
Reach, this dude who didn't bent the knee and he gets all the
rewards and then the high guard and then the hightowers are
going to get the same. So there's probably a lot of
bitterness there too. It's like they didn't help and
they're getting all these rewards.
It's like, so I surprised some bitterness there, some
bitterness that lingered, Yeah, now here's a here's something
kind of unfortunate or or missing, We'll say we talked
about the missing men. Of gardeners?
Like, why weren't there old men or children?
It's a little convenient or unusual.
What about the women? Where are all the women?
There's no, they definitely weren't at the battle.
So what happened to them? Like we kind of have to assume
some very unsavory things happen, like forcible marriages,
people sent to the silent sisters, maybe some people
getting murdered. If there had been a gardener
Princess around a Tyrell gardener, marriage would have
made a lot of sense just to lock that up.
On the other hand, maybe Agon didn't want that bloodline
existing at all. Maybe he wanted to just cancel
them entirely so that they never rose again and didn't cause any
problems. He might have thought that was a
better way to move forward. Just as good we it's good that
we have no more gardeners. Let's just to keep it that way
now, Nina points out. It's especially odd that they're
missing. If we don't count the Martells,
they're the only pre conquest royal dynasty which definitely
saw at least 2 Queens. So they already have shown that
women are more likely to hold power as compared to a lot of
these other royal houses in Westeros.
So it's even stranger in that sense.
So what we have to assume like you are free to look at this as
just George making a mistake. Of George, just for just
overriding these women and just ignoring it for some reason.
There is a lot of economy in the conquest, but I prefer to look
at it as just we got to come up with an come up with reasons
that make sense and fit them. Make something that fits.
So that's where I get to this. The unsavory stuff that these
women were packed off and and quietly sent away dishonorably,
which is why it wasn't recorded. Like Aegon wanted to look like
he was doing things the right way.
He wanted to look. He was rewarding the right
people and doing these women were kind of innocent.
So if he's punishing, we're not kind of.
They were innocent. They're completely innocent as
far as I can tell. I mean, maybe they weren't, but
as far as we know, we have no reason to suspect otherwise.
So that doesn't look good, right?
It's it's not chivalrous necessarily, even though it is
normal. You can see why it wasn't
recorded, if that is indeed what happened or if it's the best
explanation for what happened. I mean, Yandel alludes to
various houses in the Reach that have.
Blood ties to House Gardener. There's definitely houses that
have married into House Gardener and vice versa.
Something like the Bloodline was definitely not entirely erased.
It's impossible. It's been 8000 years of
interbreeding and back and forth.
There's got to be Gardener blood.
Does that matter though? No, apparently not.
Not at this point. I can imagine.
In addition to some of the stuff you suggested both like unsavory
demises that some of the women might have come to and Martin
maybe not thinking it through. Right.
He just wanted for this history. The gardeners are gone.
The men were all killed in battle.
Well, all the men. What about the women cousins?
Like maybe it's not just him not accounting for this.
It's the historians there were it's a new phase of history.
The gardeners are gone. So I I can see that that could
easily be part of it, right? That maybe George even knows
that there should still be some. But that's just that The history
didn't record that for all these different reasons, aren't as
entertaining or enjoyable to to read about or don't make sense
to, who have been written about by the historians, who would
also be chauvinistic and biased and all these other things.
One other potential is that they just went into hiding.
They knew they might have dangerous futures ahead of them.
Like, you know what? I'm not a gardener anymore,
right? Someone might have just chosen
to be a flower or whatever. Yeah, I'm.
Going to ask those, Yeah. A flower, Yeah, yeah.
Another possibility here too is that he just didn't, you know,
he wrote this stuff so early on. He wrote the This Field of Fire
and Burning of Harrenhal, these details in this part of the
history when this was supposed to be a trilogy he may not have.
He didn't expect to have to flesh it out because he wasn't
expecting to write Fire and Blood.
And that doesn't mean he couldn't have made these added
these details in. But maybe it's just like a
matter of, well, he's already settled this.
He didn't have to. He didn't go back and revisit
the thought process because he had done it so long ago.
Yeah, it's possible anyway. There's either with even the
setting that's aside, there's significant missing pieces
because there's always significant missing pieces.
There's always, I mean we can never know what's happening in
all the places and all these times like that would be absurd
for us to have that level of information.
And part of the fun is filling in the blanks.
You know sometimes it's a bit too blank.
Like this might be one of those examples.
It's better when we can fill in the blanks rather than we kind
of have to that's that's a little that's that's not as
good, but either way it's fun. Ultimately, this is, I mean, the
fun part, being imagining what things that will make it work,
that make it logical or whatever.
And this is I this is what I was saying earlier.
I said I'd come back to an example of real life history
doing this. Yeah, real life history does
this all the time. We have countless examples of
history, that is. Frustrating, just as frustrating
or more frustrating because it's missing stuff that you can do or
baffled by why the sources don't discuss this or don't elaborate
on certain details. They're still captivating,
inspire, and inspiring, but not as much as this in my opinion,
but that they were. They're all we have.
In other words, one of my favorite periods of history, and
I've said this several times over the course of our 11 or 12
years of doing the show, is that I love the the civil wars after
the death of Alexander the Great.
It's always been one of my favorite periods of history, the
successors, the Diadacoa they're called.
But those histories, my one of my favorite periods of history
has the history is very sketchy. The source, the biggest source
for those things is Diadora Siculus.
And he has been, he's had a reputation of as a historian
that's gone really up and down depending on what era your
people were reading him in. Like for a while he was thought
as a bumbler. Now he's thought, OK, actually
some of his stuff is pretty good, but now OK, but definitely
got some things wrong because there's just like straight up
contradictions. He contradicts himself several
times throughout this. I mean, there's 27 history books
or whatever that he wrote. So, you know, there's bound to
be a few mistakes in there. But a modern history book
wouldn't have these problems like they would.
They would have an editor that would look through and catch
that and be like, OK, well, this, you know, to solve this,
this is a contradiction. You can, you can present it as a
contradiction. Say we don't know which of these
things is true. But again, just like ignore the
fact that you just contradicted yourself with a point you made
that that goes against something you said 20 pages ago that
George doesn't do. Thankfully, there's not.
There's very little contradictory information in his
history books. There is a little bit.
There's definitely some, especially with things like
Ashai and some of the really ancient stuff.
But that stuff you can easily ascribe to the fog of history.
But there's a few other ones. But we don't need to talk about
those right now. So I'm glad George didn't
include that real world problem. But as Nina said, there are
other things that maybe he also didn't need to include, like the
omission of these women or the, you know, having Argylla marched
out in chains naked. That was probably unnecessary.
And it's a little odd too, that they did that.
But we have to handle this in a variety of different ways.
We can be frustrated. We can be.
We can use our imagination. We can do both.
So this is how we handle it. Let us know how you handle these
things if you do, or what this thinks or how this comes across
to you. It's an interesting meta
discussion within the greater framework, not just of fire and
blood, but of all of us. On advice and fire, I suppose.
Or just the world, how we how we handle these things.
All of history. Let's take a quick break and
come back with the second-half, which we'll be dealing with
Torin Stark and then the Hightowers.
Good stuff, probably. Torin Stark is my favorite part
of this episode, but you your mileage may vary.
This episode is brought to you in part by HelloFresh.
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I don't watch any of them religiously, but here and there
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I wonder if doing it, watching cooking shows, might make you
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HelloFresh. All right, the king who knelt.
Let's start off with a quote. It was King Aegon's intent to
continue his March South and enforce the submission of Old
Town, The Arbor and Dorn, but whilst at Highgarden, word of a
new challenge came to his ears. Horan, Stark King in the North,
had crossed the Neck and entered the Riverlands, leading an army
of savage Northmen 30,000 strong.
Aegon at once started N to meet him.
Racing ahead of his army on the wings of Valerian, the back, the
Black Dread. He sent word to his 2 Queens as
well. And to all the Lords and Knights
who had bent the knee to him after Harrenhal and the Field of
Fire, Nina writes. What's also notable about this
quote is that it suggests urgency on the part of Aegon
towards the Starks. He actually saw them as a
threat, or at least thought that they needed to be handled in a
timely manner. Perhaps before things got too
out of hand. Like take care of them before
this gets ugly. Maybe you can.
There's still a chance to make them bend the knee before they
start. I don't know, attacking the
Riverlands or something like that.
He's not sure where they're going to go.
Or they just head straight for King's Landing and he and they
get there and start, I don't know, wrecking the Aegon for and
that just looks bad for him, you know.
So he needs to beat them to the punch.
So there is urgent. There's several reasons to
understand his urgency here, and it may be a little of all the
above, or several different factors.
One thing I think maybe the biggest thing is something that
I brought up a few times before, is it they can spread their
forces. It's not that they might go to
King's Landing, they might go to River Run and King's Landing and
the Field of Fire. And if they suddenly Aegon so
far has been able to choose the battlefields, yes, that's true.
He's fighting where he wants all his army and all of their army
all there at the same. But if if suddenly he had to
face forces in a bunch of different places, it's much more
of a challenge, but with same reason I thought that it would.
It would be tough for him to actually take Castle Rock.
He could theoretically do it, but he can't do that.
And all the other things he needs to do to unite the
Kingdom, that's a. Good point.
He right now can go meet Torrance Dark on a battlefield,
full force versus full force. If he waits an army spread out
and he rallies more troops and he's on three different fronts,
that gets much tougher. Yeah, you're right.
Yeah. For all he knows, Torin would
have split his army and started and gone after multiple targets
or tried to pick up allies by, you know, sending them to
different places around. Yeah.
So there's a lot of concerns
here needed to be done. Right.
So this is what we said back in the beginning or earlier in past
episodes. These these considerations for
bending the knee and and for and the timing is very crucial in a
lot of these cases. It's not just about, Oh yeah,
I'll send a letter to surrender. No, these kings, they have to be
very careful when they bend the knee.
Why they bend the knee. What their followers believe of,
hear and understand about that logic, whether it's true or not,
like to prevent rumors from spreading about cowardice or
anything else, right? And Doran himself, from his
perspective, like he's heard these stories.
He's got more information than, say, Argillac, and Heron had
about the capability of the Dragons, but he still hasn't
seen it in person, at least not at first.
Once his army arrives, that's a little different, which we'll
get to in shortly. But first, from that quote it it
says he was planning on marching S to enforce the submission of
Old Town, the Arbor and Dorne. He never actually had to force
the submission of the Arbor. I think they just showed up and
bent the knee with the Hightowers.
It's not really made clear there, but we never hear
anything more about that. So clearly they capitulated at
some point. But Dorne, he was planning on
going to Dorne directly himself and and that would not have gone
the way he expected as it didn't later either.
But that's a real interesting what if isn't it like an
overestimation. He may have been very confident
and everyone bending the knee after he taught these lessons
but he may have been overconfident and and couple
because there were still holdouts as we see that.
That of course is what we'll be discussing next week.
So he may have yeah he may have actually expected Doran to
capitulate without a fight which clearly was wrong.
So here's what actually happened when the the Northern army got
insight of what they were faced with quote.
When Torin Stark reached the banks of the Trident.
He found a host half again the size of his own, awaiting him
South of the river. River Lords, Westerman,
Stormlanders, Men of the Reach, all had come, and above their
camp Valerian, Marraxis and Vagar prowled the sky in ever
widening circles. Torrent scouts had seen the
ruins of Harrenhal. Where slow red fires still
burned beneath the rubble. That's pretty intimidating.
You're like, OK, so those Dragons really are that big and
that castle really is burned. And those Dragons clearly did.
It's like going into the kitchen and finding the dog treats
spilled over and there's a dog sitting there and you're like,
well, I know who did that. You see Harrenhal smoking ruins
Dragons circling over it. Well, 2 + 2 = 4 or three headed.
No, never mind. And OK, so this is another
factor there. Like we're already seeing the
Dragons, what they're capable of.
Torin now has heard the stories and seen some of the evidence.
He's also facing a a larger army than his.
Like he there's more men. Forget the Dragons, it's 45,000
verse 30,000. Remember when we talked about
the size of the greech army at the Field of Fire?
We pointed out that the one that formed shortly after it was one
of the net was maybe the second biggest army field it in, and
that's up to that point because this is 45,000 men.
The reach had what? What was it, 55,000?
So this isn't that much smaller, right?
So with the Dragons factored in, it's an enormous superiority.
Plus they're on the other side of the river.
If the if Torin wanted to come to grips to make his have his
men fight Aegons, they'd have to cross the river, which is
terrifyingly dangerous with the with Dragons being right there,
especially even without the Dragons, that would have been
very difficult, but Aegon still had to make the show of force.
Because the Northerners are the Northerners, they believe that
they're stronger 1:00 to 1:00 than the Southerners.
They're they won't be too intimidated by that numerical
disadvantage. The Dragons are a different
factor in a wild card because they've never encountered that
before, but I don't think they would have looked at 3030 versus
45K as something that they couldn't overcome.
They might be wrong, but this is this kind of the northern
attitude they're more like. They might have been able to
overcome it if you take the Dragons out, because they would
have been more united, right? This, this 45,000 is more
hodgepodge, different people who aren't going to coordinate or
trust each other, as well as the Stark, the the Northerners.
That's a very good point. You're right.
These these are these Northerners are way more united
in purpose and in ideology and in just general loyalty.
They're all, you know, behind that Stark king where everyone,
everyone else has just recently cowed behind Aegon.
And some of them are probably a little bitter about the loss of
gardeners and other things. So, yeah, and they had just
fought. Some of them were were still
like injured, you know, or tired, like the Northerners were
fairly fresh. So Nina also points out that
this approach speaks volumes. Turin did not take up a
defensive position. He did not reinforce Moat, Kalin
and sit and wait for the Dragons to come and fight them on
terrain that was at most advantage to them.
They marched into the South to confront the man that claimed
their land. This was says a lot about both
their attitude, but if we're looking a little deeper, there
might be some, might be a little more to it.
Torin might have been clever than he seems here.
And I'm not saying he didn't seem clever.
I don't really know. He's he's no, he's kind of like
Aegon. We don't really know his
personality. In other words.
He's exposing his army. He's marching away from any
potential defenses, the natural benefits of the neck and all
that. He just shunned that and was
marched right into the Riverlands, where it's kind of
more open, where he'd have to cross a river to to fight them
rather than them having to cross a river or swamps or what have
you. So he's almost showing his neck
right away. He's almost exposing himself
right away, which which to his soldiers, the people following
him, that looks brave. It looks forthright, like we're
we're charging right in without, you know, without hesitation,
without any sort of fear. But taking up a defensive
position. If they had taken up a defensive
position, it sort of implies we're ready to fight where this
actually gives Torin the chance to surrender.
Even though his men might not realize that because he gets to
witness it before it hits him. Like if they're hunkered down
waiting to be hit, that first hit might be devastating because
that's what Aegon does. He wants to overwhelm you when
he when if he's coming for you, he's coming for you hard.
He's not going to just test the waters 1 strafing run, See what
you do. It's all or nothing.
And Torin knows that by now, or at least probably does.
So he's like he wants to have a little flexibility in his
strategy even. That's why we make so much out
of his giving up his defense here.
He's like, he marched right there.
And I think part of that is because he wanted to see exactly
what he was facing. He wanted to put truth to the
rumors, because if the rumors were true, I don't know if he
wants to do it. But if they're not OK, then
maybe he can fight. I don't even think that he
wanted to see what they're facing.
I think he wanted to see. He wanted all of the soldiers
and see what they're facing. If they take up defensive
positions, a couple problems with that.
The Dragons just fly right over MO Kalin.
They don't stop and fight MO Kalin, just fly right.
They just burn whatever castle they pick and choose and all the
forces can't run back and forth between castles, right?
If you get all the forces together and go South, he can't
say this, of course. But everyone gets to see what
the threat really is. He probably did.
He probably is experienced and wise enough to trust the
information he's getting, realize it's over, not
overcomable, but also that he can't just immediately give up.
So get everyone together so they can all see for themselves,
right? And they all go down.
And then when he surrenders, everyone is there for surrender.
Aren't people leftover from behind who will dissent or run
some ambush, raid or? So they all get the same
motivation by seeing the threat. They're all in the same place to
know, OK, this is really it. And they all get to have that,
like, gut churning, like, holy crap, that thing is huge and it
breathes. No, Wow.
Yeah, like without that. Like feeling it, seeing, like
experiencing it. Personally, you're right.
I think that I think that's a very strong point.
And it also doesn't work to stay back in defensive, because the
Dragons can fly around in a bunch of different targets and,
you know, depend on how things go, yeah.
As I said before, they're probably better off across that
river with a full force that can be split up to different places
that that if we maybe get people to join them, right?
If we're going to have some chance of stopping Aegon, it's
not going to be huddling in our castles wondering which one gets
burned down. It's going to be going out and
attacking a bunch of different places, and too much the Aegon
can stop. So we could at least.
We'll lose some battles, we'll lose some men, but we'll win
some battles and at least have some negotiating power.
And same thing with this show of force.
All right, Aegon, you can beat us, but we're going to put up
this fight and it's going to be it's going to look really bad.
You got to burn a lot of people to death.
You're going to have less soldiers and support back home
in the north once you take over, right?
Like, what's your goal here? They probably have better
position, better bargaining power by showing up with this
full force, too. Even if they theoretically know
they're going to lose, it's still a better position to
bargain from. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
And and it's. I think from a bunch of
different angles, I think Torn did the right thing.
Yeah, I agree. I totally agree.
And it it it seems so simple. But really when we get into this
detail, there's a lot of considerations.
It's almost a tightrope walk. And I do think that he he seems
to have handled it well. And I I agree with pretty much
everything you just said there. And another thing about the
defense position, like you said, like no one's going to join him.
If he's hunkering up in the neck, he's not going to get more
allies, which he probably knows he needs.
And that's this comes back to our point about a lot of Aegon's
allies just joined him. They may be they're not like
super tied to him. He didn't.
Aren't marriage alliances in place?
Right. He didn't marry anybody outside
of his family. Right.
So there's there's all this still there.
So yeah, he might be Tori might be thinking, yeah, that he just
appointed the Tyrells in charge of Highgard.
I bet I could get some Richmond to join me.
They don't like. They're not going to like that.
They don't want to serve under the Tyrells they've got they've
got reason to flip sides. But of course that didn't work
out. But those are things that he he
could have been thinking about strategies in mind that would
have maybe been valid and as well as, yeah, you can't just
lay down without a fight. I mean, he did, but he didn't
want to just make that his first choice or make that his only
option. Because yeah, it looks, it does
look bad and he has to. And if he's going to do it, he
has to make sure it doesn't look cowardly.
And the best way to do that is to make sure everyone sees the
threat as he does up close and personal.
Yeah. And if he just announces, yeah,
we're going to March down there and surrender.
Like, he loses so much authority, he's going to lose
more authority. Not just that.
But then when King Aegon appoints him ward to the north,
everyone's going to remember that he's this guy that gave up
so quickly. Like, he just immediately
kowtowed to this threat. And, like, is that really the
guy you want in charge? Even from his perspective, he's
like, well, I still want to be in charge.
If I'm going to lose my crown. I still want to be Lord of
Winterfell. I don't want to, like, have a
whole Tyrell or Tully situation happened to me.
I don't want him to just replace me with the Boltons or the
Manderleys. Yeah, right.
These are other thoughts that would go through his head, but
it goes even farther than that. Like you said, 30,000 men.
That's way more than Rob brought.
So don't forget, Rob also had some Riverlands men join him.
Not a lot because they were in big trouble at that point.
But the North is also more populous now than it was then,
most likely. To be fair, Rob was in a hurry.
He didn't get all the mountain Clans and some other folks.
But Tauren. Yeah, this is part of what
you're saying. I think This is why he gathered
as many men as possible. So as many men as possible would
be witness to what they're do, What happened in the South,
whether it be a glorious victory or a tough decision to bend the
knee, You know, at least they would see what they're faced
with. Yeah, I totally agree.
The witnesses, it's really important, I.
Didn't even think of it till just now, but I I wonder if on
some level, Aegon pieced it together too.
Aegon probably knows what's Torn's going through.
He's like, I need to get everywhere with my dragon right
away so his soldiers see it. I I need him to see the threat
that he wants his people to see, like, and this giant army and
this burned castle, like they get to see it's a triple threat,
right? All that stuff, plus the other
rumors. What Heron didn't have, what our
our galact didn't have, what the Lords of the Crown Lands didn't
have, is what had happened to those people.
Torin now sees what happened to the field of fire, what happened
to what happened to Heron, what happened to the Lord of the
Crown Lands, what happened to our galacts.
There's a lot more evidence, a lot more people have gone up
against the Dragons and lost, or one dragon and lost.
Here we are with three of them again, with a bigger army than
any of these others had faced. So he's really got to be
confident to take this to to violence.
And clearly he wasn't. So he saw Heron Hall with his
own eyes and the Dragons and the army, and so did all his other
Lords. So.
But there's more than that here. Here's another quote to to carry
us forward. The King of the North had heard
many accounts of the field of fire as well.
He knew that the same fate might await him if he tried to force a
crossing of the river. Some of his Lords bannermen
urged him to attack all the same, insisting that Northern
valor would carry the day. Others urged him to fall back to
Moe Kalin and make his stand there on northern soil, the
King's bastard brother, Brandon Snow offered to cross the
Trident alone, undercover of darkness, to slay the Dragons
whilst they slept. That is wild and really cool,
right? From Torrance POV too.
Not only did you mention that he's aware now of all these
conquests that just happened, but several of them happened in
such a short span of time that Harrenhal is still smoldering.
So it's like, wow, not only did he do that, he did it fast.
And here's a huge question mark though Torin's sons, we don't
know how many he had. We know he had more than one.
We don't hear of them being present there.
We do hear about them complaining about the result.
We hear about them bending, being upset about the bending of
the knee and just being a problem going forward.
It's a little odd that we don't hear about them being there, but
if his goal was to make sure as many people saw it as possible,
you would have thought he'd have brought one or two of them with.
On the other hand, he might not have wanted to bring his oldest
son if his oldest son was kind of young.
Sometimes we see the tradition of at least leaving the Stark.
There must be a Stark and Winterfell set aside any maybe
supernatural angle to that. It just makes sense to keep your
air safe or to keep at least one member of your bloodline out of
the fighting. Especially when it's something
like Dragons, which it's pretty hard to keep people out of
harm's way when that with that element in in at present rather.
Maybe he'd heard of what happened to the gardener.
Exactly. The whole gardener lines where
he's like, well, let's make sure that doesn't happen.
Leave one Stark at home like you left.
I mean, Rob was left back when Ned went S you know this, it's
common. Benjen was left at Winterfell
when Ned went S you know, all these other things.
So similar examples. And not just in the north, but
this is the north we're talking about.
So these examples are probably the best to use.
So if he brings them, they get to also witness it and they also
get to see what it is they're surrendering to.
But they may not have been old enough.
Only one of them may have been old enough.
Nina points out that it's odd that Brandon Snow and these
maesters did the negotiating if torn sons or one of them was old
enough to be in this place. This kind of tells me they
weren't because I I agree with her that if they were old
enough, they would be likely. Representatives of the king, the
the Princess are very often take that role up as part of their
training, part of the the way these these noble situations are
handled and. But they don't.
Brandon Snow and the Maesters are the ones passing these
messages back and forth, apparently.
And the lack of the son's involvement may be part of why
they're upset later, but it may. Maybe it's more likely to just
assume they were too young, or if there was an older one, he
wasn't there 'cause he was back at Winterfell.
To to the point we made earlier about Torrent wants all the
soldiers to see. Not just that, he wants to see.
I think he was ready. I think he had seen or heard
enough. But he knew that all the people
would need to see it with their own eyes.
His sons didn't see it with their own eyes.
And they're upset, right? Yeah, I think all the other
Lords went, saw the dragon, saw the field of fire, saw Heron
Hall, went back home being like, OK, good thing we bent the knee.
But anyone that didn't see is like, oh, that torn Stark, he's
the one that knelts. You know they they're they don't
realize. The other option is they would
be dead. Yeah, yeah.
And we will be talking about this more, 'cause this is a
thing we've talked about the Starks under the Dragons, We had
episodes on that. But some of this is we've added
a few new details that we're going to, we're going to want to
mention as we go through the years here in Fire and Blood.
Now what about this Brandon Snow business?
Not about him being the envoy, but about the assassination of
the Dragons? Several takes here.
Was Brandon simply another overconfident man, not truly
grasping what he was up against? Maybe not.
Maybe that's possible, but I wouldn't jump to that conclusion
automatically. I would simply consider that as
one possibility and it and it may only be part of the picture.
What means did he intend? How was he going to assassinate
them? Well, we really only have one
guess. There.
Was he the figure in brands Wearwood Vision making wearwood
arrows? At first when the Dance of
Dragons came out, a lot of people thought that was
Bloodraven. Enough time has passed, enough
analysis has been done. Doesn't really make sense that
it was Bloodraven. Why was Bloodraven making
Wearwood arrows at Winterfell? When was he ever even at
Winterfell and and the timeline, the Order of the Visions doesn't
necessarily support that either. It does support this.
It does support someone making wearwood arrows.
The time of that vision in in relative position to the others
does support the possibility that this is it.
Nina agrees. Nina thinks it is him.
He's the one there, and it wouldn't have been the worst
plane in the world. Tyrion himself notes that the
eyes are the most vulnerable part of a dragon.
Their eyes and the brain behind them.
That's how Meraxis was killed. There's a few other examples.
And yeah, if he can sneak into a Targaryen camp, get a clean
shot, which shouldn't be hard if the Dragon's asleep, You know,
shoot a wearwood arrow into their eyeball might.
Yeah, that might kill it. It might work.
I don't know how you get all three that way, but even if you
only kill one, that's pretty substantial.
And it would send a big message to the world that the Dragons
can be killed, even if they only kill one of them.
All of a sudden it's like, oh, actually, we thought these
things were unbeatable, basically.
But someone proved otherwise. That would change a lot.
It would it would affect the picture continent wide so but
but apparently torn was like was he was not talked into this.
He was not moved by this possibility.
It assumes a lot, too. Like say you sneak into the
Targaryen camp and get captured and held hostage, and now Aegon
is mad that the King's brother snuck into my like it gets a lot
worse, right? Or what if you sneak into the
camp and you don't get caught, but the Dragon's not asleep or
not there? Or you know what I mean?
Like you can't put your stake in this point.
Yeah, 20 good men will not cut it here.
Or 20 good where What errors? So yeah, it's really interesting
to think if there's maybe a vision, like if there's some
some magic involved here as well.
Maybe there's a supernatural angle to this, a dream or some
vision. Maybe someone saw the Dragon's
dead in a in a vision or a green dream, but they're actually
seeing something farther in the future.
Or I'm making my way through Clash of Kings right now.
I'm doing a reread and I'm right at where Bran is arguing with
the green dreams and Mira is too and JoJo is just like Nah, y'all
green dreams happen. Like you can't get away from it.
But if we can interpret them wrong, that's the one out.
Is that yes, it's because I see this happening.
Doesn't mean I've interpreted it correctly.
It's going to happen, but maybe not in the ways that it appears
to me. So this is a possibility for
this example as well. There could be a green dreamer
in the mix or maybe Brandon Snow himself or who knows, but it's
possible. So it's poison.
But that's unlikely. That's not really a northern
means of neither is assassination.
But this isn't necessarily assassination.
Let's talk about that more in a second here now.
So the reason I think it's not as insane as some of the others
is he's not. He's not like he's acting like
he's going to face them an open battle like like a lot of these
other kings did. He's got a plan to it's a
subterfuge but it's intrigue. So it's not you can't judge it
quite the same. It's.
I wouldn't call it insane like facing the dragon headlong is,
but that doesn't mean he wasn't underestimating the Dragons.
As as you said Sean, that doesn't mean it was a good plan.
It just isn't. Maybe isn't crazy.
You said it's not the worst plan in the world, but you need more.
That's a low bar. The bar's got to be higher than
not. The worst plan in the world.
It needs to have a chance of success, not just oh, it's the
second worst plan. In the world.
Yeah, even a halfway point plan between the worst and the best.
Still, I don't know. That's like, even better than
that, man, that's an average plan at best.
Yeah. So let's have the next quote
here right now. All through the night, messages
went back and forth. The next morning, Torin Stark
himself crossed the Trident. Thereupon the South Bank of the
Trident he knelt, laid the ancient crown of the Kings of
Winter at Aegon's feet and swore to be his man.
He rose as Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, a king
no more From that day To this day, Torin Stark is remembered
as the King who knelt, but no Northman left his burned bones
beside the Trident. And the swords Aegon collected
from Lord Stark and his vassals were not twisted nor melted, nor
bent. Yep, they were unbent swords,
but their knees were bent. I do wonder if these letters
back and forth, what was being said, what sort of information
was passed back and forth? Given the intermediaries, it's a
little less likely to me that dreams were discussed, but that
doesn't mean they weren't discussed in purpose or in
person. Once he did cross, But at that
point he'd already decided to kneel.
So yes, that's But maybe Brandon Snow was willing to discuss his
brother's dream. Maybe the maesters were excluded
from that. Doesn't mean the discussions
weren't had. It just would have been very
they would have had to be very diplomatic about when they spoke
about it, and very cautious about who they said it in front
of. So the possibility absolutely
exists, but it's it's hard to it's obviously hard to suss out
any specifics. Here, the fact that they went
back and forth a lot adds to part of my reasoning as to why.
Horns. Start bringing this whole army
forward. Gives them more pardoning power.
They're bargaining. That's what's happening here.
They're like, look, we want XYZ Aegon's like, no, they're like,
all right, we'll we'll go to war.
We're like, all right, we'll we'll go to war and we'll beat
you like you might beat us, but you're going to have to split
your Dragons up and fight us in three different places.
You're going to look bad to the rest of the North when you do
conquer me, because they're all the.
Orphans and wives at home whose fathers you just killed are not
going to follow you. You're you're I.
This is what I think with the back and forth.
More chance for bad blood. All the if thens if we do this
battle or not and what I want is Keith Winterfell you know keep
keep my. Honor, OK.
You know, etcetera, etcetera. What's it worth to you to avoid
that hassle? He's not going to phrase it like
that, because that sounds like it's a it's a he's looking for a
bribe. But basically that's the the
diplomacy, the the, the clever language that's been used by
people who are good at this sort of thing.
To not make it look like a capitulation, to make it look
like A to to keep the bargaining under subtle while the important
points are covered as maintaining honor, maintaining
certain other things. Yeah, and another consideration
here. OK, so Brandon's willing to
assassinate the Dragons. Was he willing to assassinate
Aegon himself? I'm guessing no, but it's
absolutely a worthy consideration.
I think it's just a little outside of their morals, their
their codes of honor. But there wasn't a Kingsguard
yet, so if he did want to do it, it would have been a little
easier, or maybe a lot easier than before.
Aegon. Maybe it was still a little.
Maybe he was overconfident. But then you did point that out
to him later. Like bro, you're overconfident
about your own personal safety. And then she went about proving
it by cutting his face, but so she really, apparently really
needed to make a point there. The point of her sword as.
It turns out, but it's a little outside of their code to, you
know, assassinate someone if you will.
But it's also outside their code to kneel.
So I I can see that hey, we we have this code, but it wasn't
accounted for Dragon. So maybe we got to reevaluate
our code. I'm not sure I fully agree with
that. I think kneeling is within the
is acceptable. Like, I'm not sure like it's you
don't do it lightly, but I don't know that assassination is ever
acceptable. You know what I mean?
And by their value system. But that's a Gray area.
I see what you're saying. Well, I don't fully disagree,
but I'm not sure about that. We'll say.
I should also clarify, it might be outside of their value code,
but maybe not one person, and that might also be.
I think the point is made in the document here that that might be
part of why he's sent Brendan. And not some other person.
Because he did trust that he would not assassinate him like
someone else might do something crazy in there.
And also he didn't. Maybe that's part of why he
didn't send his own son, because maybe his maybe his son was a
little less capable or he's a little doesn't want him being
like seized, whereas like if he loses his bastard brother, it's
not a not as big a deal. Now this is where it gets really
great too, because sabotage is not ignoble, that's there's
nothing wrong with sabotage. You're allowed to do that that
that's a that's fine according to the rules of war.
But with assassination, like look at Stannis and Renly.
Stannis just just will not admit that he did that.
You know, he he doesn't. It's an uncomfortable subject
for him and he's like kind of in denial about what really
happened there. He's like I when I woke up my
hands were clean. You know, like were they were
they And because like, but if it was acceptable, I think he would
have just said it like he's like, no, that was he's my
brother's a traitor. And which he did say other times
like my brother deserves death because he's a traitor, you
know. But if he bends the knee I'll
forgive him. So he's just not going to admit
that he's a kinslayer. He's not going to admit that he
engaged in something that's dishonorable because it's it's
it's doesn't look good and and he doesn't want to think that he
did it, which is very kind of the human aspect here.
And he's able to deny it. Like how many people will
believe this story? So he, you know, if he wasn't
able to deny it, he might have to face it differently or or own
up to it differently. Yeah, technically his hands were
clean. Metaphorically, no way, you
know. But technically, you know,
physically speaking, yeah. So like here's another example,
like in the North, Nina brings up the point of John being
ordered to assassinate Mance Raider.
By the other, like by Alistair Thorne and and Janice Slim.
He's like, damn it and this isn't what we do.
This is really ignoble. He's like he doesn't even, he's
not even doesn't even mind the part that it'll get him killed.
He's like, he's like yeah I'm going to die if I do that.
But that's not the part that bothers him.
He's like this is really just not OK like this is a diplomacy
and envoys. You really shouldn't do that
sort of thing. Like even when Argolac did that
cutting the hands off an envoy that was a really big deal.
Like most of Westeros agreed with Aegon and that was Argolac
was 100% in the wrong there. So yeah.
And then the quote is John considers it quote foul enough
to slay a man in his own tent under Truce, let alone the other
aspects of this. So another example that I've
thought of here right before this, right before we went Live
Today, in fact about an hour before, was when they were
willing the Westerners and Riverlanders under Jamie.
So this is Feast for Crows era, when they're willing to feast
and dance, rather when they're willing to sneak, attack river,
run at night to open the gates. But when one of them throws out
the idea, Oh yeah, and we can smear night soil on some arrows
and assassinate Blackfish, that's when they're like, no,
that part they're against. And it starts an ugly argument
between Fray and Piper, which leads to Jamie thinking, man,
they would never do this in front of Tywin, you know?
Which which leads me to wonder what Tywin would have thought of
the idea of assassinating Blackfish with night soil.
He might have been like, OK with it if it was done under wraps,
but I don't know. I don't know.
But either way, it's kind of off.
Howard would have been OK with it for sure, I think.
Yeah, maybe. Time's OK.
Drowning people don't keep drowning women and children who
aren't at war, You know what I mean?
Like, yeah, I think he would be OK with it.
Yeah, probably he. But he, I mean he didn't want to
his hand his he didn't want to be known that he was part of the
Red Wedding. You know.
I think he was fine for people to suspect it but didn't want it
set Oakland. So yeah it is a little.
I think you're right. But it's there's still some
nuance to what he wants people. I think he wants people to
suspect it rather than that he's known for doing it.
But maybe, maybe you know. His response would be something
like, I don't want to hear of this.
Ah, you could. Yeah.
OK.
That might be. I could see that maybe being his
way of handling it. That's a good point.
Now go do it in parentheses, you know?
Yeah, Nina says. This, this, this all may have
been a way for Torrent to put himself on more equal footing
with Aegon. For like you said, for
negotiations, for for bargaining, for like having
leverage and things like that. Before he had stepped foot onto
W Rest for the purpose of invasion, Aegon had tried to use
his own bachelor brother to make an alliance with Argolac, right?
He used Oris as a bargaining chip to marry Argola and
obviously Argolac was extremely unhappy with that.
That led to the whole hands cut off envoy business and now
Tauren is using Brandon Snow as a go between as a diplomat, as
an envoy. And he may be believed that this
would might insult someone from the reach or from from another
house being treated or have a bastard treating with them
because they're so high and mighty in that regard.
But Aegon had already done this with his own bastard half
brother. So it was kind of like maybe
they were hoping to expose him in a hypocrisy or just saying OK
well he he doesn't see bastardy the same way that the other rest
of the Seven Kingdoms has for so long because he's from House
Targaryen. And you know, they've only been
here 100 years and they don't look at bastards the same way
and etcetera. Maybe it's a way to share values
in, in some form, you know? Yeah.
Yeah, that's true. That's true.
Now, did the North have the most to lose or the least?
I don't know. I suppose it depends on how soon
the next winter was going to be and how long they needed it to
last or expected it to last. Like if winter was imminent then
Torin would have been very wary about sending all these men to
fight, unless went to the harvest already been brought in,
then it would be like OK, then we might be very eager, might be
the opposite where he's like what we too many mouths to feed.
So dying in battle is actually A+.
That's a really interesting like fork in the road here and what
in in trying to figure out what was on their minds.
Because if the men were needed for the harvest and the North
has the most to lose by losing men.
They're they're not only going to lose people they're going to
lose the people that whose labor is needed to survive the winter.
It also matters how long of a winter they were expecting.
If it was expected to be kind of a shorter winter, they might be
willing to be more risky. If the if they were on the tails
of on the heels of a long summer, they'd be expecting a
long winter. That's a really big part of the
consideration that the South wouldn't care as much about.
It wouldn't matter as much to them if you're willing to die a
glorious death in defense of your homeland.
But then the threat is removed, like there's no longer a threat
to your homeland because your king surrendered.
Then you shrug and go back home. You might not be happy about
your king kneeling, but you're no longer all fired up to defend
your homeland because there's no threat.
But if you're looking, if you came S because your goal was a
glorious death in battle, so your family has enough to eat
come winter, then you are very unsatisfied.
Here you would. You did not.
You intended to die. You wanted to go to Westeros,
Valhalla with a sword in your hand, dying in battle, not
starving, not being a burden to your family.
And unfortunately, we don't know when winter was coming, or how
far the last winter had been, nor how big of a winter it was
going to be. So all we can do is float these
ideas and show you. If we had that missing piece, we
could have a a very strong guess as to what their attitudes might
have been, at least a large majority of them.
Now here's a fun quote one that I found during because of my
recent reread because the field of Fire is not actually
mentioned here nor is Torren Stark.
He's but it's very clear who's being spoken of.
It's Renly talking to Catlin quote.
I mean to be king, my lady, and not of a broken Kingdom.
I cannot say it plainer than that, 300 years ago, a Stark
king knelt to Aegon the dragon when he saw he could not hope to
prevail. That was wisdom.
Your son must be wise as well. Yeah, this is Renly saying.
Look, Rob can call himself a king if he wants, but he still
has to bend the knee. To me, king is just a title.
But I need fealty. That's what matters.
Duty, loyalty that he must give me.
So he's willing to be flexible on titles, like he doesn't even
have to give up his crown. He can still call himself king.
So it's kind of like a it's sort of a diplomatic solution.
There's like, he doesn't even have to give up his title.
He just has to acknowledge that it's subordinate to mine, which
is kind of clever on Renly's partner.
It's one of those things that makes you think Renly would have
been pretty good at compromising more so than most kings.
Maybe not like compared to a regular guy, but alas, that's
irrelevant. Now in terms of outlook, it's
interesting and analyzing his character, but yeah, it doesn't
have anything to do with what's going to happen.
And we've talked about how Stannis had a lot of parallels
to Aegon as we've said and this is probably a similar, isn't
something that Stannis and Renly might have agreed upon.
Now Stannis would not have agreed on that he can keep his
crown part, but otherwise he would be like yeah, if he bends
the knee to me, we're cool. That part he would have a
similar attitude about. And overall though the kneeling
of King Toren, it doesn't have quite the ringing out effect.
Like it isn't echo through the centuries like the field of fire
or the burning of Harrenhal does.
But those were more exciting events.
But still it's very remembered, very important and has a lot to
do with the story. Like what's the North going to
do? Is the North going to
capitulate? Is John going to bend the knee
to a greater king? Is he going to submit to Danny
or someone else or is that even going to happen at all or
something similar to that? So, and the mysteries associated
with too, like we just brought up a lot of things about what
Torn might have been thinking about or might not have the
same. Some of these same factors we'll
be applying in the modern story as well.
Considerations with regards to winter, considerations with
regard to the others, considerations with regard to
the Wall, Considerations with regard to the state of
Winterfell House, Bolton House, Manderley, all these other power
players in the North. Winter coming, Yeah.
Or or is has come if you want to be specific, yeah.
Either way it's a huge factor. And so there, here we have more
idea of what's happening within in the Song of Ice and Fire,
unlike in Fire and Blood where there's several, quite a few
more missing pieces. But here's another example of it
being remembered in the Song of Ice and Fire in a form other
than memory. At the end of the dock, a
flaking shingle swung from an old iron post painted with the
likeness of a king upon his knees, his hands pressed
together in a gesture of fealty. Jamie took one look and laughed
aloud. We could not have found a better
in. Is this some special place?
The wench asked. Suspicious, Sir, Cleos answered.
This is the end of the kneeling man, my lady.
It stands upon the very spot where the Last King in the North
knelt before Aegon the Conqueror to offer his submission.
That's him on the sign, I suppose.
Torin had brought his power S after the fall of the two kings
on the field of fire, said Jamie.
But when he saw Aegon's dragon and the size of his host, he
chose the Path of Wisdom and bent his frozen knees.
If you recall, this is the inn where the Innkeepers turn out to
be working with the Brotherhood without Banner to try to set up
Brienne, Jamie, and Cleos for an ambush, which they smell.
They sniff that out and they point out that the former owners
of the inn are dead. The implication implication
being that they were killed by Tywin's reavers, Gregor or Lorch
or Hote. And so these these people just
came along and took over this empty building and are using it
to facilitate ambushes on people they don't like.
Which, to be fair, these were Lannisters.
They were trying to do that too. At least they assumed Brienne
was one at that point. Now, two chapters later, Arya
and her compatriots are LED there by the Brother Without
Banners, Tom, Angai, and Lem, who have just found them and
sort of tricked them into becoming their prisoners.
And Ariel sees the end. She says it looks friendly with
a whitewashed upper story and slate roof.
That's her like description of it.
She doesn't realize the kneeling king on the sign is her
ancestor. That's kind of fun.
This is several things that that passed by Arya that that deal
with her, her family, that she doesn't know about, like the the
Elmar Frey thing, when she's like, I hope your Princess dies.
No, no, Aria, that's you're talking about yourself.
Those kind of things. Like a lot of little things like
that happened with her and she just passes by evidence of her
own family or or ties to her own family.
It's fun. The ensuing conversation proves
that there was indeed an ambush plan like that.
They have this conversation with Angai and Lem and Tom, and it's
like, yeah, they were planning on ambushing Brienne and Jamie
and and Cleos, but they figured that out.
Arya introduces herself as Squab here.
You know when she first meets these Brotherhood Without
Banners people, and then she meets Harwin there, which is
kind of neat that this happens. At the end of the Kneeling men,
it's a reunited someone who used to be a Stark, but he bent the
knee to someone else to a different cause.
He also bent his knee to a different 'cause.
He's no longer a Stark man. And this is where Hot Pie
decides to stay behind. And this is not to be confused
with another in that the Brother without Banner controls where
Gendry is found by Brienne and he mistakes her for or she
mistakes him for Renly in her fever dream state.
And Gendry does look a lot like Renly.
But yeah, this is not the same in SO there's a couple of those,
so. George could not have written a
better in, so we don't actually hear anymore at the end of The
Kneeling Men. I kind of assume we'll find out
more about it later. It'll come up again at some
point. Maybe we can assume it's still
in the hands of the Brotherhood Without Banners, but the bread
is better there because Hot Pie is taking over that.
So now Torin Stark is also mentioned when his statue comes
up, right, because the brand, there's multiple cases of brand
down in the crypts and talking about the statue, Well, actually
two very specific cases of him naming statues.
So Torin Stark and the historical Torin Manderly.
Torin Karstark rather and Torin Manderly, There's lots of people
named after Torin. That's telling, right?
He, his name was not shunned thereafter.
Wasn't. Oh, this is an embarrassment of
a king that we all hate because he knelt.
No, people kept naming their kids after Torin.
That's very meaningful. There'd be even another Torin
Stark, right. Creagon's sons, Edrick and his
granddaughter Serena had a Torin.
So, I mean, that's only 200 years later or 180 rather than,
you know, 300 years later or 250 or something.
So yeah. That's heartening to me because
I I think of Torin as being a hero, as being a brave, wise
hero for having knelt. And yeah.
Like serious I I, I Amen. There's at least.
Some amount of resentment towards him that I pick up
through the books, but it seems like overall that's not the
case. It seems like that was maybe a
little bit in the wake of when it happened, but now looking
back, like you said, people are naming their kids after him.
So yeah, right. So that's that's a pretty big
deal. And it's also like, yeah, I
agree with your general point that it it, it does take courage
to kneel sometimes based on what the alternative because he knew
he would get push back from his own people.
You know he knew it wouldn't just be as simple as got out of
that. Now let's go home and drink you
know like no, no, the problems continued.
He he knew he would have more problems and he knew that.
Yeah. So he was it was a rock and a
hard place type situation. But it's a rock and hard place
for him, but for his people, it's just a fiery death.
You know, like he's taking on the toughness of this decision
for everyone else's benefit. Yes, the burden is on him and he
is he's taking on rather than making them take it on.
It have been pretty easy for him to.
Maybe not easy from a mental standpoint, but like from a
strategic standpoint to just send people to their death and
just he could stand back and be like.
Oh no, they had Dragons. I guess we'll surrender now.
But to do it up front, Yeah, He saved all their lives.
And just took a hit to his and his families.
Honor or or convenience of life or whatever, but to save
countless thousands of wives. So Catlin thinks when robs Crown
is being made about the kneeling of Torin, and that no one knows
what happened to Torrance Crown after it was handed over.
Not only was Torrent the last one to be a Stark king until her
son, who was the next one, right?
But the crown made for Rob was supposedly A replica of
Torrents, A bronze with 9 black iron spikes wrought in the shape
of long swords with runes of the first men all over it.
So it sounds pretty cool. But yeah, that Crown didn't have
a a good result either. Although it is, we don't know
where it is. At least we think we know where
it is. So during the first chapter of A
Clash of Kings, she's seeing it before.
It's kind of like Danny's first chapter of The Clash of Kings.
Her blood riders are gushing over her Dragons,
understandably. Now here she's looking at the
last thing that happened in the Game of Thrones, her son being
named king. And here she goes, thinking
about this crown, and she's the one that has it now.
Of course, she's also dead at this point, but she's still
walking around, unlike him. So she's got his crown.
That's the last place we saw it. She was looking at it right
before executing. What's his name, The Fray in the
epilogue. Yeah, that guy.
And Lord Torin returning home without the crown is going to
bother people. It's like an extra bit of
symbolic weight, Like his sons, maybe, if they weren't there.
Like Dad, you came home without the crown.
That's terrible, and that's going to be a problem going
forward. That will give us reason to
revisit the North. As I've said, however, yeah,
there's there's also the swords being laid at Aegon's feet.
It says that they were laid and they were not burned.
This kind of says to me that they did the big processional
where every single Lord, and maybe a lot of others, like
high-ranking people, had to walk and lay their sword at Aegon's
feet until they'd all done it because all the swords were
surrendered. Just think of the logistics of
that, all these swords being. No, that that that takes a
while. Like, all right, obviously ice
wasn't surrendered. Torin didn't surrender his
Valyrian steel play. That might have been part of the
negotiation. That might have been one of
these. Like, yo, I'm not surrendering
my sword. Let's be clear.
I will surrender. A sword.
A nice one, like the one that I don't use in battle because I
don't use ice in battle anyway. But like, let's be clear.
I'm not giving up ice. You can have my crown.
You can have at first, Egan, we're like, no, you got to give
me that. And he's like, come on, man.
Like, let's this is, this is too far.
He goes like, all right, fine. I can see Aegon spinning on that
pretty quick, actually. He understands the value of
heirlooms. This one just happens to be a
sword. You know, like.
Right. The crown.
I think you would have stood his ground on the crown.
Yes, the crown. You got to give up.
Yeah, I agree with that. That's more symbolically
important. Torn might have understood that
and it might have been a bar and was like, OK, like they may
have, He might have been like, OK, I'm going to, I'm going to,
I know I'm going to have to give my crown, but I'm going to act
like I'm going to use it as a negotiation leverage to keep my
sword. Like that's the one that's the
really valuable 1. And even though even though the
crown is more important symbolically ice is clearly
replaced like by a mile by a mile like like they just when
Rob needed a crown they just river run Smith just did that
like just boom made it took him probably like a week.
You know like no you're not replacing ice like that.
So to add to all the needles, so that's just actually backing up
slightly. That's a really just quite a
thing. It would have taken like maybe
days to get through everyone laying their sword. 30,000 men,
maybe not all 30,000 dead, because not all 30,000 would
have even had a. Sword.
I bet most did not have swords. In fact, yeah, they may have
only been like 5 to 8000 swords out of that 30,000.
Still 5 to 8000. You do one a minute.
That's days, yeah. If each guy is kneeling and, you
know, and laying a sword down and kneeling, yeah, that's
that's. Why would have been a process of
like each captain gathers up the eight swords of his soldiers,
and in each you know. Each Lord gathers up to 30
swords of his four captains, and then they bring them up
together. And but I also envision it
happening not just at the feet of Aegon, but right next to
Valerian. Oh yeah.
Just to drive it home. Just so.
Then when it go back home, they can explain why they gave up
their sword. You should have seen that
Dragon's Teeth were bigger than my sword.
What do you want from me, man, That's funny.
Yeah. So she was there for Torrance
kneeling. I mean she meaning Visenya and
so is Rainey's. Don't forget those that all
three of them were there. So this is a very, like dramatic
in terms of all the people that were there, all the presents,
all the like nobility and royalty and just it would have
been very dramatic. And if this is ever put on TV,
they're going to, they're going to do this one very cinematic.
So who's who's if kneeling and sword surrendering?
Yeah, right. So though we covered it in a
separate episode, recall that if you listen to that episode,
Vicenya didn't actually settle things in the Veil at this
point. This was still ongoing.
It was at this point that she after Torrens kneeling, she
returned to the Veil and then settled things, which went
pretty quickly, even though they were very set for defense.
She just, you know, flew past it all, which as we pointed out,
that's might have been what happened if if Torin had set up
a bunch of defenses, they might have just like flew and right
over it and been like bye like that.
Good job on the defense there. I'm just going to bypass it all,
you know, go right to Winterfell or something and scoop up a
Stark child or something. And it wouldn't have been quite
the same, but that that option, clearly it was available in some
form or fashion. So she was there for Torrance
kneeling, went, went, went back, finished all that off and it it
fits nicely though in this timeline of just so many
kneelings happening all at once or really close to the same
time. Meanwhile, Aegon headed for Old
Town after the star submission and Rainey's headed for Dorne,
which of course would not go so smoothly now.
We were planning on doing Old Town today, but I think we
probably don't fully have time for it.
So we'll come back to that and discuss it at the beginning of
the next episode, which is where we're going to be dealing with
the people who didn't kneel. So that'll still be fun because
the actual coronation happens during this visit to Old Town.
So this is when it's most clear who is not submitted and who
has. And it's not always as simple as
they didn't submit. We'll see that at the Iron
Islands. The reason they didn't submit
there is there is no single leader to lead them in
submission, whereas in Dorne there was, but they were still
very united on not doing it. So a lot of that, well, that's
going to be a lot of fun, but we'll start it off with Old Town
and looking at this from the Targaryen perspective, because
we have already looked at it from the Hightower perspective
and there are some big differences here.
One thing you know, I'm not as versed on all this.
I haven't and as versed how reversed I am.
It's newer for me than a lot of you guys.
So I wonder thinking about how Aegon could have should have
handled Dorne. I was started thinking about it
when I thought that when he when he turned to go deal with Torn,
which seemed like the right thing.
But what if he hadn't? If he had gone right to Dorne at
that moment, maybe Dora wouldn't have been as ready.
Maybe he would have had some success there if they hadn't
been as organized or come up with a plan.
I'm I'm not sure if that's the case, but I it's something I
started thinking about. Like, if maybe he should have
gone to certain regions rather than straight for the head of
the snake, if you will, you know, Yeah, yeah, and you're
right too. Like, if he had gone straight
there, like, what? Did he know he was going to have
a second coronation in in Old Town before he got there?
Was that in the back of his mind or like a dead set plan?
Or did he even think of that at all?
He may have already considered himself crowned and was like,
you know what? Actually a second coronation's a
really good idea. But it may not have occurred to
him or been something that he thought was important until the
high towers and be like you should do this, you should be
crowned by the High Septon. Look how important they look,
how valuable it is. He may not have even known it
was an option. Maybe he for all he knew the the
septon was going to like fight him or something.
Because again we pointed out he didn't know that they had
decided already to bend the knee he had, but they just didn't
tell him in advance. Maybe.
Probably because they were waiting to see if he actually
made it, if he actually got there.
I wonder too if the idea of him being coordinated and declaring
himself. King of Dorne might have added
to Dorne being like what we'll see about that.
Whereas if he had gone to treat with him first, negotiated like
he did with Torn in some way, Right on.
Yeah, that's a good. That's a clever thought.
Dorne might have had an extra chip on her shoulder over that
coronation, you know? Yeah.
OK, Yeah, that's a good. That is a very good point.
Yeah. So yeah, the fact that the the
order of the coronation maybe, maybe insulted by that, he'd
already said he'd already sent the letters out and he'd already
been crowned on the Blackwater. Some people may have already
felt that way, but like this, this may have.
Just a little more public. It may have increased that
feeling. And and because so many people
supported it. Yeah, a lot.
Yeah, a lot more public. And they're like, hey, what are
we over here? What do we chop, Liva?
And Tree looks like it in Toronto.
We didn't bend in need of you. Like, let's get a plan together
for when he comes, you know, If we didn't have the plan yet,
yeah, it's a good point. It does sort of show contempt
for the regions that hadn't been to need it.
It's like, well, y'all don't matter.
Like I this is, I've subjugated the the ones that do matter.
You guys are an afterthought. I'll come.
I'll get to you later. Like, like the Iron Islands and
the Three Sisters and and Dorne, which, who would be the most
insulted by all that? I think by far, if they weren't
already deeply insulted. Probably everyone would have
just been better off if Dorne just did bend the knee, right?
Like probably a lot of unnecessary deaths and
instability occur because of it. I don't.
But you understand why they didn't, yeah?
Reasons I hadn't thought of before are are bubbling up in me
now. They have more time to plan.
They. Got together strategies to
devoid the Dragons. Aegon had been able to meet
everyone full force versus full force and his place of choosing
pretty much Dorn's like, we're not going to do it that way.
You see what I mean? They they got to learn lessons
and come up with new plans with this extra time they had and had
extra chip on her shoulder because it's coronation.
Like I wonder if he had been able to go straight there
instead of seeing Torn first. It might have played out
differently, yeah. Yeah.
Because another factor there, like you said, just to add to
that, is that this, the Coronation is like a big deal.
It should have been invited. It should have been part of it.
They should have been at it like that's it's like having a royal
wedding. But you like don't invite one of
the great houses to it. They're like, that's a huge snub
now. And this is not quite like that
because they're still in resistant.
They're open, you know, in open resistance.
But but Aegon from the book, it sounds like Aegon was expecting
them to submit. So from their perspective, you
expected us to submit, but you got crowned before that.
Like, yeah, that's insulting to them, you know, and to to not
just to the Prince of Dorne, but probably to a lot of like rank
and file dornishment. Common folk were like, yeah, why
are we the afterthought here, You know.
And certain leaders might fire them up like that might playoff
that, exacerbate that by. Yeah.
Inflaming their, their anger with the Targaryens for bringing
that up and just making it about their nationality and their
ethnicity. Look, he's looking down on us,
everybody. Like, what is he?
You know, we should fight. And that might have really
helped you, right. That might have this this may
have been a pretty big mistake on Aegon's part.
So that's something we'll talk about when we get there.
We've got great set up for future discussions and many for
future discussions to come. We're not quite done yet though.
A couple of wrap up bits here. Hey, you got it quite well.
This is a question for both of us, but you are more equipped to
answer since you spent more time there.
Lollitof wants to know how Atlanta Pride was this past
weekend, the weekend before last, which is what we did
instead of having an episode. She was there all three days,
and I was just there one day. So yeah, you start us off, Shay.
Yeah, it was. I mean, the weather is nicer
than than June, that's for sure in October.
But it was a little wet and rainy and muddy.
So there's a lot of mud at the at the.
Festival one of the days. Second day was a little bit
cold, but besides the weather, which I still honestly would
pick that weather over June in Atlanta.
Yeah, to be clear, Pride is usually in June in most cities,
but Atlanta Pride is in October. Yeah.
And so, yeah, the weather didn't cooperate the most, but we still
saw some some, some music, some like.
So the DJ that did like ballroom, like voguing, like
pose, you know, like that type of a dancers on stage, which was
pretty cool. And yeah, went to some parties.
I went to this Coyote queer like a Coyote Ugly like burlesque
type show. Yeah, it was a really fun fun
time. I honestly, my favorite thing
about Pride is seeing the fashion.
Yeah, there are just you will, you will see outfits that you've
never imagined were could exist, like, oh, I've never.
That's a thing I didn't know existed, you know?
That's my reaction. Some others are very cool.
Some of them are very. Just some of them.
I honestly don't like it all. And I I'm not gonna like.
Everything. Yeah, I like everything.
But some of them I'm still like, wow, that's so interesting.
It's always interesting. Yeah.
It's creative, even if you don't like it sometimes, You know,
like I I'm not sure about that, but it is creative.
I had. I had a good time with that for
sure, and John's grabbing a cat for us too, 'cause it's been a
little while. We've been off our our groove
and bringing cats out hoping we could.
I found myself a nice ring, a Targaryen looking ring that I
found from a vendor there at Pride.
It was cool black and red and and you know, silvery colored
for 12 bucks. I like to wear rings
occasionally and yeah, from my experience, it's fun.
It's just like there's a lot of great food vendors there.
There's always a lot of things to see and just walk around.
People are always having people having such a great time.
So just like the vibe is really positive.
Yeah, the weather, it was a little cold the day I went, but
that wasn't such a big deal. You know you're you're active
you're walking around and and I love one thing I really like is
how people have they they stake out a spot on Piedmont Park with
with like a pavilion almost like the tents that you think about
in for A Song of Ice and Fire. Like a tournament gathered where
there's just everybody's got tents set up and it gets a
little after a few days the ground gets pretty torn up from
so many people walking around and it's worse than usual
because it was it was rainy so it was very muddy.
It's they should think of the muddy mess without the fighting
instead of the opposite attitude instead of people fighting.
They're all very happy and celebrating love and things like
that. But it it's still just as much
foot traffic, so the ground gets just as torn up and Sean has a
cat. Also, one thing I will tell
everyone Aziz is going to a corn maze on Thursday.
Aziz and I are going to a local 1 here in Georgia.
If you remember in our episode on Laura we I discovered the
disease has never been in a maze at all.
And I like mazes. They're cool and it's a fun
experience. And someone reminded me on
Discord last month. Now that it's May corn maze
season, 'cause it's obviously seasonal, 'cause it's they
harvest the corn, someone reminded me.
And so I found one that we can go to and we will update y'all
with pictures and his take on on the maze.
It's a real fail that they're called.
Will you be crowned King of the Corn Maze?
Are you going to say these days should be maze Maze.
Yes, it's a fail that they're called Corn mazes and not maze.
Mazes. Yeah, maze.
You call it corn. I like I I just want to say in
the chat devoted to Mariah said I want to hold the Kitty.
But SKG, Ano said. I want to hold Sean be a 2 for
one while he's holding the Kitty like.
Yeah, he even better. Yeah, 2 for one that got her run
away. She's like, I don't like that
idea. The cat ran away all right, so
next week we will pick right back up where we left off with
the submission of Old Town pivoting to those who did not
bend the knee, the Unbent, the Dornish, the Iron Islanders and
the Three Sisters, and maybe a few other spots.
That will be a lot of fun as we work our way through.
But also, I want to announce that we're going to take a break
from Fire and Blood Rereadus right at the end of the Conquest
in order to pivot, to do a few other style episodes, just just
to mix things up a little bit before returning to the reign of
the Dragon. So this is a good spot for that
because it's right at the end of the conquest.
And we thought that was a good time to take a short break
because we usually mix up the topics a little more than this
in general, except when we're doing a reread.
But The thing is, most rereads move around more than Fire and
Blood does. You know, World of Ice and Fire
jumps topics a lot. A Song of Ice and Fire, of
course, does even more because it's chapter by chapter.
So we wanted to keep that vibe of mixing things up, not getting
too stuck on the Conquest here and not stuck on the Aegon's
reign. So we'll move it around a little
bit and keep it fresh and then get back to it.
So that's that's the next that's the plan for the rest of the
year basically and we'll keep you, we'll give you be a little
more detailed with it as we move forward.
So a few people got the trivia question for sure.
OK yeah. So the trivia question again was
where is hot pie now? Where was the last place we saw
him? The answer is the end of the
kneeling man. Yes, that's right.
That was. We did talk about that
specifically and this. Remember what happened there?
Hot pies like this bread stinks. And they're like, let's see you
do a better job. He's like, all right.
It's like, I'll do it. I will give me, let me in the
kitchen. And then that's what happened.
And they were like, yeah, this bread is better.
Hot pie knows the deal. Yeah.
So which is nice, isn't it? You know we got to hope roofer
hot pie being he's a, he's a symbolic of people that can find
their place in in in a in a war-torn world and make other
people's lives a little bit better using their skills.
Yeah. Go hot pie.
Hope he hope we see him again. I hope he's doing well and
everyone go eat something tasty in honor of hot pie.
We're about to eat something really tasty, that's true.
We've got some homemade lasagna waiting for us out there.
We are lucky people. Yeah, so very lucky now.
Yeah. So other episodes that got
mentioned during this one before the Dragons and under the
Dragons. Most of those series are very
relevant to hear, as you probably know just from the
title, the Valerian episode, the Doom episode, Age of Heroes
content Highgarden of course that's a big one giving the
surrender of Highgarden is about to come up and plenty of others
that are relevant. Any pretty much anything to do
with House Targaryen is kind of relevant to these, like
Mentari's or House Celtic are House Valerian or the Valyria
episodes. So many that are out there.
And of course our recent episode on the Last Storm which is our
patron slash members only episode dealing with the
conquest or that aspect of the conquest.
So you can get that by joining us on Patreon, or by becoming a
Spotify subscriber, or by sending a donation through
PayPal. We'll send you all our bonus
episodes if you do that. And you can find your way to all
of those links and possible ways to support via History of
westeros.com. Thanks to anyone who does
support us that way, or by word of mouth or any other way
really. We do appreciate it.
It is very important to our success and survival as as an
independent show. Thanks as well to Nina for
invaluable notes and advice. Not only does she have notes put
in every episode, almost every episode, but she and I talk
about things offline quite a bit, which helps me form my
thoughts and get them more straightened out and helps me
think of things that I might have missed.
She's invaluable in that regard and in many other ways.
Joey, Jesse and Bran and Michael Clarfeld.
Thanks to you guys as well for the intro music, the outro
music, the intro video, and the maps behind us.
Go to Claire Docs KLARADO x.de to find Michael Clarfeld site
and get maps just like the one behind me for yourself.
And also thanks to our Benjaner for sound quality assistance
from time to time. That's right, you know what to
do. Until next time everybody.
For Sean and Ashea Valar, reread us
the.