Hello my fellow Westorians, welcome to Valariritas for
Dunkin Egg. Let's see what today brings us a
my fellow Westorians and a dancing Sean of House Beard.
What are you drinking today, my friend?
This Rita actually said I should bring drink something bright red
for Aryan Bright flames. This is a mango juice mixed with
the naked strawberry banana drink mixed with the watermelon
Mountain Dew and it's delicious. It is really good.
I would try that if I was still drinking soda.
Well, let's see, today we've got a lot of fun stuff.
Last time we talked about a variety of topics.
This time we're going to be moving on to the challenge, the
sigil, the shield, the quote UN quote accident that was not an
accident. Lots more comparisons, a few
house histories. As usual, there's a lot to cover
and we're going to have a lot of fun along the way.
Thanks to Nina. Good Queen Alley with
1l.tumblr.com. Her thoughts are throughout this
episode. We've got a lot of great takes
from her mixed in with ours. Together we create a lot of
interesting concepts to discuss and I hope you all enjoy it.
Thanks as well to our patrons who keep us going.
It's a little tougher here in the what we call the doldrums.
I suppose you could say there's been a long time since there's
been new material. There's stuff on the horizon
with House of the Dragon and other spin offs and the Winds of
Winter eventually. But right now there's less going
on. But we're keeping it going.
Almost every week we're putting out a new episode and
occasionally more than one. So thank you to those of you who
are supporting us in that endeavor.
We're going to keep them coming and I hope you all continue to
support us. You can ask questions regarding
this or other episodes, other topics, anything you want
really. Aziz, I have a question.
OK, let's get right to it. What is your question?
What is your shirt? 2 Suns, 2 moons.
This is the quartered. This is the sigil of House
Tarth. This is Brienne's.
Yeah. I thought that was appropriate.
Huh. I can't see your shirt.
What do you What do you have on? This is a mash up of The
Beatles, the Abbey Road, and of the Cowboy Bebop characters.
Nice. Very, very cool.
What's the Shay? Got going on over there.
I'm wearing a Jackie Daytona regular human bartender shirt.
If you don't. Get that reference.
That's from What We Do in the Shadows, which is a hilarious
show slash movie. It started as a movie and became
a show. You made a show out of it.
Yeah, when you met when, when a movie is good enough to to spin
off into a show that that says a lot.
So yeah. Well, let's start with the
rejection and the acceptance. And at the end of the acceptance
is when Dunk goes back to his pavilion and we'll talk about
Egg and the sigil. So we'll start with Makar
saying, why would you deign the joust with a hedge knife?
And so it's it's immediately taking us back to this place of
how much separation, how much classism is in place.
Like, why would you deign the joust with the head knife?
It's not kind of an odd question, right?
I mean, it's a tournament. Like you get.
Paired up against him, what's he supposed to do, Say I refuse to
joust this man? Maybe it's that known that you
manipulate the pairings that you like, make sure you don't face
anyone unworthy in the first round or whatever, you know,
make are just assumed that Baylor would do.
That, you know, you never thought through it.
He's like, why wait? Why were you fighting it?
Like that's that never happens. What's what?
What's? Strange set of circumstances LED
you to be facing a hegemet, But Baylor, of course, is plays it
off as he seems to do somewhat normally.
Obviously we don't have a lot of background on him, but
throughout this story anyway, he's pretty chivalrous.
He takes the comment and stride doesn't be like what a strange
comment, brother. You know, he just says, well, I
want to learn about all my foes and you know, he he gets it.
We we talk about how Makar is so much like Stannis, but in this
moment, it's almost like the opposite because it's like maker
Stannis would be the one you would might think, would say a
sword is sharp in whoever's hands.
It's, it's wielded like, you know, it doesn't really matter.
Like his, his birth doesn't determine how sharp his sword is
or how skilled he is. It helps like the education
matters. Absolutely.
Like some of these Knights have been training since they were
kids because they could afford to and that matters.
Let me ask a question here real quick.
How old is approximately? Could you guess how old Baylor
Makar are at this point? Well.
We don't have to guess. We have precise numbers on them.
Let's see. Makar was, if I remember, I
don't have it in front of me, but I think Makar was 18 in at
the Blackfyre Rebellion at the Battle of Redgrass Field.
He might. Maybe he was 21.
He was either 18 or 20. Maybe Baylor was 21.
I think Makar was 18. So that would put him at 31, 32
now. So he's early 30s, we'll just
say early 30s right now. And how old is Stannis?
Stannis at the time of Game of Thrones, where we know him best.
That's also about his age. A little about the same age A.
Little bit older I think like early.
Mid 30s. I was thinking maybe that Macor
was 24 and Stannis was 39 and just a difference in wisdom and
experience in life might have affected their mentalities.
But if they're about the same age, then Macor has no excuse.
I, I don't think that, I'm guessing that the Baratheons
never quite got to this level where they were throwing, people
were throwing matches to them in tournaments and things like
that, right? Like not, I guess the
circumstances may not even come up in the 1st place.
I mean, Renly did some jousting, but by the time Robert's king
already like, no, you shouldn't joust anymore because, well, we
saw what happened. We saw, you know, when he tried
to enter the melee. Cersei tried to con him through
reverse psychology into doing exactly that.
I mean, we already see everyone throwing it to Lionel Baratheon.
That's funny. I like Lionel is a a, a a great
pivot here because he's obviously so similar to to his
ancestor or his descendant Robert.
But it's the same kind of thing where you think even this guy
isn't really that chivalrous. Like he's not unchivalrous, but
is it really chivalrous to laugh at your opponent?
Like. Like before you're like, you're
just like, like this guy challenged me.
Bah, he's just laughing the whole time.
I mean, and then he get then we get to that part where he's
knocking their like fancy hood ornaments off their helmets and
throwing it into the crowd. Like, I mean, I I like that it's
he's basically Robin Hooding their helmets, but I don't know
if that counts as chivalrous like looting them during the
tournament. A lot of the things he's doing
is making him more popular or famous, even even if they're not
as chivalrous necessarily. He's not doing anything
specifically not chivalrous. Like a lot of times you sort of
associate a level of maybe professionalism or stoicism with
chivalry. Is that necessarily part of it,
right. Yeah, that's true.
So, but so. You could see from the surface
why someone might not think Lionel is chivalrous, but he
isn't necessarily not chivalrous, but one or the
other. He's making himself more
popular. So one of the things that Dunk
brings up when he's trying to convince them, if we if we recap
real quickly, he bring he talks to man for Don Darien 1st and
talks about how he squired for Sir Arlen and Arlen was part of
the army that went to go into Dorne to fight the Vulture King.
Well, there's been a couple of Vulture kings, but this was a
particularly notable example. This wasn't that long ago, only
a few years ago, he says three years past.
And well, that might not have been the best thing to bring up.
Like it worked like you'd think it was like I like in a vacuum
in a nutshell, you would be like, yeah, this is a smart
thing to bring up a connection, but this, there's a lot of ill
will around this whole thing. the Vulture King was a pretty
substantial rebellion. It's very hard to believe that
he didn't have support from some of the other Lords who didn't
support him openly, right? They didn't openly back him
because that would make them rebels too.
But he did so well and had so many men and wasn't contained
like it's it's the local Dornish Lords didn't stop him either.
It fell to the Iron Throne, even though his base was in Dorn.
So there's a lot of ill will over this.
It's kind of suspicious that he got going so far.
And there's they had to go into Dorn and and fight in the red
bounds, which is a really horrible place to to have a
campaign. So I don't know.
He may have lost some some people.
He may not like thinking about it.
He may like, yeah, that was a whole big cluster, FA lot of
negativity around that event. And it may remind him of of the
unease that still exists between Dorn and the rest of the realm.
Because as we've been over several times, this is in that
interim period where there's still a lot of ill will on both
sides. And it's just coming like it's
going to take a generation or two before these things kind of
smooth out. Aziz is cluster F kind of like
control F. It is, yeah.
You're kind of like just trying to trying to find.
It's maybe like the opposite of control F cluster F, yeah.
It's control Z, yeah, cluster Z, But also this is another like
speaking on on terms of like chivalry and the feudal
responsibility of a Lord to their vassals.
Like this is pretty crappy what Manfred does here.
Like, it's not strict here. Like Dunk isn't his business.
It's not his responsibility. But usually when you're like,
hey, my master fought for you. Usually that's supposed to be a
thing to to say, hey, OK, good job.
You know, like, I appreciate that you're supposed to at least
be nice to the guy, right. So this is kind of it's it's
kind of odd or it's just more of this classism, like just get
away from me rope belt, man, you know?
Yeah, I was gonna say it probably if Dunk had shining
armor on, you know, he might have like, oh, yes, come join
me. Of course I remember Arlene.
Yeah, but when he present, the way he's presenting himself, the
same guy, if he had seen Dunk, well, I was going to say the
same guy if he had seen Dunk perform in the tournament, might
have been like, actually Dunk keeps losing right away.
It's pretty unfortunate. It's kind of sad.
It's like, yeah, this guy was, these are the kind of men that
you rely on to, to fill out your armies and to to go when things
get tough. You add hedge nights and free
riders. And these other guys, they
they're an important part of the army.
Maybe not the core of it, but they, they certainly bleed and
sweat and and die alongside your regular men.
So yeah, this is lack of respect is really notable.
And this is one of the things I really want to focus on this
episode, the Brienne connections.
Now, when you compare Dunk to Brienne, and of course, there's
just the infinite connections we can make.
They both have social issues to overcome.
For Brienne, it's her gender, quite obviously.
She's accepted quote, UN quote, accepted in quotes, not fully
accepted, but because of her birth, because she's noble, they
can't outright reject her. They don't tell her to leave.
They just make it miserable for her so that she'll want to leave
on her own. But she's just so tough and and
determined that it doesn't work. She's like, yeah, make fun of me
all you want. I'm not going anywhere for Dunk.
It's obviously not his gender, it's his birth.
It's the opposite. It's the gender is is, is the
issue that gets thrown in Brienne's face and Dunk.
No one's making fun of him for being a man.
They're making fun of him for being poor and for being
uneducated and, and lowborn and all that.
So it's a different flavor of rejection, but it, you know, you
can make a lot of draw a lot of comparisons between those two.
I was just thinking a minute ago when we were talking about the
Baratheons and Chivalry, how there's similar, like one has
one and the other has the other and they end up facing similar
dilemmas or being judged similarly or whatever.
I was thinking about Robert and Stannis, how Robert is not very
chivalrous. Right.
But kind of like Lionel, he's popular.
He does things to make him play. He's a great warrior.
He's kind of boisterous. He he even like pardons enemies.
You know, he does a lot of things to make him popular.
But in the meantime, he's cheating on his wife.
He's drunk. Stannis, I think is pretty
chivalrous. I think he's pretty adherent to
the code of chivalry, but he's terse.
He's mean and cold. So he's not popular even though
he is chivalrous. It's and I think Martin is likes
to play around with like having 2 characters with with certain
elements that are opposed to each other but but still
creating a parallel at the same time and.
I would say like, obviously there's some things that Robert
is chivalrous about something Stannis isn't.
Like Stannis is like the tarseness, I think, like being
polite is a function of chivalry, I think, and and being
kind to your beaten foe. I think that's chivalrous too.
But you're right. But you're right.
But you're absolutely right. The examples.
It's not like Robert has no chivalry or Stannis is the
epitome of it, but generally speaking I think Stannis has
more than Robert, but Robert is more popular than Stannis.
Right. And these aren't these aren't
like distinct concepts. I don't like there's some book
of chivalry that clearly defines what is and isn't chivalry.
It's very much in the eye of the beholder and the the way we rate
them within that framework. Like some people might really
value the politeness as a function of chivalry, but some
people might think that's, ah, that's lower down on the the
most important thing is to protect, you know, peoples to
be, you know, stand up for what's right.
So, and that's of course a really important point here,
like Dunk perhaps did the most important nightly thing there is
here, standing up for someone who couldn't stand up for
themselves against someone that was stronger than them, just
like Brienne does. And perhaps if we could try to
get at what makes chivalry, what's the most bullseye concept
amongst that group of ideas, it might be that what would you,
what would you think? Is there something else come to
mind for you or did you kind of agree with that?
I, I kind of agree with that. I was going to say it's very
easy to be chivalrous among a bunch of other chivalrous
people, OK, right. When everyone is nice and kind
and helpful and they're hanging out with each other.
But when all of a sudden you have to stand up to the Prince,
right? It's, it's tougher to be
chivalrous in some situations than other.
And some people might back down and some people stand up.
And those are the truly chivalrous ones.
You know when you do it, when you're really being tested and
do it anyway, I think that's. That's a great point because,
yeah, when it's just times of peace, it's real easy to be, to
be all polite and friendly and just like, yeah, we get, we all
get along. Yeah, look how you know.
But yeah, when something goes wrong, that's when the real test
comes. And yeah, like Dunk, the real
test came to Dunk. And, well, I guess you'd have to
say he passed. I mean, he was lucky to survive
it. This is a a little abstract
maybe, but if all of the Knights really wanted to be chivalrous,
they would probably all be closer to Dunk.
They'd be closer to hedge Knights.
They would be like, I don't know, the, the Peace Corps, the
Salvation Army. They wouldn't be like running
tournaments, seeing who can attack each other with sticks
better. They'd be out with poor people,
helping them plow their farms and teaching them how to read,
you know? Yeah, boughs of poverty are
absolutely a thing that a lot of religious folk think is not just
not just religious folk, but that's certainly is associated
with a lot of religious monks. It's a really big common thing
with, with monks of all sorts of systems to yeah, to to live in
virtual poverty or complete poverty or something close to
that. One of my and you don't have to.
Necessarily be in complete poverty, but you also don't have
to have every outfit be worth the entire possessions of of of
a poor of you know, of a local farmer or whatever.
You know, you could put some of at least your time into helping
those people, if not some of your wealth.
You know what? That's a.
Really, that's something that that was a really good line in
the show was when the High Sparrow points out like how
expensive Marjorie's dress was, Like how many thousands of hours
did someone spend making that? Like how many hours of Labor?
I thought that was a really poignant way to do it.
That was a good line. And it's here.
You're right. Like that really comes up here.
Like how many how much wealth goes into just one of those,
like, helmets that got like, how many people could be fed for
like, the silver on just one fancy helmet like that?
Yeah. So.
Yeah, the, the income inequality in Westeros is really just off
the charts, but that's, it's a that's reflective of several
different periods in real history throughout the world,
not just including modern. Times, you know, Absolutely,
yeah. Absolutely.
No doubt. No doubt.
Yeah, it it's funny too. Just as a side note here,
Baylor, he's got more ability to be a peacemaker.
He outranks everybody except his father.
So like, if he's like, hey, y'all chill, they're going to be
like, OK, we'll chill, but not just because he's making a good
point, but because of who he is. Like yeah, the Prince is telling
us to chill. I guess we should chill.
If if someone like dunk would be like, hey yo, chill, it'd be
like shut up hedge night, you know, like it just he.
Could make the. Exact same points, the exact
same truth. Cite the exact same evidence and
they'd still be like, shut up, hedge knight.
It's easy to blow it. Off.
Yeah, they would. Stop listening before the 1st
sentence is done right. Like they would.
They're hackles are raised. They're already resisting it
right there are like only thing they've been taught about class
starts to come before he's even done speaking right?
Looks like this reaction. Yeah.
So it's neat that Baylor is the peacemaker, though in another
sense, because that was his. That was like the point of his
marriage, the parent, his parents marriage, not his
marriage. Like he's the product of
Targaryen marrying Dorn and he really is embodying it in a lot
of ways instead of the interesting.
Thing you got to think about is how much was Baylor raised to
play this role versus Makar? That's a good point 'cause.
He's the first, maybe, naturally.
They were just better and worse people.
But but you got to imagine some amount of Baylor's whole life
was preparing him for this roles.
Yeah, that's a really good. Point after all, like we we've
seen the first born son is very often like given not just the
responsibility of carrying the family name, but carrying on the
the family ideals like you complete my work son you know
that kind of thing. A carry on house tasks or
whatever, carry on my legacy, that sort of thing.
And, and yeah, and, and Daron, right.
Baylor's father was carrying on Baylor the Blessed's legacy.
And that's an extreme legacy of peace.
I mean, talk about a, a peaceful guy there.
You really can't get any more peaceful than Baylor the
Blessed. His attitude towards peace was
arguably a little insane, but still you you kind of appreciate
it anyway. I was just thinking about the
idea of like carrying on legacy, how Egg's mother, she was
Danish. Right.
Yeah, she was from Danish. Yeah, she was from House Dane,
Yes, and. Egg recommends Dunk put the the
falling star on his shield. Yeah, yeah, you're.
Right. So actually that's a good segue
because if you recall someone in the books, I can't remember who
it was mocked. I think Tom.
O sevens for rhyming carry on with Don Darian and you just
said carry on the legacy. So and our our next topic is the
Don Darian sigil, which is a segue to dunk sigil and the
falling star with House Dane and all that.
So well played, Sean. You've done well.
Yeah. This story of House Dandarian is
like a lot of founding myths. It's kind of hard to believe
that it really happened like that.
But I don't know that the point isn't whether it really happened
or not. The point is, I think, to
provide us with some symbolic resonance.
I mean, you can take from it what you want, but there's this
very similar aspect to the Shooting Star and this lightning
kind of out of nowhere because like this lightning, it saved
this. This messenger, right?
It was hugely important. It saved House Bandarian as
well, or saved this, the Storm King.
Likewise, you wrote later in the document that this arguably this
is the luckiest thing. Like meeting Egg was the
luckiest thing Dunk could have happened, and he's realizing it
right as he is. Yeah, seeing.
The the shooting star, so it's a real similar, you know, like a
bolt to purple, like purple lightning a bolt from the blue,
it's like bolt from the purple a message.
From the sky, yeah. So it's.
Really neat because that there's so much about the sigils here
that George just adds this this extra character that he's kind
of a jerk. We love his ancestor.
His ancestor Berrick is great. Like, he's a great character and
he's very nightly, right? Like Berrick, extremely nightly.
Like one of the best examples of someone that has nightly ideals
in the main series that is also like highborn, you know, that's,
you know, Brienne's obviously top example, I would think, or
one of the top examples. But Barack Dondarian, right?
He's a really good example of he's like, Nope, we got to fight
for these people. These common folk need our help.
Yeah, he his. I don't know loyalty to or
instructions from some higher report some higher.
Lord or power or whatever. Are less relevant to him to the
fundamental duties of an act yeah, and but it but.
For him it's both too, because Robert, they're like carrying on
the orders from their king, right?
And the king were well, but like even when the king.
'S gone. It doesn't matter.
I'm still doing. The king told me to do the right
thing. I'm still doing it whether he's
there or not. Yeah, the King is more like.
That's supporting their argument rather than necessarily the main
thing that they're about. You're right.
Yeah, yeah. You know this.
Is a little tangent too, but I just can't help but thinking
about like the lightning bolt and the shooting star and, and
even early we talked about like how in this world as an Ivanhoe,
there's this legitimate belief in the power of God and, and in
in this world that we are more certain of the reality of
mystical happenings than in our world.
But even in our world, all our religions are full of stories of
people walking on water and lightning bolts from the sky and
stuff like that. Carl Sagan talked about the idea
just kind of like imagining early humankind.
It kind of makes sense that we would come up with the idea of
God's being in the sky because think of how mystifying once we
can start to understand eventually after thousands of
years, how weather and electricity and the circulation
of the sun and everything make we can make sense of it all.
But it must have been just completely baffling and what's
happening in the heavens, you know, and how it comes down and
affects us. It makes sense that we came up
with the idea of gods up in the sky controlling our destinies
and such. And even as society gets more
evolved and develops culture and certain understanding, we still
look to messages from the sky of lightning bolts and shooting
stars to our luck or our omens for when what we should do with
crops, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, you're right.
Yeah, it's true. It is.
If you really try to sit back and think about it is like try
to put yourself in the place of ancient mankind, ancient
humankind, ancient people. Yeah.
What's what's going on up there? How do you?
See lightning and not think
that's magic? Yeah, like what?
The hell is that? Yeah, like, you got to call it
something. And yeah, like, well, gods,
sure, why not? Yeah, one point, Carl.
Sagan made He was like, imagine if you're sitting at your
campfire, you're a little. Tribe.
Off in a distance, miles away, there's some other tribe sitting
at their campfire. It would look like just a little
speck of light in a distance when you look up in the sky.
So contraspects of light in a distance, those must be
campfires of some magical beings that just can float in the air,
you know? And you know, just like a lot of
these things, they came. Someone invented a reason long
ago and and that got passed down from father and mother to son
and daughter and just kept on going.
And you know, a lot of and even some.
Suspicious, skeptical young kid. Like, what argument do you have
against him? Like, I guess there are gods up
in the sky. Yeah.
You could like the. Idea of like proving it you know
evidence first is didn't necessarily.
So when? He goes back to his camp.
Of course he's got eggs sitting there and like eggs just being a
Squire. He's like, look, I'm going to be
a Squire. I'm your Squire and I'm going to
prove it to you. And look, man, you need a
Squire. Look at you.
Come on, you need me. It's pretty.
Effective. It's like this combination of
pointing to the obvious and just being stubborn.
Just kind of knowing that you know he's going to win this
argument like he's going to convince this guy like he's his
points are too strong. Also, he's just, he's got this
attitude because he's a Prince himself who never forget AG is a
Prince and it's one of the, you know, recurring things that
happens. He says what's on his mind.
He says blunt truths partly because he's the. 4th.
Son of a king like this is, it's like Jerry and Lannister, if you
remember him, that he's the the the youngest of Tywin's
brothers. He's the one that just was
sarcastic and just commented on everything because like he's the
youngest. There's all these, everyone's
taking all the good jobs. You know, Tywin just looms over
everyone Say he's just like sits back and comments on everything.
We've seen this trope before. The rich kid who's like not the
first born, He's like big family.
And he just is like kind of aloof and just, you know, says
the what's really happening because why not?
No one's going to stop him. He's got this sort of
interesting perch to look down on everyone and really see
what's happening, but without the day-to-day constant like
you're going to be the next this or that.
You know, it's like this kind of in between state.
They're like thinking about egg that way.
He has enough. Power in position to not be too
worried about getting in trouble, but not enough power in
position to feel responsible for, right?
Like if. Baylor out here, you know,
insulting people, it's a bigger problem than Makar or even
Aryan. Like, like what Aryan gets away
with is wild compared to what Baylor doesn't, just the way he
behaves. So like, he doesn't try to get
away with much at all apparently.
But if Aryan was the first born, you'd be sure that there would
be some consternation. So here's a.
Quote What's your? Name Dunk, he said.
The wretched boy laughed aloud, as if that was the funniest
thing he'd ever heard. Dunk, he said.
Sir Dunk, That's the name for a knight, Is it?
Short for Duncan, was it? The old man had called him Dunk
for as long as he could recall and do not remember much of his
life before. Isn't that wild?
To think about like he doesn't know his own name.
I mean, it's one thing to be like he doesn't know exactly how
old he is. You can kind of get that because
like, hey, Westeros doesn't have birth certificates and oh, they
do have dates, but they don't have a Census Bureau or a place
that keeps all this information. Most families just they they
might have dates, but. They don't have days of the
week, do they? They have hours.
It's. Something I saw someone point
out that I that ever since I realized I don't think they ever
say Tuesday or Monday they. Don't.
Yeah, sometimes. They'll say a week from now or
or a fortnight, but I don't think they have days of the
week. Yeah, I don't think they do
either. So Theon of course would be very
disappointed. You have to know your name,
right? You know so.
Don't but the only person who'd. Be more disappointed is Rick I
but I think. One of the ways they do it is
just by moons. Yeah.
The moon? Sort of, yeah. 5.
Of of moon 5, you know, more of a moon, yeah.
More of a monthly cycle rather than a weekly cycle I guess.
They may not even think of week like a week may not.
Do they even have that designation of week?
It may not. Yeah, I don't.
Know week is. Like that, that's not
necessarily even a category of they have that.
Yeah, they have. Like Fortnite and weeks and
Moon's turn and, you know, tomorrow.
Yeah, clearly it's not something I've.
Ever looked into specifically Dunk?
It's just another irony, another reversal.
Dunk is trying to distinguish himself.
Egg is trying to undistinguish himself.
He's like, no, I want to be less like that.
You want to be more like that? I want to be less like that.
Junk is a strong, healthy near adult, you know, young man.
Yeah, I got. To find some work.
Egg is like a little kid, a rich little kid.
He's like, I got a job. Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Now here comes my favorite quote of the whole book.
Whole novella, I think. Oh wow.
Yeah, I love this. Quote.
Egg soon fell asleep beside the dying fire.
Dunklin is back nearby, his big hands behind his head, gazing up
at the night sky. He could hear distant music from
the turning grounds half a mile away.
The stars were everywhere, thousands and thousands of them.
One fellas. He was watching bright green
streak that flashed across the black, then was gone.
Falling Star brings luck to him. Who sees it, Dunk thought.
But the rest of them are all in their pavilions by now, staring
up at silk instead of sky, so that like, it's mine alone.
Yeah, I, I. Just love it in part because
this is part of his emotional intelligence that we talked
about last time that he finds ways to get confident.
You know, this is this of confidence is a form of
emotional intelligence and he's looking for he's he's using like
creative thinking to give himself a mental edge, right?
And he believes it. He's not just like working
himself up. This is something he feels, it's
something that he trusts, this instinct.
It's not like telling yourself something that you don't really
believe, you know, like I'm, I'm brave, you know, I'm, you know,
I'm ready for this, you know, like psyching yourself up.
This. He seems to sincerely believe
this, at least the way it's written.
That's how I took it. I love this.
Just this attitude of showing reasons why his situation is
better than someone who's rich and and potentially corrupted by
that wealth. He's like, look, he's looking on
the bright side, right? And you can't see the bright
side when you're in a tent. Like the brightness of that star
is only visible to him because of his scenario.
So like it's the epitome of looking on the bright side,
right? He's like, well, I don't have
these things they have, but I. Have.
This instead, and it's a really great thing, so I'm really happy
with that. Yeah, I also like the idea that
Dunk is. It's like giving some value to
his lack of wealth or whatever, right?
He's out under the stars. Everyone else has their fancy
tents, but they're missing out on real experience that the
potential for luck or whatever. Also, I see a note here that
I've got it backwards that Dunk wanted the falling star Egg
pointed out the Elm tree. I guess that's a note that Nina
made. So yeah, I think and.
That's I guess that's important because egg.
As we talked. About he doesn't have a huge
connection to his his Dane family.
Given his mother died young, he may not have.
He may have known her very little at all like he.
Maybe she died when he was like 2.
Maybe. Even younger than that.
Not much younger obviously, I just.
Wanted to take note of Aryan, how hateful he is to the Dornish
there despite his mother being Dornish.
Which also made me wonder how well he knew her.
You know he wouldn't have been that old.
Maybe when she died. That's a good point.
I wonder if maybe he wants to distance himself from the dorm.
Like maybe he's, like, frustrated that his mother was
dormant. Yeah, I think he maybe.
Could have some self hatred there as well I'm sure.
It's possible he'd got made fun of or teased for it perhaps, but
there had been a, you know, some Dornish intermarriage at that
point. I feel like the Targaryens
wouldn't have been too mean to each other about Dornish love.
It's yeah, it. Is interesting.
Yeah. Like it might be more painful in
some ways because it depends. It just really depends.
We just don't know. It might be less painful.
I'll use myself as an example. I have, I have half siblings
because my mother and father had me when I when they were young
and then they, they split up and he when my father had kids with
another woman. I don't really have a lot of ill
will towards my father because I never knew him.
I have no memory of him at all. I've never met him.
He was gone when I was six months old.
My siblings who are three of them and in particular have the
same mother and he left them also, but they were of an age to
remember it. So they have, you know, much
stronger feelings on the matter because they remember it
happening. And the age at which that
happens is the age at which you have to process it.
You don't, obviously you can't just like, I'm going to think
about this five years from now. No, you think about it when your
mom or dad leaves, that's when that's when it hits you.
So the age you're at is like, what formative stage are you at
when this hugely impactful event in your life happens?
And that's, yeah, that's a problem for us here because we
just don't know. With egg, we can estimate
because he's only a certain age. It had to be within this certain
time frame. But we so we can be very sure
that his brothers had more time with their mother and may have
known them and and and would have had potentially much
stronger bonds with her. And yeah.
And we also just don't know what kind of person she was.
For all we know, she sucked. You know she may have been
asked. Like I assume.
She was decent, but I think that's just because I have a
Dane bias for like, there's no reason to.
Yeah, she was more like. Dark Star, That's where Aryan
got all of this. Like that is, it's also it's.
Also possible that maybe she wasn't necessarily terrible, but
she might not have been excited about this marriage.
She might have been forced into this marriage, she might have
loved someone else. This marriage is arranged by her
parents. She's doing what she has to do,
but she doesn't like it. Maybe turn to alcohol in that
Cersei if she's kind of scenario or something, you know that is.
What happened with the prior generation?
In fact, Aegon the unlikely, Aegon the 4th, right?
He's the one that had all the bastards, all the great
bastards, Damon Blackfyre being one of them.
So he basically is responsible for the Blackfyre rebellions
because he legitimize Damon and all that.
His. Mother is left when they were
really young. She was from lease and she did
not like Westeros and Westeros didn't really like her.
There was some stuff early in her life where they tried to,
you know, she was part of the secret siege.
She was trapped in the Red Keep when there was a coup attempt
and all this other stuff, and she left and her kids didn't
like that as you wouldn't think, right?
Like Amon, Amon the Dragon Knight and Aegon the Unlikely,
or Aegon the Aegon the Unworthy. Like that had to have a huge
impact on them too. And it may be part of why Aegon
the the Unworthy was such a bad king.
You can't pin it all on his mother, obviously.
That's a bit much. OK, let's move on.
That was a pretty good little diversion, but so the actual
decision of the shield, like the she, he goes to get the shield
painted. Baylor tells Dunk that you can't
inherit Arlen's arms because you're not his son.
Now, actually, Baylor is probably exaggerating what's law
and what's custom. But when Baylor directly tells
you this, you're not going to. You can't.
Exactly. Yeah.
He's like, Oh well, he it's sort of all an ass.
It's like, OK, you. Just told me what how it works
so. So he basically has been told
you can't use that signal and so he has to choose something the
color of sunset because Arlen likes sunsets.
That's just that gets you in the fields there.
He's trying to maintain, preserve some of who Sir Arlen
was. He wants to commemorate.
I think commemorate is probably the right word here.
So he is sort of taking this rule of not using this previous
sigil, but we see like it'd be inspiring.
It's inspired by the previous sigil.
That's the kind of thing we see all over.
We've seen like people take on new sigils based on something
that happened, like Raleigh Duckfield, who is a great
example because he's apparel to duck in so many ways.
His thing as well. I was in a field and I looked up
and there were ducks. So Ducks.
Feel like. It's you.
It's. Sometimes it's more creative
than that. Oh, actually, it's usually.
More. Creative than that, because
that's about as you can at least be more.
Embellished than that it could have been Hawkfield or something
it. Doesn't have to be a.
Compound word man, you can do it.
Could be a little. More basically.
The epitome of the the trope and TV where someone can't come up
with their name so they just like their eyes.
Go look around the room and they're like my name is a Shan
guitar light. What's the name of your dentist?
Doctor Krentice sounds a lot like.
Maybe that's why he became a. Dentist, Yeah.
So, yeah, totally. So this, this really, this fits
really well. You feel that like this is this
is sort of chivalrous. He's carrying on the tradition
of the man who taught him. He's paying homage to the guy
that made him what he is, the guy that pulled him out of the
gutters and maybe didn't enrich him, but gave him enough to work
with, right? The man that taught him pretty
much everything he knows, the guy that gave him a chance in
life. So of course you want to, you
know, remember that and be inspired by that and, and trying
to remember the man that that was basically his father, you
know. And that's what all these.
Houses do all these famous houses.
That's a big thing is like we're carrying on the traditions of
our ancestors. Dunk is he's capturing the soul
of that by remembering the person instead of this this
house that contains these people, right.
And As for the Elm tree itself, it's pretty, pretty perfect as a
symbol as well for the sigil. After all, he's sleeping under
this tree. It it really says hedge knight.
I mean, it's not a hedge, it's a tree, but it's it's just one
step up. I guess you know, it's one of
the nicer trees, you know? There's also maybe.
Some allusion to the idea of being rooted.
That it, it it's, you know, the core's fundamental dunks.
Fundamental values are very strong and rooted Earthly, yeah.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
A man of the earth to the. Ground and the earth more so
than to some castle or some weapon or whatever else.
Yeah, that's a good. Point it's it reminds us of
what's his name, Septon Maribald, who just lived off the
land. In fact, he didn't.
Like literally didn't even wear shoes.
So like talk? About close to the earth, that
guy was taking it to another level.
But you know, just much as we respect Septon Maribald, it's
some of these same things are here with Dunk.
It's like, obviously Maribald's been doing his thing for decades
and dunks just getting started, but you see some of the same
sort of elements in that or maybe a better example be elder
brother the the because he used to be a knight, the one that's
and Brienne meets elder brother and and Sandor, of course.
So that's also pretty fitting, I think, to bring him up because
he's a really big guy. Like Brienne looks at him and
he's like, well, this guy used to be a warrior and then he just
goes on and makes some points back exactly like that.
And Maribald was a warrior too. He has that describes that story
where he his friends were all under equipped, but they were
excited about battle and it all went terrible and he was
basically the only one that survived.
And yeah. That's.
The other side of living close to the earth is.
Getting. Forced to fight for a 'cause you
don't understand or believe in or even have all the information
on and then all of a sudden you're which donk also.
Experiences, you're right. And then all of a sudden.
You're on someone else's side. You're like, Nope, now you're on
my side because I said so. And yeah, more of that in the
next story of Duncan Egg that gets brought up a little more
with those peasants who are like, wait, who are we fighting?
What? What is going on here?
Yeah. Really that that concept really
gets brought out even more there now and and another great point
here from Nina by including the shooting star, Dunk
distinguishes himself from other hedge Knights.
There must there might be thousands of hedge Knights
roaming the seven kingdoms, but only he had received its luck.
This tourney would fundamentally change Dunk's life.
Like he did get lucky. It looked bad, like bad luck,
but a number of lucky things that totally set his career
going forward happened within this like 24 hour span here
Baylor should. Have been sleeping outside.
He did need a little. More luck I think.
Yep, it was. Definitely not his.
Good luck. But on Brienne's.
Side, let's talk about Brienne for a second.
We know that this is how we know.
Let's let's go through the connection here.
So in case some of you all aren't familiar with why
Brienne's shield scene is so important.
So first of all, Brienne is confronted by Sir Ellifer, who
has been part of our cast of characters in this discussion.
In our first episode. We brought him up because he is
an actual hedge knight, Sir. Ellifer crooked a Bony finger at
her shield. There was paint was cracked and
peeling. The device wore.
It showed plain black bat on a field divided bend, bend wise
silver and gold. You bear a liar shield to which
you have no right. My grandfather's grandfather
helped kill the last of Loston. None since has dared show that
Bat Black is the deeds of them that bore it.
Well, first of all. Ella, first grandfather's
grandfather should be around around this time if he if he
helped put the Lostons down. That's only about that's only
about 20 years from from this point, about 2324 years.
So that dude was probably already alive.
Maybe he was just born or something like that.
But yeah, that's just drawing a little connecting dot here.
So what happens is Jamie gets this shield, this this shield of
house lofsten, which is hard to say, and gives it to Brienne.
Then Brienne carries it to Maiden Pool where she's told,
you know, that's sigil's, you know, that's a bad sigil.
And this is, of course, Sir Illifer says the same thing
before she gets there. So she's like, I'm going to get
it painted. And that's a really important
moment because she says, I want to get it painted.
And the person at the gate is like, oh, really.
Well, my sister does painting. So that was a good thing for her
to say because this guy can now do his sister a solid and send
her some business, which is exactly what happens.
And so she remembers. And here's the moment, Here's
the quote where she has this thought.
The arms. Of charts were quartered rose
and Azure and bore a yellow sun and Crescent moon.
But so long as men believes her to be a murderous Rin dare not
carry them. Rodor reminds me of an old
shield I once saw in my father's Armory.
She described the arms as best she could recall them.
It was. More a picture than a proper
coat of arms, and the side of it took her back through the long
years to the cool dark of her father's Armory.
She remembered how she'd run her fingertips across the cracked
and fading paint, over the green leaves of the tree, and along
the path of the falling *. They really spoke.
To her, she was really into this shield, she really liked it.
And we're supposed to linger on it as readers, to maybe let it
sink in or have it realize, have us realize one day that this is
the exact same shield that we were just described by Dung
Sigil here. Interesting in.
The next book, Lady Rohan does the same thing.
She kind of flirting with Dunk, rubs her fingers across the the
sigil on his chest. And also interesting convenience
of someone for both of them being right there.
Oh, I can paint a shield. You know, like both of them,
Dunk and Brienne both had that convenient artist on hand.
Yeah, true. Like it it forced in a city like
in a town like Mayden Pool, of course there would be 1, but it
the coincidence of being the gate guard's sisters that's.
That's where that comes. Up and then you put and then
like here at a tournament, there's going to be some
painters, but you know, apparently.
Women. Yeah, I.
Guess so seem to do this. Painting a lot.
It's not a manly. Job.
The world. Needs more painters.
My grandmother was a painter. Our house is folded with her
fold filled with her art. Speaking of Brienne, another
thing that they have in common, Brienne's big.
She's people say big for a woman, but no, she's just big
period, right? She's larger than most men and
which does make her big for a woman, but let's put it in
perspective. She's just big period.
Dunk is also just big period. But also for a man this big,
almost everyone is smaller than Dunk.
What's interesting is to me as well is that we don't have that
POV in A Song of Ice and Fire. When you think of A Song of Ice
and Fire, who's the largest person that we have Apov from?
It's probably Brienne. Like that.
Yeah. Like, like, physically the
largest person is her. Which doesn't exactly tell us
what it's like to be a large man in this setting, because a large
man gets respected, whereas Brienne gets looked down on for
being a freak of nature. Now, we readers don't look at
her that way. At least I hope we don't, But in
world she's not her size doesn't make people don't.
It's the totally different reaction.
People look at tongue like, oh, this guy is big and strong, like
we can make use of him. Where for Brienne it's like
what's wrong with her? Like it's so backwards, but it
still comes out in actual fighting the the advantages they
have. One of Brienne's advantages is
that she's taught to play defence because these guys will
tire themselves out trying to beat her quickly because it'll
they don't want it. Sad that a woman tested them.
Now of course that's not a thing for Dunk at all, although it is
a little bit because they don't want it.
Said that a hedge knife tested someone like Baylor doesn't
care. Although he was clear to point
out no, it was 4 lances, not 7. So there's still a.
Little bit of pride in there, but of course that's also just
truth, apparently. Just truth, but there is still
like that same attitude, like you don't want it said that a
hedge knight tested you. Perhaps the best example of this
that I can think of, Ron, not a hedge knight, but may as well
be. When he goes up, he's like a
step down. He's a cell source, so when?
He goes up against Sir Vardis Egan.
Think about. How confident all the Knights
were. They're like, oh, this is going
to be easy. Serve artists no problem.
Like Bron, this this Bron character, he's doomed.
Like he's just a cell sword. You know when there's a bunch of
them and they can gang up on you, then they're dangerous.
But one-on-one off. Please.
Please like their prejudice is over is so over the top it's
wild how much it distorts their view of reality.
Like no, this guy's sword is just as sharp.
I mean, he might be better at fighting.
Like how why is he better at fighting?
Because the he's he's not as rich.
Like it just doesn't make any damn sense.
He's had to do more. Of it, yeah.
You're right, it's almost the opposite.
Yeah, wish we brought this up. When I had my bron shirt on last
Bron just. Has brains and Bron.
Nice. Nice.
Imagine if he also had Bran brains.
Bran and Bran. Triple threat, but this?
Ignores some of the advantages these characters have.
Like, right, yeah, Braun has the advantage of knowing how to
fight dirty. These Knights look down on them.
Quote UN quote. Dirty, right?
They look down. On it, even though it's an
advantage, it's like it's a strange.
Distortion. Of reality.
Like it's it's really hard to you really illuminate these
blind spots. They look really silly, right?
But it's not unrealistic because this seems to be reflected by a
lots of things in the real world that people just look down on
for no good reason, just because of what it's it's in the package
it's wrapped up in. You know, it's not quite this
simple, but our friend Rudy one time pointed out you know who
wins a fight? The person who?
Realizes it's a fight first. Like when you really.
With the person realizes, they call it we're going to kill each
other. The person who realizes that
first, that's who's going to win.
Now obviously if if one person's 7 foot 280 lbs and the other
one's 5 foot 120 lbs, maybe that's not true, but assuming
it's a near close match otherwise.
And also think about the idea of like fighting dirty, how Knights
might look down like they have to be hypocritical to not no one
did anything dirtier than Aryan, right?
That's like by far the dirtiest thing I could think of that
anyone did like maybe some dirtiness.
I can we see in the future, you know Thor, what's his under leaf
or whatever, fixing the rounds and stuff.
Maybe that's as dirty as killing the horse, but I don't even
think so. Yeah, I agree with you.
Even Loris. Even Loris.
Is it? Is that a dirty trick using that
the Marin heats? You know, like I have that as
an. Item to talk about.
We'll come back to that. So I think, yeah, I think it is.
I mean, it is a trick. It's it's not as bad as killing
the horse, although it did result in the horse being killed
indirectly. Thanks to Gregor.
But I don't blame Loris for. That and some of these maybe are
a little different in the tournament, right, when there's
sort of it's a sort of a different set of rules than when
you get to like the fight to the death, the trial by combat, you
know, maybe it's a little bit certain rules are out the window
or whatever, but. Yeah, I mean.
Dunk himself thinks about how he's fighting dirty in that that
trial by combat, that trial by 7, right?
But like you say, that is a fight to the death.
I don't really think it's that dirty.
Yeah, yeah. Like, except that they were
they. Were dirty.
And alive. Yeah, they were.
Dirty from rolling around, Yeah, yeah.
Exactly. So there's another sort of,
there's a, a couple of bits of history in here.
Obviously we, we talked about the sigil stuff, but there's
also this Florian and John Keel story.
This is important setup because, well, this central conflict
really starts because of Tansel being attacked by Aryan and the
Florian Junkil story is has a lot of parallels to this.
Now, the Florian Junkil story isn't super well understood.
It's the details of it aren't. It's more of the gist of it is
what people respond to rather than the details, right.
Florian is a lowborn, maybe a knight.
He's called a knight, but it's a good example of where it's it's
probably historical revisionism because the Florian Junkil story
is way predates knighthood. So it's, it's like, it's not
even like you can, maybe you can, maybe the, the timelines
are off of it now. It's they'd have to be way off
for him to be a knight. But that's just how it reflects
how stories change with the time.
Great example, the actual Iliad, Homer's Iliad.
There's obvious anachronisms in Homer's version of the story,
which is a pretty strong evidence is pretty strong
evidence that he changed the story to suit his audience.
Like a specific example is I think I'd even cited this before
is the burials like the way they do burials like his he the way
he cited burials was anachronistic to the way to the
Greeks of the era of the Trojan War, but he was describing
current birth practice or current funeral practices.
So just one example of many historical revisionism is the
point being very common details like that are added on the Sir.
All you have to do is add a Sir to to change, you know, to
really just like tweak the story here.
But but the central line of the story is all men are fools and
all men are nights where women are concerned.
And. That's a way to say, you know,
in this case, he's can be her rescuer, but he can also be, you
know, her idiot or be like Aryan or there's a lot of ways to
interpret that. I think there's it's so, so wide
open that I'm not trying to say this is the only way to
interpret it. Did you have an interpretation
of that line, Sean, or anything that that brings out you?
Maybe the idea that sometimes there's a fine line, you know,
between being chivalrous and being foolish.
You know, that you sometimes some higher ideal can lose sight
of the, the needs of reality or something like that.
But, and, and, and you can, like, put yourself in harm's
way, you know, for the sake of a woman or some higher cause, or
whether it's foolish or chivalrous.
Sometimes it's hard to say. It's also important to remember
that the Florian and John Keel story, it takes place, the
legendary event of their meeting takes place at Maidenpool, which
of course we've brought up Maidenpool several times.
Brienne goes to Maidenpool. It's one of the reasons George
has her go there, probably to make all this work nicely or to
make it work even more. Of course, that's not crucial to
any of this, but it's, it's nice.
It's it's a nice dot connecting. And it's part of.
You know, Brienne's journey sort of being like a hedge knife.
You know, she's on the trail without exactly knowing where
the trail is. A few other historical notes
here. So we're about to see Abelar
Hightower. Abelar Hightower is going to be
one of the guys that loses to Valar, quite possibly on
purpose. Abelar could either be the
father or grandfather maybe. Of course he could be.
You never know when a Lord dies without sons and it passes to a
brother or something like that. But we have a historical note
from around this time. Not long after, the Gray Plague
is going to hit Old Town. When?
Paisel is a boy at the Citadel, which is probably only about 10,
maybe 20 years from now that Paisel was born in 216.
So Paisel's born 7 years from this, from this, where we're at
now, and this Quentin Hightower, who would be either this maybe
the grandson or son of this Abelar, is the one who burned
all the ships at port, closed the gates, wouldn't let anyone
leave, which was the right thing to do.
It was quarantine, right? If he had let people leave, this
plague could have spread all over.
But he was killed for this. He did the right thing and was
killed for it. This is a.
Great example of. Sort of high.
Level chivalry, even though it's caused a lot of suffering, it
prevented more suffering. Dunk is a is a parallel here,
right? He did the right thing and it
all, and it almost got him killed.
He was. He got lucky and was saved by
it. Quentin, not so much.
He was murdered. Of course, you're named Quentin
in this story. You tend to have you tend to
have bad luck whether you do the right.
Yeah. So you're on.
And this is a different. Spelling of Quentin too.
This is Quentan rather than Quentin, but Oh well, doesn't.
You can't fool the gods with little things like that.
Yeah, that's one of. Those things the Reach and the
Dornish fight about. Where the Y belongs?
Yeah. Why do they fight over that?
Why the where belongs? So the reason we bring up John
Keel and Florian, of course, is that's one of the not only does
it have a bunch of parallels here, but it's one of the puppet
shows that Tansel is throwing. She also has of course Nymeria
and the 10,000 ships now. Nina suggests.
Nymeria is maybe a bit of a Dornish nationalist tale but
it's not anti. It's not anti 7 kingdoms because
Nymeria didn't tussle with. The rest of.
Westeros, that we know of. She was too busy uniting Dorn
and that's pretty cool that she did that, but there wasn't any a
lot of infighting with with the Seven Kingdoms.
I guess it mostly would have been conflicts with the Reach
and the Storm Lands as as it had been for so long.
So. That's maybe interesting too,
but it's maybe even despite the fact that it's not that Nymeria
was an antagonistic or a foe to the Reach, it's still probably
not the kind of character that's.
That people from the Reach. Are interested in you know what
I mean? Like maybe this isn't.
The right. Show for this audience, not that
it's offensive, the target, the the one that gets Aryan, that
one, you know, maybe that one is, but this is still this.
I don't know this this. Maybe she didn't maybe consider
her audience she was playing with.
Fire, Yeah. So let's take.
A few more examples from the joust itself.
So there is this great like interplay of of we've, we've
talked about it a few times here, we've touched on it where
chivalry doesn't always look like chivalry.
Sometimes it looks chivalrous when it's not.
And. Loris, you brought up Loris and
that's a great example. Like Sansa?
Came out of that. Thinking Loris was even more
noble than he was before, even though he used a trick because
he came out looking great, he surrendered to the guy that
saved his life He looked horrible right he was riding
really well and then the guy saves his life and he's like,
you win. You know like I'm not going to I
can't challenge you you're the winner.
So it's it looks really noble, but it's also like you might
have just lost I mean like Sandor might have just beaten
you anyway like you just took a sword to the chest.
You're probably not at 100% anymore.
Like it, it's gracious, but it's also strategic, you know, and
it's like, I'm going to look really good here.
Like I'm going to look super chivalrous here.
My trick's not going to work again because it's, you know,
like these other. It's a win, win.
Yeah, it looks great. It like being he comes out
looking great, doesn't have to fight another match.
Yeah, like arguably he comes out looking better than Sandor
because he's he's Loris, he's pretty and and fancy and Sandor
is Sandor already. Has a couple strikes against him
Loris already has a couple notches on the plus side, so it
reinforces the the what people already kind of think you know
now think about what. Sandor said to.
I guess it was to to, I'm not sure, but he said Gregor's Lance
goes where Gregor wants it to. He is sure sure that the killing
of Sir Hugh of the Veil was not an accident.
Of course, this is part of feeding the plot to thinking it
was a conspiracy that someone ordered Gregor to kill Sir Hugh.
Now we that turns out to be red herring.
Gregor saw an opportunity to kill someone and did it.
That seems to be really the end of it.
He saw loose gorget, saw a little spot he could get, and
did it. Now consider that.
Consider how accurate these lances can be in in someone's
skilled hands. And think about what Leo
Longthorne, the ancestor of Loris, who is mentioned a couple
of times in the main series, specifically knocks the helmet
off of the Gray lion, right? And the Gray lions, like, all
right, I'm not fighting anymore because I don't have a helmet.
And that's dangerous as hell to be flying around with these
lances that are designed to splinter, right?
These lances are designed to break.
Nina writes that Henry the Second of France died the same
way. Like a splinter from a Lance
entering his eye, right? Going into his brain, there was
apparently a man in 2007 who died from in a jousting
reenactment because of a Lance splinter.
And and Nina also writes, there was a Hungarian knight named
Gregor Baci who Sir, apparently survived for a year after taking
a Lance through the eye and out the back of his head.
Oh. My his name is.
Gregor of course, that's fitting that this a guy that took a
wound that should kill him and it's still alive.
That seems to fit here. So that's so.
You've got all these examples of these guys like, oh, it wasn't
an accident like multiple cases where these guys are just very
accurate with where they stick their Lance.
Well, that sounded euphemistic, but.
So. When we have this example of
Robin Ristling, he had, he's the guy that had lost an eye and
he's up here like not giving up because he maybe understands
what's happening. He understands, perhaps, that
Leo Longthorne is doing this to get people to surrender to him.
He's not. It's not chivalrous at all.
They're like he's making this dangerous for them so that they
have to quit. It's like a.
Dirty trick. Man.
Yeah, like this. We're supposed to believe this.
Like amazing jouster is repeatedly accidentally knocking
their helmets off like. 'Cause he knocks off.
Like what A. Coincidence.
Yeah, it happens like. Two or three times so.
You know, it, it reminds me a little bit it, it seems like
it's so wild galloping on a horse against someone else,
galloping on a horse this long lands.
You're trying to aim to be able to be that precise.
But if you work hard enough at it, I mean, it seems crazy to me
how accurate baseball pitchers can be and batters for that
matter, that they're like, you know, trying to get in like a
within centimeters with a certain spin, at a certain
moment, with a curve, all these things, it, it seems just
impossible. But it's actually almost
scientific, you know, and, and if you, if you become
professional, if you work hard and long enough, it's something.
And and that by the same token, it kind of makes me feel like
the. Powers of being a.
Baseball should know when someone hit someone with a ball,
they know what they're doing. That wasn't an accident.
You should get in big trouble for that.
Tournaments may be the same thing.
Yeah, you should. I feel like it should be like.
Someone gets their night. Helmet knocked off and feel like
the other person should be getting disqualified, you know
what I mean as it is, sometimes they.
Do you're right, but and, and it's it's the the thing that
happens is we, we brought this up with archery before that some
of the best Archers in the ancient world were in their 40s.
They weren't the young men. Sure, the younger guys and
occasionally women have more stamina because they're younger,
right? But that accuracy that like
doing something really, really, really hard, like moving and
shooting a bow at a moving target, like the level of
practice you need to do that well is you just never stop.
You never master it. You never truly master it.
Like your, your physical capacity diminishes before you
can ever truly master it. But you can become so good at it
that you're a human level master, you know what I mean?
Yeah, that's a bit of a tangent. But you're right, like these,
these nights, the ones who can afford it, which is a difference
between heads, Knights and some others, They're like Loris.
He says it. In the.
Show it's another one where he has a pretty good line there.
He's talking to talking to Renley and Renley's like you're
so talented. He's like yeah, I'm talented but
I practice every damn day. I got on that horse every day
and I rode every day and I put that Lance in my hand every day.
Yes, I'm talented. Yes, I'm rich, but I practice
hard. I also worked my ass.
I didn't just get lucky. Yeah.
He's a conflict. Influence of those things.
He's not a lazy overachiever. He worked hard, definitely has a
ton of privilege, but he also didn't squander it, right?
Yeah. If he hadn't been born into that
privilege but had the same drive, he might be an expert, or
still maybe a great. Jobster, but not.
Probably not and Renly and other.
People were born into just as much privilege.
They're not as good as Loris's, right?
Yeah, if Renly. Had practiced as hard as Loris,
he still might not have been as good, but he'd have been a lot
better. Yeah, he probably didn't.
Have it's probably true that he doesn't have Loris's talent, but
he definitely also didn't work as hard.
So yeah, so good, good points there.
Let's take a few questions here in the middle and then get back
to the next topic. TK OK Podcast Network says
having Sean and his E back together these last three weeks
has been sublime. X Well, thank you very much,
Tommy. We appreciate that.
You did an appearance on TK OK recently, didn't you, Sean?
Yeah, we covered the graduates pretty deep dive into that
classic film. That was good.
And Tommy was recently on History of Westeros talking
about Valerian steel, right? Yes.
That's right, we've been very incestuous lately.
All of all, we all go on. Each other's shows, yeah, that
was a really fun episode. It was a little different sort
of style from some of the more recent ones.
Julie A. Says I wonder if Egg would have
been more tortured by Arian had he stayed.
Arian had already threatened to cut off his manhood.
Yeah, maybe he would have. I mean, the dude's unhinged.
He may have just gone through with it or done something awful.
And if your egg, are you going to stick around to find out?
Like, is he one day just going to just go a little farther and
or that knife is going to slip? I mean, you don't want to.
You don't want to find out. Yeah.
And. I pointed out in the chat that
it was probably good for Egg's sisters that Aryan was sent
away. Yes, that's true.
Oh man. And Dornish.
Dame brought up. It makes them wonder if the
reference the love potion in the Sworn Sword was about Ray
looking to marriage with Egg as a means of protection from
Aryan. Oh.
Yeah. Oh wow, that's really.
Good. Yeah, really good idea.
Wow, I'm kind of surprised I never thought of that because
yeah, like Aryan, Yeah, we we think about how bad he was to
egg, but yeah, he probably was awful towards his sisters too.
Yeah. And he probably.
Expected he would have one as a wife I mean he brings up to egg
that he he thinks he's going to marry him yeah and I.
Like I've been thinking of, I've been really, I guess my head's
been too deep in this comparison to Euron and Euron, like lucky
for his family that he didn't have sisters well.
It didn't really matter. Yeah, like it.
Would have been he probably would have done awful things to
them if he had them so good. Good for them for not existing
but but yeah, wow that's a great point.
I want to bring up a similar point.
May as well talk about it now, since it's as an exercise in
perception to put yourself in someone else's shoes.
These stories really provide us a lot of opportunities because
there's so many characters, and George does a good job of at
least highlighting the side characters a little more than is
average for books. Maybe in some cases a lot more
than average. A lot more.
A lot more, as I'm guessing. You're right.
Yeah. My head's too deep in this
fandom for me to to make that perspective.
It's probably a lot more anyway. Point.
Being the Lord. Ashford's daughter put yourself
in her place for all this. She's excited.
Think about Sansa. She's going to her first
tournament. Like so excited, like the
pageantry, the excitement. But unlike Sansa, this.
One's like. About her this is like she is
the center of attention. She's like Lord Ashford's like
highlighting his daughter like wants to show her off as a
marriage option for these fancy houses, wants to make Valar look
good. Not only does that backfire,
that part backfire horribly, but is she?
Traumatized. By all this, like, you know,
Westerosi misogyny is going to be like, oh, she's cursed.
Like she's the one that like they held a tournament for her
and Baylor died. Like, yeah, I don't know.
It seems like put yourself in her perspective and it it's
dark. It's like, man, this poor girl,
you know? Yeah, it's like someone having a
birthday on the same day as some shooting or some tragedy or
something like that. Yeah, that actually.
Exact that exact thing happened to a Co worker of mine.
I was working in an office environment for September 11th
911 and you know none of us went to work that day because they
were just like yeah don't come in today just watch the news.
And so we'd come into work the next day and and one of my Co
workers Scott's like yesterday was my birthday.
We're like. Man, oh.
Man, he's like. Yeah, my birthday is ruined
forever. I had.
I was in elementary school and we all went into to class right
and it was a girl's birthday and so like she had brought in
cupcakes it. Was.
Like, very memorable to me, man, Yeah.
That's terrible. That's too bad.
Like, yeah, I would just celebrate my birthday a
different day. I mean, definitely it's not as
bad 20 years from now. It's not the sting isn't as as
you know, like even if you lived through it or whatever or were
there, it's you can you can separate it more after time
passes. I I feel.
Like, though, she has to be somewhat traumatized by this.
Even if she didn't see the horrible gore, which she
probably saw Baylor's brain fall out, she probably definitely saw
the horse screaming like a human in pain.
That alone had to have been awful.
Yeah, poor girl. Yeah, even because.
That's the part you can compare to Santa.
Santa saw like Gregor's horse and all that and and the
fighting that. So she saw some of those things.
But ultimately that's kind of why I pointed out Loris came out
looking really good. So like in the end, yes, the
tournament went pretty well for Santa, even though there was
some it was a roller coaster. But other than that, like Loris
didn't kind of ignored her, you know, and ignores her later,
like who are you again? And she was that that didn't
that didn't make her happy. But I was like, do I know you?
I was like, you gave me the right special rose, Like, oh,
yeah, yeah. You're just some girl.
I don't remember. I don't pay attention to girls.
Jonathan Hagee says Danes don't look Dornish.
Aryan may see them as superior Dornish.
Yeah, that's a that's a really important point.
Yeah. The Danes, they look sort of
Dornish, but MO they their their their look isn't fully
established let's put it that way.
They often have purple eyes. It's not established that they
always have them. For example, we don't know what
color eyes Arthur had. We do know that Ashara had
striking purple, haunting purple eyes, which.
Also is a. Reason for the the Targaryens to
choose them as a marriage option.
It's it's a pretty perfect choice.
It's like, oh, they're Dornish. So and we want Dornish marriages
to bring the realm together, but they look like us.
They look like Targaryens a lot of times.
So that's a just kind of an obvious like let's this is a
great things line up sort of situation.
That's a good point with Jonathan saying maybe that
because of their look, so, so much of it comes down to that he
may, yeah, not look down on them as much.
Good call. Good call.
Also, like another comment from Juliet, the striking size, like
Brienne, right? We, we, we talk about how she
turns heads wherever she goes, Although a lot of them are like
looking down on her. Well, metaphorically obviously,
because she's bigger than they are.
And Dunk's the same thing. But with Dunk, we, we think of
other characters like like Hodor, right?
Like, Hodor's a big character, big guy, and maybe even maybe
even Dunk's ancestor descendant. But we're not.
Really. Ever in his head Brienne.
So we don't really have a POV that is respected for their size
because from Brienne's case, it's it's the reverse.
It's like so this this is a new perspective for us.
Not only do we have a a low born character hedge night, something
we don't get in the song like fire.
We have someone who's big who doesn't necessarily realize
they're big right. They don't.
He doesn't go around looking like, wow, look how big I am.
It's. Through his eyes, people react
to his size. I'm like, Oh yeah, look how
people are constantly looking up at him.
And that's why the Laughing Storm is a little interesting to
me because that's one of the few characters that's also really
big. And you can kind of get up like,
oh, that guy's as big as me. Someone that doesn't look up me
as a huge man, right? I have my own personal
experience with this, not being 7 foot tall or whatever.
I'm indirectly by going to Thailand with our mutual friend.
Chris is 6 foot 7 and has a large facial scar from his time
in the military. So he doesn't look at all like a
Thai person, like a marble Thai person.
So walking down the crowded streets of Bangkok with him was
very interesting because I would stand behind him so I could see
the reactions to other other people would be like double
taking like, whoa, look at that guy.
That's what their eyes would be saying.
Like they'd turn, like they'd look and they'd look away, then
they'd look back with their eyebrows raised.
And it's a real trip for me, just watching like, like dozens
of people having this reaction, like constantly because it's
super like this. Bangkok is like 11 million
people. It's one of the largest cities
in the world. So you're walking in like a Main
Street downtown where there's just so many people.
This effect is magnified. It's like if you had a drone
like looking down on this, you could just like measure all the
head turns. The top of their heads are going
to be a dark colored because most high people have like a
dark colored hair. But as their heads turn to look
up, you would then see the light of their faces and their eyes
instead. And it's just like this pattern
of all these faces turning at the same moment as this large
object passes between them. So I think it's, I remember one
time. I was walking, this is long ago
enough to, but when Rudy was still, you know, I mean, he's
still tall, but he's lost a lot of weight.
But when he was still big and with Chris Honan, I was walking
with the two of them and we were coming up toward like a
reflective, you know, a building where we could see our
reflection. I was like, geez, my friends are
my friend's Hulk. We're going.
To cross your books. This little old me and they're
like towering above me like holy, very striking image to see
our reflection Yeah, I also. Can relate just to big people
when dunk is described, for example, because my brother is 6
foot 8 and so I was, I was like a little egg and he could just
toss me all around. I just have a very clear image
of that disparity. This is a lot older than you
too, right? Yeah, he's 11.
Years older than you, so it would be basically exactly like
egg and Dunk because dunk egg is more like 6-7 years old.
Younger than dung, so when he was 20.
One, he would have been fully grown and you would have been
like 10 and you still been like 4 feet at most, yes.
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, Dunk and ash it.
Was. It was.
It was actually ash and ash. Yeah, Ash and Ash.
Ashton in the shade? Yep.
Also I want. To shout out our Discord
channels for a specific reason, we're doing an Expanse reread
over there. Just a few of us are just
talking about The Expanse and we've just started.
We've just started the short stories.
Only the first 3 short stories have been scheduled or have been
reached on the schedule. We're about to start the first
book, so if you want to get involved, it's definitely not
too late as of it's July 11th as of this recording.
So by the time you hear this, we probably haven't gone that much
farther. Really fun.
Expanse is great. There's a lot of Expanse
connections to The Song of Ice and Fire.
Well, really on the the meta level, George R Martin is
connected to those authors in a number of ways.
So that's cool. Also, it's just a fantastic
story and world. So there's that.
So if you want to get involved, head over to our Discord and hit
The Expanse Reread channel. We've talked a little.
Bit about dubbing this aspect of it is another subtopic under
that umbrella, the plumber, the steward says any night can make
a night. It's more customary to stand a
vigil and be annoyed by a septon for taking your vows.
Now he says more customary. Obviously he doesn't say it's a
rule and that's important. There's a lot of work done by it
not being a requirement. But it's also kind of ironic
because as Nina points out, Raymond Fossaway doesn't have
any Vigil or any Saptun or anything.
It's a lot. You know what it reminds me of
Sean is like, like a battlefield promotion.
Like obviously in the real world military, most promotions are
done with some signed paperwork and some back and forth, a
little bit of time approvals and stuff like that.
But sometimes the officers are all dead in the real war
situation and someone has to be like sometimes it's temporary
promotion, but sometimes it a lot of times it sticks right.
Am I, is that pretty accurate? Am I, am I off there?
It's very. Regimented the process to for
getting promoted there's there's a certain minimum time in grade
and then you have to take certain classes you have to get
a recommendation from your officer and at certain levels
you have to you know stand in front of a board at at higher
rank like generals have to be approved by Congress.
But on the battlefield, yeah, a lot of times when sometimes
tragically, a lot of people can get killed all at once and
someone's got to be in charge, you know?
And also, not to mention, usually there's sort of a chain
of command in addition to, like, the ranks.
Like, ostensibly any captain can tell any Lieutenant or any
Sergeant what to do, but usually you would only tell someone in
your own unit what to do, you know, a captain telling a
private from some other unit, technically they're allowed to,
but it's, they might even get in trouble for it, you know?
But on the battlefield, people might just get thrust together.
They're on a plane. They jump in, they're scattered,
Someone dies. All right, we need someone to be
in charge of this squad. Taken that hill, Private.
You're the Sergeant in command. Now.
Go do it. Usually, after the battle,
they're way more likely to get promoted to Sergeant.
Usually it's temporary till afterwards.
But once you've actually been in battle, acting as a Sergeant,
you're probably going to get that promotion, you know, now,
of course. Caveat, what Sean's describing
is the US military. Now Sean was a soldier, so he
knows a lot of this pretty well, but obviously there's other
militaries throughout history and currently that would not
have all the same rules. Some of them would be pretty
similar. But there's also examples in
world of say, Lord Commanders of the Kingsguard becoming Lord
Commander in the battle. Like Lord Commander dies, you
guys named Lord Commander. There's one Lord Commander who
was only Lord Commander for like an hour.
He got a battlefield promotion, died within that hour and well
makes for a good story. So it's really important we we
see that there's a lot of amidst this pastiche of of class and
honor amongst the concept of knighthood, the knight that dubs
you. It is important.
It's not just this standing vigil and whether a septon does
the oils and whether you say the right words.
More importantly probably is because this is remembered going
forward a lot more than where you stood your vigil and that
stuff gets forgotten. No one's going to even know, but
if you but who dubbed you that is a little more likely to be
remembered, that's more likely to stick around and more likely
to be important, more likely to be brought up at parties, you
know? So this is a quote The question
is, And why did Lord Frey ask Rob to see about Oliver's
knighting when he had more than enough anointed nights at his
disposal to attend to the matter?
So why should someone go to Harvard when they can get a
degree from their local Community College?
There's great prestige in receiving your knighthood from a
king, a Prince, one of the kings guard or other celebrated
legendary Knights getting knighted by brothers.
Like kissing her sister. We'll leave Jaime Lannister and
the Targaryens out of that comparison.
And getting dubbed. By the local hedge knight is
like graduating from Barber college.
You get a sheepskin maybe, but don't try applying to law
school. Yeah, and of course.
Charge isn't denigrating those institutions, he's just pointing
out how society tends to look at them.
Yeah, A. Lot of times later in your life
and later in your career that matters less.
Yes, right. Like you, maybe you just went to
your local Community College, but after you've been in your
career for 14 years and you've got success and built a business
or won your cases or whatever it is it it starts to matter a
little bit less. Probably the same for a night
right. Like in fact, Dunk of
questionable whether or not he was even dubbed a knight by
Arlen, who is a knight that hardly anyone even knows.
But eventually he's the Lord Commander, right.
So eventually your actions of your life can overcome your
start point. But your start point can
certainly give you a a a jump start and Dunk is an exception
to the rules. Yeah, and.
You wonder if like. Raymond was like, I mean, you
can't be that unhappy because the Laughing Storm knighted him.
And that guy, you know, is pretty famous.
Although he did have a rebellion, he did come back and
surrender and it all worked out. So for the most part.
So yeah, that's pretty good. Like getting knighted by the
lapping storm, that worked out. The Lord of the eventual Lord of
Storms End. But had he been knighted by Sir
Duncan the tall famous knight of the Kingsguard?
Oh man, He's like Dunk was like, no, you don't want to united.
I mean like actually in retro, you know?
Another example to that point is Barristan thinks about knighting
his Squires, but he's but he knows he's about to lead a coup.
He's like, maybe let's. Make sure this works out.
First, because I might be dooming them, you know that
being knighted by me, if I get executed after starting a coup
might get them executed, but if the coup's successful, then
maybe I'll do it and it'll be more honorable.
Yeah, Now that he's. Apparently LED this very
successful sortie with his leading his troops out now being
knighted by him definitely gains some prestige.
Of course, if, you know, we have to wait to see how he's actually
received, you know, but yeah, we think we'll.
Potentially see a battlefield knighting.
I mean if. We're if we're concerned about
Barristan's survival. Good point, good question.
I really like. Bringing this Barristan example
into this, this is really getting me to think, well we'll
have to keep that one on the shelf.
We have some ideas, we'll we'll throw them out.
Y'all in the chat do the same. Please give us your thoughts.
Martin has. Thousands of pages coming in a
story that's enough for one of these young troops to to take
over Barristan, you know, for Barristan to die in battle, but
someone he knighted become a more central character, loyal to
Danny or whatever. Yeah.
And that. And that would be, in some ways
that would be really interestingly fitting because
you'd have Knights, which is a W Rossi distinction, but they
would be like Tumko Low, who's from the Basilisk Isles.
Yeah. And I mean.
That would help with something we've just been dying for.
We complain about it all the time, which is just, we want
more time with these SoC. I mean, we talk about the the
Dothraki, obviously, most particularly, but just period.
I would love to see the red lamb.
Yeah. It's neat too.
Nina writes this parallel between Dunk and Egg and Raymond
Fossaway. They're boys from very different
backgrounds, but they all want to be nice.
Throw Bran in the mix if you want to bring the first
character we're introduced to in a Song of Ice and fire.
Like that's a he starts off like one of the actual first lines is
in it's an entire arc is thinking about the Kingsguard,
like how he wants to be in the Kingsguard.
I mean, it's not in his first. I think it's in his 2nd chapter
and then his 3rd chapter is his fall.
So or no, he follows the end of the second chapter.
That's right. It's the end of that.
It's a very much a recurring theme.
Boys wanted to be nice. I mean.
I don't. Know about you, but for a while,
when I was a kid, I wanted to be, I don't know, a cowboy.
It's kind of the same thing my dad.
When he was a kid, he wanted times are a little bit different
now, but when he was a kid, he wanted to be one of two things a
garbage man or a fireman because it got to ride in the outside of
the truck that's. Fantastic.
So yeah, so they. Each have these other like they
have these ways of getting to it.
And like Hague is with Deron, you know, his drunk older
brother. And he's like, well, how am I
ever going to become a knight through this method, right?
Like, how am I ever going to get there through this?
And meanwhile, Raymond Fosseway kind of the same like his, his,
his cousin's kind of holding it over him.
He's like, yeah, you're not ready.
Like he, he wasn't being very good about it.
So Raymond, by breaking free, all three of these guys broke
free of their main influence and it worked out for them.
Now in in Dunk's case, Sir Arlen wasn't like bad to him.
But still. To become a knight he had to,
you know. It was kicked off by Sir Arlen's
death, whereas Egg's journey is kicked off by leaving Deron and
Raymond's journey is really kicked off by finally getting
away from Stefan. That's a nice little
triangulation. 3 characters. The knight must have three
swords, I guess you could say. So let's talk about the apples.
Let's talk about Fossa ways. This is a good lead in to their
family. The the last time we had queer
foreign fruits. This time we have straight
native fruits. They are definitely one of the
houses that when you add up their appearances, they're
pretty prominent. The Fossaways first appear in a
clash of kings. So this is yet another example
on the meta level of like George wrote this story alongside the
clash of Kings and these world building details sort of came
out at the same time. They're one of the say, 15 ish
houses. There's not an exact number on
that, but it's in the mid teens that claim direct descent from
Garth Greenhand. Their their claim is accepted.
There's some other claims out there that are as, to use
Olenna's term, a bit dodgy, but it's really hard to dispute
theirs because there's a famous figure named Foss, the Archer
who was one of Garth Greenhand's sons.
And so they are Foss away. Like, you know, like the name,
it's right there, right? It's in the name.
There's a notable. Lord Owen Fosseway during the
Dance of the Dragons, who was one of the caltrops so we might
see him on TV. Sir John Fosseway is of the
green apple Fosseways. So he's an ancestor or God.
I keep doing that a descendant of.
Of the cadet branch. We see formed here in this very
novella, the green apple. Fosseways, of course, didn't
exist prior to this novella. And Fosseway.
John Fosseway shows up at Storm's End in Catlin and
Davos's chapters in A Clash of Kings.
And then? Sir Garland Tyrell Garland the
gallant is married to Leonette Fossaway and you've met her.
We've all met her. She sat next to Tyrion and Sans
at the purple wedding. She's the one that had that sort
of quip of about when Tyrion finished that line.
He's like N cut off poor Tyrion's nose.
She's the one who's like, you're a better singer than this
Galleon of Chi, You know? They were both like very
conspicuously nice to Tyrion, which so nice that it's like.
But returning. To a question that is bearing a
lot of fruit. Thanks again, Javi Marcos, for
your question about where Black Fire references might have
appeared had they been fully developed by the time the story
was written. And I have to think this is a
huge bullseye A bullseye a. William.
Tell Bullseye with an apple on, you know someone's head, because
how great a fit would it be to talk about a cadet branch of
House Targaryen amidst the formation of a cadet branch of
this apple family? You have the red dragon cadet
branch turning into the black dragon.
You have the red apple turning into the green.
Whereas of course, in the Dance of the Dragons, it was the green
versus the black. So you got red, green, black.
It's the three main colors of apples and Dragons.
And. Brown, frankly, rather Franklin,
not Frank Lee Franklin Flowers quotes the Prince acknowledging.
With the nod Flowers is a bastard name or from the Reach.
I. My mother.
Was a washerwoman at cider Till at cider hall till one of my
Lords sons raped her. Makes you sort of brown apple
fast way the way I see it. So this is a great.
Thread to follow. Franklin is part of the Golden
Company, which is of course a product of the Blackfyre
Rebellions via better Steel. So.
How about that? This is a deep levels
connections of both themes and direct plotting here, not just
like behind the scenes connecting dots, but this is a
pretty direct through line to the Golden Company appearing
into the story as you know, championing a guy who may be a
low key Blackfire. And Nina also writes.
It's a wonderful bit of irony here.
Stefan abandons Dunk to back Aryan because Aryan promises to
make him a Lord. But Raymond, he's gonna found a
new house and get his own get lands as well.
The the cider hall is the seat of the red apple fossil ways.
But now there's this new barrel. George really leans into these
his names new barrel. So Raymond fossil ways probably
the first night of new barrel and best guess these lands are
established after the black fire.
The third black fire rebellion which would be the next time
there's actual fighting because the second black fire rebellion
is is barely a war. Great guess.
I agree with this guess that these the lands of New Barrel
were established after the third black fire abound when you would
have a time that rebellious Lords would have lands taken
away from them and those who stayed loyal would have these
lands given to them. We see this right after the
Battle of Blackwater, right? So, and I think maybe we're
being set up to see that again. Franklin Flowers.
Fossaway, bastard. Brown apple.
Fossaway, as he says it. What?
Are the odds. That that's the land he wants,
not not New Barrel, but Cider Hall 'cause it's probably a
fancier spot. And that's, you know, where he
was from his, his mother was the washer woman at Cider Hall, not
at New Barrel. So that's who he would want,
that's who he has descent from, that's who he would want revenge
against. So if we see Young Griff grant
this title to Franklin Flowers because he's a captain in the
Golden Company, well, or Sergeant in the Golden Company,
I guess he is a captain. Anyway, you have already had the
groundwork laid out for you, so you will know why it's a
momentous land giveaway and not just another random person
getting some land. There you go.
And that would make him perhaps similar to his distant ancestor
Sir Derek Fossaway, who was an exiled mite infamous enough to
have been one of the Band of Nine, AKA the 9 Penny Kings.
He probably wanted Cider Hall too, among other things.
For more on him, check out our episodes on 9 Penny Kings.
There's two of them. And this.
Derek and Franklin as members of the Fossaway family, They remind
us of what happens when claimants lurk across the sea,
just like it was with the black Fires.
Speaking of, let's not forget the promise of sorts that
Franklin Flowers makes in A Dance with Dragons.
Rivas was smiling in approval of those traded thoughtful looks
and Peak said I would sooner die in Westeros than on a Demon Rd.
and Mark Mandrake chuckled and responded me I'd sooner live
wind lands at some great cast, some great castle and Franklin
flowers slapped to Sword Hill and said so long as I can kill
some Fossaways, I'm for it. It's much.
More believable than this promise made back in A Clash of
Kings Catlin 2 by another Fossaway.
Sir Mark. Mullindor brought a black and
white monkey, fed him morsels from his own plate, while Sir
Tanton of the Rad Apple Fossil Ways climbed on the table, swore
to slay Sandor Clegane in single combat.
The valve might have been taken more solemnly if Sir Tanton had
not had one foot in a gravy boat when he made it.
First of all. Shout out to our good friend
Sanrixian who drew the best ever fan drawing of a fantasy monkey
of all time. She drew Mullendorf's monkey
with armor 'cause he did have a little suit of chainmail.
According to the text Sir Tanton, Gravy Boat man did
survive the Battle of the Blackwater.
No word of whether it was because he kept the gravy boat
on. Gravy boats are better than
other boats when wildfires flying around because all those
other boats were burned and well, the gravy boat probably
did fine. Really, though, the man the
Fossaways should want to kill isn't Sandor Clegane.
It should be. Lothor Brune.
Why Lothor Brune? And well, he's not exactly easy
to get at right now. Lothor Brune is in the veil with
Sansa and Elaine. Well, both of them.
Sansa and Elaine, he's 1 of Littlefinger.
'S top men during the Battle of the Blackwater, Sir Loathor
Brune killed Sir Brian Fossaway and Sir Edwid Fossaway and then
captured the aforementioned Sir John Fossaway.
He didn't bother with gravy boat guy.
Probably cuz like. Who needs So you don't need to
worry about that guy, but he. Was given the.
Nickname Lothor Apple Eater Like these families with their proud
heritages? You have a guy walking around
named Lothor, Apple Eater who got that name because he killed
multiple Fossaways. That should be your.
Arch nemesis, right? Like seriously.
Your apple. Nemesis, which is a.
Segue to to the format of this tournament, the challenging
right that you set up you get to challenge whoever you want and
it's really interesting the way that fits into the the style of
corruption that they that's being run around here, right.
We've got this example of, well, you have to pick who you want to
pick. Do you dare challenge this guy?
Do you dare have the social, do you have the social currency to
challenge someone this far ahead of you?
When it's just a bracket system, when the randomness determines
it, it's not. You're not jumping up socially
by challenging something. The challenge happens for you.
You're not making a decision. But here, it's almost like they
know that like this is going to keep.
Even Aryan. Doesn't challenge Valar right?
Like of all the even he isn't doing it.
But who does he challenge? He challenges the lowest born
champion, Harold Harding, who distinguished himself like that
guy was kicked butt, right? But he was the clearly the
lowest born of the Champions. Like obviously Dunk isn't a
champion. Dunk is lower born, but he
wasn't a champion at that moment.
I mean, that's a big deal, right?
Like he's he's showing teaching this upstart a lesson.
It's like you beat all these people, you're low, boring.
I'm going to embarrass you. But of course it backfires.
Kazarian's concept of. Of what's embarrassing.
And what it isn't is is pretty off.
Yeah, he ends up buricing himself.
Dunk does think at one point that Harding, if he had to
choose, would be the true winner the the attorney, because he, I
think won 14 joust more than anyone else, which is crazy.
Yeah, he was the most impressive.
Yeah, but. That you.
Could see all the more reason why Aryan would want to like put
a stop to it, you know like. Yeah, and why and.
No one's and the very people stood up to that.
They're like, yeah, it's so obvious that Aryan has done a
bad thing here, but like almost no one was willing to back him
up. Are there neutral Knights along
among Well when we speak of how beautifully George has managed
to tie Dung's story to his likely ancestor Brienne, This
biggest examples is coming along here.
One of the very few things we very first things we learned
about Brienne. Apart from her.
Physical prowess like her size is the obvious details that you
see from the outside is her naive view of knighthood and
chivalry. A big part of her arc is, is
that falling off like her learning the truth of what not
of what real Knights are like, but sticking to it anyway.
It's beautiful, right? She stays like she's like, oh
wow, very few nights actually uphold these nightly ideals.
All the more important. That I do so then she's not
like, Oh well then rather than just going with the crowd she's
like, oh, that makes it even more important that I do it and
Dunk is of the same attitude with just a couple of buddies.
That's that's really beautiful to me that this is a central
theme of this and it really spins the name Brienne, the
beauty on it's, it's on its meaning.
Like they're mocking her, but she has the.
She really is. Beautiful in this sense in her
attitude and very few nights have this attitude that she has
and it's. You know, it's really.
Stand out. So Duncan's learning that too.
It's it's different because he's learning it not quite as much
out in the world in war, not by, you know, losing half of his
face and these other awful things that happened to Brienne.
But he's confronted by a bunch of examples of nights not acting
like nights at all, like blatantly.
There's cheating, there's favoritism, there's exclusion,
and there's a few bright spots. Glad, of course he dies at the
end. Bright spot so.
These twin concepts like I, we talked about Leo Tyrell's trick
and Loris Tyrell's trick. That's another example of, of
privilege and wealth. It's insider knowledge, right?
Loris knew this trick about horsemanship, about a stallion
and heat because he's been around horses and wealth his
whole life. Like you.
You're not, you can't be around horses without having money
unless you're like a stable boy or something like that.
You're either employed with horses or you're rich and own
horses. There's not a lot of in between
there, even in this world. I mean, in our world, that's
even more true. Of course, horse knowledge isn't
nearly as valuable in our world, but so I think that's touches
back on what we were saying about Loris and and Gregor and
all that. It's like that trick would Dunk
have even conceived. I'm not saying he would have
used it even if he thought of it, but it's not.
It wouldn't have even occurred to him like but a long the
Tyrells have been jousting for centuries like this is something
that they just know it's another thing.
That Loris might have an extra awareness of, as we pointed out
how much he practices. He probably at one point wrote a
mirror that was in he and realized, oh, I can't do this,
but I got to be careful about which horse I'm picking in the
1st place, you know, part and trunk.
But still some value of his experience, you know, and it's
like the. People who are watching who knew
horses like they got, they understood Loris's trick, but
it's not out in the open. It's not like, oh, Loris was
cheating because it was subtle enough that most people don't
even notice, right? It the reason it even got
noticed was because Gregor cut his horse's head off.
That kind of made Sansa like, oh what the hell?
And then someone explains it to her.
But if Gregor just like grumbles and marches off, it might not
even get brought up that Loris was cheating, right?
And here it's even more subtle. It's not obvious that they're
throwing it for Valar, right? It's it's not obvious at all,
but it is there like once you're once you're clued into it, it
becomes obvious once you're once the concept is raised.
I think like George RR Martin here, he says one of his quotes
is it's pretty plain in the hedge tonight.
If you read between the lines that everyone was bending over
backwards to make Valar look good, you know, and he doesn't
say cheating. Well, a quote.
He had won nine victories, but it seemed to dunk that everyone
was hollow. He's beating old men in upjunk
Squires and a few Lords of high birth and low skill.
The truly dangerous men are riding past the shield as if
they do not see it. That line right?
There the truly dangerous men are riding past the shield as if
they do not see it. That's the one that I think is
the biggest clue of all. Yeah, George loves irony.
So it's it's funny how this all works out.
We talked about how backwards it all goes like nothing like
wanting to show off for the Targaryens only for the Prince
to die bitter steal, though, over the cross and air seas.
Like, yeah, all right, good tournament.
And it's an interesting too. The difference between Baylor.
Baylor is nothing isn't like Valor.
Like you wonder what's in Valor's head.
Does Valor realize that everyone's throwing it for him?
Does he get it? Does he does he is he clued into
this like we don't know much about valor, whether he's a
smart kid or the only moment we really get with him is he's
like, man, don't get away from me.
You're the reason my father's dead, which I get it.
Like he's he's bitter. It doesn't mean he's a bad guy.
I, I, I don't hold that against he's dealing with.
Like 3 weeks later he might have been kinder to dunk, 2 days
prior he might have been kinder to dunk.
It's hard to know. And I, I, I also wondered if
maybe Velar even maybe he does know it and he's frustrated by
it. You know, maybe he wants a real
challenge. It's all the old the the crappy
nights, you know, like he. Get he understands he's being
coddled maybe, but that and that's the question.
I wonder if he realizes that it it would be.
It's hard because from in on in some ways it's really obvious.
But in some ways, like when you're the recipient of it, you
know, when you're in the middle, when you're raised, like it's
he's not that old, you know, he's kind of, you know, I don't
know. I wouldn't assume he knows.
So. Yeah.
It's also, if I remember right, just the first day.
Maybe he thinks, well, tomorrow, tomorrow someone will challenge
me, you know? But yeah.
I. Maybe I want to paint him in a
brighter light since he's Baylor's son, but but maybe,
maybe he asked to make sure it happened that way, you know, it
could be the other end of the spectrum.
You never know. You know, like Baylor might have
put his thumb on the scale just a little bit because it's a few
a little like one sentence from him says a lot, right?
Because of who he is. Can I just?
Bring up real quick how fitting it is that the Targaryen that
this is happening to is Valor Targaryen, which is the exact
opposite of valor. Yeah, that's funny.
Yeah, And it just, it is once again reinforces the classism in
place here. Valor is getting all these,
like, advantages and, like helping him win.
Yet when someone like Harold Harding comes in and just does
really well on Merritt alone, Darian kills his horse and.
Breaks his. Leg, it's so awful.
It's like this is this sort of stuff happens in regular society
all the time. We just don't see it.
You said Harold, It's Humphrey. Oh, Humphrey.
I'm sorry. Yeah, of course the 2 Humphreys
Harold is of course the current character that Sansa's going to
marry Harry the heir, getting Harry the Heir confused with, I
mean, Humphrey. The dead, yeah.
And this happens. Again, in the in the misery.
Now we'll be coming back to this.
It's like the Knights who lose on purpose are rewarded.
The Knights who refuse to lose on purpose get a Lance in the
face and false charges of Grand Theft Dragon Egg, right?
And the plants. In the Face comes up from a
professional tourney knight who cheats regularly and talks about
how common it is. Right.
Like it's just, oh man. So The Dirty underbelly to
tournament night, tournaments nights and tournaments in
general is like such a contrast to what Sansa sees from our
first tournament we ever get in these books.
So yeah, what's we have saved up?
Some sort of funny moments? Here's one that I think.
Is kind of funny, but also just under the radar.
Kind of. Well, refer a little tongue in
cheek, shall we say? Or maybe something else in
cheek. Here's a quote.
Lord Karen Harper and singer and knight of renown touched the
point of his Lance to Lord Tyrell's rose.
So there's some Leona Rhaegar vibes there.
You know Harper, a guy who's both a Harper and a singer and a
rose, right? The blue rose.
It's a gold rose, sort of a blue rose.
But I mostly that line is just really gay.
Especially if you consider. The next line in the same
context, Sir Jothis, Sir, I can't say it.
Sir Joseph thumped on Sir Humphrey Harding's diamonds.
I. Think I'm exaggerating?
Well, the next line is well, shortly.
I don't have the next line, but shortly after we have the Harp
Lord and the Rose Lord. We're going at each other
lustily with blunted long axes, to the delight of the roaring
crowd. So.
Dunk. Certainly doesn't notice what's
between the lines there. But he's not going to notice it
when Sir John the Fiddler flirts with him and says I'd like to
try my Lance on you. So really this is a regular
feature of the Duncan Ignovelas. This people, you know, a little
bit of mostly it's directed at Dunc cuz he's barely pretty hot.
I mean, he's a huge man. So that that tracks.
So that's pretty funny. It's also like a connection to
Brienne. Again, Brienne not from maybe
getting that Renly was into men or just not not mattering to
her, but she also, you know, Renly had a favorite Tyrell rose
also, who involved some Lance point touching staying on the
subject of. Non.
CIS relationships we have horses won't charge a spear wall.
OK. Well, where are you going with
this, Aziz? What?
Well, Shay and. I had noticed something on video
the other day that was that was very amusing.
Yeah. There is a video of, you know,
how streets they'll do the crosswalks, they'll, you know,
paint them rainbow for Pride month or whatever or, or just in
general. Yeah, we're just in general.
Sure. So anyways, it was some horses
with the some of those cop, the police horses walking down the
road and they they, they come across one of those rainbow
crosswalks and they just would not cross it.
They were, they looked so freaked out.
They were like going around like, like sidling around,
getting on the sidewalks, doing everything they could to avoid
it. And I don't think it's that they
aren't comfortable around rainbows.
I believe it's that they. Yeah.
Homophobic horses.
No, I don't think it's that. I think it was just really
unusual to them. They.
They aren't used to that sort of thing on the ground.
And the horses got spooked by it.
And then the other horses kind of followed suit with the first
horse. Yeah.
It's really neat. They're.
Just like really afraid of this rainbow crosswalk.
But I, I think it's color cause horses don't see the same colors
as we do. And it might look black.
Like we one time put our cat's food dish on this red Matt and
he didn't, he was freaked out. He was like, what the hell is
this 'cause I think it looked like a black hole to him, 'cause
cats don't see red that well, 'cause he was like, he was like
touching with the tip of his pawlik.
What is that like? Oh my God.
So yeah, it was probably something like this where it
just looked like a pit, probably like, like, Oh my God.
So, yeah, horses don't charge a spear wall.
And this is this is historically interesting.
Horses, like a trick in ancient warfare was to open a gap in the
infantry lines, not just so you could have like a physical space
to charge through and and disrupt their cohesion.
But physically the horses wouldn't charge unless that was
there. They needed to see that or they
just wouldn't do it because, you know, horses aren't most
intelligent animals, but they're not suicidal.
They're not like yay, like they they're not completely blind to
the danger of running into what looks like a wall of people.
They may not realize the Spears are dangerous, but it's still
like animals don't run into walls.
Like at high. Speeds like on the regular.
So there's just some basic common sense here, you know?
That reminds me of the, the, the horses and the rainbows and
such. It reminds me of a video I saw.
I think it was an Aussie man reviews you know how you like
and it's it's two horses coming down a trail and there's a
little Bunny rabbit on the trail and he's just freeze.
They like step forward and step back and like the human's trying
to coax them and they're like and Elzamine's like doing the
horse's thoughts about like you go first.
I'm not doing it. That thing could get us.
Have you seen them? It was hilarious.
I. Think I've seen that one.
He also does one where there's that one where the geese, the
geese and the cows and there's or one goose and there's all
these cows that are like charging the goose.
And the goose does not back down like a, a cow comes full speed
at the goose and it doesn't flinch at all.
Like it doesn't even take one step back and the, and the cow
stops. The cow's like it.
It breaks its charge because it's like it's so thrown by the
goose's insane courage. It wasn't.
It might be a stone goose and a cow doesn't want to hurt itself.
It's like rambling over. Which brings us.
Back to the point, animals don't charge stationary objects.
Very. Often, unless you make them,
really. Mad real quick as well, Nina did
us the favor of of doing a rundown of what happens to the
challengers and the Champions. It's not it's mostly not good.
Humphrey Harding of course, dies by the end of the tournament.
He's killed during the trial of seven.
Medgar Tully dies within two years the tourney.
We don't know why he's succeeded by an 8 year old and that
becomes you know, that's brought up during the mystery night.
Damon Lancher, the Gray Lion, dies of the Spring Sickness next
year. Tybalt Lannister, who we see as
a challenger, dies under suspicious circumstances in 212
AC, and Sorrell becomes Lady of Cashley Rock, but she dies less
than a year later as well, which also perhaps suspicious.
Valar dies of the Great Spring Sickness as well, so he doesn't
even last a full year after this.
Leo Tyrell? Leo Longthorne?
No idea, but he's already considered older here and he's
said to be ailing by 2:12, so yeah, he probably just doesn't
doesn't last much longer. Lionel lasts for a while.
He lives at least till the two 40s, so he's around for quite a
while. He does have a rebellion.
It's his daughter that was supposed to marry Duncan, the
Prince of Dragonflies, who because he goes and marries
Jenny of old Stones instead, you know, Jenny's song.
So that results in a rebellion and a trial by combat.
This one you might not know about.
Sean, did you know that that that much later that Lionel
Baratheon will fight a trial by combat against Duncan the Tall?
No, really. Yeah.
If there's a really famous piece of artwork in the World of Ice
and Fire, it's huge. Full page of the two of them in
their full armor. The Laughing Storm with his big
antlers and and his big. I guess it's a big.
Hammer. Does he have a hammer or an axe
or something and then dunk and his full kingsguard?
You'll have to. Read The World of Ice and Fire
to see how that goes. It is cool.
Yeah, it's very cool and it has an interesting resolution.
I'll leave it there. We'll leave it unresolved for
you so you can experience it the way it was intended or close to
it. Now the.
Ashford brothers. This probably wasn't very good
for any of them. This.
The family probably took a hit prestige wise after this
happened under their watch, even though it really wasn't their
fault. And of course, the Hightowers,
we talk about how they're about to have a big old plague, not
about to it's, you know, maybe a decade or two, but that's
obviously going to definitely Abelar will be gone by then.
The accident, the quote UN quote accident, not an accident at
all. Of course, we we saw what
happens. There's Dunk because he's still
has the wool over his eyes about chivalry and naivete, about
knighthood offers the possibility there was an
accident. But Egg is like, without saying
he knows that guy. He's like, I know that guy, that
wasn't an accident. And yeah, no one.
There's really no argument there.
It was definitely on purpose, especially after we.
Just talked earlier about how the the Knights can be very
adapted, what they're adept at, what they're doing.
And it this wasn't even like the, you know, 6 inches
difference between like the the helm and the shield.
This is like the 2 foot difference between the neck of
the horse and the shield. So by the way, another.
Reason to another piece of art to check out shared in our
Facebook group by Shaya was carrying bright flames like
tournament regalia, his armor and his like, flaming Cape.
And it looks awesome like you would be.
I mean that it's hard to imagine a more intimidating set of
armor. Now of course these Knights are
not going to be intimidated by just, you know, the shape of
someone's armor. But the idea might be the reason
Aryan in one chose to fight the lowest born guy there would be.
Perhaps to get him to go easy on.
Maybe he thinks that they won't try as hard against him because
he's a Prince and this guy's so low born he might think class
protects him a little bit. Of course, he doesn't even let
it get that far. He just Spears the guy's horse
right away before there's. Anything else?
Could even happen. Interestingly, of all the people
to have their horse killed under them during the Hands tournament
early in A Game of Thrones is Barack Dandarian's horse was
killed by a hedge knight in a checkered cloak.
A checkered cloak. That checkered cloak that's
Humphrey Harding has checkered has red and white diamond.
He's got a checkered cloak. So of course this is not
obviously not the same guy or even the same family, but it
might be George having a little fun with the reversal there.
Because it's a low, the lowborn knight kills the highborn
instead of the other way around. And of course.
Very famously, Willis Tyrell fought Oberyn Martel in a
tournament and that's what cost him his leg.
Now, that, of course, according to Oberyn, wasn't really his
fault, and Oberyn makes a decent case that Willis wasn't ready to
be fighting in such company. But there's still an element of
chivalry to that, right? Like, well, Barris and the Bold
shouldn't have been fighting in that tournament either.
But that doesn't mean you have to, like, treat him like he's
not a boy, like he's a competitor in the tournament.
I'm not going to go light on him even though he's 10 so.
Clearly. Duncan the Prince of
Dragonflies, has a different attitude than Oberyn Martel, but
we knew that already. This moment, Sean, how did this
moment hit strike you when you're reading the story the
first time? I think we're all dunk when you
know, he didn't believe he was really going to snap her finger,
even though like there's no reason not to believe it because
of who he is. Like ah, it's so visceral.
It's like you get the horse being speared and that's like
way bloodier and gorier and it's probably a lot louder.
But this is like, this is so human and like, ah, finger I I'm
I'm always a little like little weaker kneed when it comes to
hand injuries because my mother is a musician and she's real
cautious with her fingers. And that that that was imparted
to me by osmosis. So I don't know, maybe that's
just a little bit of me. But that's just something that
this is so just man. It just brings back memories of
like childhood bullies and just people picking on people they
can't help. Just like you hate it so much.
It really, it's really well done.
Really. Like in terms of writing.
Yeah, even. The second time reading it, when
I, I kind of knew it was coming, I was like, oh, oh, I had to put
the book down for just a second. It's exactly.
It's really hard to sometimes like on TV or movies or I guess
some books or whatever when. 14. People are gutted by chainsaws
and blood splattered on the wall.
You know, some hyper violent something out of the Boys or
Quentin Tarantino movie. It's not as bad as when sewing.
It's their finger broke. Something a little more simple
and realistic, more relatable. It's like how Oh geez.
And another thing I can't help but think, oh, Casanova
sighting. Another thing I can't help but
think about too, is the implications.
Not just like the pain of that moment, but she's a puppeteer.
How's she going to do her job anymore with a broken finger?
You know it's and not just. That they've destroyed.
All her. Puppets like everything they
burned. Exactly.
Yeah. It's ruining someone's.
Life it's it's a real. Parallel to what Dunk is worried
about, like Dunk is worried that if he doesn't win his first
match, he loses his armor, his horse, his livelihood.
It's the same thing. She just lost that.
Now we've come to find out she has an uncle that made the
puppet so she could, she probably has, you know, a way to
get going again. But still Aryan doesn't know
that. He doesn't think of that at all.
He's just just pure authoritarian, pure cruelty,
just. They're in.
He doesn't. Care.
You know, like. The punishment fitting a crime
is a key part of modern justice, you know.
And this just not yeah, it's like we like we assuming it was.
Even a crime she was committing, you know, that's what I was
going to say. It's like, this isn't even a
crime like this in in America anyway.
And plenty of other places around the world we really like
harp on the fact that we're allowed to say almost anything
we want. Like it's a pretty important
part of of American culture. This is not in this society you
can't. Like this is proof, like it's
not against the law what she did, but it's unwise, right?
Because there's people like Aryan walking around who can do
this and probably get away with it.
Like it's it's very unlikely that Aryan didn't get away with
this. Like the fact that he didn't get
away with this was was the upset here.
Like he's probably done similar things and gotten away with it.
The exception. Yeah, you're right.
This is the exception rather than the rule.
Is Aryan doing this kind of thing to someone?
And that's it. No consequences for him, lots of
consequences for his victim. And that's the end of it.
Well, not for them, but for him. He he won't.
He probably doesn't even think about it again.
Now, we've alerted you all to countless times that George
loves to give answers to riddles before giving the Riddle itself.
He has a kind of a micro version of that here.
Here's an egg. Easter egg.
The King's 4th. Son, said Raymond, not quite as
bold as Prince Balor, nor as clever as Prince Aries, nor as
gentle as Prince Regal. Now he must suffer seeing his
own sons overshadowed by his brothers.
Daron is a sought, Aaron is vain and cruel.
Third Son was so unpromising they gave him to the Citadel to
make a maestro of them and the youngest Sir, Sir.
Duncan Egg burst in, panting. Yeah, this is I I really
appreciate this foreshadowing. I knew reading this that that
egg was, you know who, who his identity was.
But like my dad, for example, I don't think he knew.
I don't think I told him. I, I don't know if my dad pieced
it together at that point. Maybe it's more obvious than I
realize. I wonder how many readers I I, I
sort of assume most not just but the 1%, probably like 90% of
readers starting these books already know that I didn't.
But of course, I read them, you know, a long time ago.
And that was neat. I was like, oh, that's so cool.
Yeah, it was. It was a nice legit surprise for
me. I definitely didn't catch this
this moment where Egg jumps in just as they're saying and the
youngest. There is.
Oh, speak of the devil. Egg and you.
Might say the timing of this is quite unlikely and you know, can
I just point out that you. Said speak of the devil beg.
I think we, I think we all move past that a little too quick.
That's all you have to do it when you're me and you make lots
of puns and you're not sure which ones are going to be
funny. When no one reacts, you just
have to keep going because it's like, oh, I guess they just
didn't. Like that one?
You know, it's just, it's just. Part of the game, right?
Some eggs don't hatch, you know. Yeah, so.
It's, it's pretty cool. It's only, it's only a few.
You, you can piece it together. Like you can see it like it says
a few moments earlier. He says there's only one brother
unaccounted for. It says there's the Bain and
Crew 1, the SOT and then the Citadel.
The one who went to the he's a maester, so he's clearing out
there. And then there's.
So yeah. And then Egg refers to Aryan as
brother. He's like, I didn't want to look
like you brother, you know? Yeah.
And we knew already the 2 Targaryens were missing, you
know, there. There's so many clues along the
way that I agree. I think George does a great job
of giving us a bunch of clues, but still hard to even know,
like you said, what the clues are for.
But then once you realize you're like, oh, it was right there the
whole time. He's a master of that.
It's like a layer. It's a whole layer of items.
And if you find a part of any part of the layer, you, the
whole, potentially the whole layer is there, but you have to
see the layer to find any of the layer.
You have to find one, one part of it, any one part of it leads
to the rest of it. But if you don't catch any one
part of it, you won't get there. It's like R + L equals J.
There's a ton of clues for it, but if you don't start off on
that track, you might, you'd be like, and then it's just like a
flood, you know? Realization.
By the way. The third son was so unpromising
they gave him to the Citadel. How dare they?
How dare you? 1st I have several questions.
First of all, how dare you? Yeah, you know, I.
I tend to think of of Raymond not that poorly, but that's not
a great comment. Yeah, I guess he just doesn't.
Know he's just it's all rumor he he he doesn't know him
personally but. Still, it's also maybe.
More from the warrior perspective, right?
This is someone who wants to be a knight at a tournament.
You know, they they have a different standard of what makes
someone. You know, good or a good leader
or whatever. Yeah.
That's funny too, because for better or worse.
And and Raymond. Says poor Makar because of all
his kids, but that's going to change because of how you know
so many Targaryens die and then Makar actually becomes king and
the other things happened the the the sons do quite well in
the third Blackfyre rebellion. Even though Aryan sucks, he
apparently was a capable warrior and was useful at least in that
regard during the during the war.
And Egg was also a very good warrior, so that turned out
well. Also, I guess the lack of
Makar's reputation as the hanvil in the Hammer in the Anvil
scenario that happened during the Battle of the Red Grass
Field, that would make him look better because he was definitely
a war hero. So of course, because of this,
Dunk rushes off to save Tanzel. Now, this reminds us of, we've
compared Joffrey to Aryan, but it's Joffrey's mother that is
has a parallel here. And or you can maybe you can
maybe throw a little Kyburn into this because, you know, Kyburn
is the one that asks for these prisoners to experiment on.
So he's the worst of all, perhaps.
But you know, take your pick. They're all terrible.
Here's the line of that when Kyburn is telling Cersei the
equivalent example of what Aryan reacts to here.
In 209 AC at Ashford, he gave her an.
Apologetic smile and told her of a puppet show that had recently
become popular amongst city small folk puppet show where in
the Kingdom of the Beast was ruled by a pride of halting
lions. Puppet lions grow greedy and
arrogant and as this treasonous tale proceeds until they until
they begin to devour their own subjects.
When the noble stag makes objection the lions devour him
as well and roar that it is their right is the mightiest of
beasts. And is that the end of it?
Cersei asks, amused. Looking at it.
Looked at in the right light, it could be seen as a salutary
lesson. Know, your grace, at the end a
dragon hatches from an egg and devours all of the lions.
The end. He took the puppet show from
civil insolence to treason. Yeah, so that's Cersei's.
Inner thought there. Cersei is the one declaring that
it's treason and of course as I just said, she gives the puppet
puppeteers to Kyber so. That's as far as being.
Punished for treason? It's even worse than the
standard punishment for treason. Normally you're executed or sent
to the wall, but they're given to Kybren is worse than either
of those things by far, and kind of a ironic twist of sorts.
Obviously it's not on an obviously wasn't intended by
Aryan, but Dunk was probably going to lose everything by
entering this tournament. He was probably going to fail in
his first joust, get beat, lose all his stuff.
So in a very indirect way, Aryan going and doing his bad thing to
Tanzel saved him not only from losing everything but propelled
him more towards his trajectory of becoming Lord Commander of
the Kingsguard and being Eve Little.
Faith, You don't think he was going to beat the Lord?
Yeah. That's it.
Yeah, Yeah. We'll never.
Know we'll never know. OK, well, that's a good stopping
point. We're right at the point where
the Duncan is accosted and beat up by Aryan's men.
So next time we'll get to the climax of the story itself and
probably be able to finish it. We'll be able to discuss the
death of Baylor directly, the similarities to things like
Makar and Stannis killing their own brother and and not taking
responsibility, full responsibility for it.
Lots of other parallels, lots of other fun stuff.
And we've got a few things that we've saved up, such as the
aforementioned parallels, but also a bunch of funny lines.
Sean and I have taken a note of some good quotes.
A few of them we've already, we've already cited, as you
know, but we've got several more that'll be fun.
That'll be one of the last things we do, kind of a nice way
to. Do our send.
Off in between stories. And then of course, we'll be
getting to The Sworn Sword the week after we finished the Hedge
Night. We'll see how that goes.
So folks, if you have questions that you want answered, since
we'll probably be moving on from the Hedge night, this is the
best time to get them in. If you have questions relating
direct to the Hedge night, if they're just relating overall to
Duncan Egg, well, they can be fit in pretty much anytime
during this run through of three stories.
But we do appreciate any questions you send.
We enjoy answering your questions, but if you don't send
them, we'll be just fine. We have plenty to say without
them too. Yeah, thanks everyone for coming
today. Appreciate if you came live and
asked questions and hang out in the chat that is awesome.
But if you also catch it afterwards, that is also
awesome. We appreciate you listening and
or watching and or participating in all the different many ways
we have available to participate or not.
If you choose to just be a listener, that is fine too.
We are cool with. All.
Shapes and sizes of participation.
You do what is best for you, what is most comfortable for
you, and we'll just keep putting episodes out.
Thanks as well to our all of our people who keeping our social
media sites running and healthy history Westeros mods, our
Discord mods, everybody on Facebook, everybody doing all
the things helping keep our discussions extra cool.
Thanks again to Nina. Thanks again to Michael Klarfeld
for the maps and our video intro.
Thanks to Kevin McLeod for the Valeritas music.
Thanks to Joey Townsend and Jesse Koval for the regular
History of Westeros intro outro music.
Thanks to our Ben Genier for editing and sound quality
assistance. I do the, you know, editing as
far as what gets cut and what doesn't, but then works on the
sound quality. We want a shout out, of course,
as we often do our friends at Hereby Dragons, they are
discussing the Clone Wars again. They've done the Clone Wars
before, but now they're up to Season 6.
There's a lot of Clone Wars to discuss.
It's one of the biggest series of Star Wars material outside of
the movies. Probably the biggest.
While we're bringing up. Star Wars Everybody should read
the High Republic books. They are quite.
Bad I. Really was actually blown away
by the most recent book. It was really good.
So there's my my recommendation of the week the word first was
called. Light of the Jedi second was
called the Rising Storm. They're set like say I shed in
the High Republics. There's quite a while ago.
There's not a lot of familiar characters.
There's only one character you've heard of Yoda.
Yoda, he's. Not really in it, he just.
Mentioned. But that's the cool thing.
You have all these Jedi and they, a lot of them get full
introductions and a little bit of back story.
You have no idea which ones are going to die and which ones are.
So the conflict is pretty legit, the tension pretty legit.
They're all page turners. They're not.
It's not high literature. It is the High Republic.
But it's good. It's very solid.
It's well written, page turning, good action adventure.
Star Wars is fun if you like Star Wars.
Interesting. Themes that you would imagine,
you know, about the militarization of the Republic
and the the fall of the Jedi and just how they get to the kind of
inferior version that they are during the prequels.
Yeah, it's really good. Very.
Good. We have.
Given a rousing rendition of that.
And with that, we'll say goodbye, everyone.
Thanks again and until next week for more Bella Reece.