After Liana and Rhaegar disappeared, shall we say, since
it looked like different things to different people, Brandon
Stark, heir to Winterfell and older brother of Ned and Liana,
rode to King's Landing to confront the Crown Prince
Rhaegar, taking a few companions with him.
Only a few. His father, Lord Rickard, did
not follow for reasons which we shall discuss.
Mad King Aries had grown ever more paranoid and cruel after
the defiance of Duskindale, attorney of Harrenhal, and so
many lost children over the years prior, and he responded to
Brandon's anger with one of his most infamous acts.
This was a brief but vital precursor to Robert's Rebellion.
This was the point of no return. People started being killed.
Well, that's really when you can't go back.
After what Aries did to Brandon and Ricard and those other Lords
and their sons, war was all but certain.
It was so horrible that Catlin and Bran and other Starks were
never even told all the details. Something we'll explore is the
idea that even Ned himself doesn't know some of it, maybe
even some of the major details. It's not like he was there for
it, but someone else we all know pretty well was.
In this episode, we'll focus on 4 characters.
We'll get into their perspectives, dig into their
minds as much as we can for the length of this affair, not
bouncing around between them. But each of them in turn will
wonder what they were thinking or not thinking in quite a few
cases, or feeling what their options were or what they
couldn't do and what they did and didn't know about each other
or each other's intentions. Those 4 characters and in the
order we will pursue them, Brandon Stark, Mad King Aries,
Lord Rickard Stark, and the only person we can be sure of who
witnessed it all and is still alive and is the only one of
these four to be in the Song of Ice and Fire POV character Sir
Jamie Lannister. We will be digging deep into
those characters as they pertain to this event.
There are several quotes from Jamie, and there's some more
from Catlin and Ned and a few others like Bran.
Even we readers know more than most of the characters involved,
right? They each know a slice of the
story. We have access to all of their
slices, and even their slices are come with uncertainties,
however. But still, with that in mind, we
have a lot more information than they do, including the world of
Ice and Fire, which weighs in on this, unlike a lot of other
things. So we will uncover as much of
that mystery as possible and highlight what remains, where
the big questions are, the ones we can and can't answer, and
what's left to discover and how it's impacted Westeros and
several of our favorite and most important characters since all
that and more on this episode of History of Westeros Podcast.
Hello and welcome. It's another Sunday live stream.
We do these most Sundays at 3:00 Eastern.
That is our preferred time slot. You can catch us live at that
time or catch the edited version on Spotify, or you can listen to
it on any podcast platform if that's your jam.
And you can also get it ad free if you listen on Patreon.
This is Topics Moot episode #1 of 2025.
Topics Moot is a Now yearly since this is the second year
and we're into it now, of Topics Moot, where patrons vote in
weekly polls conducted in February and March over the
series of weeks to determine a bunch of different episodes.
Last year was 12, this year it's going to be 16, and halfway
through the episode I'll read you which ones have been picked
besides this one. So far it's been pretty fun and
there's more to come. Thanks as well to
ninagoodqueenalley.tumblr.com. That's where you can find her
and she's always writing good things over there.
Her latest post is a question from Anonymous that says, do you
think Sansa is connected to the Winter Rose and Liana?
Do you think there are meaningful parallels going on?
And you'll want to see what Nina has to say about that.
She's also, of course, got some notes in this episode, as is so
extremely common, and we love it.
So if you have questions for us.westeroshistory@gmail.com is
how to get in touch with us. Or you can hit us up with live
questions. If you're here attending the
stream right now. At the end of the episode, I
will mention some episodes that overlap with this one a little
bit, or at least relate to it if you want to stay immersed or
continue your journey. And they'll also be the answer
to this trivia question, which is we're told that Aries
executed all the fathers of Brandon's companions, but one of
those fathers had died long before, so Aries couldn't get
him. Which of Brandon's companions
was fatherless prior to the executions?
Now, as is the case with the trivia questions, the answer is
revealed during the episode. If you're paying attention, some
of you may already know. However, I'm proud of you if you
do, because this one's kind of hard.
So this one doesn't have creative section header names as
much as usual because we're doing these sort of character
perspective takes here, But we are starting with another Stark
family secret. Then I'm going to run through
just a quick list of the events. Then we're going to do Brandon,
Aries, Lord Ricard, and Jamie, and then some aftermath.
And that's it. That's the episode.
Each one of these chunks will take a bit of time, and we'll
have fun exploring what it must have been like for each of those
characters as these events unfolded.
There are some lots more work really to be done on Robert
Rebellion. It's such a huge event.
That's why we never tried to tackle it all at once.
I mean, we've done the Battle of the Trident, we've done the
abduction of Lyanna, we've done the episode Stormborn, we've
done an education which was young Ned.
And a lot of these have a lot to do with Robert Rebellion, or at
least significant amount to it. There's so many more to go.
We've never fully focused on the Tower of Joy.
We haven't done Stonysept, we haven't done the Tournament of
Harrenhal, we haven't done the sack of King's Landing.
There's a lot, a lot, a lot. So this is just one particular
chunk, one big chunk really, because of how important it is.
Arguably the one that, as I said in the intro, take it out and
there may not be a there may be a chance to back down on both
sides. The provocation had already been
there. But until people start getting
killed, there's a chance that it doesn't have to turn into an A
big old civil war. But as we know, that is what
happened. Well, let's get into another
Stark family secret. Ned never told the worst of this
to Kat or his children, as far as we can tell.
It seems like he just spared it, spared them that because it's
such a horrible story. She ends up learning a lot of it
from Jamie during the story. And that comes up especially
near the end of Clash of Kings. Unlike Jon Snow's parentage,
which you could kind of understand why Ned kept that
secret that's protecting someone's life.
This is all in the past. It's just it doesn't matter.
It's not a secret that will harm anyone other than the person
having to think about it because it's just a terrible thing to
think about. It isn't like the secret itself
holds danger to others. So here is where Bran thinks
about it as he's down in the Crips quote.
They were almost at the end now, and Bran felt a sadness creeping
over him. And there's my grandfather, Lord
Ricard, who was beheaded by Mad King Aries.
His daughter Lyanna and his son Brandon are in the tombs beside
him. Not me, another Brandon, my
father's brother. They're not supposed to have
statues, that's only for the Lords and the Kings.
But my father loved them so much he had them done.
Beheaded, you say? No, he was not beheaded.
Definitely not. It was much worse than that,
much more horrible. He suffered a lot.
It wasn't simple and painless like a beheading often is.
We don't even know what Brandon thinks of how Brandon died.
He doesn't even mention it here. If he knew about it, it would be
hard for him not to mention because it was so awful it's
hard to just gloss over it. But the second part is
definitely true that Ned really did love his siblings that much,
but it's also the manner of their deaths that drove him in
part to make the statues of them because they had a particularly
tragic deaths that were really a lot of the results of
communication errors or things that could have been resolved.
A lot of people getting angry, as we'll see, there were
numerous points that maybe this could have been averted.
And we've seen them in other episodes that we've discussed.
There's things that could have stopped it.
So for Ned's perspective, and he bears the biggest burden of all,
probably at least until his own death, from seeing all and, and
seeing all these and witnessing all these tragedies that
happened to his family, He's really the only person that had
all that information. And it wouldn't be the first
time Ned avoided details of his past with his children.
Nina reminds US Ned described Arthur Dayne to Bran as the
finest night he'd ever seen, but then got sad and would say no
more, right. He didn't want to talk about the
Tower of Joy for John's sake. He doesn't want to even get
close to that subject. You know, that's part of keeping
the secret, but also he's traumatized by it.
Ned was surely that affected him deeply personally.
And the Reed children remember how shocked they were that Bran
had never heard the story of the Night of the Laughing Tree or
the Tournament of Harrenhal. He hadn't heard any of that.
And that's very likely for the same reason that Ned didn't even
want to get started on that journey.
It would just, it would just cause more questions to get
asked and Ned didn't want to have to answer those questions.
So he he didn't even want to start walking down that path
because of where it would lead. Not just because of the
information, but because it was painful.
So Brand's sanitized version is kind of telling.
Perhaps he'll learn the truth one day using his powers, or
maybe he'll just get told somehow.
That's a little harder to imagine.
Like, who's going to tell him at this point?
But it is Catlin who is actually confronted by the truth directly
in a very unlikely place, the dungeons of River Run, But not
from an unlikely person. A witness quote.
As he laughed, she realized the wine had done its work.
Jamie had drained most of the flag in and he was drunk.
Only a man like you would be proud of such an act.
I told you there are no men like me.
Answer me this, Lady Stark. Did your Ned ever tell you the
manner of his father's death or his brothers?
They strangled Brandon while his father watched and then killed
Lord Rickard as well. An ugly tale and 16 years old.
Why was he asking about it now? Killed, yes, but how?
The cord or the axe, I suppose. Jamie took a swallow, wiped his
mouth. No doubt Ned wished to spare you
his sweet young bride, if not quite a maiden.
Well, you wanted truth. Ask me.
We made a bargain. I can deny you nothing.
Ask. Dead is dead.
I do not want to know this. But learn it she does.
With this information and more, we piece it all together as best
as we can, and we'll return to Kat's conversation with Jamie
later in the episode. But regarding the common, no
doubt Ned wished to spare you. Is it possible Ned himself
doesn't know the whole story? Let's consider that briefly
here, with a quote from Eddard 1.
Brandon had been 20 when he died, strangled by order of the
Mad King Aries Targaryen only a few short days before he was to
wed Caitlin Tully of River Run. His father had been forced to
watch him die. He was the true heir, the eldest
born to rule. Now this is Ned's inner
monologue. It kind of undersells the
horror, doesn't it? He doesn't even think about his
father being roasted. His father had been forced to
watch him die. That really undersells.
He's forced to watch him die while roasting to death himself.
While Brandon was also forced to watch that.
So it's not like Eddard is trying to deceive someone here.
It's again, this is his thoughts.
But as Nina pointed out earlier, just as Ned has been seen to
keep things from his children and Catelyn, well, he avoids
certain subjects in his own mind too.
It's like he's good at compartmentalizing or he's been
forced into it. Some of it's maybe a little bit
of authorial license. Of course, Ned, you know,
doesn't think about all the details of the Tower of Joy or
never thinks of John's nose parentage directly.
There's just little clues here and there.
So that's at least in line with that.
This isn't the only thing that Ned doesn't think about
directly, but still, it's a little curious.
And the and the presentation is different.
We can consider that maybe he doesn't know the whole truth.
How would he? Who was in that throne room that
he could have spoken to later about it?
Did Jamie tell him? I don't think so.
I don't think Jamie gave him the truth.
Barristan maybe would have been there, but that's not even a
sure thing. As we'll explore later.
There would have been maybe some guards or other servants, but
how would Ned know who they were?
Would he seek them out and track that information down?
It's not entirely clear. So he might be short a few
details himself. On the other hand, Robert says
also in the next chapter to Eddard.
Actually, he didn't say he roars as Robert is won't to do what
Aries did to your brother Brandon was unspeakable.
The way your Lord father died, that was unspeakable.
You know, they're arguing about certain things, and that sounds
like they know at least to some extent.
Like, yes, 'cause it was unspeakable.
But if he just was, had his head chopped off, maybe not.
Oh, we, we seem to have, we seem to have some dusting, live
dusting going on here during the episode.
Who made these? They look like shit.
Oh, these were made by some German guy, I think his name was
Michael. Must be told.
Sure. Yeah, must be, ladies and
gentlemen. And that was the Michael
Klarfeld himself. Yes, the actual creator of these
maps all the way from Germany. We have them in the house.
Just to clean. Them just to clean.
Them just to clean them up for us.
He was offended at how dirty we left them, so he came all the
way here to fix that up. Now we're not going to let him
leave either. So we're also going to have to
delete this episode because it contains evidence of the
kidnapping. So don't tell.
Let's talk real quickly about running through the events of
this brief saga before we get into the our little homemade
character perspectives here. It starts with the connection to
Lyanna's abduction slash kidnapping slash elopement.
Brandon was headed to his own wedding or at his own wedding at
River Run, and he got word that his father was on the way.
So he left to go north to meet his father to greet him on the
road. And they found out on the road
about Liana and Rhaegar. And Brandon heads straight to
King's Landing and demands that Rhaegar come out and die
according to Jamie. And then Aries has him and his
companions imprisoned on charges of conspiring to kill Rhaegar,
summons their fathers, and then Rickard and the other nobles
arrive, probably together as they'd likely have come S for
the wedding. It's their future Lord Brandon
that all these sons are are accompanying, so makes sense
that they'd be going to that wedding and perhaps why they
were even there in the 1st place.
So. And then things played out from
there with the horrors. So let's start with Brandon.
As we said, Brandon would have been on his way from River Run
to meet his father on the road. Just you know how nobles behave.
I guess maybe he was bored. Like, yeah, let me go greet my
Lord father on the road. Little welcoming party.
You know, we're all here to get married and then have this
arrangement and all that. I don't know if he was just
wanted to get out and ride or just that's just what nobles do.
I'm not sure. But either way, it's a
reasonable thing to do. And up comes this interruption
somehow. Somebody, we're not sure who it
was. We discussed it a bit more in
the abduction of Leona episode. Probably someone in Leona's
party or someone who saw a witness, you know, might have
been around someone in the Wentz territory because it would have
been close to Harrenhal where this all happened.
It could have just been some random person that witnessed it
from afar. But if Leona bolted from her
companions, they might have gone to report on that.
Anyway, it's the world book that tells us that Brandon got to
River Run and then left to meet his father.
So and we also confirmed that from Catlin.
Catlin had a goodbye from Brandon.
He's like, hey, I'm going to leave, I'm going to come back
and then we'll get married and etcetera.
And like, who could have possibly known that this Liana
business would have happened? There was no foreshadowing or
warning of anything like this. It was just a, hey, let me head
out, meet my dad, and then I'll be right back and boom, we'll
get married and and then we begin our lives together.
Imagine Brandon's perspective here.
We're trying to focus on that. What's he thinking?
He's already mad about what happened at the attorney of
Harrenhal that was upsetting the Rhaegar, giving Liana the Laurel
of blue roses, the Queen of Love and Beauty award in front of
everybody. That was embarrassing.
That was, you know, Brandon apparently had to be restrained.
You know, Robert laughed it off but was probably actually upset
about it. So this isn't out of nowhere.
This isn't something that's a new provocation.
It's a sore spot already for Brandon, perhaps more so than
anyone. He might have been the most
upset about what happened at the tournament more than anybody
else. I think if I had to guess, hey,
I'll guess yes. I'd say Brandon was the most
upset about it, even more so than Robert, and he might have
been upset even more. He may have seized at it because
nothing had been done right since then.
There hadn't been any words said.
He probably maybe expected something to be said or maybe an
apology, but nothing happened. His father hadn't done anything.
Maybe he tried to talk to Lord Richard and he wasn't going to
do anything about it. He just like, let's just let it
drop, son. But no, that's not what
happened. So he might have been steaming
over that. And we know he's quick to anger
and was already angry about this.
So it's not much of A leap at all.
So what does he say? What's the scenario here that
allows him to just leave and go to King's Landing?
I can't imagine Lord Rickard consented to this.
It's almost impossible to imagine that.
I, I really don't think that's the case.
So perhaps they argued about he's like, I we need to go do
something about this right now. Rickard might have been like,
hey, let's be cautious, let's be diplomatic, let's go there.
And strength won't just ride off hot headed.
That's not going to help. But Brandon apparently isn't the
type to take advice like that. And maybe that's exactly what he
did. He gets frustrated at his
father's calm, rational approach and it just bolts immediately
leave. Maybe he says I'm not going or
he's just fine and then just sneaks away something like Jon
Snow sneaking off in the night, but instead of his companions
coming to get him, his companions go with him, right?
Something like that. Or he just left and left
quickly. And Ricard immediately was like,
oh, I, I can't catch him. I mean, he's fast and he's going
to ride all night. And even if I could catch him, I
wouldn't, my men wouldn't be able to turn him around.
They'd they lacked the authority to tell the heir to Winterfell
to stop and they're not going to do it by force.
And he's clearly going to do what he wants.
Or maybe Brandon misled his father and said, hey, I'm just
going to go and talk to them. And I kind of doubt this one,
but I'll throw it out there. You know, it's like, hey, I'll
be polite. I'll make you know, I'll bring
it up. I'll say, hey, this is on.
This is unbecoming of the Crown Prince to run off with my
sister. You know, shouldn't you do
something about this? So maybe that seems hard to
believe. But So what Aries ended up doing
is kind of hard to believe, too. I don't think anyone saw that
coming. I'm not even sure Aries saw that
coming. He may have just reacted in the
moment. But getting ahead of ourselves
either way, we have these five guys that go to the Red Keep
with Brandon. Well, 5 total.
Brandon is number 5. We have Ethan Glover who's
Brandon Squire, so he is of course is going no matter what.
Then we have Jeffrey Mallester, Kyle Royce and Albert Aaron.
We don't know much about Mallester and Royce.
We know that Kyle Royce was not a son of Bronzeon Royce, might
have been a cousin or a nephew or something like that, but he
definitely wasn't a son. And Jeffrey Mallister, also, we
don't know his relation to the current Lord Jason Mallister,
but Albert Aaron was the heir to the veil.
He was John Aaron's nephew. This was before Sweet Robin was
born, so this was the heir presumptive.
So his nephew. This might have made them all
feel safer. They're like, hey, we're a bunch
of important nobles. Even if we embarrass ourselves
or lose our tempers in front of someone of higher rank, what's
the worst that could happen, right?
I mean, slap on the wrist, tossed in a tower cell for a
little while to cool off. They're not thinking.
I don't. I don't know that they're
thinking much at all about penalties, but they're not
thinking of death. They're not thinking of that.
I just, I doubt it occurred to them.
Now, Jamie says they were quote, all Lord's sons.
It seems to me though, but it's not entirely true.
I mean, Albert Aaron was definitely not a Lord.
He was the heir. But, you know, we can be using
the term Lord loosely here, like Lord Tyrion and Lord Varis.
Like these, these aren't Lords of territory.
They're Lords as honorifics, and they're related to Lords.
And yeah, so it probably wasn't meant to be particular, but it's
interesting to consider the possibility that these guys were
even higher rank. You know, Jeffrey and Glover and
Kyle Royce might have been higher ranked than we even
thought, which would make the whole total rank of the party
even higher, which makes the whole crime committed here even
grander. So anyway, this is still only
five guys. No matter who they are, it's
only 5 dudes. So they're definitely not like
going to take Liana back by force.
That clearly wasn't their intent.
Or if it was, I mean, that's silly.
They're going to March into King's Land and go to the Red
Keep and the five of them are going to draw their swords and
pull like it doesn't. That's not rational.
Even for crazy angry guys, they're not like it doesn't seem
like that was their plan, right? So it's one thing to think about
Brandon and what he's thinking or not thinking, but this isn't
just like an overnight ride. It's not like they left the area
near River On and the next day they're at King's Landing still
angry. Now this is like 2 weeks or
three weeks of riding maybe, maybe on the lighter end because
they probably were going fast, like Brandon was probably
pushing it. They were probably sleeping very
little and riding hard and changing their horses often,
things like that. So he had time to cool off, even
riding quickly. He had it was probably at least
two weeks, but he didn't cool off apparently, because from
what we hear, he when he got there, he was just fired up.
He was yelling, he was threatening.
What did his companions expect? Were they just like, whatever
you want, Brandon, we're with you, you know, or were they
like, I'm with you, but this is a bad idea, bro.
And what did they all think happened?
Like, Brandon was probably very opinionated about what Rhaegar
did, but they didn't necessarily have all the details right.
They may have had, some of them may have had their own opinions,
which they might have kept quiet about because they wouldn't want
to upset Brandon. And they're there to support him
and the Starks and their future, you know, the future Lord of
Winterfell. And you know, you want to get in
good with him, I suppose, you know, and there are probably
some genuine friendship and play here.
You know, you got young men, there's some camaraderie.
You got like this. This offense was committed
against him. It's, it's a righteous 'cause
they're on here like they, they probably feel justified and like
they're doing the right thing here.
Because remember what we said in the abduction of Liana episode,
Even if Liana went willingly, Rhaegar shouldn't allow that as
the Crown Prince, he should be looking out for her honors,
honour, quote UN quote. But so, you know, in this
society, him running off with her is a complete no no, you
know, even if it was innocent, which it wasn't, so Rhaegar's
guilty no matter what. It's just a degrees of guilty
here. Like, is he?
If he kidnapped her, that's obviously worse.
But even just them running off together and eloping is bad.
And even all this is uncertain though, because Brandon's got a
huge temper and who knows what his temper brain was thinking or
making him think and who knows what thoughts were flying
through his head. He might have been pretty
irrational about it all. And Anita is definitely on team
believing that Brandon thought it was an abduction.
And I, I tend to that way as well.
So that just in intensifies the whole thing that Brandon would
be even more angry about it and saying, hey, look, King court,
whatever, this is a blatant crime.
I shouldn't have to do anything other than point it out.
And you all should make good on it, you know, because it is,
again, hard to believe he intended to go there waving a
sword. And, and just, I mean, he did
apparently say come out and die Rhaegar.
But you know, that's, those are just angry words, right?
I, I also wonder why they assumed Rhaegar and Liana went
to King's Landing. Is it just, was that an
assumption or did they know? Well, they were wrong if they
thought they knew that. It's maybe a little odd, maybe
not, though. Let's let's examine this
briefly. So everyone got it was a pretty
dramatic when Rhaegar gave Leona the crown of Laurel, Laurel of
love and beauty and all that. It's one thing to do that in
front of everybody, but it's a whole other thing to bring her
home in front of everybody to the Red Keep.
Like take her to like your chambers where everyone can see
it. That seems like going more than
one step farther, right? Maybe I'm overthinking it.
You know, maybe she would, maybe he would do that.
Maybe that is a a reasonable thing for a guy that's already
taken this step to do. But like his wife is there, you
know, Elia is there. He's still married to her.
Like she's not, she's not gone. She's not in Dorne.
You know, his kids are there. This is it's kind of a big deal.
You know, I I think it's a little out of hand for him to do
that, but still, Brandon would want to confront the king about
it and say, hey, look, look at your son has done, you know, if
Rhaegar isn't there to answer for this, he still wants to
bring it to the attention of a higher authority, even though
that turned out to be a horrible idea.
You know, you could see why that might be the thing to do is
like, hey, I want justice here, you know, and the only one who
can bring justice to the Crown Prince is the king is the only
guy that outranks him. So you know, Nina argues maybe
Rhaegar would have been that bold and maybe it's not
irrational to think that Rhaegar would have done that.
But hey, and it also be where else would Brandon go?
You know, where else would he start looking?
He's like, well, maybe he wouldn't go to the red key.
Maybe Rhaegar would run out somewhere or would run somewhere
else where Dragonstone. Well, if he that's the only
other like reasonable guess, he certainly wouldn't guess Dorn,
which is where they actually went right.
So Brandon never would have found them otherwise, I don't
think Yet another tragedy along the way.
You know, if if just Aries hadn't reacted the way he did,
or if Brandon to use different language or Brandon started
looking somewhere else, another, another coulda woulda, shoulda.
Now, after those couple of weeks of riding, after not cooling
off, after whatever they discussed amongst themselves,
those five companions got to King's Landing, rode through the
streets, rode up the King to the Red Keep, were let inside.
And here's Jamie telling what happened next quote.
He rode into the Red Keep with a few companions, shouting for
Prince Rhaegar to come out and die, but Rhaegar wasn't there.
Aries sent his guards to arrest them all for plotting his son's
murder. The others were Lords sons too,
it seems to me. So this is presumably the same
courtyard where Tyrion slapped Joffrey after the riot.
Just inside. You get inside the red keeps
gates and it's the first thing right?
This is right after the riot they ride in, right?
Just like Tyrion was furious that Joffrey incited the crowd,
Brandon is furious that the Crown Prince ran off with his
sister. Again, no matter what reason he
had for it, no matter what Brandon thinks it's an offense,
It's a dishonouring. So I don't know what he thought
was he was expecting. Again, I don't think Brandon was
doing much thinking at all here, but maybe in his mind, thinking
that Aries would be apologetic, that he would say, hey, this is
this. I agree with you.
This is a dishonouring. And if he says it out loud to
everyone, everyone hear, that makes it more public.
It's harder for Aries to sweep it under the rung he has to
respond to a public injustice committed against a great house.
But of course, that's not what worked at all.
Aries was not. Oh, gosh, I'm sorry my son ran
off with your sister. That's a dishonorable thing to
do. You're right.
Let's get this sorted out. We'll make amends.
Yeah, of course, that's not what happened.
But I think maybe that's where somewhere in Brandon's mind, he
was thinking this is what should happen and that's what he's
going to get. Because he's Brandon Stark, he's
the heir to Winterfell, his sister's important.
He's going to do everything he can.
It's a little combination of bravado and arrogance and
genuine care for his his siblings.
So all that. It's obviously not remotely what
Aries would do. This is a guy who barely knows
the Mad King. He doesn't really know what to
expect. He may have heard a few things.
He saw him at the Tournament of Harran Hall a little bit saw the
long fingernails and the long hair, but he he looked probably
kind of cowardly and timid, right?
He he demanded the identity of the night of the laughing tree,
but for the most part, I don't know.
He he doesn't. He cuts a kind of AI don't know
about intimidating figure isn't the right word.
He seems a little crazy and out of sorts and looks like he his
mind probably operates and maybe.
So maybe Brandon didn't fear that for whatever he.
Maybe he thought that was a, a weak man that he could sort of
push around a little. Hello, Casanova.
More fool him for believing that.
I mean, this is the man who exterminated all of the
Darklands and Hollards. So.
I don't know. Brandon maybe was thinking of
certain things and not thinking of others.
But again, Brandon's only 20 years old, not fully up on all
the events of the world. Yeah, well, what a plot, though.
Ares accused them of conspiring for plotting his son's murder.
Plotting, you say? I mean, that's not a plot.
They plotted to demand he come out and die.
Oh, that's cunning. We'll we'll walk in.
We'll demand he comes out and die, and then he'll die.
Ha, ha. They'll never see through that
plan. What?
This isn't a plan. It's it's it's neither cunning
nor even a plan. You can't even call it a plan.
It was just what he did. So, yeah, Aries, as Jamie said,
immediately had them arrested, hauled off, tossed into, you
know, a cell, whatever that means.
They had to sit there for a while.
And what does that mean for them?
Were they sitting there wishing they had acted differently?
Or were they just expecting that this was part of the plan, that
this would work, that, hey, escalating is going to work out?
We're in prison and they will have to negotiate now, right?
My father will come, our fathers will come, etcetera, and they'll
work this out. You know, that may have been
another one of an aspect to Brandon's rashness, thinking
that, hey, I'll escalate by making this really loud in
public and then it'll bring everyone together and they'll
have to work it out. He just didn't foresee how bad
it could have gotten. He didn't foresee an escalation
to violence. But Aries was all about that.
He was all about escalation and paranoia.
But of course, Aries didn't do anything right away.
He locked them up and made them wait because he summoned their
fathers. He sent out letters, Ravens, and
then, well, we had to wait. They had to wait for those
fathers to receive those letters and then travel to King's
Landing. So again, weeks pass, Aries
could have cooled off. They could have asked for a word
with the king and apologized. Of course, none of these things
are super likely, but there was time for it.
It didn't happen, of course. So at this point, Brandon, his
companions are helpless. They lose all their agency.
There aren't even witnesses to anything.
They're just sitting in cells. So this is a good time for us to
move on to our next perspective. But I wanted to mention one
thing here, one quote between the Catlin and Jamie
conversation that I think is pretty telling about the
character of Brandon. In the same conversation that
Jamie says there are no men like me.
We've already quoted it. Jamie says this to Catlin quote.
Brandon was different from his brother, wasn't he?
He had blood in his veins instead of cold water.
More like me. Brandon was nothing like you.
If you say so. The big difference is though,
Jamie saw how Brandon died, Catelyn did not.
Catelyn didn't exactly know Brandon super well right?
They didn't spend much time together.
She spent a lot of her life especially to that point
thinking she would marry him. But they didn't spend a lot of
time getting to know each other. She barely knew him at all.
They but she did know him better than Jamie did.
But still, Jamie saw how he died and saw how he came charging
into the Red Keep with those demands and that foolish
gallantry, as Lord Hofster will call it later.
So I think Jamie did know what he was talking about when he
said Brandon was a bit like me. We have a very distinct example
of this. Jamie also rode with a few
companions to confront Lord Eddard in the streets of King's
Landing, angrily demanding to know what they had done with his
sibling. Right, It wasn't his lover, it
was Tyrion 'cause I said sibling with Jamie.
So that does need to be qualified, but it's a similar
situation. Jamie's taking less of a risk in
terms of his own person, but no less of a risk in terms of
escalating a conflict between 2 great houses that can and does
turn into civil war. In both cases, that's what
happens. And in both cases, this dispute
over a sibling and the seizure, slash, abduction, slash arrest
or whatever, whatever, however each individual perceives it has
dire consequences not long afterwards.
This episode, as I said at the beginning, is one of our topics.
Moot winners. The other five winners so far
are the Winterfell murders, which is a examination of all
the murders taking place during A Dance with Dragons at
Winterfell, while the Bolton's and Manderleys and praise and
everybody is all there together. And the killing of Kevin, as in
Kevin Lannister, the murder of Kevin, why virus is doing it, A
lot of other details along that. So those were winning those.
Those won a poll, a set of polls.
There was 1 poll about murders and there was another poll about
executions and then at the end of the week those the winners of
each of those two poles competed against each other and produced
these winners. So we had a lot of other fun
topics like the murders in a Marine, many murders in Marine,
I called it. That was the 4th place finisher,
which of course deals with the the harpies and the the graces
and the shave paint and all that.
So a lot of great fun topics. Each pole has 10 or give or take
one or two topics that people vote on.
So it's quite a lot. And then the next group was
Benjen Stark, Barth Blacksword and Danis the Dreamer.
So it was a Targaryen pole and a Stark pole.
And they face each other down. And some close names, some names
that almost got in there that didn't quite make it were
Visenya. She was close.
So is Sarah Targaryen, Princess Sarah the Unruly, and Brandon
Snow, the one who purported to believe he could murder Valerian
and Maraxes and and Vergar. He never got his chance.
We wonder He may have been in Bran's dream.
So if you want to participate in those polls, come sign up on
Patreon. And we do it every year, like I
said, but you also not. In addition to getting to help
choose episodes, you also get bonus episodes and access to
other fun things like our notes and cool nicknames and shout
outs, things like that question from Wygard.
Hope I said that right. I always think I'm an expert on
A Song of Ice and Fire with all the time I put into reading the
books and listening to podcasts, but those trivia questions
always put me in my place. Love the content though.
Well, I I sometimes make them easier.
Sometimes they make them kind of hard, but I also kind of
sometimes I lose track of what is and isn't hard.
So appreciate that regard. Sam, John.
This person listens to the whole episode, they'll get the.
Answer That's right. I like that that change in the
trivia style that you give the answer throughout the episode.
Yeah, yeah, I used to just the the we first started doing the
trivia question. It was just a random question
and I wouldn't give any context, but but now it's like, yeah, we
worked it into the episode. Now the question is related to
the episode and we get, yeah, nice little evolution of our of
our trivia. Sam Jensen says I catch my first
live stream and witness a kidnapping.
Truly a Westeros podcast. That's right.
We did kidnap this man. No, we didn't kidnap him.
There is no kidnapping whatsoever.
There is no evidence whatsoever of a kidnapping.
None whatsoever. No kidnappings.
Yes, I'm telling you, there's no evidence.
There's no secret messages being passed along here.
Michael isn't holding any signs up.
Let's move on to Aries. Brandon was in a state of anger,
which in many ways simplifies things.
It's a little easier for us to imagine what he's thinking
because he wasn't thinking right.
That's kind of the way I prefer to frame it.
Maybe I'm simplifying too much, but maybe we'll learn more
someday. Aries on the other hand, madness
is a bit harder to predict other than it being unpredictable, but
let's try to get in his head anyway.
I think we can uncover a few things.
An attorney of Harrenhal was the first time Aries left the Red
Keep since Duskindale. It was a surprise that he did so
after Duskindale. Of course.
He killed off all the Darklands and Hollards, minus Dantos of
course. Thanks Barristan, though, he was
pretty clearly in the right. On the occasion of duskindale,
meaning Aries didn't do anything wrong to make that happen.
You know, it seems he was innocent, you know, in terms of
like that situation until he killed all those people, until
he had all those executions on it.
He killed a lot of innocent people.
In that case. It had been a horrible
experience for him though, being jailed and mocked.
So he just didn't leave home anymore.
Can't be, can't be jailed or seized or kidnapped if you never
leave home, right? That's, that's how he thought
about it. The realm had seen him in his
pretty starry state. Rather, when he went to
Harrenhal, they saw his long hair and his nails and his
frailty and his skinniness. He wasn't eating much, you know,
And his stooped bearing, like he was a hunchback, sort of, and
not because he had a problem, just because he was hunched.
And his shifty eyes, I mean, it doesn't inspire confidence you
don't like. That's our king.
Remember very early in the Game of Thrones when John is seeing
everybody come into the dinner and and he thinks Jamie looks
like a king, you know, and and yeah, this is the opposite.
Imagine if you saw Aries. He's like then later he's like,
wait, that's my great grandfather.
That's my or not great grand. That's my grandfather.
Crap, isn't it weird thing of John as the grandson of Aries?
Yeah, it is weird. So was Aries reacting to that?
Did he see how the realm saw him?
Did he leave the Red Key for the first time in 5-6 years?
Maybe it was only four, but quite a few years.
And the way people looked at him, the way they reacted and
turned their face and kind of shocking, right?
Did this make him go deeper into his paranoia?
Did this upset him to see how other people reacted to him?
Did this make him more worried? I I might have.
I don't think it went well. I don't think it made him feel
good. At best case, it didn't bother
him at all. At best case, it was a nothing.
It definitely didn't make him feel good.
And what did everybody think? And then they're seeing the
petty way he treats Jamie. He invests him with the in the
Kingsguard is an honorable noble thing to do and sends him home.
That's just weird and definitely embarrassing.
It's not like something that everyone's going to cheer the
king for. It's clearly petty.
It's clearly dramatic. It's but also confusing to them.
They don't really necessarily understand.
A lot of the nobles would because they understand.
They're aware of Tywin and Aries's problems, they're
feuding and all that. That was public enough.
So they would. Some people would have some idea
of what was going on there, but a lot of other people would just
be like, what is going on here? What is all this?
And but it doesn't look good. It doesn't make Eris look good.
It's not authoritative, it's not kingly, it's not grand, it's
petty, right? It's it's stooping and I'm using
a pun 'cause he was stooped to a low to, to, to a level that's
beneath a king, right. So this is a guy who never
leaves the house and he's going to a huge party.
It isn't just leaving the Red Keep for the first time in
several years. He's going to a huge event.
Not nearby. I mean, it's not like really
far, but it's, you know, 10 days journey, maybe a little longer
if he's going by wheelhouse. I kind of doubt Erius is riding
horseback himself given the way he was like, how's he holding
the reins with those huge nails, right?
It's so weird to imagine doing anything with those long
fingernails. Either way, it's kind of going
to be an ordeal. Like his anxiety, you know, he
hasn't left the Red Keeping all the time.
He's probably like worried like bandits are going to attack
them. Arrows are going to fly.
You know, like all the things that maybe aren't rational
because he's not rational. So you have to go beyond what,
Like this is a place we could be ambushed and he could be
thinking that in a place that's completely unsuited for an
attack. But Aries doesn't know strategy
or battle tactics. He's just everywhere he goes,
he's like, is this going to be it?
Are they going to get me here? You know, he's just paranoid
constantly. And now he's out in the world
for the first time. And the reason he left, as far
as we know, is because he was told by Varis that they were
conspiring against him at this tournament.
So he's also going there to confront or at least interrupt
potential conspiracy against him.
So the his paranoia is maximum, if there is a maximum for Aries.
And then there's this night of the Laughing Tree business.
At first he was convinced the night of the Laughing Tree was
Jamie, right? That's a detail people forget
because that's in the world book, not in the main Song of
Ice and Fire novels. I'm not sure Aries clung to that
belief in the long term. He he would have found out that,
yeah, Jamie did go back to the Red Keep.
I mean, maybe he never even inquired.
But yeah, that would have been strange, you know, to have the
night of the Laughing Tree and never find out who that person
was. But to also have a a weirwood
tree in this northern association.
What did Aries think of the Queen of love and beauty gift?
What did Aries think of that of Rhaegar giving that to Lyanna?
I mean, he's worried about Rhaegar plotting against him.
He's been told that and now he's flirting with a northern girl.
What does that mean? Is Rhaegar trying to bring the
North in and on his conspiracy? That's dangerous for Marius
perspective. He's like oh oh, the North is
going to join my son to overthrow me.
This helps explain a little of his behavior later why he was so
incredibly savage in a way that was even a step farther from for
him. He's already burned people to
death by this point. I mean, he already did what he
did to the Hollards and Darklands.
I'm not sure he burned all of them to death.
He maybe he did. Either way, he had done other
burnings. His love affair with the
substance, with wildfire had begun by this point, so that's a
major consideration. His fear of his son and his
son's associates, now them, that includes northerners, and he's
worried about what that could mean.
And then this night of the laughing tree disappears.
That just makes him even more paranoid about the whole thing.
Like, who is this guy? We never found out who that was.
So he's got the North, he's got Rhaegar, he's the night of the
Laughing Tree, lots of things bothering him, setting off his
paranoia. And he's already very paranoid
that he didn't need any more. And he's not smart.
This guy isn't very bright. He's not able to, like, parse
through some of his own paranoia with some occasional doses of
logic. He just doesn't have that.
And there's all these things going on around him that are
just going to set him off even more.
So while Brandon was seething over Rhaegar, Aries was seething
over Starks and potential Northern enemies here.
So here comes this Stark riding up into the Red Keep, demanding
his son come out and die. Paranoia meet outrage.
Didn't I teach the realm a lesson with how I punished the
perpetrators of Duskindale? Must I teach them a sterner
lesson? Must I do this all myself?
It isn't enough for just this one son and his companion to be
punished, though. Their fathers are responsible as
well. That's an unusual step.
You don't normally arrest people and say hey, bring your father's
2. When else does that ever happen?
Unless they're like, underage, right?
And then still. And even in that case, we're
talking about the real world. When?
I cannot think of another example of that when a bunch of
young nobles are seized and their fathers are called to
account for it. Like Brandon's 20, this is, he's
been a man by the standards of this society for like 4 years.
So this would have thrown some people for a loop right there.
Just this whole demand to bring their fathers in.
And there's a big, big wild card here on top of all this.
Varis, how much did Varis edge him along here or try to pull
him back? Remember, Varis, as far as we
can tell, came along after Duskindale, not long after
Duskindale. So he would have been there for
after Aries's madness. It was well underway and wasn't
really there before it. He was part of the new paranoia
package plan that Aries implemented.
A guy to warn him about everything.
And you know, if you believe Barristan and others, he warned
him about things that weren't there.
Now, Virus is far too cunning for us to make specific guesses
as to what he would have said or done at this time, but this
isn't something I think he would just stand by for.
Is it going to be like just shrug and go?
Or maybe he tried. I mean, Varis tried to tell
Aries not to open the the gates to Tywin.
He didn't listen to him then. And that was well, we know what
happened after that. So maybe Virus was just don't do
this, you know, tried to used all his abilities of convincing
his charisma, his I mean, his virus is good at that sort of
thing, but it wasn't enough. This is a madman.
This is an angry, paranoid madman.
Even Virus can't work with that sometimes, I suppose.
But maybe Virus was pushing him. If Virus was pushing him, it'd
be easy. It'd be like just a little bit
is all I need to do is poke him here, prod once like this.
Just a little bit of pressure here or there, and it's all it
would take because Virus is all as good as Virus is at this
man's already 2/3 of the way there, if not more.
All of Virus has to do. Yeah.
Just a little more push. That's all it takes.
So let's consider a little briefly.
Is the Fagon plan on yet? Arguably, yeah, this is the
perfect time for it because consider this so much hinges on
the baby swap. The baby swap doesn't work if
it's a 2 year old, a four year old, a six year old.
That kids going to have a lot more distinct appearance the
older he gets. Babies are less distinct.
Their hair isn't all the way in yet.
Their eyes maybe change color. Yeah, they don't.
They're not talking very much or at all.
It's easier to pull up a baby swap than a three-year old swap.
So really the time is kind of limited.
This might have been the go time for Varis.
So yeah, he might have pushed Aries into doing stupid things
into hey yeah, kill that Stark. It's perfect to start a war.
Kill a guy that's at the center of starting a conspiracy to take
you on in the 1st place. Meanwhile Rhaegar is also there.
It's the perfect excuse. Maybe all Virus was trying to do
is get Rhaegar to replace him, but he might have wanted full
blown civil war, which is what he got.
On the other hand, we don't know that that this far back.
We can't assume that was actually the plan.
We don't know that Virus and Illyrio had to had conceived of
the Phagon plan that far back. But the timing is about right.
So it's interesting to consider. But back to Aries, I think the
most likely thing is Virus had very little to do with any of
this because he would have reacted to the news.
He would have done his thing. And this, this does kind of read
like the reactions of a madman, a paranoid madman, you know,
kill them and kill all the people associated with them to
make sure that they don't come get me.
It's not very thoughtful. It's not very clean.
It's not very subtle. And Virus, you know, maybe Virus
wanted him to do unsubtle things to take advantage of that chaos.
But I don't know, It's tricky, right?
Very tricky. A crazy parallel here would be
if Virus recommended, Yeah, imprison Brandon, imprison those
guys. And he hopes to calm the
situation down and find a diplomatic resolve, just like
maybe Rickard would have wanted to do as we'll discuss like
Varus did with Ned. Get Ned in jail, you know, help
all that. Don't do anything to stop that.
Allow it to happen, and then try to work out a solution.
Send Ned to the Wall. That's not going to start war
between the two families only for the king to go overboard
with punishment. In that case, Joffrey.
Maybe Egg gone by Littlefinger. Either way, Joffrey did it and
here we have a similar potential situation.
Maybe Varys egged on Aries to do certain things with Brandon and
his companions. Either way though, if Varys had
a plan, I would believe that because Varys is a planner.
Aries though again I don't. I don't know if there was much
plan. I think plan is the wrong word
to assign to what Aries is doing.
I think reacting is more likely, which is, again, is kind of what
Brandon was doing. And both of them had time to
cool down and neither of them did.
So a lot of things in common between Brandon, Aries, even
though Aries is a villain here and Brandon is not, there's
still a lot of, like, emotional states that they shared at
similar steps in this process. So again, didn't harm the
prisoners right away, just accuse them of treason, which is
a very heavy accusation, of course.
But at first, he appeared ready to adjudicate this like a
relatively normal king would. This might be where he's got a
little bit of a plan. He's like, yeah, I'm going to,
I'm going to lure their fathers here on pretenses of justice and
then just have them all killed. That could also have been
Avari's idea, but it's simple enough that you don't need to
assign it to somebody else. When you have a complicated plan
executed by a simple person, you think you wonder if someone gave
them the idea. This is kind of simple in the
1st place, you know? So yeah, I don't have to assume
Avari's was involved. It's just a possibility.
Another person Privy to some of this that I wonder about is
Paisel. He would have been the one to
send the letter demanding that the Lord's come to answer for
their son's conspiracy, right? So that he would, he would have
been aware. I don't know he would do much
about it either. Just be like, uh oh.
And honestly, Paisel was probably just too busy thinking
about how Tywin was right about everything because that's how
Paisel thinks, right? Aries, on the other hand, might
have actually been excited. He might have been like, yeah, I
can't wait to kill these guys. I got them.
He might have been feeling like a winner.
He threw these dudes in jail. Look how stupid they are.
I caught them. You know, I, I, I broke up
conspiracy up, like I'm winning. You know, again, it's hard to
predict how a paranoid mind is working here.
But we know that Aries was manic, that he would go from,
you know, all the way from very high to very low.
He could go from historical laughter to uncontrollable
weeping at the the drop of a hat.
So these extremes are absolutely in his wheelhouse, but we have
to keep in mind that the wheelhouse is huge.
There's a lot, there's a lot of different extremes that are
possible here. But anyway, I do think that
that's likely that he was feeling temporarily confident
because, well, he had his enemies in prison.
He had some very powerful, important hostages that gave him
some leverage. He had captured, in his mind, he
had captured Jamie recently too. So he was, he was looking pretty
good there against the people that that in his mind were after
him. Meanwhile, what was Aries
thinking about radar? Like?
Where does he think radar even is?
Like we don't know where If they had already gotten to the Tower
of Joy by this point, they may have still been travelling to it
by this point or if it's even where they went first.
But Aries might not have had any idea.
He's like, I don't know. I have any clue where my son
went. Does he care?
Does he think, oh, he's off conspiring?
Or does he think hey I caught some of your Co conspirators
here? I mean that doesn't make any
sense that Brandon would be working with Rhaegar right?
He hates him. But paranoid mind, insane mind
here. These only these things don't
have to be rational. The point kind of is without
throwing out too many more examples, just this was perhaps
inflaming his suspicions. The fact that his son was still
gone, maybe ran off with that Stark girl.
He doesn't like that. And maybe it's not his primary
concern. That would be these, these
northern people, you know, these sons and and the ones he just
put in jail. That would wouldn't matter more
to him. He might be thinking, oh, that
Lyanna, that northern girl got away, but these ones won't.
He may have already decided what he was going to do.
Like I said, said, hey, I'm going to lure them here and have
them all killed. Whether he had already decided
on how to kill them, that may have been something he was still
working on, like workshopping. What's the cruelest way I can
have these all kill? This is another thing where I
wonder, you know, if he had some suggestions from some of his
lickspittles, some people that were like, hey, OK, so Council,
come to a meeting here. I want to see, I need ideas on
really horrific ways to execute people.
Hit me, you know, give me their best ideas on how to kill people
horrifically. You know, that's what's a really
cruel way to do this. Anyway, there's a lot of good
reasons, right? If if Aries kills enough Starks
or enough Northerners, one of them's bound to be the night of
the Laughing Tree, right? Just kill enough Northerners
and, you know, yeah, you can feel confident that one of them
was that gosh darn night of the Laughing Tree.
And if not, he's probably killed a lot of his son's allies.
You know, I just did. It's got to be a good thing,
right? This is move ahead with
confidence here, Aries. Let's talk about Lord Ricard.
Move over to him. Because Aries sent those demands
out. Or rather, Paisel sent the
demands made by Aries out, and Lord Ricard received it.
Now we're going to kind of assume that all these Lords were
together again. All those guys were with Brandon
because they were his companions and they were there for the
wedding. His those fathers would have
probably been there too. If not, we've got people
traveling from all over and it gets a little wonky the
timeline. So I assume they were all on the
way to the wedding or at the wedding, or, yeah, waiting for
the wedding to start. But for whatever reasons,
Brandon rode to King's Landing with just those few companions.
And we have no idea what Lord Rickard thought about that.
We could be pretty sure he didn't consent to it.
But, you know, he couldn't stop his son if his son is
headstrong. And what's he going to do, Lock
him up on the road? Tie him up?
It's not like they have a jail cell to put him in.
They're travelling, you know, they're going down the King's
Road. Just limited means to prevent
him. What was Rickard doing, though?
His son runs off to King's Landing.
What's he doing? Is he just like, well, let's see
how this goes? Well, what else is he going to
do, right? What else could he do?
Send men to chase after him? We already talked about that.
That wouldn't have worked. Brandon, be like, I'm not going
with you. Try to stop me.
I'm there to Winterfell. I outrank you.
If this comes to swords, you're never going to you're not going
to hurt me. That go, you know, so I I can I
can bluff my way through this because you can't hurt me.
And I'm like, yeah, OK, good point.
You know, so there's nothing you can do.
They can't chase after him. They'll never catch him.
It's it's it's kind of puts him in between a rock and a hard
place. Rick Hard's got like well, send
men after him to help. That might just antagonize Aries
right. And it's more stark showing up.
Was he more concerned about his alliance falling apart?
Was he commiserating with hoster?
Was he trying to get word to John Aaron say hey, you know,
watch out for all this. Your son just ran off with my
son or your nephew just ran off with my son.
You know, I wanted to make you aware of it.
He's very concerned about his S run ambitions and his alliances
and you know, he he would have be concerned that Brandon ran
off to deal with this thing that he probably can't do anything
about in the short term when he should be getting married to
Catlin to shore up that river run alliance that Tully Stark.
Marriage needs to happen. Why not get married first, then
run off and go try to find out what happened to your sister?
What's the worst that could happen?
What's Regar and Leona doing? They're just having a fling.
Who cares? That's not that big a deal.
Come on, son, is it really that big a problem?
Robert's still going to marry her.
He loves her. He's infatuated.
Don't worry about it. Of course, these are just ideas.
We don't really know what kind of man Rick Hart was, but we do
know he didn't actively, you know, send men or react angrily,
or he had a calmer, more collected reaction.
And yeah, he would be concerned as a father, I'm sure, too.
But it might not have been #1 on his list and he might have been
more concerned about. Brandon, then Liana, he might
have actually been more worried about Brandon Liana because he's
thinking, well, Liana's, you know, she's not in danger of
dying. Brandon's the one who's running,
running off hot headed, you know, going to confront the
king. Now I, I kind of assume also
that their mother was dead by this point, meaning Liara,
Ricard's wife. She was also a Stark, by the
way, that was, that was Ricard's cousin or else she would have
been at the wedding too and she would have had thoughts on this.
So she said she's never mentioned here.
It's it's, it could be a case of just, you know, she didn't get
mentioned, but I guess she was already passed by this point.
But let's also not forget that there is a little unusual thing
here going and why Ricard may have been a little concerned
about making sure his plans weren't interrupted.
The era of Winterfell, marrying a southern girl, highly unusual.
The rank isn't the problem. The Tully's are very high rank.
That's fine. But when had the heir to
Winterfell married a Southern girl in the past?
How many examples are that? There's very few.
You've got Kragen marrying a Southern girl, but that was a
worshipper of the old gods and that wasn't even his first wife.
So yeah, it's I don't know that there are other examples.
So that's odd. Right.
So that's part of the calculus here is all these big plans and
schemes that are going on that that Brandon sort of interrupted
by rushing off to do something that he couldn't do anything
about. So yeah, what is Rickard's
thinking here? He's like, well, Brandon's going
to run off and yell at them, and I'll have to go deal with that.
But he probably just like Brandon isn't worried about
being killed. It's, it doesn't seem like a
rational potential thing that could happen just for words.
When you're that high-ranking, you can get away with words to
the king, to the queen, to whoever.
It doesn't usually because they know that treating your vassals
so lightly, treating them with contempt, treating them with
violence will lead to significant other violence,
which I mean, that did happen, right?
That is exactly what eventually happened.
And that it wasn't unpredictable.
It wasn't like, Oh my God, I can't believe this turned into a
civil war once all those people were killed.
It was like, yeah, well, this is of course, this is going to turn
into a civil war. So that's a major difference
from Brandon, who was really just focused on Liana, 1000%
focused blinders, not thinking about anything else, doesn't
care about the alliance, doesn't care about his own life, doesn't
care about how mad the king is. He's like, Liana must get.
Liana must, you know, Rhaegar must answer for this.
Rickard's got way more things to think about.
He's got to think about both his kids.
He's got to think about all these alliances.
He's got to think about the king.
What's the best way to deal with this madman?
It's not just charging right at him with your demands.
On the other hand, his son's already doing that.
So what does he do about the fact that his son's already
charging in with demands? Assuming he even knows what his
son is doing, which maybe he doesn't.
We do hear Hoster Tully saying that Gallant fool Catelyn
remembers that, so he has. They seem to have some idea of
what Brandon was doing. They call him Gallant, so they
have an idea. We talked about how Brandon is
an unknown commodity to Ares and Rhaegar, but Ricard is the only
one in this scenario who actually knows all his children
really well. Rhaegar doesn't know Brandon
that well. Aries doesn't know Brandon or
Liana that well. Ricard presumably knows his kids
pretty well. Maybe he's a bad father and
doesn't know their personalities, but I'm going to
go with he knows his kids well enough to have some
understanding of how they'll behave in these scenarios
they've gotten themselves into. And he has experience with Aries
unlike everybody else here as well.
There's some interesting timeline here.
Let's delve into that briefly. In the year 262, Brandon was
born. That's the same year Aries took
the throne. So since that was their first
born child, Ricard and Liara Stark, so that their first born
was born that year. So Brandon born in 262, the same
year Aries takes the throne. So Brandon's entire life has
been under this same king and Ricard, of course, that's 20
years. So that's some quite a while.
We know at least once Ricard went to King's Landing, it was
264, so only two years after Aries became king.
He wasn't nearly deep into his madness yet.
He was, you know, maybe a guy that spoke with delusions of
grandeur. He could see maybe the
beginnings of his madness, but maybe it wouldn't have been seen
as madness, just dreaminess or a guy with a big imagination or a
guy with big plans and not a lot of follow through.
That isn't necessarily madness, right?
The idea was, hey, oh, I like what you're talking about with
this wall and the lands beyond the north.
What if we build a second wall farther north and, you know,
claim the lands in between, which is kind of like what the
Romans tried to do with Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine
Wall didn't work, but they actually built the Antonine
Wall, whereas Aries just kind of kind of forgot about that idea
later or just got a different got excited about different
plans instead. So it's possible Ricard had the
wrong idea about Aries. He may have been remembering the
Aries he knew back then and wasn't up to snuff on what kind
of man he'd become. But that's not super likely
because again, Ricard was would have known about the long
fingernails and the long hair and the burnings of people and
what happened to the Darklands and Hollards and all the
Duskandale stuff. So I don't know.
I there's at least he should know some things, but he might
have been in the dark about just how mad Aries had become.
But even if he had, what's he going to do again?
He can't chase after his son. He can't stop it from happening.
This is a ball that's rolling downhill when he's already he's
at the top of the hill. He can't do anything about
something that's already going on like that.
He has all this information, but he has little ability to do
anything about it. He's the Lord of Winterfell, but
he's kind of helpless here. The only person he doesn't know
here, the only person he doesn't have a read on, is Jamie.
And Jamie is just a witness in this episode, even though he's a
very important witness. Jamie is irrelevant to Ricard.
So it's definitely a question of what Ricard did.
We really want to know what he thought, what what he expected
or what he believed would happen.
Was he too distracted by his own plan to consider how bad it
could go? Was he telling himself that this
could all be resolved? Was he thinking, hey, let me go
get all of our allies and come in strength and present
ourselves before the king as a group before he got the Raven
saying you got to come now, right?
He may have had a different plan before the King's demand for him
to show up with the news that his son was accused of plotting
to kill the Crown Prince. I don't think he expected that,
you know, I don't think he expected your son is accused of
conspiracy to murder the Crown Prince.
He he he probably considered the worst case scenario and that
might have been beyond what it was other than, you know,
actually succeeding in murdering the Crown Prince.
That might have been the true worst case scenario.
So Ricard isn't Privy to what happened.
Ricard doesn't know exactly what words were exchanged in the
courtyard. He gets a letter from Aries
saying, you know, plotting to to kill the Crown Prince.
He doesn't know actually what happens.
It must have seemed really weird, though.
He's like my son. The headstrong wolf blooded kid
plotted to murder the Crown Prince.
It doesn't sound like him at all.
If he had been told. Yeah, he ran in and demanded the
king send out Rhaegar to come and die.
That sounds like my son. Yeah, that sounds like what he
would do. He knows his son is headstrong,
not some schemer. He's not cunning.
He's direct. Right.
That's, that's the kind of man Brandon was.
So whatever the various considerations, whatever
conflict was in his heart, whatever he thought would have
been ideal, it doesn't necessarily matter.
He really had no choice. He couldn't just abandoned his
son to Ares. He couldn't allow the honor of
how Stark to be treated any other way.
He had to put his life on the line.
He had to show up for the trial. He had to find a diplomatic
solution or die trying because the honor of his house demanded
it. Great houses don't sit idly by
when their heirs are in peril, especially when it's an
injustice. And this was more than just a
Stark. This was, you know, an Aaron and
a Glover and a Royce and a Malicer.
So Ricard had to go to King's Landing and answer for Brandon
and forget all the stuff I just said.
It's important. But he also just have, you know,
this is a son and a father, like a lot of fathers would do this
regardless, just to stand up for their son.
But it's still, it's ominous, isn't it?
Again, I, I point back to this. Who does this?
Who summons the fathers to answer for the crimes of their
sons? That's unusual.
You wonder if Ricard sent anything ahead, like some men
to, to scout out surreptitiously the mood of the city or anything
like that, find out some details because he wouldn't believe the
letter outright. And the letter wouldn't have all
the details. One thing he might have been
able to do before Brandon got there was send a Raven and say,
hey, my son's on his way. You know, sorry if he's angry.
But maybe that just didn't seem like the right plan.
Or maybe he did do that. It didn't matter.
Like all the other parties so far, Rickard would have had a
lot of time to think about this on the road, riding the King's
Landing, Hopeful outcomes, the worst case scenarios, all the
things Aries might do in each case and how he might respond to
the each of those individual things Aries might do.
He's like, OK, if Aries says this, I need to say this and
this and that. If Aries does this, I need to do
this. He's thinking all these
permutations through in his head and all the the the very slender
hope he might have had of finding a way out of this.
Now, who went with him? I guess he had a retinue, would
have included those other fathers, maybe a few other
guards. But I would have thought, I
mean, I would think it would be kind of a small group.
Must have been a grim procession, however big it was.
Brandon in his companions might have had the idealism of youth
paired with rank and anger and just, you know, they felt like
they had justice on their side. These are much more experienced,
not naive men. They would have had a much more
realistic view of their outlook. But even with that, I don't
think they had much idea what was coming for them.
You know, I don't think they expected just how bad Aries
would be. So they would have arrived, gone
to the Red Keep, brought inside. They wouldn't have been yelling
like there was with Brandon. Probably they would have
submitted, said, hey, we're here to answer the crimes.
We're here for the trial. You know, maybe they were
arrested or just put in tower cells or just, you know, given
freedom of the castle house arrest, something like that.
Maybe they were brought before the king very quickly tried to
argue, maybe tried to dissuade him from this course of action.
Obviously it didn't work, but he tried.
Maybe it seems like he would have at least given it a shot.
Maybe it was just simply straight to the matter, an
immediate demand for trial by combat.
He's like, no, we're, we're not going to argue.
This is what's up. He's like, OK, trial by combat.
I demand that. Now, we don't know what kind of
swordsman Rickard was, but we must recall that Aries's
Kingsguard was considered legendary.
And it's not hard to see why. Jamie Arthur, Dane Barrison, the
Bold, Sir Gerald Hightower, the White Bull, Oswald went, Prince
Lewin, Martel, Jonathan Derry, and these were this is a
murderer's row right here. He expected to fight one of them
and presumably, and that's reasonable, that's rationable,
rational, that's what you would expect.
Like you go to fight the crown, the Kingsguard represented.
In fact, that's it has to be. And we see in A Song of Ice and
Fire, Cersei considers other options like, Nope, got to be
got to be the faith, you know? And then she turns that around
on them later, right? It's got to be the faith, got to
be, got to be the the Kingsguard only has to be the king guard,
only choice. You can't pick someone else.
So Ricard was ready to face that.
And, you know, he probably talked to some of the other
Lords they may have been waiting and to see, hey, if you win this
trial by combat, then we're all innocent, right?
How can Brandon be innocent and the rest of the sons be guilty
if they're just supporting him? If his actions were justifiable,
then them supporting those actions have to be justifiable
too, right? So I kind of guess Ricard was
first here, but maybe not. It's possible that the other
Lords had already been all murdered by the time they got
around to Ricard. I kind of think it went the
other way. I kind of think Ricard went
first, but I'm open to multiple possibilities.
Either way, let's move on to our final character perspective,
Jamie. He's the only one who still
survives among the four. Of course, he's the one who
killed the one that killed the other two.
In many ways, he's the simplest as well, because he doesn't do
anything during this episode. He is a witness.
He has no agency whatsoever. It deeply impacted him.
It absolutely has a huge impact on his personality and how he
views knighthood, the white cloak kings, Westeros, honor
duty. It's huge.
But this was one of the earliest hits to his ideals, one of the
biggest ones. He might even, as we said early
on, be one of the be the only living survivor of these
executions. Again, we can't assume Barristan
was there. Barristan thinks of standing by
the Iron Throne quote as Jaharis's son descended into
madness and doing nothing. He also thinks of things that it
pained him to recall, but nothing specific.
Like, you could easily imagine Brandon and Ricard being one of
those things. But if Barristan saw all those
other executions, so many other burnings, well, that one, it
might just kind of be all part of that montage of horror.
But you'd also think that, you know, there's other people to
guard. Eris had Raela and young
Viserys. And for a while there, Eris was
really paranoid about anything that could happen to his kids
because of what happened to so many of his babies.
But he had left them alone before, unguarded.
Like when he went to Harrenhal for the tournament, he took all
7 Kingsguard, well, the six. And then he made Jamie the 7th
and sent him home. And that's what he said he was
sending him home to do. He said, hey, I'm sending him
back to guard Raela and Viserys. Of course, that's not why he did
it. It was the pettiness.
But that's what he said because it was a decent cover story,
because that is a normal thing for kings guard to do, guard the
other members of the royal family.
So otherwise, yeah, guards, servants, no one with an
identity that we could discern. One of the possibilities that
was Varus. Again, he's somebody that could
have watched. I don't know if Varus is like,
do I really need to be here to watch this?
Maybe yes, because he needs to be there to support area.
I got to support my king in all his burnings, all his horrible
execution, all his tyrannies. I need to be here to witness, to
stand by his side and support him.
Or perhaps he found a reason to be somewhere else because he's
like, I do not want to be here for that.
I do not need to smell roasting flesh again.
So here's what Jamie says happened after Lord Ricard
arrived and demanded a trial. There were trials of a sort.
Lord Ricard demanded trial by combat and the King granted the
request. Stark armored himself As for
battle, thinking to duel one of the Kingsguard.
Me perhaps? Instead they took him to the
throne room and suspended him from the rafters while 2 of Ares
pyromancers kindled a blaze beneath him.
The King told him that fire was the champion of House Targaryen,
so all Lord Ricard needed to do to prove himself innocent of
treason was, well, not burn. I guess Danny could have passed
that test. Hey, she's the only one that's
the innocent of treason is Daenerys.
So Ricard started the affair believing he would have a
regular duel, even though he would have likely thought his
chances poor. He might have still had, you
know, appropriate warrior confidence.
And certainly the cause of righteousness on his side.
He bothered to put on his armor and all that.
So, yeah, he went in there expecting it.
But then they suspended him from the rafters.
Did he did he fight back? Was he seized by a bunch of
guards? And they just held him.
And I doubt he submits to this quietly.
I mean, it's he gets there and expects to duel and they're
immediately disarming him. And this isn't right.
No one would have been pleased to carry out this order, right?
The guards been like the, yeah, maybe a random psycho or two who
happened to be in the King's employ and maybe some of the
pyromancers, they're always, they're all about this kind of
thing. They're they're, they're
preloaded with a lot of this evil.
So let's just take a second to appreciate just how blatant this
is in terms of the feudal system and a King's rights and duties
and that of his vassals. I'll take Nina's lead on it
here. What Aries did with Brandon and
Rickard specifically, and the other nobles too, whose names we
don't fully know, was to say essentially, hey, the feudal
system, feudal contract doesn't exist anymore, I can do whatever
I want. This is an outright tyranny.
I can do whatever I want. He treated the standard, very
long held aristocratic right to justice and trial and just threw
it out the window. Trial by combat is an ancient
and respected form of justice. We all think it's a little
silly, but it's very entertaining for the setting.
And Aries just said it's a joke. Ha ha, Fire's my champion.
Wasn't that hilarious? I mean, it was.
So he is treating it like a joke, right?
That's that's not right. That's not fair.
It's not. I mean, the gods, how are the
gods involved in this? This is the the whole purpose of
the trial by 7 is to allow or a trial by combat is to allow the
seven to weigh in to judge. Fire is not part of the seven in
that sense. The Smith works with fire a
little bit. You know the Crone, you know the
Lantern, you know, but like that's not this is they're not
this isn't relore we're talking about here.
Even relore wouldn't operate like this and having his sword,
Brandon sword just out of reach. I mean, this is, it's terrible.
It's like this is this is a mockery of his right to a trial
by comments like you can fight fire if you can reach your
sword, which is just out of reach.
And it's not just a miscarriage of justice, it is a literal
mockery of justice. Contrast to our favorite Aries
parallel, Searcy, who also has grand plans about building new
edifices similar to the ones Aries mentioned and then
forgetting about that later, who also intends to make a mockery
of trial by combat by using an undead knight.
But that's also not what the gods had in mind for trial by
combat, Fire and the undead. Come on, those aren't
representatives of the seven. What, 7 are these?
You're adding an eighth and a 9th.
It seems like such an easy thing for Aries to do for me, in his
mind, he's like, what's stopping me?
I can do this. I can give the order.
They'll follow the order. They'll burn.
Hey, hey, it's but it's just a fine line or it's not even a
fine line. It's a very blatant, obvious
line that we don't see other King's Cross.
Like even even like Aegon the unworthy do stuff like this Meg
or the cruel. Even he didn't go this far.
He did. He was a little more, he'd be
creative or and he aimed so much of his brutality against the
commoners who were, you know, they can't fight back.
So how shocking was this, right, in terms of other people, in
terms of the the realm, in terms of court and and council, things
like that. As we had said before and as we
talked about in the Stormborn episode, Aries started to become
sexually aroused by fire and by turning people by burning people
to death. But this, my champion, is fire
business is a new level of depravity, right?
He hadn't done that before. He used it as the final form, as
a form of execution. This was.
It's part of the trial now, too. It isn't just the form of
execution. It's like taking over, spreading
like a fire does. The whole justice system is
becoming a roaring bonfire. Perhaps green roaring bonfire.
Now, technically, Airy said that Fire is a champion of House
Targaryen. Not just him, but he's the only
one who did this. Well, maybe if some other
Targaryens would have done this. I don't know.
All of them. So even on top of all that, the
mockery of justice and of the gods and of the rights of nobles
and just general mockery, it's just really cruel, like
unreasonably cruel. Even for medieval execution,
it's cruel because most medieval execution styles, maybe not
most, but a lot of them are really brutal.
They're really violently cruel, but they aren't psychologically
cruel with the whole like, your sons having to watch your son
die too, while he's also strang. Like, yeah, like, that is not.
That's worse than some of the worst medieval punishments I've
heard of. And medieval punishments are as
bad as it gets. Here comes the worst part.
Jamie's telling Catelyn what he saw.
Quote. When the fire was blazing,
Brandon was brought in. His hands were chained behind
his back, and around his neck was a wet leathern cord attached
to a device the King had brought from Tyroche.
His legs were left free though, and his long sword was set down
just beyond his reach. The pyromancers roasted Lord
Rickard slowly, banking and fanning that fire carefully to
get a nice even heat. His cloak caught 1st, and then
his Sir coat, and soon he wore nothing but metal and ashes.
Next he would start to cook, Aries promised, unless his son
could free him. Brandon tried, but the more he
struggled, the tighter the cord constricted around his throat.
In the end, he strangled himself.
As for Lord Ricard, the steel of his breastplate turned cherry
red before the end, and his gold melted off his spurs and dripped
down into the fire. I stood at the foot of the Iron
Throne in my white armor and white cloak, filling my head
with thoughts of Cersei after Gerald Hightower himself took me
aside and said to me, You swore a vow to guard the King, not to
judge him. That was the White Bull, loyal
to the end and a better man than me.
All agree. Jamie doesn't mention it, but
there must have been dead silence from everyone except
Rickard, who couldn't help but be screaming and yelling, and
Brandon most likely yelling as well.
A lot at first, but gradually less as he became unable to
breathe. Everyone probably knew to be
quiet or they would be tossed into this too, right?
Yeah, probably. Like don't interrupt Aries's
entertainment because apparently he would have been laughing like
the way he set it up. Like you'll be fine if you can,
unless your if your son can free you.
Like, this sounds like he's just, like, cackling and
twirling his fingers and his giant.
He doesn't twirl his mustache because it's too big.
He twirls this giant massive beard with his fingernails all
in there. Yeah, it's hard to imagine.
Actually. That would be the loudest sound
eventually, once the Brandon and Ricard were unable to make a
sound. You still have Aries just
laughing like a madman. Literally.
That would make it way worse for the witnesses.
It's already horrible enough as it is, but you have a guy who is
sincerely enjoying himself watching this, like genuine
laughter at a horribly torturous injustice.
It's. I hardly, can hardly imagine it.
I'm not really going to try too hard to imagine it, actually.
Let's just use the words and kind of gloss over it.
Yeah. Now, Catelyn doesn't believe
Jamie cared a wit for Ricard and Brandon.
She's like, that doesn't. You can't tell me you cared
about the Starks there. It doesn't have anything to do
with you killing Aries and Jamie's like the Starks were
nothing to me. That's true, but it absolutely
led to him being the Kingslayer, seeing what Aries was willing to
do, seeing that the realm is built this way, seeing that
monarchy and duty, all, all the things that are part of Jamie's
arc. This is one of the Seminole
events that kicked him off towards that cynicism that is
now coming back around into sort of redemptive type arc.
You know, redemptive thoughts, some redemptive action.
We'll see where it goes. But he's clearly a different
man. But coming back to the what he
was at this point, it absolutely, it ruined his
ideals. It, it, it the sense of purpose.
So Catlin is sort of right that he didn't care about the Starks,
but he cared about what Aries was doing.
He cared about the miscarriage of justice.
He cared about having to sit there and hear a man roast to
smell it, to all that the all the sensations of that that he
still to this day can't shake. He still thinks about it.
It could have been two other men.
It could have been two other nobles.
Yeah, it doesn't matter necessarily that it was Stark's,
but it mattered to him that Aries would do this to someone.
And this really does come up again, he tells Tommen in a
fatherly moment to the boy who doesn't know that's his father.
He says, sometimes you have to go away inside your head.
You have to learn to go elsewhere in in your mind.
And he he and Tommen says, yeah, I've done that.
You know, I've done that when when Joffrey tormented me.
And Jamie thinks in his mind when he's saying this, he's
specifically thinking about Aries roasting Ricard.
When he's saying all this, he's like, that's the time I went
away in my the, the the number one example that comes to mind
for him going away in his mind was Aries roasting Ricard.
It's the worst thing he's had to sit and watch now.
Yeah, like Catlin says, Jamie probably would have killed Aries
anyway. Jamie probably would have killed
Aries anyway without any of the burnings because of the
wildfire. The wildfire plot's enough.
That guy would have killed all of King's Landing, so that's
enough reason. He that would have been plenty.
But he doesn't tell Catlin about the wildfire, does he?
He doesn't bring that up. He doesn't mention that till
later. He doesn't tell he he doesn't
trust her with that information. Or maybe he doesn't believe
she'll believe him. Or maybe he's just not ready to
say it. He says it to Brienne later, of
course. Now let's also remind ourselves
this is not the only time one of the Kingsguards, senior
Kingsguard has to pull Jamie aside and say hey, you know,
don't judge the king. You know, in the Stormborn
episode we pointed out the thing with Raela where Aries comes
after burning his hand. The king and forces himself on
his own wife and and then Jonathan Ordere is like, hey,
don't judge us the king, you know, like we aren't we supposed
to protect her and he's like not from him.
So the same thing here. Gerald's like Yep, don't judge
the king. You know he's burning people.
It's just don't think about it, you know.
So despite all that, though, Lord Rickard, definitely the
most famous and definitely the highest ranking of the people
that that Rick that Ares killed and certainly the first time
that it was a replacement for a trial.
So what's a Kingsguard supposed to do in a spot like this?
Kingsguard is for life. You can't do anything.
The only thing that can change is the king changes.
And I don't mean his personality changes.
I mean he dies. A new person becomes king.
Aries had to die. That's a big part of why Jamie
killed him. It wasn't just the the wildfire.
You can think about it that way. What if there had been no
wildfire plot? Might Jamie have killed Aries
anyway? Or might Jamie have pushed for
him to be killed? My Jamie have told everything.
If Aries had been like put on trial, if they had some counsel,
you know, they captured him alive, Jamie would have been the
number one witness to to point out all these crimes that Aries
did. I mean, there would have been
maybe a few other kings guard because not all of them would
have died. Maybe things have gone
differently, but Jamie would have been the most disillusioned
because he would have been the freshest to have the most
recently had lost his ideals. So going through this
conversation with Kat is telling because of some of the things
Jamie leaves out. Like and remember, he's drunk
during this. He only reveals it to Brienne,
someone who's another warrior, someone who actually beats him
in combat and after he loses his hand.
So he's already starting to kind of transform into somebody else.
But he has more respect for Brienne than he has for Lady
Callen, I think. And it's happening in the tubs
of Harrenhal. And you know, he's it's a
different state of mind for him. And I'd come back to the
wildfire thing with Callen because he doesn't even admit it
even then. And she's like, you didn't do
this for Brandon and Rickard. He's like, no, you're right, I
didn't. But he doesn't say why and he
doesn't push. He doesn't go well, I did do it
because of This is why doesn't bring that up.
But Despite that, despite not bringing up the main reason,
despite not bringing up the wildfire, Jamie's confessions
are significant here. His his information, his words,
what he revealed mattered enough to allow Kat to go through with
her plan to set Jamie free and to trust him with Brienne to let
her daughters go. Because whether or not she
believes his motivations, he killed the villain.
He did kill Aries, even though that's something he's, you know,
denigrated for something that is considered a dishonor.
No one wants to say the quiet part out loud, except maybe him.
That actually killing Aries was a good thing.
You know, it's like, it's to us, it's like obvious, like, yeah,
that guy's terrible, but you know.
I made you a little art of Aries with his.
Long ankles. Oh my God, he's a baddie.
Aries is a baddie. Yeah, there you.
Go. He's got those tattoos and
everything, so people are all like, you can't trust the
Kingslayer. Come on, Catelyn, what are you
doing? He's like, yeah, but the
Kingslaying part is kind of why I trust him.
He used his good judgement over his like, he he ascended, he
looked past his loyalty and his oaths to do the right thing.
And she doesn't even know about the wildfire.
So, yeah, she it was a bit more of a leap of faith, but still,
she was on that track. She's like, you know what?
This is this. I can trust this guy because of
what he did, even though it's the thing that, as he laments,
I'm, you know, I'm hated for my best act and and loved for my
worst things like that. But again, this isn't just
Ricard and Brandon. We got to wonder about the other
ones, I said. Maybe they were killed first,
maybe they were killed second. Let's let's talk about them for
a minute here. The Lords and their fathers
quote. Ethan Glover was Brandon Squire,
Catlin said he was the only one to survive.
The others were Jeffrey Mallister, Kyle Royce and Elbert
Aaron John, Aaron's nephew and Aire.
It was queer how she still remembered the names after so
many years. Eris accused them of treason and
summoned their fathers to court to answer the charge, with the
sons as hostages. When they came, he had them
murdered without trial, fathers and sons both.
It's this comment that Jamie responds to.
Oh, they were trials of a sort, sarcastically.
So mock trials, you know, So technically there was a trial,
but it was basically no trial. So same difference really.
And when you say mock trial, I mean, we mean ultimately, you
know that the mockery was at peak here.
So we only hear of how Rickard and Brandon were killed.
We hear of the strangulation and the burning.
But what happened with the other guys?
Unlikely. They got off easy.
Maybe not the whole strangulation and slow roasting
thing. Which again, that really shows
me that Aries had it in for the Starks a little bit here.
Like he didn't necessarily treat the others that way.
We don't hear them treated that way.
They probably were burned to death because he was so enamored
of death by fire. But yeah, I do think it's
interesting that he, even though it was, you know, and some
reason it makes sense that he would punish the highest ranking
people the most. But still, I think he he had it
in for them a bit before all this because of reasons that
they might not have even been aware of, reasons we discussed
before visa vie what happened at the Tournament of Harrenhal now.
So not all of them had a father to even show up.
For example, Albert Aaron's father, right?
We mentioned him, that's John Aaron's nephew.
His father, Ronald was dead by the time Albert was born, like
it was almost posthumous. He was born a little bit before
his father died. So Albert never knew his father.
John Aaron was kind of maybe a father figure to him, especially
as his naming him as heir, you would think he would be a father
figure to him. So again, I, yeah, I wonder
about when they were killed. But again, with Aries, you can't
take too much for granted here. He could have been weirdly
creative in a gross way with the other murders executions as
well. Now, why did Ethan Glover live,
though? This is a strange one.
This is something that a lot of people in the Song of Isis Fire
Phantom have been thinking about for decades because this is
something that was revealed in A Game of Thrones and we've never
gotten any follow up on it, at least yet.
Nina's guess is that it was a part of the mockery letting him
live as a way to say, OK, this one guy was innocent.
You know, all these others were killed, but let one off just to
just to show that it was a real trial.
You know, it makes the whole thing seem more legit if someone
gets off. Cersei says the exact same
thing. It's another parallel to Cersei
with Kyburn, and she when she talks about how to do the trial
and how they're going to make Marjorie look guilty, they do
the same thing. Like, hey, let's accuse this
person and then let them off so that the whole thing looks a
little more legit. Because then it looks like, you
know, we try. We, we investigated, we found
some people guilty, some people innocent.
It's the same like it's like the token innocent person to make
the whole thing look like it was a real example of justice.
Now with Aries's madness, it could be something entirely
other mocking the request for trial by combat by leaving
someone alive afterwards, saying none of this matters, letting
one live because that's what Barristan did with the Hollards.
You know he's like I'll do the same thing here.
Or maybe the Glover father was still on route.
Eric's was waiting to for him to show up before killing him and
then killing you. So Ethan Glover just got a
reprieve while his father was coming over.
But I probably not. He's his father was probably
killed as well. But there's more here.
Let's talk about the aftermath. This is our final section today.
Even if Aries had stopped there and not killed anyone else
again, I think it was the turning point, the breaking
point, the tipping point had already passed, especially given
how cruelly and unjustly it was done.
It wasn't just the killings, but how they were done, the fact
that he laughed about it. And, yeah, just.
That is just such a violation. It's hard to imagine war
wouldn't have come. But he didn't stop there.
He demanded that Ned and Robert be killed, too.
And John's like, you killed my heir and you want me to kill
them? Like, who do you think you are?
You know, I'm the mad king. No, I am John Aaron.
I rebel. I rebel against you.
It's almost like Aires was trying to repeat Dusk.
And I was like, yeah, I'm going to I that was fun killing
everyone in a house. I'm going to do that again a few
times, you know, even with way less provocation this time, at
least from where a rational person would be sitting.
But that's not Aries. So this is a much bigger
justification for the war. Again, I think that it's a
running theme pre Robert Rebellion, just pre Robert
Rebellion that that a bunch of nobles leverage their rank too
much. With Aries, they think, OK, my
rank protects me here. And then they find out to areas
that matters very little. And he's also far more violent
than they realize. They assume they'll get slaps on
the wrist. Instead, they get executions by
fire. It's a repeated miscalculation.
And I assume that they'll be more context to this someday
when we learn more about some of these events.
So Robert's Rebellion certainly breaks out shortly after all
this. Of course, with the once the
demands are set, John Aaron says no and war begins.
And then, you know, Robert has to make his way back to the
Stormlands, Ned has to get back to the North, Robert Rebellion
follows. We don't have to go through any
of that. That is a whole separate
subject. But it's very straightforward
why the war was such a clear answer for so many people, not
just Robert, Ned and John Aaron. Because Aries absolutely
blatantly violated the feudal contracts like, well, that's
grounds for all the nobles to take the sides of the Starks and
the Aaron's and the Brathians. And then of course the Tully's
along with because Ned went ahead and fulfilled that
marriage alliance by Mary Catlin.
So if he wasn't freed earlier, Ethan Glover was presumably
found in this jail cells down below after Robert's victory.
Like a hey, look who we found down in the jail cells.
Ethan Glover. What?
Amazing you're still alive. We thought you were dead.
What a new world for him to emerge into.
He gets out of jail, he's like, my side won.
I didn't even know. He might not have even known
there was a civil war. He might not have.
Like, I didn't even know we, we had a side.
I didn't know there was a war going.
He might, he might have been told by the jailers or
something. Maybe, you know, there's plenty
of time for something to happen and him to be told, but he
wouldn't get to enjoy this new world for very long.
He may have witnessed Robert and Ned quarreling over the bodies
of Rhaegar and Ilya's children there and the split that
followed because Ethan went with Ned after that split.
So if he didn't witness that argument, he surely learned of
it. He then accompanied Ned S the
newly made Lord Eddard and he, along with five other companions
and three Kingsguard, died at the Tower of Joy.
That's right, Aries didn't allow those men to face the Kingsguard
into trial by combat, but Ethan and those other men faced three
of them at the Tower of Joy instead, though he probably took
on only one of them with help. It was probably like two and
three on one. But that still wasn't enough
because yeah, only Ned and Hal and Reed survived.
We don't know which of the three obviously killed Ethan Glover
specifically, but it would have been Arthur Dayne Oswald went or
the very same Gerald Hightower who told Jamie that the
Kingsguard don't judge the king. And in this case, and in their
minds, they were guarding a king too.
Those 3 Kingsguard at the tower Joy were guarding their baby
King John, who they wouldn't have called Jon Snow probably
but. We all know who we're talking
about. Eris's grandson again.
Still weird to call him that. Ned would have been relieved
that the baby didn't look like a Stark, but what of his mind that
only time could tell. Could this child have inherited
his grandfather's madness? So Ethan followed 1 Stark into
certain death and made it out alive, but couldn't pull off the
trick twice. So Ned carried a lot of his
weight around with him. He was party and witness to an
outsized amount of all this. Again, he would have felt the
tragedy of Ethan Glover, the tragedy of all of his other
companions who were caught up in all this, all because of the
abduction, the murders, Brandon running off rashly, Lord Ricard.
I don't know if there's anything he could have done about it.
But all these things that Ned had no control over, that he had
to watch unfold and then live with afterwards, no wonder Ned's
the way he was. It wasn't just about Lyanna.
It wasn't just about promise me. There were so many other things
here, so many burdens. He carries some, and you can so
you can kind of understand why he didn't want to tell his
children and his wife exactly what happened.
He didn't want to give them all the gory details because they
are rather gory. They're enough to make the realm
turn on the king, among other reasons.
But of course, Ned is now gone too.
And it's Jamie really the only one that we know for sure is
carrying a lot of this weight around with him.
And he's coming to terms with that.
He didn't feel that burden earlier.
He treated it as a, a side part of him.
He's just a cynical guy that lives with the world being
crappy. You know, he just, well, that's
how the world is. You know, the world sucks now.
He's got a bit of a new sense of purpose, bit of a new attitude,
a new life of sorts. And in a sense, he's the only
one that can recover from this because everyone else is dead.
So good luck to you, Jamie, and I hope we learn more about these
things. Like so much of Robert
Trebellion, there's missing pieces here, right?
There's a lot more we could learn, a lot more light that
could be shined on, what Brandon was thinking, what Aries did,
what other Kingsguard witnessed. Again, maybe Barristan will have
some thoughts on this. We can't answer all the
questions we raised in this episode, but by raising the
questions we think are the most pertinent, we get ourselves a
little closer to knowing what we need to know and our and a
little closer to the answers. And those are compelling.
Just having the options, just knowing what might be is pretty
fun. And that's what we do here.
And that's the end of our episode.
Here's a couple questions, though.
Dornish James says probably weird for John when you realize
it's one of his grandfathers killed the other.
Yeah, that's a good point. It's like, yeah, my grandfather
killed my other grandfather. Dang it.
Whoops, yeah, don't do that. John's got some pretty big
realizations to come, and I suppose Brand does too, if he
starts using the weirwood network to uncover some of these
secrets. Trivia question Which of
Brandon's companions had already lost his father before Aries?
Had all the rest killed? Albert, of course.
Albert Aaron, whose father? Ronald died of a bad belly
around the time Albert was born, as we said.
Ronald, you said Ronald a little bit.
Did I? Ronald Ronnell Ronald.
So of course Ronald had been heir before Albert, and then
Ronald died and then Albert became heir.
And John Aaron, of course, eventually had Sweet Robin and
he became heir, but Sweet Robin was born more than a decade
after the events of this episode.
Some other episodes that relate to this one.
Stormborn, the abduction of Lyanna, then Education or N
Education. We call that one The Battle of
the Trident, our Summer Hall series, which talks a lot about
how Aries became potentially obsessed by and traumatized by
wildfire in the first place, in addition to many other mysteries
around Summer Hall. It's certainly not just about
Aries, more about other characters really, but that's
where the overlap is for this one.
Also, we have an episode on the defiance of Duskindale.
That's a scripted 1, and it is a lot about Barristan and Aries,
of course, and Tywin. And that's a really fun one too.
Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Nina, for the great
notes, the great takes, the great insight.
Thanks to Joey Townsend for our music.
Thanks to Michael Klarfeld for the maps and for appearing live
on this episode for cleaning them and for cleaning them.
Yes, because we Americans don't know how to properly treat our
maps. We are.
We take them for granted. Good thing we got some help on
that. Our maps are clean now.
Until next time, everybody. Valerie read us.