There are a lot of reasons to fight.
Not so honorable reasons, like taking things or people by force
for personal gain or pleasure. Honorable reasons, like stopping
people from doing that. Like, you know, defending your
loved ones or your home or your friends, etcetera.
And even if you have wildly different values, like even if
you think fighting is often a good thing, actually it's
impossible to deny the destructive nature of it.
Perhaps the worst reason of all to fight someone, though, is
because your parents and their parents fought each other and
with no apparent end goal in mind, at least not one that
they've had enduring success at. That's why the Blackwoods and
Brackens do what they do, because they've always done it.
They think they have reasons, but from the outside, it kind of
sort of looks like they just keep on fighting each other
because it's what they've always done, like a tradition, because
they don't even seem to have a great grasp on how it all
started or why they're fighting, right?
So the whole point of it, A Song of Ice and Fire, is full of
cycles of violence, full past, full present, full in between.
But no feud perhaps emulates the pointlessness of revenge, of
mutually assured destruction of what might be otherwise decent
people at their worst, then Bracken and Blackwood.
What makes them keep doing it? How much have they harmed
themselves over the years? How much have they held each
other back and themselves back? And what are some of the
standout moments of this feud over the Eons?
How badly and how often has their feud spread, as war often
does to engulf other houses, if not entire kingdoms?
Well, we've got the answer to all that and more on this
episode of History of Westeros podcast.
I'm really working on my the little leading cast.
Yeah, one day I'll I'll be a master of that for all the good
it will do me and the rest of you.
Hello and welcome everybody. Another episode of History of
Westeros podcast is here. Most Sundays we live stream at
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Westeros. Sean, how's it going today?
I see you got a Dunkin Egg shirt.
I got a Bitter Steel shirt. I feel like the, you know, the
Blackwoods are more popular in the fandom, so I wanted to give
the give the Brackens a little bit of a bump there.
You think the Blackwoods might be more popular than a fandom,
eh? I'm not in a limb with that.
Yeah, I'm really going on on a limb.
Hey, I like a limb of a Blackwood tree.
Am I doing that? Yes.
I'm not horsing around, you know when I say that.
My shirt is a a minor clue to the trivia question today.
Oh, very good, very good. And shout out to our good friend
Nina, Good queen allie.tumblr.com.
The latest blog post over there is something she loves to talk
about. Well, this one actually isn't a
question. This is just for musing.
Wondering about George and his use of Margaret of Anjou to
Henry the 6th of England as inspiration for Mariah Martel
and Daron the 2nd. Daron the Second's going to come
up today a little bit because we're talking about blackfyres
and stuff. But yeah, George certainly has
used a lot of the Henry's and English history and some French
history as inspirations. Of course, The Accursed Kings is
is French and English history combined, and that's one of his
favorite influences. And that's one of Nina's
favorite things to write about. So you're going to want to read
this one really good. She's excellent with the
parallels in this period or I just in general really, But this
is you know, one of the topics she knows the best, so check it
out. Good queenalley.tumblr.com
that's 1L in alley and if you have questions for us, well send
them to westeroshistory@gmail.com or put
them in the live stream. Chat and Ashaya will often float
them for us to discuss or answer and I will give you all some
suggestions for episodes to further your immersion after the
end of this one. Usually we focus on episodes
that relate to this one, and that is no different here.
Also, at the end of the episode will be the answer to this
trivia question. What village rests between the
grassy hills fought over by Bracken and Blackwood, known as
the teats? That means the hills are known
as the teats. What's the name of the village
that sits between the teats? It'll be crazy to have a whole
village between your teats. Wow, they're a large person.
If you can do that. It's like Bender, right?
Bender and Futurama. Maybe it's a small village,
yeah. We'll take an era based approach
today, looking at the interactions between the two
houses in detail, then as a whole, sort of like all over,
You know, like an overview, though they're conflicts of the
headline. We'll also look at the times
they've fought, if not together, or at least on the same side
'cause it's pretty notable when bitter enemies are on the same
side and we're looking at an awful lot of history here.
And of course, usually that's against some great common foe.
But in between those common foes, they've torn each other
apart so many times that they've often corrupted others around
them into taking up that war with them.
It's like a violence germ from Germ that makes those times they
fight on the same side all the more notable, right?
And it's it really primes us as readers when we see Bracket and
Blackwood often, almost always, whenever they're in a sentence,
they're next to each other. It immediately makes us think of
this feud. It's so famous, so long running,
and events are often framed by their feud.
Like, oh, Bracket and Blackwood agreed, Oh my goodness, that's a
big deal. Oh Bracket and Blackwood, of
course they're on the opposite side.
They have so many events throughout A Song of Ice and
Fire, and the history are framed through the Brack and Blackwood
feud, which I suspect some of you didn't realize.
It was quite this common in the story, but when you sit back and
realize how much you've heard about this feud, it might make
more sense and might start to register even more.
Now I remember a panel one time. I think it Ice and Firecon.
Lady Gwen from History, from My Radio, from Us talked about how
the lore within the world makes the world seem more believable.
That makes sense if characters in the world know stories, and
that makes us think of them as being more real people and
relate to them, just like we in the real world have stories Star
Wars or Declaration of Independence OR the Hatfields,
Mccoys or, you know, good. Example.
Yeah, I know our our friend Scott Alexander, the you know,
who's also a Facebook mod for a group, brought the Hatfields
Mccoys up this week to me as a long running feud.
That's a good one. Yeah, that's a nice famous one.
And you're right. Like people we've we've
discussed the Hatfields and Mccoys 'cause they're a real
world rivalry. And in world a lot of people
talk about the Blackwood Bracken rivalry, 'cause it's the most
famous rivalry in Westeros, probably.
And people that are nowhere near the Riverlands talk about.
It's like I think it's a matter of gossip and a matter it still
gets used as a point of reference.
Like, well, even the Blackens and Rackwoods would agree on
that, you know? Yeah.
And I I was going to say it becomes, it's, it's among many
literary devices that George uses.
It becomes when he can reference something that, as you said,
that like when they do agree, characters in the book and us in
the audience like, whoa, even they agree, you know, it has
more meaning. Yeah, it's it's it's their feud
gives emphasis by comparison to a lot of other things.
That's kind of what I was getting with the filtered
through their view. Yeah, it makes.
It's really interesting how George uses this 'cause they're
not just a great piece of world building, as you say.
As Lady Gwyn said, it's also a really powerful narrative
device. George uses them to convey
information really effectively, and we're going to have a lot of
examples of that. One thing we love to do on our
show, a recurring feature, one of our regular approaches is to
take a look at the first time something is mentioned.
We call it the first mention, of course, how simple of us, but
how effective? Here is the first mention of
Bracken and Blackwood Feud Catlin 5 The Game of Thrones.
The rain obscured the fields beyond the crossroads, but
Catlin saw the land clear enough in her memory.
The marketplace was just across the way, and the village a mile
farther on. Half 100 white cottages
surrounding a small stone scept. There would be more now.
The summer had been long and peaceful.
North of here. The King's Road ran along the
Green Fork of the Trident, through fertile valleys and
green Woodlands, past thriving towns and stout holdfasts and
the castles of the river Lords. Catlin knew them all, the
Blackwoods and the Brackens ever enemies whose quarrels her
father was obliged to settle. Yep.
And then of course the quote goes on to mention other
Riverlands houses and different like a one liner about each of
them. But here we go.
The first time they're mentioned, they're mentioned
together in the context of their feud.
They are introduced as enemies and neighbors under her father's
vassal or as her father's vassals.
And it's going to come up pretty big later in this episode
because we're going to go back in time to talk with history and
then finish with A Song of Ice and Fire.
Finish with book main book events, and you'll be surprised
at some of the times that Bracket and black would come up
as the backdrop to a greater event.
You'll also notice that whenever there's a list of houses or
Lords that include them both like a list of river Lords
Houses Bracket and Blackwood are all but like once or twice in
the entire series. I I look for this because you
know that's the kind of thing I do they're always next to each
other. Like there are a couple of
exceptions but very few it's and I think it's it's partly because
of alliteration you know Bracken, Blackwood, they're BRBL
you know BRA actually BLA like actually yeah like that's really
close the the 4th letter is AC in both words also like they
they they they they fit together 2.
Syllables. It flows off the tongue, yeah.
And they are geographically right next to each other also.
So they they will be lumped together for that reason, but
also because they're so tied to each other, anytime you would be
listing them, you need to be accounting for them.
Does that make sense? If you're listing your allies,
you have to name the two of them together, 'cause they might
cancel each other out, you know. Yeah, it's always a problem.
There's always a little extra baggage with them.
Yeah. Bracken Blackwood baggage, Yes.
Whether whether they're allies or obstacles or whatever it is,
they kind of are coming together.
Even if they aren't working together, you have to consider
them together. Let's use a modern social media
phrase to get us started a little further here, how it
started versus how it's going. This is a bit of an overview of
well, how it started versus how it's going for Bracken and
Blackwood quote. The feud of the Blackwoods and
Brackens is infamous, and rightly so, for it stretches
back thousands of years to before the coming of the Andals.
The origins of it are contested and shrouded in legend.
The Blackwoods say they were kings and the Brackens little
more than petty Lords said on betraying and deposing them,
while the Brackens say much the same about the Blackwoods.
That they were both royal houses on the Trident seems true
enough, and none can doubt their enmity sprang from some cause so
entrenched that it has become legendary.
Powerful as they were, they have maintained their feud despite
the many kings who have attempted to make a peace
between them. I like how that kind of throws a
little shade on them. It's like their enmity sprang
from some 'cause, like it had to come from somewhere.
It's not nothing, but they're still downplaying that it should
have any value. Now, thousands of years later,
whatever that cause was, there's no way it's so bad that y'all
still need to be fighting over it this far later, like many
royal houses have been overthrown by many vassals, and
none of them are still hating each other thousands of years
later. I mean, there's certainly
something flare ups here and there, but this is, this is
truly exceptional in that this not only is the cause not known,
there's nothing you can imagine that would make it right, Like
it wouldn't justify this, you know, for either of them so.
The thing that might make it justifiable is also the thing
that might have ended it. A Red Wedding type scenario,
right? Like if the Brackens had
slaughtered every man, woman and child, then there would be
reason for this, but there would no one be, no one left to have
the feud anymore. You know what I.
Mean. Exactly.
Yeah. It's like one of the things you
can do to end a feud is completely wipe out the enemy.
But neither house has ever been powerful enough to do that to
the other. There's a lot of, you know,
nation, real world nations that are kind of like that they'd
love to wipe each other out, but they can't, you know.
And some of these feuds go back thousands of years as well, or
maybe happen thousands of years and are not happening anymore,
but that that's not unrealistic. I wonder how much it's purely
they weren't powerful enough, if there could be some other
factor. If if as bad as the feud is,
maybe you know this 30 year old warrior who's upset because of
what their dad did to his uncle and he wants revenge and he goes
to kill the other 30 year old warrior.
But there's his wife and his two year old child in a room.
Is he that merciless to slaughter them too?
Or does he let them live? But then now that child grows up
having the same vendetta. You know what I mean?
Is it a lack of power or a lack of a positive thing?
Maybe a lack of? There's still some honor and
chivalry mixed into it even though they're bitter.
And that's a that's a really interesting concept that you
raise here, Sean, because very often we see Bracken due to
Blackwood or Blackwood due to Bracken.
What they pretty much wouldn't do to anyone else, Maybe not
goes to quite so far as to slaughter a 2 year old though
there are some examples of that even.
But it's it's the thing where it's like they would never do
this. It's like it's beyond their
normal boundaries of honor. Unless it's Bracken or Black.
Unless it's this, this bitter enemy from thousands of years
ago. And it there's also not quite as
much at stake. Like, you know, Tywin killed all
the Tart. Well, tried to kill all the
Targaryen children. Yeah, but that was for
ostensibly, right? The safety of the realm.
He's got to make sure this new king is in place and he's
aligned with them and the war is over and that if he lets
Targaryens get away, that that might be in jeopardy.
But this is just over. It might be harder to justify
when there's less to win. Like, you know, like maybe if
you thought you killed the last Bracken, you would get credit
from your house for ending the feud.
But this one two year old, they're not the last one.
They're still a bunch of cousins.
And, you know, I don't know how many times someone might have
gone through that and made what seemed like a good decision but
ended up continuing the feud. Like we'll see later in the
episode as well, it's impossible to kill everyone with Blackwood
blood without killing some brackens.
Yeah, exactly. Or vice versa.
Like they've mixed so many times and they've mixed with other
houses that have mixed with them.
Yeah, the, the like the they're all so intermarried and so
connected. By now it's just, yeah, so they
both. What's interesting too is they
both disagree on what the initial cause was.
They both have a reason that that is their 'cause.
It's not a good reason. As we've said, 'cause.
There's so many other examples of houses that have done this
exact same thing to each other, yet they don't have lifelong
enmity. But the histories don't even
necessarily agree with either of their versions of events.
So it's like it's like they have a personalized version of
history. It's like, no, this is our
history. It's like, no, there's fact and
fiction and then our version, and we just go with that cause
'cause what we do. So as you said earlier, Sean,
proximity is a big deal. Proximity plays a role, as it
often does. It's hard to maintain a long
feud with someone that lives thousands of miles away.
But if they're your neighbor, it's a lot easier to understand.
You can argue over little things like, well, this fence is too
far on my side, like things that regular neighbors around the
world would argue about. Hopefully they don't turn to
violence, but we know that sometimes they do.
And if the story that the Blackwoods started in the north
is true, then the Starks forcing them S was a pretty crucial
beginning, cause clearly they would not have been neighbors to
the Brackens had that not happened in the 1st place, Nina
adds. And of course, the history of
the Riverlands as a geopolitical region encourages this sort of
conflict. The Riverlands has always been
war-torn, right? They've never had.
They don't have one house that has held power for a really long
time like the Starks have in the north, the Lannisters have in
the West, the Errands have in the in the Vale, the Storm, the
Durand and Slash Baratheons have in the Storm, etcetera, right,
There's there, There's a marked lack of stability in the
Riverlands as to the dominant royal house as compared to all
the other regions. Even the Iron Born have had more
stability there and they've they've had less than some of
the others, but they've had more stability at the top than than
even the Riverlands have. Of course, that's partly because
of the Ironborn and the and the Storm Lands, and some other
houses that have given the Riverlands a lack of stability
through invasions, but they've done a plenty good job of
fighting each other in between all that.
As you know, the Ironborn had their fair share of feuds and
have held themselves back with such.
You know so. Yeah.
So it's it's a little odd on some surface that that both
Bracket and Blackwood claim that they are the rightful kings
because they don't do that anymore, yet they're still mad
at the other house for undoing their Kingdom.
That probably rose and fell several times, right?
These flare ups often start over little things like imagine my
miniature example of like a neighbor arguing over where
offence is. You know that in the real world
that often just goes to like court or something like that, it
gets resolved by a third party doesn't usually fall to
violence. Maybe if you go back a couple
100 years it would more often result in violence and maybe
some of those times it resulted in long term violence.
Hatfields and Mccoys a good example.
I don't think their dispute started over a fence.
I don't remember what it started.
Over to you, Sean. For what it's worth it started
over. They, you know they they live on
opposite sides of a river in West Virginia and Kentucky.
And they both had family members that fought in the Civil War all
for the Confederates except one not what side he was on but did
fight for the North and we came back the other family killed
him. So that that's what initiated.
But that but even that might have subsided except you know
like the the the next the next you know incursion or whatever
was the a dispute over who owned a pig.
Oh my God. Which like a murderer which you
know had like talk about maybe that initial thing was sort of
justified but future things were not.
But it it had started, it was anything was going to cause it.
Now you know. They both had a long list of
prior grievances from built up from that initial conflict
spawned more conflicts and then then then the list was really
long and they may not they might not have even remembered how it
started like some of them individually historians may have
pieced it all together later. But yeah, so that's often how
some of these flare up came up and like they they maybe had a
big deal for the first one, like someone overthrowing the other
one from from their Kingdom, from losing their crown.
But from then on and mostly it's smaller things, you know just a
pig or the teats or something small like that.
Right Now what's funny about this is despite their proximity,
them being neighbors, it's we're not 100% sure about either the
location of Stonehedge or Raven Tree Hall.
We just know that they're next to each other and Raven Tree is
north of the Red Fork and Stonehedge is South of it.
But they've got sometimes the brackets of that land on the
other side and vice versa and and probably at times they both
held lands on other side of the Red Fork and we know that
because we've. There's been so many border
disputes that don't involve the river, right?
This land, this mill, they've argued over.
Well, if it was just a matter of one being on one side of the
river or the other, that would be pretty easy as well.
It's on our side of the river. How can you even, I mean, they'd
still find a way to fight over that, but it'd be really easy to
adjudicate from the, like the river river and be like, that's
on this side of the river. That's easy.
Clearly it's not that simple though, because these disputes
aren't about just north or South of the Red Fork.
Let's take a look at the map. You can see the surrounding area
gives you a general idea. You got river run a little bit
to the West there. These areas that we've seen
quite a bit in the books, they've been traversed by Jamie
and Arya and Brienne in and out, like some of these ranges.
And the BWB we have, we don't really see them, you know on on
page, but they're there. You can't always see, do you
know they're there. And so that's like some of these
areas we can't point to exactly where, but some of the ones
along the river, some of the ones that are close to the other
side, whichever perspective you're looking at it from,
whether Bracken or Blackwood side, they're like the they're
like the Disputed lands and Essos.
So Bracken and Blackwood have fought over these many times.
They're not constantly at war, but you know, they're they're
probably only a pig away from starting up a fight again over
just a mill or a a village or some hives, you know, some bee
by beehives. We even see Jamie and and Titus
Blackwood talking about that specific thing.
He's like, you got to give some land up.
And he was like, all right, I'll give this to that and that.
And he's like, give him the beehives.
It'll make his teeth rot. You know, it's like he's trying
to find some silver lining in this, you know, like anything to
get anything to get those brackens.
Like, yeah, I'll make their teeth rot.
That's it. Yeah, that's it.
Sure, Titus. That's going to happen.
Yeah. So there's several examples of
them fighting or taking that dispute to the king and trying
to get what you prefer them to do.
If you're going to have a dispute, like, yeah, get go to
an adjudicator. Don't just start drawing your
swords and killing each other, but quite often that is what
happened. You know, real quick, I want to
point out that the IT makes me a little more certain that George
had the Half Little Mccoys in mind when he made this feud
because they lived on opposite sides of the river called the
Tug Fork. Tug Fork.
Oh, it's the Red Fork. Oh, my goodness.
Yeah, that's really good. That is really good.
So yeah. So we'll see some examples
throughout the rest of the episode.
Of specific pieces of land. The Teats is probably the most
famous. It's been owned by both
Blackwood and Bracken countless times, and given back to the
other. Lost it, Owned it, Lost it.
It's like, who knows how many times these teats have passed
back? And why can't one have the left
teat and the other have the right?
Why can't they just share the teats?
Yeah, those teats really stick out.
So let's talk about the different versions.
Let's have a quote from each side.
This is Jamie being told this bit by Lord Jonas Bracken.
If I may offer you some counsel, though, it does not serve to be
too gentle with those Blackwoods.
Treachery runs in their blood. Before the Andals came to
Westeros, House Bracken ruled this river.
We were kings and the Blackwoods were our vassals, but they
betrayed us and usurped the crown.
Every Blackwood is borne a turn cloak.
You would do well to remember that when you were making terms.
It sounds like what all of the lustrous things about bastards
like oh they're all treacherous they're all it's like it's
ridiculous that in that context and it's ridiculous here to
every Blackwood is born. That's insane, right?
Like, that doesn't make any sense.
And and who would believe that? Like Jamie's like, oh, you don't
say. OK, I will be careful.
I will treat them all as turn cloaks.
Thanks for the advice, Lord Jonos.
Like he doesn't realize how silly he sounds, you know.
But I mean, that kind of talk isn't that strange for Westeros?
But when you really put it under the microscope, it's like, it's
it's pretty ridiculous. But he's sincere.
He's utterly sincere. That's how entrenched in like
how much a part of their identity, this hatred for the
other side is. That's that's the word I want to
use is identity. I was going to bring that up
earlier. It's it's that even when
something about you is negative, when it is your identity, you
still live up to it and talk about it, maybe even brag about
it. You know, like I'm not good at
math. It's that's something that once
you feel that about yourself, whether it's even true or not,
you stick to it. You know it.
It maybe even justifies some of your actions.
You want to make sure people know about it so they know what
to expect from you. You don't.
You? Never decide.
I'm gonna get good at math now, right?
If you're right in again, I'm not good at math.
Don't expect me to do this. I'm gonna make sure everyone
knows I'm not gonna do math. You.
Know there are. Yeah, I mean that that's a theme
in A Song of Ice and Fire in several places, right.
Like like, you know, a woman's courtesy is there armor.
And Tyrion says, you know the world won't forget that you're a
bastard. So own it.
Or House Cod saying though men though all men may despise us
like, Yep, they all hate us, but that's who we are.
You know, we're gonna, we're gonna own it.
Yeah. That that comes up a lot.
You're right. Good point, Sean.
So yeah. So he's utterly sincere.
He believes what he's saying. And these are these.
It's again, it comes back to these things that you wouldn't
do this to another person, but you might do it for your child.
This is a a theme in the real world.
It's a theme that George really amplifies a lot, I think where
people, people of honor, there's things they won't do for
themselves. They will break personal codes,
do do things they they think may might be look evil in another
context, but to them, since they're doing it for their
children, it's not evil. It's the reverse sort of thing
here. Like what a Bracken would do to
a Blackwood is, is not what they would do to somebody else.
At their view, they they don't see them as human.
They don't see them as the same species.
Almost. It's it's it's strange that way.
This is this is how hate corrupts your your brain.
And that's also part of the tragedy here is that that
identity that they have, like we hate the Brackens and we hate
the Blackwoods, They pass that on to their children.
Yeah, their children. What do you think?
That if their parents didn't tell them, yeah.
From a very early age, like blah blah blah blah blah honor blah
Except for those dirty blackwoods, you know?
And make sure their children also take on that identity.
Yeah, it's important for them. Yeah.
It's like, yeah, he's a good. He hates the Blackwoods like a
good little bracken, should you know or the other way around.
He's like, does he hate the how much does he hate to write?
A lot. They're like, OK, good.
You know, it's it's one thing if you don't think you're good at
math and forget about trying, but Can you imagine telling your
child you're not good at math 2? Years old with.
This in school because you're not good at it.
That's who we are. We are not, you know what I
mean? Like pass on to your child.
And this is arguably even more awful.
You know, Pass on the prejudice, you know.
Zach Remley sends a super chat, says history.
Westeros is the best podcast on earth.
Can't wait for Season 2 coverage.
Well, thank you Zach. We will try to live up to that
great praise. Yeah, we're trying to break into
the Mars market now. Yeah, that's a tough one.
There's not very many listeners there.
So thankfully Jamie is curious enough to delve deeper into this
Blackwood Bracken history, but not by asking Lord Jonas for
more. He's like, yeah, well, I don't
need you as a source. Let me ask someone who's got a
little more of a neutral view or at least a an opposing view.
Let me let us hear from a Blackwood, which is exactly what
happens. Here's a quote from that same
chapter. How did all this begin between
Blackwood and Bracken? Is it written down?
It is, my Lord, the boy said. But some of the histories were
penned by their maesters and some by ours, centuries after
the events that they purport to chronicle.
It goes back to the Age of Heroes.
The Blackwoods were kings in those days.
The Brackens were petty Lords, renowned for breeding horses.
Rather than pay their king his just due, they used the gold
their horses brought them to hire swords and cast him down.
I want to point out this is a smart boy and maybe even gets
credit for being wise and courageous.
To to have this knowledge, to to have researched this out and
then to understand that there are differences in the histories
and then that could be meaningful.
And then to say it out loud, right?
Like what? They didn't know, but they're
like, say, point out, I don't know, but you know, maybe he's
just naive, you know, maybe he's just too young to realize that
he needs to. His family might not be happy
with this but but I want to give him some credit here.
I agree and and remember Jamie thinks like Tyrion would love
this kid. Like they would just talk about
history and all that and but he also but he definitely is naive
like Jamie notices like he's this kid thinks he's going on
some grand adventure here and he's also like should be wary of
the fact that that his father was like this is the one his
father chose to get rid of like he doesn't realize that like
he's like no I want to keep my daughter.
He was stricken. He was that was the actual
actual word when Jamie asked for his daughter.
He's like he looks stricken. He's like, well, Bethany, like,
do you, can we maybe, can you take someone else?
Maybe. You know, and that's often not
what you see, right? Like Lords often aren't.
They're willing to give up their daughters, like, in part because
that's what they expect to do in the long term anyway.
Like where I'm going to marry her to some other house anyway.
So. But they're also people and they
grow attached to their children, but some more than others in
some cases. So this story about one of them
being king, throwing the other down, or vice versa, they both
have these stories that seem to contradict each other, but they
don't actually have to contradict each other.
We're talking about a lot of history.
One could have ruled over the other for a time, only to lose
their crown to the other, only to regain it later, to lose it
again to to them or the other or in between.
Or they could have both been kings at the same time.
Like it could have been a king of Blackwood Vale and a king
over Stonehedge at the same time.
And they could have warred against each other.
Like there could all these stories could be true.
None of them could be true. There's enough time that that
pass that enables so many possibilities.
And given that they don't even know which is true, I mean
that's where I fall down. Like I who knows which one is
1st. And that's, that's the point.
I don't think George isn't going to reveal that because that
would give one side more justification, maybe not much.
If he did reveal it, I bet I would want him to reveal it for
the brackets. I would want to know if everyone
were like, oh, maybe they're right, But The thing is, that
doesn't make them. Right.
It doesn't make them right because.
They didn't have it thousands of years ago.
Just say no. Even the statement, by the way,
in that quote when he says goes back to the Age of Heroes.
The Blackwoods were kings in those days.
The Brackens petty Lords. Well, how long was the Age of
Heroes? That would be like.
Right. They they both could have been
kings or petty Lords in that. Like it would be like if you're
talking about the 17 and 1800s, you could say the United States
wasn't united in that era or you could stay in the United States
was united in that era. Those would both be true
statements, so. And it's also possible that I
mean we're also having every reason to believe that a lot of
this comes back to before the end all times like they were
both probably neighbors or well before the Andal's and that's
before there was any written history.
So they're admitting that this feud goes back to a time where
no one has records maybe Bran can look back in the like that's
what he wants to do. He's like I want to go find out
when this started let's that's I don't care about the others I
don't care about anything else. I want to know how this.
That's his ulterior motive to all this.
He could have already known by now.
He's like, no, I I look deep and I couldn't.
I need a more powerful green seer to look back farther.
It's not. I couldn't do it.
So yeah, the fog of history just allows so many possibilities,
allows for all these stories to be true, etcetera.
Yeah. And Nina's kind of says a
similar thing, Sean. Like probably the Brackens were
there first. That doesn't mean that their
story is right or that it justifies anything, like she
agrees with that. But given that the Blackwoods
probably started in the north, that argues that maybe the
Brackens had gotten to the Riverlands first and the
Brackens, the Blackwoods, came later.
But even that is not a sure thing because probably know the
Blackwoods are 500 years older than the brackens as a house you
know or even longer or the other way around like the long night
right. They could have been allies
during the long night. This is a good example of well
even sometimes Bracken and Black would fight on the on the rights
on the same side and it's when there's an overwhelming common
threat that when that happens and that of course is way far
back and I've descriptive words like way with lots of whys cause
we have no idea how many actual years it's talking about.
It's even hard to guesstimate Jamie and Hoster Blackwood's
conversation continues a bit further, which helps set the
stage for more discussion quote. When did all this happen?
500 years before the Andals 1000 If the true history is to be
believed, only no one knows when the Andals crossed the Narrow
Sea. The true history says 4000 years
have passed since then, but some maesters claimed that it was
only two past a certain point. All the dates grow hazy and
confused, and the clarity of history becomes the fog of
legend. Well, that kid really is a
little historian, isn't he? Right.
Like him. So to frame this, basically to
summarize, no one knows. They literally don't know how it
started, but they do know how it's going because it's still
going and it's a lot of fighting and feuding and blood and it's
like what Tyrion said. We danced to the tune of those
who came before us. They inherited this grudge.
It's passed down to them, but they don't question it seemingly
or or much at all. You know, maybe maybe someone
like Coster Blackwood does, but he's an academic.
He's not going to be the one to get out there and force them to
stop, which might be what it takes.
You might need someone stronger to to keep them in line, which
is the only time it's ever stopped them with someone more
powerful and like look at Stark and Bolton.
Like there's the enmity between Stark and Bolton.
Isn't this great? You know, there is some enmity
and it's particularly strong right now given recent events,
but it had died down for hundreds of years, right?
I don't think Black with Bracken ever took that long of a break.
Maybe Dorne and the Marcher Lords had the longest running
similar few. That isn't one house, but
there's certain border pairings like the Stone Way, the the
Fowlers and the Tarly's, you know, are opposite ends of that
of the of the stone way. So maybe that or the Prince pass
rather so maybe that's it, I don't know.
But it's hard to come up with examples that are even close to
Black and Blackwood as far as rivalries and there's healthy
debate rooted in the timeline there, so we can't be too sure
of much of anything. But however long the timeline
truly is, whether it's 2000 years, 4000 years, 8000 years,
the brackets have been at it that whole time.
However long it is, that's that they fit that to there.
So the the sheer longevity of the feud is is special in
itself. Let's let's jump forward to the
Age of Heroes and talk a bit about how things progressed from
there. Quote.
Stretching from the Neck to the banks of the Blackwater and east
to the borders of Vale, the River Lands are the beating
heart of Westeros. No other land in the Seven
Kingdoms has seen so many battles, nor so many petty kings
and royal houses rising and falling.
With a quote like that, it becomes even more ridiculous to
see the Brack and Blackwood dispute.
Like so many other people have fought and killed and died and
usurped and overthrown and betrayed, but they really are
focused on each other. It's like no one, ever, no one
ever harmed us as badly as they did all those thousands of years
ago in ways we can't describe. And and as we see like this
pattern is still continuing. Rob's new Kingdom during the
events of A Song of Ice and Fire happened and that's and fell.
Or is still kind of maybe not completely fallen, but arguably
has fallen. We'll see.
Either way. It's an example of what you're
saying here. No other land in the Seven
Kingdoms has seen so many battles, nor so many petty kings
and royal houses rising and falling.
So yeah, we, we see it literally during the events of A Song of
Ice and Fire, but it's likely at its worst the farther back we
go. When there were smaller
kingdoms, you know, there was more fighting, there were fewer
border or more borders, more disputes, etcetera.
And that's probably when whatever transpired between
Bracket and Blackwood really, truly started and got
established. So during this very foggy time
of history that we know very little about, we'll just say
there was a long night. Bracken and Blackwood most
likely fought on the same side, perhaps for the first time ever
maybe. And Fast forward many years
later when there was another common foe and a whole new
historical era, the Andal Kings. Now the Andal's, of course
didn't come out once. It wasn't just one giant
invasion of Andal's. It was a waves of migrations and
expeditions and comings and goings and risings and fallings.
1 Battle in particular, though, stands out for our purposes with
this episode. The Great Battle of Bitter
River, where the Brackens of Stonehedge and the Blackwoods of
Raven Tree Hall made common cause against the invaders, only
to be shattered by the charge of 777 and all nights and seven
septons bearing the seven pointed star are of the faith
upon their Shields. Yeah, the end alls for the most
part didn't replace existing houses, right?
They suborned existing power structures like, well, let's
know why create a new house when I could just become the new Lord
Blackwood or new Lord Bracken which has power in this realm.
People will respect that name already that comes along with
the feud, but still it has other baggage with it.
But for the most part, it's better than starting fresh for
the most part. So this provided a new wedge for
the two houses. Well, because yes, they stood
together in this battle, but as things played out afterwards, it
created a new reason for them to have a dispute.
It may have really refreshed their their rivalry, because
most houses in the Riverlands took the Seven, including the
Brackens, but the Black Witch did not.
So now they're also different religions.
So that's that's always a recipe, not always often a
recipe for disputes. And it's certainly something can
inflamed an existing 2 religions can get along.
But when two people already hate each other and they have
different religions, when they used to have the same one, well,
that's. I think most people would bet on
things getting worse. And indeed they did.
You got to wonder what cause and effect here is too.
Did they choose different religions and so the rivalry got
greater, or because the rivalry was so great, they chose
different religions? You're going to join?
I'm not going to be in that group if they are, you know,
like. We we see that so often that if
one of them does something, the other won't, just on general
principle, if they're doing it, we're not, or if they aren't
doing it, we will. So absolutely the Blackwood
stubbornness might be a combination of piety and
conservatism or just do tradition or whatever, but it
might be yeah, we're not switching if the Brackens are,
you know, or or the other way around.
And certainly the you can see why it would inflamed things
further because well, the Old Gods isn't dogmatic.
You know they're not really out there trying to win converts.
They're not. They're not out.
That's not really how it works. They don't even have priests,
right. People either choose to worship
it or they don't. And the reason it started is
because there was proof of it being real thousands of years
ago and but the Seven is more like a a real world religion
where there's people are trying to convert people to it.
You know there it's it's it's a problem if you don't follow our
religion. So there was definitely burning
of heart trees and during this era and destruction of of other
things were associated with the old gods and worship of the of
that. So that would certainly cause
lots of problems for Blackwoods who were trying to not let that
happen versus brackens who are maybe at the forefront of that
because it enables them to target the Blackwoods and and.
Maybe they're allies. So definitely a tip of the
spear. The kind of thing that starts
more fights. For example, Jonas Bracken or
sorry, Titus Blackwood tells Jamie that the Raven tree, heart
tree was killed by the rackets. He says they poisoned it, quote
1000 years ago, the the generic 1000 years ago.
And he blamed. Yeah, he blames the brackets,
but I wouldn't be surprised if they did not do that.
If it just died for some other reason, someone else poisoned it
or. But also wouldn't be surprised
if they did. It's like, yeah, yeah, they very
well might have, you know, So yeah, so this is like, yeah, you
can't really use, like, motivation as a guide here.
So it's like, yeah, his motivation is to, yeah, their
motivation is to destroy Blackwoods, but their motivation
is to blame brackens, you know? So it goes both ways.
That generic thousand years too, That could be 700 years or 2000
years. But it's so long ago you can't
prove me wrong. You know what I mean?
Yeah. That's true.
A lot of those like appeal to it's not appeal to authority,
it's appeal to ancient tism. Appeal to the fog of history.
Our identity, it's been that way 1000 years.
That's what we believe. It's not going to change.
Who are you to question it? It's been this way this long.
You're going to question your father's and their fathers and
they're like, no, that that's yeah he's the the reverence for
their elders, their long dead elders.
Is is plays a role in upholding these traditions.
I think too, almost as if to show us what Bracket and
Blackwood are capable of if they work together.
In addition to that case where they lost to the Andal's,
there's sometimes where it actually went better.
Hoster Blackwood tells us the two houses intermarried many
times to forge a peace. But we know nothing of the
success or lack thereof or any of these marriages.
We well, that's not true. Not nothing.
We have a few examples and here's one of them.
This next one is well, there was at least attraction if not love
between Bracken and Blackwood. Quote.
The first of the Andal kings to bring all the river lands under
his sway was a bastard, born of a tryst between two ancient
enemies, Blackwoods and the Brackens.
As a boy he was Benedict Rivers despised by all, but he grew to
be the greatest warrior of his age, SER Benedict the Bold.
His prowess in battle won him the support of both his mother's
house and his father's, and soon other river Lords bent their
knees to him as well. There's nothing like being a
total badass as a means to dominate a culture that loves
total badass. It's like they respect it.
And there's the actual I'll Kill you if you don't Obey Me aspect
to it That is always sort of looming like Egg on the
Conqueror. Like, don't forget I have
Valerian. This guy obviously has nothing
like a Valerian, but being the greatest warrior of your age
carries a lot of weight just before you even get on the
battlefield. People are already afraid of you
when you have things like that going, and that makes them more
likely to just sign up to be on your side.
Like I'd rather be on the side of the bad, baddest warrior than
be against him. You know, sometimes, sometimes
you want to be the guy that beats the baddest warrior, but
it's a huge deal here that the two houses seem to work together
to subjugate the Riverlands for the man who descended from both
houses. This is.
We don't have another example like this of Bracken and
Blackwood being combined in one person that was so effective.
It might be an exception to the claim that yes, they sometimes
work together to fight a common foe.
But not just them, they are. They join coalitions that
involve other river Lords and all that.
They never was like just Bracket and Blackwood, just the two of
them together. That's unheard of.
Except maybe this, Except maybe here, Maybe Benedict the Bold is
the only example of Otherwise. I like to think that he had a
sigil that had both houses kind of reflected like a quartering
of both. But eventually he took his own
name because he became so famous and founded a dynasty which is
house just men, and they had scales as their sigil.
So there's no remnant of either Bracken or Blackwood in that
sigil. Scales like dragon scales.
No justice, the scales of justice.
Oh, gotcha. Like.
Just men. Yeah, he's house.
Just men. Yeah, I'm just man like Saul
Goodman Child Benedict. Just man, Yeah.
Exactly, and this is the maybe the closest it ever gets to
being a powerful functional United States before the
Conquest. The petty divisions though is
what kept that from happening. Heavily implied, if not stated
outright that the reason the Riverlands never had one house
at the top that could hang, that could hang and and keep
stability for so long, directly related to these feuds between
them and with of of which Bracken Blackwood is the biggest
by far. So yes, every time they go to
war it often engulfs the other houses around them because they
have allies and then those allies have to go to war and
then they've all just wrecked each other and progress blah
blah blah. After about 300 years, though,
the Kingdom of the Justin's fell apart.
The dynasty collapsed, and here's what happened Next quote.
Another period of anarchy and bloodshed followed.
The realm that Benedict the Bold had knitted together was torn
asunder once again, and 100 years of conflict saw petty
kings from the Houses Blackwood, Bracken, Vance, Mallister and
Charlton contending with one another for supremacy.
That was the Ironborn that tore it apart, right?
That's what that was, A. No, that's about to be.
It's going to be. They come next.
Was there not some certain onus that made it Justman's reign?
No, it just there. Yeah, there was a there was a
collapse, but it's not really. It's not related to Bracken
Blackwood. But yeah, the Ironborn invasion
comes a bit later, so they unlikely or not unlikely, rather
that both of them held crowns again during this short anarchy
period and then they would have lived his vassals under someone
else, or maybe back and forth. Very chaotic and there's not a
lot of, not a lot of tracking of this period.
When you say Hill crowns again, they both would have claimed to
be kings again of smaller lands most likely right?
So because that's something I was wondering about is under his
rule Did did they they would have maintained their own houses
and had their own sigils and their own marriages and
everything like Justin became a whole new house.
It kind of just came and went right And Blackwood just gives
this existed simultaneously, continuously alongside of that
and then that went away and they were just back to where they
were before. Like usually you have something
like a cadet branch forms out of a former house, but in this case
it's like a cadet branch from 2 houses.
Like it's it's equally. You could say it was equally.
Formed. Yeah, yeah, a lot like that.
So because usually a bastard is is only a lot of times they're
only noble on one side or they just go with their father's side
or something like that. But this because of the unique
situation here, because Bracken and Blackwood are both so
powerful. And I mean, honestly, it sounds
like a bit of a Romeo and Juliet thing, doesn't it?
Like this tryst between a black and a Blackwood?
Like it doesn't even say which was the mother and which was the
father, Because maybe that's not important.
It's not really that important, but it might add some detail.
If we knew you know which side did which, but probably not,
wouldn't change the things very much at all, he might favor one
over the other because you know, people usually favor your
father's house just in Westeros because it's a patriarchal.
But there's no indication of that here.
Probably because he needed to keep that balance.
You know, Brack, if he favors Bracken, the black ones will get
pissed. If he favors Black and he's part
of managing his vassals is keeping them from fighting each
other. As so many other overlords of
the Riverlands had to deal with these two houses fighting each
other, he was uniquely positioned to hold them together
because he would came from both of their houses, which is that
made it harder to argue favoritism and things like that.
Plus he was also just a really strong guy and they didn't want
to mess with him. So all the all those ingredients
really lined up well. Another sort of follow up
question. I did a little research but
couldn't find anything too definitive.
It seems weird to me that this house got to such supremacy and
it just completely disappeared. I got no lost cousin or
anything. There's one guy in Lucifer came
about and made a claim, right? But is there anything beyond
that? No, they they they basically
died out like there's a lot of Riverlands houses that went that
way like house mud and House Fisher and some others that you
don't see those type of extinctions as often in the
other regions for the very same reason the Riverlands are so
war-torn. They that lack of stability is
why you see royal house go extinct whereas in other places
it wouldn't necessarily or where they are ceased to be royal
houses or where there's so much changing at the top.
So yeah, I cannot imagine you know this is when this is also
the era of sigils and and banners and and all that and and
house words, house mottos because the first men didn't do
that. So when the Tully's came up with
family duty honor I believe the Brackins and Bracken and
Blackwoods were like, OK that's pretty good, but let's do it a
little differently. Let's go.
The family to kill is the Blackwoods.
I have a duty to kill Blackwoods.
It is honorable to kill Blackwoods and the Blackwood
house. Words would be kill brackens,
family duty honor in that order. Yeah they both would have A and
we actually don't know the words for either house so it's we can
play with that all we want. The Riverlands lost their self
rule after that period of anarchy too because the
Stormlands eventually took the Riverlands and it was after the
Brackens and Blackwoods actually fought together again against
House Teague. The Teague's were the final
Riverlands bred dynasty to rule the Riverlands and but they were
very zealous with their religion to the point that even the
Brackens thought they'd gone too far gone too far.
So the Blackwoods rose against them because they're like hey we
worship the the old gods so your your zealotry is a particular
problem for us but rather than the Brackens saying we worship
to seven perfect opportunity to attack the Blackwoods, they
actually joined the Blackwood. So this is a very rare case and
now other Riverland houses did too.
So it's it's not a case of just being Blackwood and Bracken.
There were a lot of like the vances and some other houses
joined in but they were going to lose.
This coalition of rebels was going to lose to the Teague
until the Blackwoods brought their in laws.
The the Durandons in almost called them the Baratheons.
But we're well before that era. The Durandons come in, beat the
Teags and then they were going to hand the Riverlands over to
the Blackwoods. But the Blackwood who was going
to receive the crown died during the war.
And they're like, well, we could hand it to like his daughter or
sister. We're not sure who she was.
It was Cher Blackwood. And they're like, Nah, let's not
do that. Let's just keep it.
So the Storm Kings just. Yeah.
So they held it and then and they held it for a while, 300
years. You got to believe that the the
Storm Landers were like every few years, every 10 years, 20
years. Like God, those brackens and
Blackwoods are at it again. Like, This is why no one wants
to rule this region. These two people make these two
houses, make it just not worth it.
It's such a hassle, you know. And I don't know if they like
the Stormlander, who knows how they ruled it.
Did they encourage them to fight each other?
Because the next group of overlords, the Ironborn, will
encourage that. They're like, you go ahead, go
right ahead and fight each other.
But I suspect they were a little unusual in that I suspect that
most rulers want their vassals not so united, that they're a
danger of gathering together and overthrowing you, but not so at
war, that they're not so hating each other that they're fighting
each other, 'cause then they're Your tax revenue is less than
your. What value are they to you?
You, you can't call them up to fight for you 'cause they're
fighting with each other and they're not.
You're contributing to the coffers or helping their own
people or anything so. Surely they were flare ups, we
just don't know what they were in the 300 years of Storm Kings
holding the Riverlands. But interestingly, the fall of
the Storm Kings rule over the Riverlands and transitioning to
the Ironborn actually was in part because of the Bracken
Blackwood feud. Yet again, let's start.
Rather than skipping all, let's skip all the campaign and just
get to the decisive battle quote.
Lord Tully abandoned River Run without a fight, fleeing with
all his strength to join the Host gathering at Raven Tree
Hall under Lady Agnes Blackwood and her sons.
But when Lady Agnes advanced upon the Ironborn, her
belligerent neighbour, Lord Lothar Bracken fell upon her
rear with all his strength and put her men to flight.
Lady Agnes herself and two of her sons were captured and
delivered to King Harwin, who forced the mother to watch as he
strangled her boys with his bare hands.
So the reason I wanted to include that last line, which
isn't actually relevant to the Bracken Blackwood conflict, is,
well, I think it is because this look at this bad judgement like
this is who Lothar Bracken allied with this guy that
strangled this woman's sons in front of her.
Like this is the man you think you can trust that you want as
you're out. Like what were you thinking?
And indeed it was a huge mistake.
It it he would later regret turning on his fellow
Riverlanders and it seems like kind of obvious you know that
that like a blatant mistake and I think that maybe just a dummy
but I think it was yay, an opportunity to attack the
Blackwood. I think he just took that part
of it and focused on that and was like, all right, here's our
chance and that that was maybe too much of A benefit to him and
clouded his judgement on how bad the rest of this arrangement
would be. I also wonder if Lady Agnes just
hated the Brackens even more than King Harwin.
I was like, yeah, he killed my sons in front of me, but he that
other that brackens the reason this is even happening in the
1st place. He betrayed the entire
Riverlands. You know like that guy this the
ironborns are going to Ironborn brackets turned on their own
people. That's worse.
So and had she lived like she stood up to him and was executed
for it. If she had she lived, she would
have seen that Lord Lothar was hanged in a CRO cage to starve
to death. So he got quite the karma for
his actions there and I think, I think the Blackwoods would be
like, Yep, he agreed he he earned that and more.
I think they'd be saying after that that horrible way their
lady and her sons were were killed.
What did King Harwin get? He's the one that seems to be
getting some karmic justice too. But I don't.
Did he? He just.
Nope. Kept being king, he.
Just ruled the Riverlands and passed it on to his son.
Yeah, he didn't. He didn't really have any karmic
justice for him. So yeah, and that's an
uncomfortable truth about war and conquest, is that it's often
wildly profitable for the winning side.
But that's a point that doesn't apply to Bracken and Blackwood.
They're not. There's no profit really, at the
end of this for them. Like, if I wipe out the
Brackens, I get. It's like the Underpants gnomes,
like there's no profit at the end of that.
Like the king won't let you keep Stone Head.
The Brackens take Blackwood Vale.
The king will be like you can't have that.
We're giving it to a new house. Someone else gets to rule that
it won't be your ancient and Arch enemies anymore.
You can maybe feel good, but you're the Bracken that finally
wiped out the Blackwoods. But there's no actual benefit
to, like, measurable benefit in that sense, other than maybe
they're they'll never attack you again.
There is always that. Which, again, is the
uncomfortable truth about the benefits of Warren Conquest
sometimes. You would get that benefit with
peace. Also, there's a lot of benefits
to peace. Thank you.
Yes, exactly. So, so it's an example of how no
one wins in cycles of endless violence like this.
In ancient times, it might have been possible for one of them to
wipe out the other, but that's those days are gone.
They no longer if they ever had the strength to wipe each other
out, Sean, we talked about that earlier.
They don't anymore, right? Like they don't now.
And it would they don't even have the permission to start
these wars. So when they do it, they're
already breaking the law. When they do it, they used to be
able to do it legally and it was still a bad idea.
Now it's illegal and still a bad idea beyond being illegal.
So lack of benefit, lack of like just they just shooting each
others in the foot, just it's just so bad.
But if we're going back to this time, or to where we're
currently focused on before the Iron Throne was forged, right
before, there's someone over them going, no, you can't do
that. The iron after the Iron Born had
ruled the Riverlands for 80 to 90 years.
We'll Fast forward to that. So not long before the conquest,
only about 1020 years before the conquest, Heron Hall was 3/4 of
the way done. OK, so we're 30 years into
Heron. The Blacks rule.
He ruled for over 40. The Brackets of Blackwoods went
to war again at this stage, and it went even stupider than it
often does. It went further into the realm
of self-inflicted damage. Quote.
A decade before Aegon's conquest, the Blackwoods and
Brackens had entered into a new private war.
In their ancient feud previously, their ironborn
overlords had largely ignored such conflicts amongst their
vassals. Indeed, if the Iron Chronicle
could be believed, Harwin Hardhand OFT seemed to pit his
bannermen against one another to keep them weak.
But this time the feuding disrupted the construction of
Heron Hall, and that was enough reason for Heron the Black to
deal with them harshly. I wonder how exactly the war
disrupted the construction. But whatever it was, it would
have been stupid. Because that's the only thing
Heron the Black cared about, was building this castle like he was
making slaves out of people. Like tearing down weirwoods,
doing all sorts of awful things. Is is clearly the only thing
that mattered to him. You know, it was, it was 30
years into this construction, you know, all of his attention
was put into it, and they disrupted the construction of it
somehow. I don't even know how.
Like maybe they destroyed some mine, started some fire.
Who knows, Maybe a bunch of different things cut off supply
to this or that. I don't know.
Their soldiers might have been responsible for transporting
some material. Instead of doing that, they're
all fighting a war. So now all these workers are
standing around in Hare and Hall without the right materials and
you know. Got another?
Another just great example. Great example in air quotes of
how blind their collective rage makes them, like they are so
intent on hurting each other. That and then so unable to back
down that they're while being pretty aware of what's likely to
happen to them. Like Aaron the Black is going to
kick Y'all's butts for this, and he's way more powerful than you
all. If you wanted to stand up to
him, you'd need to do it together, not after weakening
each other. It's just really, it's like game
of chicken. They're driving right at each
other, you know, And they're both like, oh, I'm not turning
And they're just going to ram into each other like they
neither of them backs off or they're like, oh, I'm going to
drive off this Cliff to show you I can do it and then actually
drive off the Cliff instead of stopping at the last second, you
know. So the conquest moving forward,
the actual conquest. Aegon and his sisters took
portions of what became the Crown Lands 1st and moved on to
the nearest kingdoms. Aegon took on Heron the Black
himself, who was believed to be the strongest.
So you know, take on the strongest guy, prove yourself to
be the new strongest guy. And of course, Valerian was a
big part of that. The River Lords hated Heron
hated the Ironborn, probably didn't love the idea of facing
Dragons either. So the decision was pretty easy.
Let's see, we hate this guy. He's probably going to lose.
Should we stick with him or not? You know, like, it's a pretty
easy call. Let's switch to the guy with
Dragons, who we don't hate, at least not yet.
And he didn't. Honestly, Eggon didn't really
give them any reason to hate them.
Not in the Riverlands anyway. Elsewhere, absolutely.
But the Riverlands, they were like, yay, he's our Liberator.
Like, yes, he's also going to be our new king, But by comparison
he's so much better. And he raised a lot of River
Lords up. Like a lot of them benefited
from being these early defectors, so a lot of them were
the first ones to join him, because the rest of the conquest
wasn't complete yet. He had the Crown lands.
His sisters were off subjugating the Stormlands and the Veil.
He took care of Black Heron so fast, the River Lords fell in
line so quickly. Yeah, they were like the first
ones. The River Lords were like the
first ones to join Aegon, and a lot of them benefited greatly.
But because their private war and subsequent punishment by
Heron, the Black weakened them so much, neither Blackwood nor
Bracken were able to take advantage of these new
opportunities, these new, this churn that it happened.
It's this opportunity to rise in the court of this new Grand
Conqueror, to be in his esteem, to get new jobs, honors, titles
that went to Edmund Tully because Tully had the strength
to do so, whereas Bracken and Blackwood didn't 'cause they
were so weakened by that private feud and subsequent punishment.
Remember that Edmund Tully was not only named Lord Paramount of
the Trident over the Brackens and Blackwoods, both of whom
were more powerful than the Tully's then and now.
Well, temporarily. They were weaker then, but they
recovered, you know within 10 to 20 years had more money, more
soldiers than the Tully's, both of them.
So it was a wasted opportunity. Had they not fought each other,
one of them could have been in Tully's place, they might have
been fighting over which it was. That's a relatively easy guess
to make. But still, it's the Tully's were
weaker and they but they got to jump to 1st place because of
their own, their own squabbling. And this.
The evidence for this is supported later by how quite
often Bracken and Blackwood were able to claim high places at
court later on. We've got both the hands.
There's a hand to the king Bracken, there's a hand to the
king. Blackwood.
Well that's blood Raven. But still that counts.
And yeah, so they this just goes to show that level of prestige
that the value of having been kings in the past gives them,
you know, extra clout among the nobility.
And yeah, they squatted it from the early going.
No. I think Nina points this out
here that it might have been like a blessing in disguise for
Aegon 2 to not have to choose between them like.
Oh yeah. Guys made it easy for me because
then he's kind of choosing sides as a quarrel.
Like I I wonder, even if that hadn't happened, he might have
still chosen Tolley or someone else so as to not have to take
sides or reinflame the conflict between those two.
But they made it easy for him so.
And he didn't like he wasn't like Heron, where he wanted them
to fight each other, but he didn't want.
But he did want them, the top house in each region, to be
reliant on him, 'cause he then their he, their authority should
come through him so that they need to stay with him in order
to keep it. Otherwise they might rally their
realm and fight him. So yeah, by putting until he's
in a weaker house in charge. Yeah, we've talked about this
before. Same thing happened with the
Tyrells and to a lesser extent the Greyjoys.
Yeah, it could absolutely have also been a reason for egg on
the Conqueror. Like the prime example of what
kind of laws he needs to make for his new vassals.
Like, OK, well we need to keep them from fighting each other
too much. Bracket and Blackwood is
probably the best example or worst example of what it could,
of how it can devolve. So we need to use them as the
litmus test of how we govern. You know, we can't allow these
kind of private wars. So what do we do to them?
How do we punish perpetrators of private war?
What's the punishment, What's the policy, how do we enforce
it? Etcetera.
Bracket and Blackwood would probably be the the chief
example like well if we can control those two then we can
probably control anyone you know and that would be but there
might be like and there might be other river Lords like Edmund
Tully who knows them well. Hand of the King is in there
like giving specific advice on how to well and and my father
dealt with them this way or you know well not his father 'cause
they weren't in charge of them. My father said this about
Bracket and Blackwood and their feud or whatever and how how
strong had hands of the king in their Riverland's house.
They would probably have experience with the Bracket and
Blackwood feud too. Their their house is just as
old. So thousands of years of dealing
with these houses as neighbors. Like yeah well if you want to
deal with those two, you got to do this or that.
Don't give too much favor to one or the other.
Aegon would be getting advice from river Lords like here's how
you handle that and then if you if you can handle that one you
can handle any other conflict. So yeah, once again, there at
the tip of the spear, the best example and the worst example.
They're like a long standing problem, but at at that moment
for Aegon, the Iron Islands had a lot of infighting too, right?
Yeah, absolutely. So had he Had he conquered?
Had they bowed to him at that point?
They didn't bow to him until the second year after the conquest.
He kind of let them do their thing while he was conquering
the other areas while the iron. And then he was like time to go
settle this and put it 'cause there was an in there was
religious warring the the Shrike or low dose rather low dose was
was leading a religious rebellion against the Dragons
and Yep, it was it was bad. Speaking of the example of that
hoster Blackwood gave Jamie of Oh yeah, we've had lots of
pieces. We've had many times were
Bracken and Blackwood married and just it was a temporary fix
at most, you know. And that happened here.
Visenya brokered a double wedding between Bracken and
Blackwood early and early after the conquest.
We're not sure if it was you know 1020 thirty years in
because it was during Aegon's reign and he reigned till the
year 36, so plenty of time for that to happen.
But either way it also doesn't seem to have created any lasting
peace. But it maybe worked for 50-60
years, so decent job there by Vicenia, but they may have also
just been like afraid to test their new overlords.
Even Bracken and Blackwood might have been like hair in the black
can only do so much to us. But these guys have Dragons.
We saw what they did to literally to hair in the black.
They they have Aaron Hall sitting right there to remind
them of what happened. So that might have helped keep
them down for a while, but not forever.
It came back as it always does and we'll come back after some
quick messages here. We would love to have you join
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I'll say it again. I think it's a good way to to to
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That's how we do it. And it's worth a discussion here
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It hasn't always been possible so easily the Internet is in
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that possible. So these discussions I think
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You know, it's it's really is a a buffet style, you know, take
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A lot of reasons to go to our website.
You know, it's been a long time, but I think it's before I ever
heard the word podcast. But Radiohead released an album
for free, and they're like, yeah, you can pay us if you
want, however much you like it, pay us that much money.
I remember thinking that's a revolutionary idea.
Yeah. Yeah, right.
And you know, when you're a band as big as Radiohead, you can do
stuff like that. But still I'm not saying that is
like to be cynical because it it when they do that it it does put
that idea out there more for more people to do it.
It encourages that it like it is a rising tide lifts all those
type of situation even though even though in this case it's
just conceptual it's like yeah support directly rather than and
we all like that like you because who wants to support the
music industry when you could support the artists like that's
one of the worst industries there is right.
Like podcast industry is fine. Like it's not such the best
ever. But it's it's nowhere, it's not.
It doesn't have the the decades of of filth that the music
industry has. It's just such a criminal
industry. Yeah, there's some good people.
We need to get started on that, Aziz.
We need more filth. Yeah, let's get let's get in
there. Let's.
That's that's the industry for me.
Yeah. Yeah.
So we every Friday I do Twitch streaming over on
twitch.com/history Westeros, and that involves playing the games
Crusader Kings Three with the Asanga W Fire mod.
So it is set in Westeros with Essos and all that good stuff.
It's extremely detailed. And there's a group of you all
who join me every week, who I call the large council y'all
help me make decisions and name characters, plenty or otherwise.
And right now we're playing House Tarly in the era of just
after the Black Fire Rebellion, the final Black Fire rebellion,
the 9 Penny Kings war. And we had Robert's brother,
Robert's father's rebellion. That's right, Robert didn't
exist in this timeline because it started in 258, before he was
born. Robert's father Stefan instead
rebelled against the Queen Rainier Targaryen.
Not the same Rainier as you know, Dance of Dragon's era, a
different Rainier child of of Aegon the 5th.
And so good times and and fun happens every Friday with
alternate world Game of Thrones. Let's get back to it.
It's funny to think about Victorian and how Euron Oh no,
did that sentence. You can just stop right there.
It's funny to think about Victorian.
Yeah, just end of sentence. No, no, just kidding.
It's funny to think about Victorian and how Euron got him
to go halfway across the world simply by taunting him with the
equivalent of what? Are you scared?
Too scared to go across the world?
Like, I'm not as scared of anything.
I'll go across the world. Like that is the most
manipulatable person like you are.
So like, talk about like leaving yourself open, like this guy can
totally make him do, make you do whatever he wants.
Yeah. How like, so keep that in mind.
Like one brother taunting the other and getting him into
action. Blackwood taunting Bracken or
black or back and forth or the other way around, vice versa.
Like that's probably very effective because they hate each
other so much. They they have so little, they
use so little of their brain when it comes to the opposite,
you know, they get worked up so easily.
It's just like that bracken. It only have to be true, like to
someone. Like a virus or a little finger
could be like bro, that black. That black one black.
I was doing it. I was doing so well, not
crossing bracket and Blackwood names.
Now I'm doing it. That Blackwood over there called
you a name, bro. What like didn't have to be
true. They probably believe it because
that is what a Blackwood would do.
You can't trust them. They're all treacherous.
They're born with traitors, blood.
Like Jonas said. Yeah.
I appreciate that. Was that Littlefinger and virus
you said? You know, like squirrelly
manipulative characters. You can lump Tywin in with them
also. Right.
Oh, yes. Tywin would do that.
Yeah, he would do it. He would also do it to their
faces. But he would also do it behind
the scenes. Yeah, he would do both they.
'D do it, it seems. Right.
Oh yeah, that later. Yes, Tywin.
Totally took advantage of of of this of their hating each other.
So after the conquest this this phase that we like to call under
the Dragons and we have a couple of different episodes that are
hold that title different houses or regions and and how the early
phase of under the conquest treated them.
The Brackens and Blackens weren't in a great position to
take advantage of the great ship power as we said they did so
later though that's as well in part due to proximity their
former royal houses that are near King's Landing relatively
speaking they're not as proximate as each other.
You know they're not right next door.
But still the Riverland is like 2 weeks, 3 weeks ride from from
their lands to King's Landing, which is pretty short
comparatively. Things were pretty quiet for
Blackwood and Bracken under Aegon, Anis and Megor, and that
might be because of that Vicenia double marriage that might have
really worked for couple or a generation or two.
Or maybe they just were like I said earlier, afraid of pissing
off the Dragons. Fairpoint, right?
Like Vicenia and Aegon and and well, Raines would have been
dead pretty early on, but still. But the Brackens were busy with
Megor thanks to his wars against the Faith and the Brackens.
The Black, the Blackwoods might have sat back and been like see,
look what happens when you mess with you know, you take on the
seven like that, you become a 7 worshipper and look what
happens. You got to get in these wars and
all that. Like our religion is so much
better. Bracken was also Kingsguard in
this era and he defected away from Megor when Megor's reign
kind of collapsed. And yeah, I wonder if the
Blackwoods were like, why would you have a Bracken in your
Kingsguard? Like how could you trust that
guy? Like he's just going to stab you
in the back. And sure enough, like that's why
what they said, even though it was Megor, he did, he defected
away from Megor like see, can't trust him even though it was a
totally reasonable thing to do. Like, I mean, this is Megor
we're talking about, but Jerry's who was obviously king next,
didn't really want any Kingsguard who switched sides
and so and so he allowed this Oliver Bracken to switch his
white cloak for a black one and join the Night's Watch.
Now this Oliver Bracken had more adventures in the North, crazy
stuff that happened up there, but they have nothing to do with
any Blackwoods or the feud. But it's it's quite a story
anyway. But we'll come back at some
other. Time.
He wasn't exactly a hero, though.
Cried me from. Oh no, he was definitely not.
Not exactly. Not even close.
He was a bad guy. But.
When when we were first putting this episode together, I asked
you, are there any brackens who are protagonistic, heroic, you
know, any kind of positive light And you're like, I don't think
so. And I'm like, are there any
Blackwoods who were like negative villain, bad guys?
I'm like maybe blood Raven, you know, sort of.
It seems pretty clear that George is presenting them with a
bias. Yes, they are, you know, But
it's it's. Interesting that that Despite
that bias, none has triumphed over the other.
You know, and I have more to say on that later as well.
Same, yeah, so Bethenia's double marriage didn't have, you know,
eventually it a war off, I guess because things clearly flared
back up near the end of the 1st century or so.
We don't have the details, but here's a brief quote that tells
the story. Even the old king Jehari's the
conciliator failed in his attempt to halt the ceaseless
war, for the peace he forged not long outlast the end of his
reign. Yep.
So they went right back at it. Even the man who earned the
nickname The Conciliator, like, he was really good at this sort
of thing. He made peace between the faith
and his house. Like after what Megor did solved
all that, brought a lot of other houses back into the fold that
had wars with each other. Just fixed a lot of simmering
feuds. But he couldn't fix this one.
It had start. To be fair, it had lasted a lot
longer than the other ones that he was dealing with.
But this goes to show all right. The dance era.
The Blackwood supported Lanor in the Great Council of One O 1.
Remember the book version? It's Lanor, not Rainey's.
We don't know who the Brackens supported, but probably Viserys
because he was the most popular candidate by far.
And the Blackwoods are noted as an exception to supporting
Lanor. So almost certainly the Brackens
were supported. Viserys, who of course became
King 11 years later in the year, won 12.
So we're still 17 years before the war a Samwell Blackwood
dueled am Sir Amos Bracken for Rainier his favor.
There's no indication Rainier actually cared that much, but
they said hey let me let us duel for your favor and just
thinking, OK, neither of them actually got anything out of it.
Amos won the duel but it didn't seem to win in many acclaim.
In fact, the Brackens fought for the Greens later, so maybe it
maybe they were expecting something and got nothing.
And that's why they were like, all right, we're fighting for
the Greens. But so a different version of
this happened on TV. There's a different bracket and
Blackwood happened for some reason, it happened in the Storm
Lands, but whatever. So that wasn't Samwell, it was
what was his name, Willem Blackwood versus Gerald Bracken,
which is that works for me. Like, I don't know why they
changed it from Samwell and Amos, but like, there's been
infinite Blackwoods that have fought infinite Bracken.
So just yeah, throw two names together and give them a reason
to fight. And which this is, they're both
trying to I impress the girl more than you.
And you can imagine the taunting, just like it happened
in the TV show 1. Little taunt is really all it's
took to get going. And if those were two other
houses, it might be like, that seems extreme.
But Bracken and Blackwood and I actually like how the TV show
portrayed it because right after young Willem kills Gerald, he
like, throws up. He can't believe what he just
did. And it's like that to me.
That's the feud. That's his and their ancestors
made that happen as much like they're like they're just along
for the ride. Like the kid doesn't even know
what he's doing until he's like, Oh my God, I just killed this
guy, you know? So that's that's the power of
this feud, just like coursing through his veins.
And and once he's done that, it's going to be hard to choose
a new path forward, you know what I mean?
He's kind of has to stand by that identity that he just
created for himself or that his parents created for him or
whatever. Yeah, he's got to own it.
He's like, yeah, I killed that Prac.
And even if he kind of feels guilty about it or feels bad
about it or like Nope to it's it's that whole better to look
cruel than stupid kind of thing, you know, He's like, you know I
did that. So just by what he believes,
he's going to say that he did it on purpose.
And I took out a bracken. That was a good thing, you know,
you're like, I'm always going to be proud of that.
Well, you know, why wouldn't I be?
Blah, blah, blah. He may not actually feel that,
but that's what that's the party line, I think.
I just want to point out that I I avoided research in this
section 'cause I don't want to spoil myself for for the House
of the Dragons show, you know, and and I kind of trust you to
not spoil me through here. But for example, I'm scared to
even know which side the Brackens and Blackwoods fall on
because there seems to be such this bias for the Blackwoods
being more of the good guys, although that's not the same
thing as being on the winning side.
But anyway, I just want to throw that out there to the audience
trying to stay unsullied on this.
If you want to take your headphones off for three
minutes, this is the only brief spoilers we have.
They're pretty mild, but so the Blackwoods declared for the
blacks early in the war, as did most of the Riverlands.
The brackets took the side of the Greens, and though it isn't
explicit, it might have been because they didn't want to be
on the same side as the Black Blackwoods, which is obviously a
foolish decision making your choice based on who your which
side your enemy is on. Like you know you should make a
decision based on what's better for your house overall, not just
what the Blackwoods are doing. And they certainly engaged in
some fresh mutual destruction. You know, there was the Lord
Blackwood was killed and then Lord Bracken was killed.
And mostly the Blackwoods got the better of it, but not
because it was Blackwood versus Bracken, but because most of the
Riverlands was on the side of the of the blacks.
So the Brackens were in the minority and it didn't work out
very well. Damon was there.
They didn't have a dragon on the air side.
So pretty quickly the Brackens were not a factor in the war
anymore. They lost and they joined the
rest of the Riverlands. But we don't actually hear the
mentioned. Again, the Blackwoods mentioned
a lot throughout the rest of the war, but not in the context of
fighting Brackens. So it's not too relevant for us
today, except perhaps to say the brackets probably were jealous.
The the the Blackwoods were very outstanding.
There are a lot of famous names. Black Alley, Blackwood, Bloody
Ben, Blackwood, Red, Rob Rivers, even that's a Bachelor of Raven
tree. So other than the fame and honor
that Blackwoods gained that the brackets didn't, that there's
not much else to say about the dance now.
It's certainly possible there was another flare up after the
dance. But we're getting into the era
which is after the dance that is kind of hazy for us it's there's
no there's fire in blood, but there's no blood in fire.
Meaning we have the years one through one 31136 just pretty
well known but the period between after the dance up until
roughly Roberts Rebellion Ish maybe a little before that we
just we're missing a lot you know there's certain periods we
know decently well because of Dunkin Egg for example.
But yeah, there's large chunks that are some of the least
understood for us. And it looks likely that there
was some Blackwood Bracken competition here and there,
especially after the dance when there was no more threat of
Dragons, right? They they they it's one thing
for Bracken and Blackwood to rise up and get egg on or Mega
or someone's attention and Valerian, next thing you know,
Valerian is there, you know, burning one of their castles
down. But after the dance, just like
no Dragons left. So what do they they they have
probably feel a little more empowered to to do what they
want and deal with the consequences later 'cause they
were already pretty willing to do that.
It's like, well, we'll fight each other and that's better
than not fighting each other, even though the punishment will
be great. Yeah, so but they also, it also
shows how things transitioned. They started fighting.
They moved, let's say they didn't start fighting, but they
moved their theater of their feud to not just the Riverlands
anymore. It started also happening at
Court Bracket and Blackwood Dynamics played out at the Red
Keep as much as they played out in the Riverlands.
This is a difference is an evolution of their feud and it's
fairly recent in the history we were.
We've covered thousands of years of history today, but some of
the stuff under the Targaryen reign is is very different
because it's allows them to both simultaneously play out their
ambitions, both against each other and individually as houses
under the auspices of the Iron Throne, where there's a lot of
space to rise because hey, the the era of Blackwood and Bracken
Kings is gone. But there's nothing to say that
a Bracken or Blackwood Queen couldn't exist through marriage
to a Targaryen, right? That's entirely possible.
It wasn't as possible during the era of Dragons 'cause they were
more set on the incestuous marriages because the blood of
the dragon making able to fly Dragons and all that.
But after the dance, the Dragons were no longer the source of
Targaryen power. They started to move towards the
faith. They started to embrace the
seven as a means of power, as a means of authority, cause to
replace their draconic authority like they had physical prowess
with the Dragons. They didn't have that anymore.
So they're like, well, the gods chose us.
We are the arbiters of heaven in a sense, so you everything goes
through us, right? And that enabled non incestuous
marriages because the Targaryens are like, well we don't care
about that as much. Plus we're also trying to be
more under the rules of the faith, and the faith isn't so
big on incest. Yes, we had the doctrine of
exceptionalism, but the doctrine of exceptionalism specifically
refers to Dragons and things like that which we don't have
those anymore. So they kind of quietly started
doing more, quote UN quote regular marriages to just
powerful houses rather than just to each other.
And yes, Bracken and Blackwood were included in that.
And in no era was that more a big deal, more prominent than
under Aegon the Unworthy, who had his famous 9 mistresses and
countless other lovers and, you know, flings and what have you.
But there were nine that like, had longevity so real.
Here's an overview of the relevant parts.
Egon the Unworthy's fifth mistress was Barbara Bracken,
who bore Egor Rivers, who later became known as Bitter Steel.
Egon the Unworthy's sixth mistress was Melissa Blackwood,
who bore Brendan Rivers, who later become known as
Bloodraven. There's also two sisters, Mia
and Gwyneth, but we don't know anything about them, so we'll
just have to skip them for now. Aegon the Unworthy's 7th
mistress, so 5-6 and seven, was Bethany Bracken, who was
Barbara's younger sister and bore no children, but she
suffered as much as anyone described in this episode.
Poor Bethany Bracken. While others will leverage or
incite the Bracken or Blackwood feud for gain as a strategy or
whatever for their own purposes, Aegon just did it for fun.
Which is, you know, that is his own purposes.
But his own purposes were just kind of simple and kind of
cynical, you know? So when he was dating Barbara
Bracken, he took the teats, which were currently in the
possession of Blackwoods, and just reassigned them to the.
He's like, Nope, these belong to you now, kind of inciting the
old few just bought on a whim then.
And the part of this was because Barbara was well endowed in the
chest and he thought it was funny to be like, ah, she get
it's her family deserves these because she's buxom.
You know, like, yeah, again, this guy was a real piece of
work. That's why he was the unworthy.
Although, well, just one example of why.
Anyway, then then he breaks up with Barbara eventually and
takes Melissa Blackwood as a lover, probably in part to piss
off the Brackens, just because this is the kind of thing he
did. I mean, he could have had about
anybody he wanted. He was the king.
But he took Melissa Blackwood and gave the teats back to the
Blackwoods. He just like Nah, actually
reverse that decision. It goes back to them just on a
whim, just giving land to one family, taking it away, giving
it back, blah blah blah. And all this was in the backdrop
of a much bigger drama playing out at court over the years.
We don't actually know who owned had the teats for just like a
lot. Just like the origin of feud.
We don't know who had the teats first, who took it from the
other, but we don't know. But it's what's more important
here is just this guy's being a just a a blatant, silly tyrant
here. He's like, yeah man, this is
land ownership is a big deal. It's it's held to entrust.
It's like an important part of their society, you know?
Think of the impact it has on the people that live there too,
like they just have no idea what to predict or plan for.
Should we harvest our? Should we plant crops?
Who is going to tax us? Are our houses safe from being
taken over or attacked? You know, like and to him, it's
a whim that he thinks nothing about except three or four
people that might get upset. But never mind the hundreds of
people whose lives are at stake, you know?
Yeah, yeah, that's a great. Yeah, great point, Sean.
So, well, when he was dating Barbara, when he had her as his
mistress, Dating is kind of a funny term to use in this
context, but whatever. Lord Bracken was Aegon's hand,
so he was basically taking advantage of the King's infinite
lust by, like, bringing his daughter into the mix.
Now, it's actually not clear what came first, the Hand ship
or the relationship. He may have leveraged their
relationship to become Hand or the other way around.
Doesn't matter. Both of these things were
regular occurrences on Aegon's court.
Both he was the the King of Bathe Her and Bring Her To Me,
You know that that was his thing.
But she, Barbara, was actually originally one of the companions
at the Maiden Vault, one of the princesses in the tower.
So that's probably where he met her.
So it probably wasn't Lord Bracken being Hand first then.
But again, it doesn't really matter which happened first.
It's a big parallel to Otto Hightower using Allison to get
in with Viserys, who's already hand, and then he brings
daughter in. Instead of Otto pushing Viserys
to set Rainier aside for his grandson, we have Lord Bracken
encouraging the King's rivalry with his brother, aiming the
dragon knight and his own queen, the sister sister wife Nerys,
right? Remember, Aegon tried to disown
his own son so he could maybe inherit, give the inheritance to
one of his bastards. Which is exactly what Lord
Bracken would be pushing for cause one of those bastards was
Bitter Steel, who, you know, didn't have that nickname yet.
But a Bracken being king could have was a reasonable
possibility in this era, and they were certainly pushing for
it. And there he's had her
illnesses, right? She was frail.
The maester's like, it's not a good idea for her to have more
for her to have more kids. Aegon didn't give a crap.
He's like, I don't care, we're going to we're going to take,
give it a shot. You know if she dies, she dies.
I got more women. His attitude is like that.
Pretty awful. So he'd also fathered Damon
Blackfyre by this era. But of course, Damon was not
Damon Blackfyre till he was 12. He was Damon Waters and and the
father wasn't known. Dana the Defiant refused to say
so. That's why Hagor was more
prominent in this era, even though he was a year younger
than Damon. But then Brendan Rivers comes
along under when Melissa gives birth, and that's four or five
years later. I've long believed that Agor and
Damon, who are both larger and older now.
I don't think Damon would have picked on Bloodraven, but Agor
would have. He's been taught Not only has he
been taught to hate Blackwoods, but this is a particularly
charged situation because Barba and Lord Bracken were very
ambitious. They both.
They wanted to win Aegon over, get Favors Nerys when she was
dying. Lord Bracken started openly
talking about the king marrying Barba after, you know, in in her
place before she died. Like she didn't die until many
years later. So it was really just uncouth,
really just bad, like his poor policy for his ambitions, not a
good way to accomplish his goals, his crappy goals.
So he went too far that even Aegon had enough.
They like, you're gone, you're done.
No more of this talk of setting my wife aside or replacing my
wife. You're out.
How bad? Do you have to be for Aegon the
Unworthy to think you're bad, you know?
Yes, a very good point. Yes, good observation.
So so you got to think that bitter steel who eventually
poured poison in Damon's ear as we're told, had this poison
poured in his ear first by his grandfather and mother who were
bitter like he is over losing their station.
Losing their relationship, losing his hand.
Ship all that to a Blackwood, right?
Not just losing it, but losing it to a Blackwood like oof.
Like that is the boiling point. That's all the things they hate.
Stifled ambition and Blackwoods, you know, like all that, right?
Mix into a pot and they can pour all that into this sun.
This promising martial violent boy who's really good at has
purple eyes. He's really good at fighting.
It looks like he's going to be a real winner of a knight.
Well, he might be not a winner, but he is certainly a knight.
And and dangerous and yeah, the other other words.
You're up to you on how to describe bitter steel.
I've got the shirt on so I'm a fan as a character.
So remember this parallel look. Think about how strong a
parallel is. Like Otto was also fired for
pushing the issue of succession too much, right?
So you can kind of see. But this would have been
different though, 'cause, like Viserys isn't Aegon the
unworthy, he's not. It wasn't a great king, but he
also wasn't awful, wasn't abject terrible, wasn't just like
constantly doing things to make it worse.
And yes, Viserys left the realm in a sorry state at visa visa
succession, but it was it was through inaction, whereas Aegon
did it specifically. He created the problem that
wasn't there. Viserys made passive errors.
Aegon created problems, created new problems.
And these problems were created through the black and black with
Feud. He used their focused hate as
like a like a laser like he that was the amplifier of this drama
was using the two houses who hated each other the most and
just making a game of it. He's like, I'm going to pit them
against each other and see what happens.
And I get to sleep with whoever I want anyway, So what do I
care? Yeah, so it's just this awful
game, like picture. This is what, like, imagine this
is the kind of thing Joffrey would have done if he had lived
to be older as a king, Probably with more more violence,
probably with Joffrey and less sex, but still still pretty bad.
This is the type of thing that makes us not want kings.
This is the type of thing that led the world to favor democracy
or whatever else. Yeah.
When you have a good king, it's
arguably better than a democracy, even.
You know, if you have a good, just, wise, intelligent on and
on positive leader, they can maybe make a greater difference
with greater power, but it's not worth it because if they're not,
if they are. Inevitably, someone won't be.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
They can just completely undo all the positives and be so
awful for everyone, yeah. Yeah, so it's there.
We see a lot of this there. And yeah, so it's instead of
like most kings have had to deal with the Brackens and Blackwoods
to figure out a way to keep calm them down, this king incited
them. He took the thing that's a
problem for rulers and made it worse for his amusement.
Now we're not sure why Melissa left or was set aside.
Maybe Aegon just was like, I'm ready for a new mistress.
I've had her for several years. I'm bored.
But it could be like the brackens were in his ear, you
know. Hey, I've got another one for
you. I've got a better younger girl
for you because that's what happened.
The next mistress was Bethany Bracken, who we are explicitly
told was groomed by her father and older sister who had
experience like he likes it when you touches this or he likes it
when you do this or whisper that like like it's so bad.
But that's this is what happened.
Like she's teaching her younger sister how to like, please, this
man. But she wasn't ambitious like
her sister and father. She didn't like it.
She wasn't in on the plan and she of course eventually got
caught sleeping with the Kingsguard and was executed
horribly after watching the Kingsguard be executed horribly.
And there was punishment and torture, and then Lord Bracken
was executed as well. So it really backfired.
It really backfired on the Brackens trying to get in with
the king here. And they're pushing back against
the Blackwood element. I think might be a big part of
what caused them to act far. They there was a line that they
might have played around properly if it was just their
ambition, but the hatred of Blackwoods and that element,
like it just threw a hole, just threw some chaos into the mix.
Gas on the fire. Yeah, that's a good one.
Yeah, it was a catalyst for them to act stupidly, like, oh, they
might have kept their cool and stuck to their plan, but this
Blackwood hate threw them off like that.
We got to also get the Blackwood that became part of the ambition
is yes, we want power, but we want to use it against the
Blackwoods and we want to use it before we even have it all.
Like, yes, make me king before the queen is even dead.
Or make make my daughter queen before the before your queen is
even dead. So just lots of mistakes like
you couldn't. You can't rise that high being
stupid, but they definitely did stupid things to lose it, you
know, it's it's like, yeah, another example of both power
and hatred just messing with your brain.
When those two things were together, they can really mess
with your brain. So the realm would suffer
immensely. Though this was just the
beginning right? This is just laying the seeds
for the blackfyre rebellions. Which again, the biggest great
civil war since the dance, one of the greatest civil wars in
the history of Westeros. And I'm not sure it happens
without Bracken and Blackwoods, without their feud.
It's their these mothers, really, the Bracken mother that
was pushing it more, and Aegon the unworthy.
But still, the Blackwoods are not blameless.
They definitely get a big part of the of the blame for this
next part. In general they have an equal
share of the blame, I would say. But here, maybe, maybe there's a
case for for it to be a little different still, like a virus
that spreads from a rural area to an urban area where it wreaks
havoc because there's a lot more people, you know, The bracken
Blackwood feud pushed itself onto a larger stage here with
the black fire rebellions. It started at King's Landing,
then incubated back in the Riverland.
You got Barbara and her father sent home complaining and
scheming all around young Egor who took all that in, and you
could see how it affected him because he spent his whole life
chasing the Iron Throne and fighting Blackwoods on a bigger
stage than any bracken before him ever had probably.
So this is the ultra competitive and ambitious lifestyle that he
was was brought into. And of course, we know that egg
on the 4th famously legitimized his bastards.
And his son, King Daron, was worried about what might happen,
right? The black fire bellies didn't
kick off for, you know, 12 years after Aegon's death.
And to maybe keep them at peace, he brought them closer together.
He's like, OK, I'm going to bring you all to court and you
can be next to each other. I can keep an eye on you.
That might have blackfired. I mean, backfired because it
might have been inevitable, but it it might not because Brendan
and Igor grew to hate each other.
I mean, they already kind of dead because they were primed to
because of their families, right?
It's like they, they probably hated each other before they
even met, Probably, you know, and they did meet his children.
So a lot of these decisions would have been made for them,
and then as they grew, you know that the more and more hate
would have been poured into their ears.
Even if Melissa wasn't telling Brendan to hate brackens or
whatever other Blackwoods probably did like she wasn't,
she was an exception. Not the rule.
Like not all Blackwoods are as beloved and, you know, amazingly
able to make friends with people who should be her enemies.
I wouldn't be surprised if Melissa was came close to
befriending Black Brackens, but even that didn't happen.
But she did befriend Nerys and Prince Eamon who you know,
despite her her lover, being terrible to them.
I bring up Melissa's popularity to point to yet another thing
that probably pissed off the brackets.
They're probably God. Why does she getting so far
She's so they all think she's so nice and friendly and blah blah
blah like what does she ever blah I hate, You know, she's
they would hate it. They would hate how popular she
was. You know, you could argue that
Megor, you know, obviously something like this isn't going
to have just one simple cause. Like Megor?
What do you mean? Well, yeah, when he no, I mean
when Aegon young worthy legitimize the sun.
Sorry. You know that arguably created
the civil war, right? But if the sons that were
legitimize had just been like holies and malesters, it might
not, right? Because it was black, black
woods and Brackens almost said. Almost did the brack woods and
blackens. Yeah.
It's so hard not to. Do that it It was this extra
factor that that stewed this pot into civil war that might, you
know, almost certainly was not going to happen if it wasn't for
all Aegon the Unworthy's actions, yes, but all the Aegons
unworthy actions might not have done it if it wasn't for also
the involvement of the Blackens in the Black and Brackens and
their rivalry. We're getting worse than saying
it as the episode goes on. Yeah.
So yeah, I agree with you because I think it's arguably
the first black fire rebellion. What happened anyway?
Maybe because, but maybe not 'cause it was.
Bitter Steel, we're told, is the one that just kept talking in
Damon's ear. Pouring that poison in his ear,
they say that bitterness which he got from his family and so
much of it was over this feud, or that the the elements of feud
contained in this ambition. So maybe the first one still
happens, but I think the continuation second, third, 4th,
and maybe not the 5th. But of course 5th wouldn't have
happened without the 2nd, 3rd and 4th was because of Bitter
Steel's determination. Bitter Steel is the reason that
the rebellions kept happening. Without him there is no maybe
the second still happens because better still wasn't even
involved in that one. But the third, the 4th, probably
not the fifth. Like he's the reason and it's
his hatred of his brother and his loss of station and all
these other things that was such a big part of it because he all
they also competed over Sierra Seastar and she liked pitting
them against each other. She was kind of Aegon the
unworthy like and like he he he I like it when you two fight
over me. And yeah so all these different
things exacerbated their hate and it played out over the
Golden Company. Like none of these things might
not have happened without Bracken Blackwood feuding like
you said. If it was Mallister and Tully,
like, would this have gotten so charged?
I don't think so. Maybe the first one cause Damon
Blackfyre isn't either. He's not a Bracken or a
Blackwood and but he might not have rebelled without, you know,
at all. It's so it's so interesting to
think that the Bracken Blackwood feud might be a key element to
the black fire rebellions happening at all.
It's a pretty strong case for it.
And Bloodraven's attitude as a ruler, his ruthlessness, his
hardline attitude, like a lot of us, like the character and think
he was a decent guy but was too hard in some cases.
But some of that is that's upbringing.
He was raised in an era where there was black fires
everywhere. And you can't trust these black
fires like he he speaks about black fires the way that Jonas
Bracken speaks about Blackwood. You can't trust any blackfers.
They're all treacherous like that.
He pretty much does say that, you know or believes that.
And some of his ruling decisions were made seem to like over
overly focus on what Bitter Steele might do, even though
they were like clearer, more present threats happening like
on the mainland like that. He let those go because he was
more concerned with what Bitter Shield might do rather than what
he was doing. So yeah, that's so that's again
and again that's Bracken. Blackwood is mixed into that.
He doesn't just hate his brother because they're both Targaryen,
because they fought on the opposite sides of the civil War
and because of the Shierra and all these other things.
All of that was was fuelled by Bracken, Blackwood, hate.
All of those things are. That's the underpinning to it
all. That's the lowest level like
it's the most anchoring of the hatred.
It's the it's the farthest back you know out of all these
things. So I think a lot of Bloodraven's
ruthlessness comes from Bracken Blackwood feuding.
Not just his experience as a ruler not just the times he
lived in but does matter too. It's it's never just one thing I
don't think with with with grand like personality traits and long
term decision making moving forward to the Hedge Night era
Duncan Egger. Which of course still covers the
era of the lack of black fight rebellions 3 years prior to the
Hedge Night. The year two O 6, a fresh feud
between Bracken and Blackwood breaks out because Sir Offo, the
brood of Bracken slays Lord Quentin Blackwood during
attorney at King's Landing in front of everybody at the
Capitol where everyone's aware of it.
This isn't some like small tournament off in the in a
smaller house where maybe not everyone hears about it.
This is kind of famous. This is going to travel.
This is in a city with half a million people or so.
Everyone's going to talk about it.
Everyone already knows about the rivals.
It's going to pop off now those two are going to go at it again.
Everybody knows Bracken and Blackwood are going to go at it.
Dunk is aware of it. Dunk is a hedge knight.
He's a 16 year old hedge knight with no education and he's even
he knows about their famous feud.
It's specifically said, I mean he probably was told about it by
Sir Arlen of Penny Tree. Who that's that's relevant here.
Now Sir Otho's older brother would die during the great
Spring sickness which by the way was handled very unpopularly by
the Blackwood Hand Blood Raven. So we had a Lord Bracken hand
under egg and the unworthy and now a Blackwood hand you know 30
years later ish So Stefan Fossaway of all people one of
the Fossaway knight. I mean one of the the the crappy
one who turns on Dunk. He's musing about who they might
get to fight on their side. This is of course before he
switches sides. He's like who can your six
companions be? You should ask Brackens and
Blackwoods though you'll never get both of them on the same
side. It's like comes up multiple
times in the early in the Hedge Night, the feud comes up.
Then two years later after the Hedge Night, when we're in the
sworn Sword, Otho's father is dying, right?
So Otho is the heir and his father is dying.
So everyone knows that Otho is going to become the Lord of of
Stonehedge Septon, Sefton says. Oh, that's probably going to
lead to war. Septon, Sefton sitting here
stand fast, deep in the reach, dealing with this issue between
Dunk and Lady Webber and Eustace Osgrey.
And he just throws out this bit about Blackwoods and brackens
are probably going to war soon. You know, it's a he's gossiping
and this is the thing that comes up.
He also suggests Bloodraven's prejudice is a problem here.
He's like, he will he never. Like Brackens are come to him
and ask to like speak to him and he just won't see them.
You know, it's like, well, that's not a good way to rule.
Like there's constituents they see still needs to like deal
with their issues. Unless they're just coming to
complain about some nonsense you know that isn't a real issue.
Maybe he's stonewalling them because they don't have a real
complaint. It's hard to know what the real
is. Is he being biased, or are they
being biased? Or both.
We don't know. Septon's probably a little
biased towards the juicy gossip, but also.
What it's worth, I agree. But still, when he wants to tell
the juicy gossip it's Black Blackwood juicy gossip he wants
to get into, yeah. So it's great.
So this brings us to the village hero, which might be the next
Duncan Egg story, right? It would be the 4th one.
The war's not mentioned in The Mystery Night.
So when the mystery Night happens, and there's no mention
of whether the Brackens and Blackens actually went to war
over this, it's possible that his father still hadn't died
yet. I I do want to point out by the
way that the, you know, Makar didn't become the brute of
Targaryens right when he killed his own brother.
So that's true whether there was something particular brutish
that Otho did or if it's just to to push the rivalry more.
But I I think it is noteworthy that when someone's called the
brute of whatever, they're probably not a good guy, you
know? Yeah, that's actually a great
point Sean, because that's how that that that anecdote is
mentioned at the beginning of the hedge night, how Otho stove
in Quinton Blackwood's helm with I think either a Mace or a
blunted axe. And that's pretty much what
happened to Baylor with Makar and his at Mace.
So it is kind of like a it was almost maybe it was almost meant
as foreshadowing in that sense because it's it also started
disputes like the death of Baylor caused a lot of problems.
You know, just like the death of Otho or death of Quinton
Blackwood caused a lot of problems.
So Nina has a great theory or with some permutations that this
village hero story will be how we first of all meet black Betha
Eggs future wife, and how it will involve Penny Tree, the
village that Dunk's former master is from.
Penny Tree sits between the teats.
It's the village that rests in that region, and it's probably
traded back and forth many times, but no longer, because
it's now a royal thief. Neither Bracket or Blackwood
will ever fight over it again as long as it remains like that.
Because it's it's owned by the Crown.
Quite possibly because the Crown was tired of them fighting.
It was like, no, it's ours now. Neither of you can have it.
Who made that decision, by the way?
We're not sure, We don't know. But it was in this era.
It was a route. It was in.
It might have been by Bloodraven, he might have, which
that would have been a a neutral decision, you know, like that.
Maybe. Maybe because maybe he took it.
He took it from the Brackens and said, OK, now it's nobody's, but
it would fit perfectly if that's what happened, you know,
something like that, if if Bloodraven did it, or maybe the
hand right before him or or something like that.
You know an interesting little Another old parallel anecdote
with the Hatfields and Mccoys is at one point there was a trial I
I might be mixing up who was on what side.
But I think that one of the Mccoys was on trial for having
murdered one of the Hatfields and the judge was trying to keep
things balanced. So he had the jury be 6 Hatfield
and six Mccoys except he was a Hatfield himself.
So God, really keep that balance, but.
And that's that that makes sense here because that's the problem
here. Like there's lots of people that
will have Bracken or Blackwood or both blood and in like in
their recent family history. And it's like, well, you can't
go that far without finding some.
It's hard to find something that's completely neutral,
right? Like Like within the fandom,
like most people favor Blackwoods, right.
So that's just goes to show that most people would probably pick
Blackwoods and that's maybe in the world they would too.
Or maybe in certain different times of history they might pick
Bracken because of like religious reasons like, oh those
Blackwoods worship the old gods. I prefer the brackets, blah
blah, blah. Lots of different things.
Where the bias would be, it's almost straightforward.
But the but the point is there would be bias.
Yeah. So Jamie and Hoster Blackwood
spend the night at Penny tree. It's like they're talking about
bracken Blackwood conflict as they pass through the teats this
most disputed of lands between them and that just kind of adds
some fun to the whole scene that they're actually in the zone of
conflict while discussing the conflict or the history of it.
And so Nina's idea is that Autho Bracken will Marshall an army
and take the teats by force, and that will cause this to be a
problem. And the people of Penny Tree
will be caught in the middle. And the reason Dunk will want to
go there is because his master's from Penny Tree and he will want
to help the people of Penny Tree and then Dunk will get eggs.
Royal blood will be involved somehow and who knows, but it
it's a great idea. Obviously there's no we don't
know that. It's not like George has said
this, but. But yeah, it would be a great
way for him to flesh out some of this history and still have this
relatively simple story with Duncan egg compared to the
expansive stories he's got in the main book series.
And again, just bring back what I said at the start of this
section. His future wife is Betha
Blackwood. And having them meet early on,
like, rather than meeting later, 'cause they fall in love.
Like they're they fall in love and get married and it's like,
yeah, OK, go ahead and get married.
Y'all, we don't care. You're so far down the line of
succession. Blackwoods used to be kings.
This is this is sufficiently prestigious and we don't need it
to be overly political. So yeah, go ahead.
Of course that changed, and the brackens were probably very
pissed about. That's like, hi, Blackwood
queen, damn it, we wanted that. But that's much later.
And meanwhile, there's more Blackfyre rebellioning happening
after the village hero and before the village hero
Bloodraven and Bitter Steel's feud plays out through the next
several black fire rebellions. Of course not.
In counting the second, which we see through Duncan egg, Igor
Rivers decided not to participate with Damon the
Second's rebellion. But he fully supported the third
rebellion, and that was a close run thing.
Igor was captured and Bloodraven wanted him executed.
He's like kill that guy and and the king was like, no, that's
kin slaying. He's my kin as well.
We'll send it to the wall and then the exciting, well,
probably exciting Daring Commando raid where Bitter Steel
is rescued on the way to the wall.
Like, what the hell, That's so awesome.
But also so like Bitter Steel. Bloodray was like I told you to
kill him. I said so, like see that which
just made him mad and made him suspect there were or not
suspect, but remind him that there were Blackfyre spies at
court that were. That's how this commando raid
was pulled off. Presumably they knew what ship
it was. They had to have inside
information to be able to do that.
So, well, whatever Blood Ravens deal with the Brackens was, he
didn't like, extirpate them. He didn't have them like wiped
out while he was handed the king, So he didn't.
He might have been unfair to them, but he didn't like fully
go like full blown like mad King type stuff here.
So this was just quite a thing for me, like using this as a as
a touchstone moment, as a key, as a most maybe the best example
of Bracken Blackwood outside of their own region is the Black
Fire rebellions. But let's move on because we
have A Song of Ice and Fire to talk about.
That's perhaps the juiciest part in between A Song of Ice and
Fire and the end of the Blackfyre Rebellions, Sort of.
I think the fifth one came after Summerhall.
But Summerhall, big deal, right? That was a huge event.
Would the Brackens have, like, quietly celebrated the death of
all those Blackwood children? They were Targaryens also, but
they were. There's a lot of Blackwood
Targaryens there that all died. And they might have been like
he, he, we we won't, we won't celebrate openly.
But he He. Yeah, I don't know if it's a
question of if they would have quietly celebrated or not.
It's a question of whether or not they would have celebrated
quietly or not. Yeah, they might not have.
They've been like, yeah, it's party time.
We want some. Yeah, let's, let's light some
fires in honor of all those dead Blackwoods.
Yeah. But on the other hand, Aries
became king, you know, a couple years after Summer Hall because
Jaharis the Second didn't live very long.
And Rayella was his sister. Right.
So they were children. They're still grandchildren of
Beth Blackwood and of course, Jaharis ruling for a couple
years. That's the son of with his
sister, wife. They were black, half Blackwood,
so it still was a Blackwood king and queen right there for a
minute. But they don't call themselves
Blackwoods. Maybe the Brackens can kind of
like pretend that's not the case.
But yeah, let's let's let's move on to the actual Song of Ice and
Fire thing. It comes up so often.
At the beginning of this episode we talked about how it's a
weathervane or a wedge or like the the key point of emphasis.
You're going to see so many examples of that bracken and
black and agree on something. It's a big deal.
Everyone knows that the Brackens and Blackwoods hate each other,
so everyone knows that if they agree on something, it must mean
be meaningful. And because they prioritize
their shared animosity so much, it can be used to undermine any
alliance they're a part of. That's the Wedge, the
Weathervane and the Wedge, right?
Tywin experienced it prior to A Song of Ice and Fire when he was
Hand, because one time he ruled for the Blackwoods in some
particular dispute over a mill. Of course, it's just some mill,
some small piece of land. Thankfully, they didn't go to
war over it, apparently. Apparently Tywin rules for the
Blackwoods, but Aries is like, Nah, I'm giving it to the
Blackwoods or to the Brackens. It's like, you know, I'm just
going to do that. Even though that's his
grandparents, he didn't seem to care about that.
He just, he just wanted to overrule Tywin.
That was his thing. So.
That's a pretty young rivalry there.
Yes, yes, that's true. And it's a so it's a It's a
backdrop as well for a completely unrelated drama that
happened around the same time Hoster Tully was distracted the
night that Peter and Catelyn and Lysa got drunk.
And Peter thinks he slept with Catelyn but actually slept with
Lisa. We don't need to know what
actually happened that night. That's a whole nother story.
What actually what transpired with Catelyn and Lisa and and
and how that all that had such a big impact on the future of
several of some device to fire flatlines.
Why was Hoster distracted? Why did he go off in private,
allowing the kids to drink because no one was supervising
them because it was Lord Bracken and Lord Blackwood arguing.
And this it got to such a point where he had to take him in
private because it was such a big argument, because these two
just can't resolve their differences without the backdrop
of thousands of years of feuding.
And this is what hospitality was having to deal with.
So while they're off in their backroom resolving this dispute,
the kids get drunk and A Song of Ice and Fire ground work is
late. Yeah.
That was a a memory that Lysa was like talking to Sansa about.
Yeah, she was just like, she was just like trauma dumping.
And Sansa's like, I wasn't born yet.
Like what? She's like, were you there when
I was doing? She's like, do you remember
that? And Sansa's like, is she drunk
or crazy? It's like I was.
I wasn't born yet, man. Yeah, so yeah and but yeah, but
she specifically mentions Lord Blackwood and Lord Bracken with
their dispute, which might have been Titos and and Jonos, but
maybe not 'cause it was long enough ago.
That might have been one of their fathers or something.
Who knows. Either way, Let's talk about the
Kingdom of North and Rivers, which definitely involves Titus
and Jonas Jar. Jar Martin has given us a
substantial enough history that we can see patterns and concepts
like history repeating itself multiple times.
It's one of the values of having such a long history as being
able to show these things and see how they play out and maybe
show you, which also enables him to give you the occasional
exception to these rules. It also allows for cautionary
tales. Yeah, Don't make the same
mistake these other people made, you know?
Yeah, and that's a that's a very good point to raise for this
particular topic. Prior to the Iron Throne, when
the kings were mostly separate, as we saw, the Riverlands was
conquered in succession by the Stormlands and then the
Ironborn. And before that there had been
no continuity over the eons as different Riverlanders houses
had risen to the top only to fall after a few 100 years or
less. So again, I repeat the earlier
point that the Riverlands hasn't had stability at the top like
all the other regions have, and Song of Ice and Fire brings us
right into that cycle with Rob forming the Kingdom of the North
and Rivers. That's a Kingdom that's never
existed. This isn't rebuilding some Old
Kingdom. There had never been a Kingdom
of North and Rivers before. That was completely.
New There was rivers and hills at one point, right?
Yeah, this is a new, new way to carve it up you.
Know we see this life cycle of a dynasty play out in kind of a
short time. Like there's only ever at this
point we've only had one king of the North and Rivers.
And that may not happen again. Maybe it will.
Maybe it'll rise again by the end of the book.
Maybe by the end of the series. That's what it'll be.
It'll be the King of North and Rivers.
We won't have to. We won't have any guarantee that
it'll stay like that. We're not going to have a view
into it's. It's like 100 years after the
books are over, probably. I'm holding out hope, Yeah, I'm
holding out hope. Me too.
Me too.
I'm right there with you, brother.
Like all these other Riverlands kingdoms of old, Rob's didn't
seem to last. It technically hasn't fallen,
but it's not doing so well, is it?
It's it's not. It's hanging on by a thread.
If it's if it exists at all, I'm not sure you could say it still
exists. And again, the Bracken Blackwood
feud is at the heart of all this.
Before, after, and during Rob's Kingdom.
I mean, when the Riverlands and Lords of the North meet after
Ned's execution in Catlin's final chapter in the Game of
Thrones, she notes that Lord Jonas Bracken sits as far away
from Lord Blackwood as possible. Quote.
Jason Mallister pointed out, Let them bide their time, denying
Lord Tywin fresh levees and provisions while they
strengthened their defenses and rested their weary troops.
Lord Blackwood would have none of it.
They should finish the work they began in the Whispering Wood
March to Harrenhal and bring Roose Bolton's army down as
well. Blackwood urged Bracken,
opposed. As ever Lord John O's Bracken
rose, to insist they ought pledge their fealty to King
Renly and move South to join their might to his.
Catelyn suggests pretty clearly that that's why he did it, Like
that's from her thought process. She immediately suspects his
suggestion is because it's the opposite of what Bracken said.
It might just be, you know, a good idea that Bracken has that
thinks it's totally valid. It might have nothing to do with
what Blackwood but everyone just assumes.
And they might be right because it is a such a common recurring
thing. So surprise, surprise, it plays
out there. So their opposition is the wedge
everyone. It's it sets the stage for
Catelyn's musings and her internal monologue of OK, these
two are against each other. So when they agree on something
it it, it drops the hammer of oh OK this is something that
they're together on after all this disagreement even they are
together. So both of these these are both
valid ideas like March to Harrenhal, bring Roos Summers
out. Like that's a valid strategy.
Joining King Renly, that makes sense too.
Like Renly might treat them better like they don't want to
fight with Joffrey. There that's that's the enemy of
my enemy is my friend. They have no quarrel with King
Renly so why not make him an. These are these are valid
strategic suggestions. So, like, it's hard to decide
whether he's making that suggestion.
So it just adds a lot of baggage that their hatred of each other
just adds baggage to this situation.
We're like, well, is he saying that because he thinks it's a
good idea or is he saying it because it's the opposite of
what the what is what he this guy he hates is saying.
It's just kind of, it makes it all confusing.
And so this is another example of just how the few just throws
things off. It's are these allies worth it?
Well, yeah, they are, but with caution.
Another thing is, it makes either decision a little more
difficult now because you know you're going to have one faction
adamantly against it. Yeah, whenever One of those
options you choose, right? And if they make their case,
well, then a bunch of people will join them.
And just on the strength of that argument, even though that the
strength of that argument is more fueled by opposition to
their rival than just good strategic sense.
So their division corrupts everything around them.
It it infects decisions, ideas, support for those ideas.
And who's motivated to have those ideas in the 1st place.
Everything is questionable. Like just throw so many things
off. Then Catelyn makes her move in
this scene, this very powerful scene, she argues for peace.
She's like, look, Ned won't come back.
This war, it it's not a great idea.
Can we even win it? Blah, blah, blah.
She makes her point and the Weathervane makes its appearance
and it's pointing directly away from her 'cause, even blackened
and Dang it. Even Bracken and Blackwood
disagree with her together. She's particularly horrified
that they're both against her. She's like, oh God, I can't,
That's it. I've lost.
My argument is over. Bracket and Blackwood are
against me together. That's it.
She is their common enemy. Like they rarely are the common.
They rarely unite against a common enemy but that.
But in this argument, she is that common enemy.
And like, oh God, I've brought them together against me.
That's it. I can't win this argument now.
And indeed she can't. Next thing you know, King of the
North, King of the North, King of the North, right?
Even Bracket and Blackwood are there, right?
Slaying their swords side by side like Dang.
Moving forward to the Battle of the Fords.
George uses this device again. When Ed Muir is telling Catelyn
his plan for the Battle of Fords where he blocks Tywin's
crossing, it comes up quote. Plan's a good one, he concluded.
Lord Tito says so, and Lord Jonas as well.
When did Blackwood and Bracken agree about anything that was
not certain, I ask you. Be that as it may, she was
suddenly weary. Perhaps she was wrong to oppose
him. The actual battle plan was good,
it turns out. It just wasn't maybe the right
idea to do it in the 1st place because of Rob's other plan,
grander plan, which he didn't communicate very well.
But whatever. That aside, it's neat to see
here that the way that he convinces his sister is by
saying Bracken and Blackwood agreed on it.
He doesn't describe the merit. He's like, This is why it'll
work. It's like Bracken and Blackwood
agreed on it. Boom.
Right. Sealed.
That's a Clash of Kings, right?
So that all happens in the Clash of Kings kind of near the end.
And it works. He's he drives Tywin back and by
A Storm of Swords bracket and Blackwood are two of the seven
Lords who helped with Lord Hosur's funeral boat, so they're
at the top and as usual, they're mentioned side by side.
The Lords are named Bracket and Blackwood side by side as usual.
But yeah, and so yeah, she starts.
She has this instinct to argue back, like be that as it may,
oh, never mind. I'll never argue you out of it.
If Bracket and Black would agree, you know.
But she even considered that maybe it's even right if black.
You know, never mind my argument.
Maybe they're just. Right.
It swayed her. Yeah.
It's like, wow, even they agree, huh?
Dang. So yeah, it carries a lot of
weight when they agree. And that makes sense.
Like when two people hate each other that much, it does mean
something. When they can get over their
hate to agree on something, it does kind of.
It does sort of emphasize the point.
And this is the literary device George has created by creating,
having this feud that's so charged.
It's it's lens emphasis or credibility or what have you
wait to it being thrown around. It's really well done, really
clever. I never thought about it as a
literary device as much as it was.
I just thought about it as world building and I was like, ah,
it's really, it's both. George used it so cleverly.
It's both. And I'm not sure how well, how
much he's conscious of that, like because we've as we've the
more we've gotten to know George, he's just like a savant
with some of these things. He just does it without thinking
about it. I've even had a little bit of a
thought that it's that it's and I don't want to be.
It's going to sound negative at first, but I don't mean it to be
that it's a little unrealistic for this feud to have lasted so
long, right? For, especially when it has had
breaks like when what was his name?
The. The Justice Guy.
The. Justman.
Just men. Yeah.
You know like seemed to rally them together and there's been
these changing of of guards and overlords and and and even just
the natural like I don't know diseases that come and go
passage it. It seems like for this much
time. Yeah even at Hatfields and
Mccoys that only lasted like 50 years like it.
And it's so it's crazy for a few to have lasted this long for a
million reasons. Not just the feud itself but
just like the people to survive this amount of time for houses
to live this long is kind of unique but to survive with the
few. But even if it is a little
unrealistic, it's worth it for the literary device, for the
storytelling elements that George gets out of this, that
where this rural building like you said, or this device to let
us know when you know when these two people do agree it's
significance here or you know when they because they don't
agree. Everyone has to work around that
it. It really flushes things out in
a lot of ways that he couldn't do with the rivalry that was
just one generation old. Yeah, that wouldn't carry such
way. Like, yeah, he just like George
turned the dial up to 11 like he does with a lot of things.
In order to give that weight to them, let's move forward to
after the Red Wedding and start with a quote.
The River Lords are no fools, the Queen argued.
Without the North Men, they cannot hope to stand against the
combined power of Highgarden, Casterly Rock and Dorn.
Surely they will choose submission rather than
destruction. Most agreed Lord Tywin River Run
remains, but so long as Walter Frey holds Emer totally hostage,
the Blackfish dare not melt a threat.
Jason Mallister and Titus Blackwood will fight on for
Honor's sake, but Afraid can keep the Mallisters pinned up at
sea guard and with the right inducement, Jonas Bracken can be
persuaded to change his allegiance and attack the
Blackwoods. Pretty specific, isn't he?
He's not saying he'd get them on his side.
He's not saying he could get them to track the Tullys or only
the Blackwoods like I can get them, They'll their honor will
not allow them to attack other river Lords except the
Blackwoods. That's the one exception that
they'll make here because they hate them so much.
The the famous hatred is is a wedge here.
Tywin knows you can use it to neutralize both houses, turn
them against each other, and then they're both out of the
picture. And that's exactly what happens.
Even though Tywin himself had Stonehedge burned early in the
war. So the Brackens should hate the
Lannisters more. But the Lannisters have all this
power, and the Blackwood feud is so much older and so much more
ingrained. So he's like, you know what?
You can have a pardon if you attack the people you hate.
Was like, if I do that, like this sounds like a bone.
Like it sounds like you're offering me a good, like, I have
to do that. Like, I want to do that.
Like thank. You pardon you if you jump in a
briar patch. The briar patch?
Oh, no. Like.
I'll pardon you if you go out and have a nice dinner with your
friends. Like what?
Like, OK. Like you're bribing me with a
good time. Yeah.
It's like, don't bribe me with a good time, man.
That's exactly what this is. Yeah.
So they stalemate each other from the for the for a while
there because Bracken's like, Yep, we'll get what few men we
have left and go surround Raven Tree Hall and sit there and wait
because, well, we'll see in a minute.
What's going to happen is the the the Blackwoods will refuse
to surrender to the brackets like, well, yeah, I'll
surrender, but not to them. So it becomes a stalemate while
they wait for some other resolution which may or may not
be coming. In the meantime, Brienne's over
on the quiet aisle. She wanders over there on her
journeys and her searches and elder brother says a lot of
beautiful, tragic things. And one of them is that Bracken
and Blackwood wash up here all the time and they get buried
side by side because in death, you know, there there's no
hatred there. They're all in the same place.
They're just bodies. They're at rest.
Their hatreds are gone. Their rivalries are gone.
They're probably aren't born Blackwood or Bracken.
These aren't like, these are men that lived in those territories,
not like people that actually belong to those families.
So there, that feud was passed to them as well.
All these like soldiers, which I think pretty important.
We focused on the families quite a lot, but all the villagers and
and commoners that they rule over are caught up in this view
too. And they're taught to hate
Bracken. People living on Bracken land
are taught to hate Blackwoods, like a lot of them probably do.
They like buy into the policy, the line, you know, it's like,
it's like sports rivalries, like you live in New York.
You're root for the, I don't know, the Yankees.
That means your family taught you to root for the Yankees, and
you probably hate the Red Sox you know.
Or at least you think see them as your main rivalry.
Or you know, whatever sport your family follows.
You're probably aware of this concept to some degree, except
this is violence. This is death and killing.
Not just let's score touchdowns or hit home runs or whatever.
So, but the but some of the structural underpinnings are
similar in that it's taught to you, you're you inherited this
from your parents, and you don't exactly know why.
Like what one sports team isn't better than the other, morally,
Generally speaking, right? It's just you just have a
favorite, but you treat it like it's life or death or something
more serious than that. In this case it is more serious,
but still. On some level, it's maybe
geographic too, especially when it comes to sports, right?
Like, you might end up being a fan of the home team, wherever
you're from, wherever your parents are, if you move
somewhere. But.
But you Can you imagine someone being born in Barrowtown and
growing up to hate the Blackwoods?
You know what I mean? Yeah, in a row.
Would they do that? So let's talk about the Siege of
Raven Tree. Which is one of our last
sections here. We're coming back to where we
started, where Jamie goes there and talks to Jonas Bracken and
gets his version of the history, and then talks to Hoster
Blackwood and gets his version of the histories.
And this is a little before that.
This is how it gets started. Which encouraged Jamie to go
there in the 1st place. Whoa.
As the River Lords took their leave, or Karl Vance lingered to
say or Jamie, you must go to Raven Tree so long as it is
Jonas at his gates. Titus will never yield, but I
know he will bend his knee for you.
Jaime thanked him for his counsel. 100% accurate.
Totally right? Like, yeah, dude.
The Pride will not allow him to surrender to Jonas Bracken, but
he'll totally do it to Jaime Lannister.
Like in the name of the King. Everyone in the Riverlands knows
this. They this is a common knowledge.
Like, Jaime might have known it himself.
He might have needed to be reminded of it, and it's good
for the reader to be reminded of it by this conversation coming.
Well, like Jamie's like, oh, yeah, of course I do.
That makes sense. They won't, they won't yield to
their own their, their super ancient enemy that they hate
with all every fiber they're being.
So I need to adjudicate. I need to be the ambassador, the
arbitrator here. I mean, pride is already a big
problem for the noble and privileged, right?
Like you, you're born with feeling like you're better than
other people. And this feud is just as mad.
This feud is as much a part of their identity as that nobility
and that pride. In fact, it's all wrapped
together. Noble identity?
No. Their and their pride.
Those two things are like those things are linked.
Your your noble identity is linked to your pride, and your
pride is in part to your house's traditions, and one of their
traditions is hating the other. Now here's how it plays out when
Jamie is actually allowed inside Raven Tree Hall quote.
I am here to make an end of this.
Your men have fought valiantly, but your war is lost.
Are you prepared to yield? To the King, not to Jonas
Bracken I. Understand.
Yes, he does and so do we. We do indeed.
I think we understand. I don't know if we we don't
agree, but we understand we've had a lot of, a lot of education
on this topic and of the way these people think.
So yeah, let's let's return specifically to that
conversation between Jamie and young bookish hoster Blackwood,
which comes very shortly after this agreement is made between
Haitos and Jamie quote. So you were fighting over a
crown that one of you took from the other, back when the
casterly still held Casterly Rock.
Is that the root of it? The crown of a Kingdom that has
not existed for thousands of years?
He chuckled. So many years, so many wars, so
many kings, you'd think someone would have made a peace.
Someone did, my Lord. Many someones.
We've had 100 pieces with the brackens, many sealed with
marriages. There's Blackwood blood in every
bracken, and Bracken blood in every Blackwood.
The old King's peace lasted half a century, But then some fresh
quarrel broke out and the old wounds opened and began to bleed
again. That's how it always happens, my
father says. So long as men remember the
wrongs done to their forebears, no peace will ever last.
So we go on century after century with us hating the
brackens and them hating us. My father says there will never
be an end to it. There could be.
How, my Lord, the old wounds never heal, my father says.
My father has the same too. Never wound a foe when you can
kill him dead men don't claim vengeance.
Their sons do, said Hoster apologetically.
Exactly right. We discussed this earlier in the
episode. That is exactly what happens,
and that's where their honor sometimes stops them.
Maybe from what could end it, because it would be such a
dishonorable ending, killing children, not the continuing.
The violence is much more honorable but couldn't
understand why that would be a bridge too far even for this
feud which is, you know, the worst feud that we can point to
in this entire world. Now Jamie Jamie's father or
Jamie himself could have pointed out, well if this conversation
had gone any farther, which it didn't because he well, the the
rains and Tarbeks were my father knew how to handle them.
But Tywin was special. You know air quotes there.
He that was not something people normally did.
Yeah. Ares wiped out a few houses to
you know there are some. Every once in a while someone
gets exterminated. You know, someone gets someone
with power who's a lot more powerful than them, does this.
These days, these examples when they happened there were were
taught and shown through context that they're rare.
And there's a reason why they're rare.
It's just people just aren't willing to go this far.
You know, it's like, theoretically anyone can murder
anyone, right? But people don't because they
don't want to, you know, it's it's too far.
Like this feud already pushes them beyond their normal, like
human boundaries. Like they already do things
under the guise of this feud that they would never do in any
other circumstance, save maybe a few really difficult enemy type
situation scenarios. Like you would never, almost
never do certain dishonorable killings or attacks.
I would never attack. I would never be the first one
to swing my sword at someone unless it was a bracket, you
know, So they're already doing things that they would never
normally do and this is this is it.
Like Tywin was just one of those people that was was willing to
go that far. Like his feuds with people were
all win or die. Like everything was the do you
win play the Game of Thrones, You win or die.
Everything is that way for Tywin, the Blackwoods and
brackens. Maybe not quite that ruthless.
Maybe just that the fight, that the feud is the purpose of it.
You know that is the point. Not winning isn't the point.
It's the point is feuding to some point.
To some degree, I think that's true.
There's also another factor to consider here.
Is it Who's going to put Tywin in check when he does this?
Yeah, right. Like the he was.
He was he handed the king at that moment.
No, he was not he. Was not yet, no.
But still, clearly there's only really one person above him that
can do anything about this. And that person was insane and
power hungry themselves or whatever, you know.
So another thing to consider is, you know there a couple of
factors of This is kind of ironic when you think about that
quote earlier where Jonas Bracken, talking to the
Blackwood, said treachery runs in their blood.
But now we're told that they've been remarried so much that
they're the same blood. So he's saying treachery runs in
his own blood. A if Jamie is suggesting that
maybe you wipe all of them out, well, that means wipe all of
yourself out too like that it's not quite the option that that
as dark as that statement might be.
You know it's I I think that Jamie was kind of implying when
he said there could be if you just kill them all, there won't
be a rivaler anymore. But that means you have to kill
everyone in your own house as well.
So that's not really the option That and he thinks he might be
presenting. Yeah, I was just double checking
about the Tywin being handling. He became handling right after
the Reigns and Tarbex thing basically.
Anyway, yeah, well said Sean, One, basically just one or two
more points here. I think we might see Hofter the
hostage again like he's going to King's Landing.
So like that's a that's a place where we often you're.
You're more likely to be seen in POV chapters at King's Landing
than most locations. It's obviously one of the most
popular location, 4 chapters to be, and you know that could go
well or badly. Maybe he'll become a hostage for
Aegon's camp instead and then maybe Danny or something like
who knows? We could see a lot more of him.
Maybe he will get to meet Tyrion.
That would be interesting. That's Huster.
Blackwood, right, is on his way. Isn't there also a Bracken?
Hostage there is. We haven't met her, but yes, one
of the girls like Jonas Bracken has a bunch of girls and he said
I want you to send one of them. I forget if he picked one.
I think he just said send one of your girls as well.
But what what I'm getting at here is it's there.
Another famous rivalry is the Montague's and the Capulets from
Romeo and Juliet. And these two kids, who maybe
have not fully indoctrinated into this rivalry, might meet
and form a. That's a great idea, Sean.
I did not think of that. So maybe this young Blackwood,
young Bracken girl and and hoster Blackwood, who's like 12
or 13. Yeah, maybe they could become
friends. Maybe they could fall in love.
That also ended in tragedy, to be clear.
So well, yeah, how positive I can be about that potential.
But. Yeah, hopefully.
Maybe maybe it'll be a good tragedy.
Like it's it's changes the Blackwood Bracken dynamic
forever. Even though it doesn't go well
for them, you know if they they die at King's Landing in a hail
of fire, but everyone knows they were in love.
So Nina says. Brings us back to the point
about Bracken Blackwood favoritism and how both of
George and the fans, because of the way George wrote them, wrote
them. The Blackwoods are just better
people like them more. And it's true.
It's hard to you can't. It's it's pretty much impossible
to disagree with that. Like Lothar Bracken betrayed
Agnes Blackwood. You've got Kriegen Stark, you
know, doing things with Blackwoods.
And like you said, Sean, it's hard to find good examples of
brackens. You got Barbara and like
Bethany's a victim and Barbara's a schemer, Agor is a schemer and
A is as bitter as his name says, You know.
Titus Blackwood, on the other hand, comes up so much better
than Jonas Bracken. Jonas Bracken comes off as, you
know kind of disloyal, kind of scummy, you know, not the worst
guy. There's the bar is pretty low in
Westeros. Like he's he's no Gregor Clegane
or you know, but he's you know he doesn't come off great.
Titus Blackwood comes up as an honorable and an upright and he
conducted himself very well in the war before he had stood out
as a leader. He, he helped rescue Edmure, you
know, during some of the early battles when the war just
started. So it's true.
It's like, oh, that's true. Yet I think it's super
interesting that George doesn't make the black, which is the
winner in the feud, nor does he make them more morally correct
in the context of the feud. Outside the feud, yes, they're
more, they're more upright, they're portrayed as better.
They're closer to power and use power better in a lot of ways.
They're kind of cooler, you know, like Blood Ravens just
cool, you know, and their their sigils.
I don't know, the horse is cool, but the Raven with tree, that's
just cooler, right? So most people are going to like
that more, I think. But within the context of the
feud, the Blackwoods don't look morally superior.
It does not even drop the slightest hint that, yeah,
actually the Blackwoods are the ones in the right here.
Not in terms of the feud, In terms of like, yes, moral
correctness, just general betterness, a better house,
whatever, sure. But in the context of fighting
each other, they neither looks good.
They look equally to blame for it.
I think that's neat. Like George is like, yeah,
these. This house is cooler.
I like them more. But when it comes to starting
fights, I'm not going to give them any moral credit for that.
They're just as bad. They're both equally to blame
for this, and I appreciate that. That's cool.
Even in in in showing his blatant favoritism for the
Blackwoods, they don't get set higher than the Brackens for in
in the contest of the context of this feud.
It takes two to tango, right? Like, you know, neither of them
know the reason it started, but both of them continue it, even
if one of them, aside from Nets is at least as far as we can
tell, seems to be portrayed more positively.
But if they were really good, they would not worry about the
feud, right? It it would be hard to last, you
know, very long if one side stopped caring.
Yeah, that's true. That's true.
So will they unite against another common enemy?
We saw examples of them doing that against the Andals, against
the Well, not against the Ironborn.
Against the Teags, for example, was another one, and perhaps
against the others during the Long Night, and that might be
who they unite against this time.
Will that finally teach them to work together to set aside their
feud? Probably not.
It might. They are.
They might work together. But setting aside their feud,
that's the part I'm. Together until the others are
defeated, and now they're. Back to their feud, right?
That seems more likely. Certainly in the short term it's
going to happen and we won't see the long term, so we won't know
if 100 years it will. It will take time passing to
know if the feud has stopped because it's like, well, maybe
they don't fight for 10 years. Nothing, nothing.
Saying they won't start fighting in the 11th year. 100 years goes
by 101st year they might fight. So we we would need a lot of
Beyond A Song of Ice and Fire time to see if they've actually
stopped or the only way we'd know for sure is if like, yeah,
well one or both of those houses is gone, then well then it's
that that would be the end of it.
So it's a great bit of world building that also serves as a
narrative and or literary device to deliver emphasis.
The Brack and Blackwood feud is more than I thought it would be
when we started, when when I started researching it and
diving into it, you know I I thought I knew where it would go
and in some places it did. But this other lot of other
things that came up that I didn't realize.
I certainly didn't remember the part about it being the backdrop
for Lysa and and Littlefinger and Peter and our Littlefinger
and Catelyn and all that that night.
That being the distraction that led to all this man, even those
little things. It comes up in social moments
too. It isn't just wars that
distract, it's just their little Their disputes, like distract
people and or come up in other more mundane times have become
not so mundane when after the passage of time.
Yeah, I thought that this topic, I'm not unsoldly like I was
before, but I'm not as deep into it.
I haven't read the book so many times.
I've been. I've been doing this for a few
years, not decades like some people you know.
So to me, this is like, oh, neat little niche part of the story.
We'll do a quick episode on. I would just say it's
superficial Research is like, I think I searched a search of Ice
and Fire for Blackwood and had like over 100 results.
Like, man, how often does this come up?
I just didn't realize how pervasive and inconsistent it
was. Right.
It's cool. So it symbolizes the worst parts
of human nature and human civilization.
And maybe it will see what it means to overcome all that and
fight together. Maybe that will be part of this
whole theme, this whole lesson, this whole aspect of the story.
Trivia answer What village rest between the grassy hills fought
over by bracket and Blackwood known as the Teats Penny tree.
Several times. Yeah, we had Penny Tree.
There it is. Yeah, that's cool.
I like that. So we'll we'll, I'm sure we'll
see Penny Tree in the Duncan Egg Show.
That was a guarantee. Like the guy 100%.
There's no way we won't see that.
We might even see the pennies nailed to the tree.
They might even do that. That'd be cool.
I hope they do that. That'd be really neat, although
we won't see it in season one. Probably.
Maybe we will if it's in flashback, because Dunk does
have flashback. Anyway, that's a story for
another time. Just looking forward to what's
to come. There's always more to come,
more episodes from us, more TV episodes, and hopefully some
more books too. Some episodes I mentioned that
relate to this one. Under the Dragons is a big one.
Before the Conquest is another one.
Or rather, before the Dragons is what we call that our Black Fire
series. Of course a lot of that came up,
whether it's Egg on the Unworthy, whether it's Bitter
Steel, individual episodes for all these different characters.
Also the Golden Company, Black, a lot of the battles themselves.
Of course, our Duncan Egg series taught all three books very
relevant to Black and Brackwood feud, especially the 1st 2:00,
but also the third one better. Steal and Blood Raven are always
participating and they're Bracket and Blackwood.
So there you go. And of course, our Valerie
series, meaning the books, the main series, we we deal with
these chapters individually, Jamie and then Hoster and that
all that stuff at Raven Tree Hall and Stonehedge is, is very
relevant and various other places we've talked about him as
well too. So that's a good start for you.
Hopefully you enjoy those. Aimon the Dragon Knight, by the
way, is another one since we talk a lot about.
He's important to the story of of Aegon the Unworthy.
And of course he comes up in the context of John's chapters very
early on, both Daron and Aemon and Aegon the Unworthy.
So that's important. Also the Shira Seastar episode,
there's so many that relate to this.
Honestly, we have. We've been doing this a while,
you know. All right, Thanks everybody for
attending or listening later. We appreciate you consuming our
content because that's important to us and we are grateful.
Nina provided a lot of great takes today, as she so often
does. It's a regular occurrence around
these parts. Great takes from Nina.
Check her out at Good Queen allie.tumblr.com.
That's 1L and Allie, as I like to say.
Thanks to Joey, Jesse Bran and Michael Klarfeld for the intros
and music that we have. We've got a new intro coming for
House of the Dragon. That's the made by Bran.
He's been showing us little pieces of it.
We're getting excited for how cool it looks and our regular
video intro that will probably be iconic for us at least for
years to come. Made by Michael Klarfeld.
And of course we love our music too.
Written by Joey Townsend and a different version.
The the bluesy version sometimes you hear at the end of our
episodes is by Jesse Koval. Until next time, thank you
everybody and you know what to do.
Valar Riridis.