In 258 on Essos, another challenge rose to Aegon's reign
when 9 outlaws, exiles, pirates, and cell sword captains met in
the disputed land beneath the Tree of Crowns to form an unholy
alliance. The Band of Nine swore their
oath of mutual aid and support in carving out kingdoms for each
of their members. Among them was the last
Blackfyer, Meilis the Monstrous, who had command of the Golden
Company, and the Kingdom they pledged to win for him was the
Seven Kingdoms. Prince Duncan, when told of the
pact, famously remarked that crowns were being sold 9 a
penny. Thereafter, the Band of Nine
became known as the Ninepenny Kings in Westeros.
It was thought at 1st that the Free Cities of Essos would
surely bring their power against them and put an end to their
pretensions, but nonetheless preparations were made should
Nelis and his allies turn on the Seven Kingdoms.
Yeah, welcome back my fellow Westorians.
That is a great quote to start this fun episode off about
Nelis, the Montras and the 9 Penny Kings and the Band of
Nine. When Septon Mehrabald gave his
famous Broken Man speech, one of the more memorable and moving
passages in the entire series of books, this was the war he was
talking of. Of course he was Speaking of war
in general, but he himself fought in the war of 9 Penny
Kings, and it's the one that he remembers most clearly.
Most personal. I think it's fair to say Robert
Trebellion was a war that did a lot to define the lives of the
men and women who came of age roughly 20 years before Song of
Ice and Fire started. The war that defined their
fathers and mothers generation. However, if any did, was the War
of 956. Like Robert's Rebellion, there
are huge gaps in our knowledge of what actually transpired
during it, but we know quite a lot, and the world we're given
is so well defined that we can extrapolate quite a bit more
too. Fire and blood, too, is a long
way away. Maybe a long, long way away, but
that's when we could expect to fill the rest of those gaps.
At least some of them. But there's a good chance we get
quite a bit more in detail in The Winds of Winter, too.
After all, we have a Jon Connington as POV and the Golden
Company are heavily involved in the plot and more.
The Dance of the Dragons and the Black Fire rebellions are both
full of foreshadowing for the plot lines of Young Griff and
Jon Snow. Thus Daenerys as well, and thus
Illyrio and Varis and Jon Connington and Tyrion and so
many others. On top of that, Rob's will hangs
over the story still. And when that plot line issue
was first introduced in A Storm of Swords, it was also the
introduction of the Black Fires. The first mention is by Stannis,
IEA guy from the House, also founded by a particularly
prominent Targaryen bastard by the name of Oris Baratheon.
To be clear, elements of the Blackfires were introduced right
away in A Game of Thrones. We get the story of Egon the
Unworthy, his brother Amon the Dragon Knight, their sister
Nerys, and the dispute over Deron the goods heritage.
Bloodraven is obviously present from the get go as well, even if
his name isn't. But it wasn't fully fleshed out.
The name Blackfire hadn't been conceived when A Game of Thrones
was published. Point being that Black Fire's
being tied to Rob's will and Young Griff etcetera means that
they are still lessons untold from that era that could provide
groundwork for A Song of Ice and Fire.
Now after Rob's will and the tie insurance to the earlier plot
lines like Eamon the Dragon Knight and Bloodraven, Black
fire related history starts popping up semi regularly.
Both in a Song of ice fire. Such as possibility Young Griff
himself is of black fired scent and or that Illyrio may have
black fire the sword itself. Dance with Dragons has the most
Blackfire stuff of any of the 5A Song of Ice and Fire novels, and
it surrounds plot lines that are yet to be resolved.
Meaning it's very likely George R Martin will include more
Blackfire lore in The Winds of Winter, not just fire and blood
too. If we're right about that, then
it's good for us all to be well aware of the most recent
Blackfire activity, which was only, like I said, about 20
years before Robert's Rebellion. Heck, a current POV character
slew may lease the mantras in single combat and it would.
All it would take is for that character Barristan the Bold to
think about that for a few minutes to give us a fantastic
mini story within the greater story.
Like 2 paragraphs of memory from Barristan would do a lot right
there. Other non POV characters or
possibilities too. The Blackfish fought in the war
Ninepenny Kings for example. Stannis's father Stefan died in
a shipwreck but he fought in this war and his father meaning
Stannis's grandfather Lord Orman was named commander of the
Westerosi armies. So when the Blackfire plot
peaks, which might be in The Winds of Winter, we'll know what
we're dealing with as well as anyone in this fan.
Many people out there not listening to this episode will
read more about Meilis and the other 9 Penny Kings and think
that's cool. They'll have a great time with
it. That's a credit to George
because with even even without a deep dive, it's fun.
But you'll read it and it'll hit so much harder because you'll
know so much more. Learning the rest of what there
is to know about these characters will pay off, but
there are great stories here all on their own as well.
Not only do we have a cast of little known characters that
will flesh out, but there's quite a bit of action from
familiar characters in their younger days.
In addition to Barristan the Bold, Blackfish and Stannis's
grand sire Lord Orman, this episode will include the White
Bull, Gerald Hightower poster, Tully and his friendship with a
certain Lord Baelish Tywin and Kevin Lannister, the Red Lion,
Roger of House reign, Prince Aries Not so mad back then,
Aegon the Unlikely AKA Egg, Kelon Greyjoy, the father of
Bailon, Huron, Victorian and Huron, and of course Septon
Mehrabald. So greetings everybody, with me
as always. Is Shaya handling all the
different tasks behind the scenes?
We actually have worked things out so that she can speak during
our guest episodes. At last, we had to work around
some technology. Some of y'all may not be aware
that Google Hangouts is no longer a thing.
And we've been moving around trying to figure out new setups
outside of Google Hangouts and well, it's hasn't been easy.
But also I want to welcome with that in mind, with this
technology in mind, all these challenges, our returning guest,
Steven Atwell of Race for the Iron Throne.
Welcome back, Steven. Hey, it's great to be here.
Right on. So let's talk about real quickly
what you've been up to. You, it's been a little while
since you've been on, and you've probably done well.
I know you've done lots of things since then.
So why don't you let everybody know?
People who maybe haven't been keeping up and close as they
should, or who haven't paid attention in the last week or
two, let them know what you're doing.
Sure. So most recently I hit the 50%
mark in Storm of Swords. That's a brand 3, the, you know,
Queen's Crown and the, you know, Hodor, stop bodering.
I just finished John 5, which is where he escapes from the the
rating party and that is actually available for my
patrons right now and it'll be up for everyone else tomorrow.
And in other stuff, you know, now that I like I, I, I don't
know, I got a first of inspiration with John 5, but I'm
looking to do some like more thematic essays for a while.
Just, you know, take a bit of a break from just doing nothing
but Storm of Swords. So I want to write about Duncan
Egg, which is obviously relevant to the War of 19 Kings, and I
have a couple other projects like that.
Find out. Cool sounds.
Sounds really good. Yeah.
You're always staying super busy and putting out lots of good
content. It's similar for us.
We've just gotten through Clash of Kings, so it's nice for us to
do something a little different because we've been, we've been
deep in our reread over here as well.
And this is nice for a change of pace.
And it's a topic we've been wanting to do for a while.
And we've known for a while that it would be you that we did it
with. We've been talking about this
for a long time, so a couple of shout outs for us and a quick
announcement or two before we get going and then, well, we'll
get going. Thanks to History of Westeros
First Sword, Jeff Gnarly the Long Snapper, and thanks also to
Tulaneous the Talon, King of Gagasos, rider of Tellurius the
Red dragon with scales, horns and talons of midnight black.
You can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/history of Westeros.
You can find a variety of levels and benefits and things that you
that suit you. Things like episodes early and
shout outs and access to our scripts are included as
possibilities. Thank you to Tommy Pappas who is
one of our patrons who sent a very generous super chat saying
in your best German accent, is it now the war of 999 Penny
Kings? It's like, what does that show?
We should do a mash up. It's that Brooklyn, 99 Penny
Kings, something like that. Yeah. 99 Luft Penny Kings.
Yeah, something like that. A lot of that stuff I said at
the beginning was my own thoughts, but I wanted to get
you to weigh in on some of that as we get started.
Steven, do you agree with my take that T wow will be fairly
heavily black fire as far as as far as whatever heavy black fire
means, but weigh in on that. I'm curious what you think
about. Sure.
So, I mean, you've already kind of identified some of the most
obvious suspects, right, Sir Barristan, John Connington,
Young Griff, all of that. I definitely think that's right.
I think there's some other possibilities as well, right?
Peter Baelish is very much part of Sansa's story.
You know, it's possible that, you know, Ford arrives at the
Golden Company, landing in the Stormlands that like, he might
have something to say about his father, who he hasn't really
talked. About that much, No, he hasn't.
That's true. You know, it.
It's funny. It's like in a series where like
so many people are absolutely consumed by like daddy issues,
he he's he's got pathologies of his own, but that doesn't seem
to be hugely one of them. And yeah, I mean Tyrion
chapters, as you said, another good, another good possibility.
Yeah, he has that dream about looking kind of like Malius
himself when has the head. Yeah, and the, the, yeah, the
the one that's laughing and the one that's crying.
Just a hell of an image. Yeah, right.
That's just bizarre. Like it's is that magical?
Is that predictive? Is that just him thinking about
it? It's one of those things where.
You can't really metaphorical. So yeah.
So I think, yeah, we're probably going to see a good bit of black
fire stuff and the Golden Company.
I I guess the question is like depending on when we think
Daenerys gets to Westeros in the Winds of Winter.
That's a big question. Is it the very end of the book?
Is it halfway through the book? I feel like towards the end,
because she's still at, she's not even gotten to base Dothrak
yet, you know, and she's probably headed there.
Yeah. You know, it depends.
On how it it depends on how many chapters right?
If this is like, you know, 'cause at times we've had like
only, you know, four or five Daenerys chapters in the book,
and in other times you have more like 13.
So depending on how many chapters you know there are
there are to work with, I think that determines how much both
sort of screen time and sort of distance she can travel without
it seeming like the sort of like late season HBO.
Called Littlefinger virus just like how did he get there so
fast? OK good point.
Yeah. So let's say I said at the
beginning of this episode, this episode, I've been calling it
this episode, But as we were working on this and we realize
that we have enough in from enough material here for two
episodes. So this is very likely Part 1.
We'll see how far we get, but I'm expecting this to be two
episodes. We'll do a lot of setup and
talking about the band of nine and and Meilis and then what's
going on in the West, the Westeros side.
And by Part 2 slash the end of Part 1, we'll be talking about
the war itself. And then we're getting into the
aftermath and the aftermath is really, really huge.
It's one of the mediast parts of this of this series because as,
as we alluded between the beginning, it's it's a defining
moment. So for so many elder characters
and and thus their children were also impacted by the the law of
passing down, you know, war from generation to generation, which
is a law, right? That is how it worked.
So let's go into the band of nine penny kings.
So let's get into who these guys were, where they were from and
all that. This first section is called The
Dragon Must have Two Heads and got a quote for you.
Captain of the Golden Company, named for his grotesquely huge
torso in arms, fearsome strength, and savage nature.
A second head grew from his neck, no bigger than a fist.
He won command of the Golden Company by fighting his cousin
Damon Blackfyre for it, killing his cousin's destrier with a
single punch and then twisting Damon's head until it was torn
from his shoulders. Other than perhaps Damon
Blackfyre himself, no one is as important to the Blackfyre
rebellions as better steep. The dynasty was launched by
Damon, but Agor saved the Blackfyre family and sword,
protected them and the sword, and facilitated the 3rd and 4th
rebellions themselves, not the second.
He didn't back that one, as we've covered the past.
So you could say that the Black Fire cause exists to the blood
of Damon and the sweat of Bittersteel.
Adding way to this importance, after Bittersteel's death, which
came decades after Damon's, there were no more Black Fire
rebellions. But the blood of Damon and the
fruits of Bittersteel's labor did not die with either of them.
The name and blood of a black fire, that's Damon's legacy, the
Golden Company, that's Bittersteel's legacy.
And the they with both of those things Melee's well, that's he's
not the kind of character you would expect to combine those
legacies, but he's never on screen.
But his skulls are quote. The Captain General's tent was
made of cloth, and was made of cloth of gold and surrounded by
a ring of Pikes topped with gilded skulls.
One skull was larger than the rest, grotesquely malformed.
Below it was a second, no larger, no larger than a child's
fist, Naley's the monstrous and his nameless brother.
The other skulls had a sameness to them, though several had been
cracked and splintered by the blows that had slain them, and
one had filed pointed teeth. So that's John Connington
returning to the Golden Company after so long and taking a look
at the skulls. That is a really, that is a
brilliant Pat paragraph because it gives us lots of fun
historical information, but it also has it's very metaphorical
in a way that or symbolic in a way that the other captives of
the Golden Company are not as memorable as this guy, not just
because of his huge skull, but because of the type of person he
was and because of the things he did.
Do you have any comments on that, on that quote, Steven?
It's such a good. Yeah.
Well, you know, partly it's the sort of idea that like in death,
our individuality is stripped away.
It's that whole like toten tons thing that you see in in
especially in like medieval German art literature where
you're, you know, people are literally like taking off their
flesh as if it's clothing and underneath were all skeletons.
But Malus retains some level of his sort of, shall we say,
larger than life nature. Although I have to say I like
the one with the the filed pointed teeth.
I'm. So curious about that guy Martin
has a a a way of building in mystery with very few words, and
that's a great example. I I think.
Is it the juggles nigh that have that file their teeth or there
there's some group in in Essos that do?
I think you might be right, but I did not look that up.
That's a good. That's a good question.
But it definitely suggests that this, like this legacy of cause
'cause you normally think, right, You know, in, in all the
rest of the series, heads on Pikes is what you do to your
enemy. Yeah.
Not to your past. It's it's, you know, here it's
like transformed into this, this like honor, this funeral honor.
And of course, you know, it is that started with bitter steel.
He commanded that this be done in part because he sort of
wanted to see victory. And, you know, even in death,
you know, it's part of this whole thing where like his feud
with Bloodraven, right, continues past a normal human
lifespan that, you know, he wasn't a sorcerer.
Who could, you know, extend his life by, you know, getting
hooked up to a free IV? But you know, he could, he could
build this human institution and in that way sort of live on as
this kind of legend and Odom. It's really good.
Yeah. That's that's really well said.
And he is. It's true too, because you like
it. Like he just kind of how he
inverted cell swords by making them loyal, like loyal and
dependable and professional. He's inverted this concept of
the heads on Pikes. I never thought about it that
way. That's really good.
Take Maley's the the name is a feminine form of a branch branch
French slash Breton named Mael. MAEL meaning chief or Prince.
So I wonder if George was playing with that or if that's
just a coincidence. Now, I think there's some very
clear comparisons to Gregor slash Magor here.
Now Gregor and Magor have a lot of comparisons to each other.
So this guy is kind of like part of that triumvirate of, of type
of characters like this. He has Megor's sort of similar
heritage and upbringing and and Gregor's more of Gregor's
deformed size. He's not as big as Gregor, but
instead of the nasty headaches, he has a second head.
Instead of being, you know, killing his, potentially killing
his father, he may have killed his when he killed his cousin
Gregor, who may have killed his own father.
Well, and his his brother. Yeah, yeah.
Tried to kill his own brother, right.
So this is clearly the Kinslang stuff, is there?
Then you have this sort of aspect of undeath around them.
Gregor is obviously a product of necromancy at this point.
Whether he's technically dead or ever dead doesn't really matter.
That aura surrounds him. That concept.
Magor sort of the same. He was in a coma for 28 days and
then mysteriously rose when Tiana Sorceress Tiana came and
worked with him. So there's well, or, or that
could be his his mother. Yeah, you're right.
Either way, it's something kind of unnatural.
Visenya Tiana getting getting dirty with all that.
I don't know what they did, but it's a similar kind of idea.
Maely's, meanwhile, there's less sorcery, but he's carrying
around a dead twin with him at all times, so there's like this
death surrounding him as well. He's also got some things in
common with Damon Targaryen in that Damon Targaryen was a a
great warrior. He wasn't malformed or anything,
but he was. He started off down on the chain
and tried to work his way up. He was.
Malformed possibly on the inside, like yes, no, Malcolm.
There's like some adaptations of Richard the third where like the
the actor goes like very much into like what the deformities
were and then some in which like the Richard is not deformed.
It's just his his spirit. That was.
I remember I saw one where the whole shtick was that the
hunchback and the the withered arm would only be there when he
was alone on stage. Oh, OK, interesting.
So it was more about sort of like this is what his soul looks
like. Yeah.
So yeah, I agree with you. Damon Targaryen did not have a a
good looking soul. And of course the whole business
with the Stepstones. Another thing you have in
common, Damon Targaryen was King of the Stepstones for a little
while before he surrendered his crown to his brother.
And Nailees of course, crowned himself and they, the band of
nine did take the Stepstones. So he wasn't necessarily king of
the Stepstones, but he was a king and he and his group did
control the Stepstones. So that's pretty close.
I wonder, it's just as a quick aside, what type of king Nailees
might have been. I kind of think of it was
probably would have been a bit like mega or very, very more
like very trying to be an alpha male about everything, not
having much, not having a gentle touch on anything, just being
blunt and and aggressive about. Yeah, I imagine he, he would
have probably spent his entire reign, like putting down
rebellion. Yeah, like, that's if he got
himself onto the Iron Throne. Just by that point, I I think
things that had divided or diverged too much between the
Black Fire exiles and sort of mainstream Westerosi society,
you know what once once that. Occurring to me just now a
comparison that might just be random and maybe something that
George was was thinking of was the Roman emperor Maximinus
Thrax, who I'm not sure if you might be familiar with him.
He was elected by his he was a soldier kind of elected by the
rest of the legion he was part of and they just named him
emperor. And he was a big, huge warrior
that ruled kind of like what we're describing.
He he tried to rule the empire like a like a soldier and that's
just did not work. Interesting name too, right,
Maximinus Thrax, like 7 foot tall, badass Roman legionary.
Like like, yeah, I'm going to read about that guy.
So let's move on. Though.
Speaking of black fire the sword, this is a what's
interesting is how it's not mentioned at all.
It's part of the saga of the of the 9 Penny Kings and we're
really just left to wonder. It seems like it might have been
lost to the Blackfyre's back all the way back in the third
Blackfyre rebellion. Or maybe I have a small head
cannon that it could have been destroyed at Summerhall.
Not too likely, but. And we have this evidence that
Delirio still has it right. Yeah.
I mean, my guess is that probably, you know, it may have
been lost many times because, you know, after the 3rd right,
Bittersteel gets captured and then escapes 'cause he has
friends at court. And that would make sense that
like if they captured it because, you know, it's, it
seems fairly clear that Hagon Blackfyre died after having
surrendered. You know, if that's the case,
then you know, his sword would have fallen to the Targaryens.
But I could see it disappearing along with Bittersteel.
But then they might have lost it again in the Fourth, because
again, that is a case where a Black Fire King dies in on
Westerosi soil and what becomes of of his his arms and armor and
of. Course Better Steel did escape
that one too, the 4th. So there's, you know, maybe just
like he escaped the 1st and took black fire, it's possible that
would happen in the 4th. Of course, then the question is,
how did he get it back? And well, there was, there's
this been the World of Ice and Fire gave us a theory as to how
Illyrio got his dragon eggs, which was and of course, I'm not
referring to Alyssa Farman. That's a theory going back even
farther. I'm referring to the the little
note in the World of Ice and Fire that even Aries had eggs.
Aries second that is, and that thus it would be very easy for
Varus to abscond with a few eggs and hand them over to Illyria,
who then gives them to nearest. Why not steal the Targaryen
sword in the chaos as well of all that?
And that could be how Illyrio still has it or got it back as
you say. Maybe he didn't have it then.
Got back that that would fit the whole Varus model of like
stealing stuff and then selling it back to people, right?
On Yeah. I mean, you know, arguably the
whole project has been from the beginning to like, steal the
Targaryen dynasty and then sell it back to Westeros.
So like having the sword Black Fire be part of that would kind
of fit the model. Right on.
Yeah, that's that's very true. So let's talk about this then.
Bitter Steel didn't back game in the second in the second
rebellion as we know rebellion in quotes there and it seems
this was due to concerns over his personality and or
capabilities. He did quite famously back Hagon
in the third and then Damon the third in the fourth rebellion.
That's a little bit of a confusing sentence.
So 2 questions. Who succeeded Bitter Steel after
his death in 241? And what did everyone Hagor, his
predecessor and the rest think of Malice when he was born?
So I'm going to let Steven weigh in, but real first little
context. Maelys died in 260 and Bitter
Steel died in 241, so only 19 years before.
Thus their lives very likely overlapped, maybe not by much,
maybe only a couple years. But Maelys was a huge man, and
huge people generally get most of their genetic hugeness early
on. He probably ascended quickly.
He was probably a a really good warrior really fast, just like
Gregor and Sandor and these other big dudes.
If he didn't, then it gets even more interesting because then
we're looking at a scenario where Bittersteel knew Maelice
when he was 8 or 9, maybe even 11:50 if not older.
But Sandor killed his first man at age 12, so there's certainly
precedent for 12 year olds who were warriors.
Like there's a story about a 12 year old warrior who joined the
infamous Yams Vikings who were like a Viking mercenary company
in the 9th century. And this guy to get in this
company, you had to fight one of the existing warriors and this
12 year old won his way in. And so it's this isn't even, you
know, a fantasy thing necessarily.
And of course we know about if if y'all are familiar with the
Janissaries who were slave soldiers raised from birth,
that's pretty similar to the Unsullied.
So we have things like this out there.
So anyway, Steven, let me get your thoughts on that.
Whether a what, whether you think Magor and Agor's or Mali's
and Agor's lives overlapped and what things like what people
would have thought about this, this kid.
Well, I mean, it's interesting because to to me, the the
question comes back to the changing mechanism for
leadership of the Golden Company, right?
For most of its history, it seems to have been elected
right, the captain to become captain general.
The only example we have of a challenge so far is Malus.
And Malus was like the, you know, he he was not an equal
challenger. It was his cousin who had the
command and then he was the the challenger.
So, you know, part of me wonders like, was this A to to use a
slightly odd historical analogy, but like Lennon on his deathbed
trying arguing that don't pick Stalin.
You know, I don't like him. And you know, when, when the,
you know, decision is like what's going to happen to the
next generation? Did Bitter still have a will?
Did he name a successor? Was there an election?
You know, if so, you know, probably Meili's lost that
election because I imagine it was one of these scenarios where
he's he's certainly he was known for having this kind of like
dark charisma, right? He he brings other people into
work with him. But the fact that he wasn't the
first choice, all right, the fact that he had to engage in
this kind of like almost Conan asked act of kinsling, right,
killing a horse by punching it in the head.
That suggests a situation where like, his strength and ferocity
was known, but his character was feared.
But this is sort of largely speculation.
The only thing that we know is that like whatever the situation
was, he clearly wasn't the first choice because he had to to
fight that duel in order to get the golden in able in order to
get everything else. Yeah, what do you think about
his his look apart from the obvious 2 head, you know the
strange second head coming out of his his neck?
You think he had the the silver hair and and purple?
Eyes so in in every other instance where heavy Targaryen
deformity has come up, it's always been in the context of of
inbreeding. And, you know, one of the the
things that you know, seems to have come up it, you know, is
the fact that like the black fires prided themselves on the
fact that Damon had more Targaryen blood than Daron did.
And that didn't marry a Martel. He married someone who also had
the blood of Old Valerie. So I can imagine them adopting a
more strict version of like this, you know, incestuous
marriage in order to maintain that Targaryen valerian heritage
to say we are we are the true Targaryens, not these not fail
or break spear and all these people who don't look like
Targaryens. And certainly in all of the like
the official artwork that we've seen of male is the monstrous.
You definitely see this like huge shock of silver hair.
That's. True.
And giants like he looks like, you know, evil Santa Claus.
Yes, like this, this big, big guy with his huge beard, huge
hair. Which is a little confusing to
me because that's part of where I my theory that he was on the
younger side does not really reflect the way he's looks in
some of the official art that say in lights and fire.
He look like you said, he looks like, kind of like a Santa
Claus. It's strange seeing him without
a helmet because you would expect, you know, in on TV you
see them do that all the time so you don't lose track of who's
who. But in the books, guys who go
into battle wear helmets and what kind of strange ass helmet
would he have? I mean Thai Rash.
Thai Rash is known for strange helmets, so they could.
Be but also his his physical deformity may have actually
interfered with his his armor in that case.
But I also think it it's like one of those things where
anytime young or old, right, silver hair is something that we
associate with old people. So I imagine that like part of
the thing that makes the like Targaryen look so otherworldly
is that they look kind of ancient even when they're young,
that they're like young people with old people's hair.
That just slightly disconcerting.
Mike's make them seem a little wiser than they should be, yeah.
Yeah, no, little bit, little bit, Village of the Damned.
And like you said, given where the black fires reside, which is
the disputed land and Thai rush and all that, if they didn't do
intermarrying within their own line, they could pretty easily
find more Targaryen features to marry into to keep the look at
least. So unlike in Westeros where
those things are are pretty rare.
So I really wonder, like from a superstitious perspective, what
did it seem like to the black fires and just the people around
in tyros, not necessarily black fires, but the people who knew
and in Westeros as well, when this guy was born, what did they
think? I mean, it's a superstitious
world. You got a, a person born with
this really strange feature that's extremely, extremely rare
in the real world. There is precedent for such a
thing, but it's so rare that you can't expect that that Westeros
to treat it or Essos to treat it like a scientific anomaly.
They will treat it like some sort of strange supernatural
prodigy and. Yeah, I'm going to say like if
we look at how they they react, you know how Westeros reacted to
Tyrion's work, like it was seen as a mark omen.
It was seen as like the punishment of the gods.
So I imagine like on the Westerosi side, they would have
been like, look, this is proof, right?
You know, this is the evil at the heart of the, you know,
treacherous black fires. Yeah, it'd.
Be really easy to use. That propaganda sells itself.
I imagine like, you know, this is again, you know, sort of
speculation fitting into my whole thing about him not being
the second choice. But like, there was such an
emphasis among the black fires about Damon's physical
perfection and the physical perfection of his kids that this
would have been, you know, that that malus would have been a
subject of shame. And I, I think it's really the
only difference, you know, between him and Tyrion is like,
he was big enough that like, he could fight back.
It's very hard to like, torment someone who's, you know, 7 foot
tall and made of muscle and, you know, very willing to.
Kill you? Yeah.
If Tyrion could fight like Jamie, people would not be
making fun of him nearly as much.
They would not call him half man.
They would at least not do its face.
Yeah, you wonder about that because with Tyrion, there's the
notion that maybe Tywin would have had him killed on the quiet
if if not for, you know, his connection to Joanna.
Obviously, Joanna didn't stop him because she was dead
herself. But, you know, he may not want
to kill a child of Joanna. But this consideration would be
different for the black fires. I wonder if there was any
thought of just let's let this leave this kid out for the
wolves. That's strange.
It's like you said, if they were embarrassed by it.
But clearly, they did not do this.
Yeah. But it depends on how many male
black fires did they have left. Yeah, that's a good point.
It may have just been him and his cousin, in which case, you
know, if anything happens to his cousin, he's the only one left,
so. He might have been sterile too.
Like, look, with that, with all his genetic abnormalities, it
wouldn't be surprising if he couldn't have kids of his own,
let alone people wanting to. That someone would marry him, I
suppose. But Yikes.
Really wonder whether Bittersteel would think it was a
good thing or not, because I really do think it's very likely
he was there for Meilis's birth. I mean, he was meaning by there
I mean alive when it happened. Because he's.
Yeah. Meilis's death was like 19 years
after Bittersteel's death. We do know too it.
Beyond this, like you said, for Westeros, the fact that it seems
they could easily spin this is something bad.
It's worse because people whispered that he was born a
kinslayer. I mean, the idea that he
consumed his own twin, well, all everything except its head is
kind of a story that you could see how that would spread.
And that is obviously a bad bad thing 'cause kinslaying is so so
taboo and Westeros doesn't love cell swords either.
And there wasn't much support for the 4th Blackfire Rebellion.
So let's just say it's doubtful people were clamoring for King
Nailies. And he probably didn't have any
alluding about that. He knew that they weren't
clamoring for him. He probably knew he'd have to
take it by force. So in in a Clash of Kings, Boris
tells the council that a 2 headed dragon had been born in
Karth. Of course this is Daenerys
birthing her Dragons and and Boris is probably knows that.
Well, he definitely knows that. He's just spinning it in a way
to keep the attention away from them.
When Meilis was born, the equivalent would have been a 2
headed dragon being born in Tyra.
They ignored the three headed dragon rumor, not taking it
seriously. And I wonder if that's kind of
what happened here other than the the denigration and all that
'cause it sounds like, I mean, Prince Duncan is out here saying
yeah, 9 they're giving out nine, you know, kings 9 a penny.
But we're talking about later, not the the 9 Penny Kings
incident is later. The band of nine forming in in
in 258 is well past the time when Melees would have been
born. So we're talking about two
separate events. There would have been a reaction
to his birth and then a reaction to him crowning himself.
And I wonder if this, you know, how that how things went from
there. Any thoughts on that, Steven?
This is retcon is maybe slightly too strong a word, but there was
a little bit of timeline adjustments.
Yeah, he's originally like, you know, a lot in the fandom were
left with the impression that Aegon the Fifth had been king
during the 9 Pity Kings. And then we learned it was
Jeharis. And you know, that always kind
of slightly wrong footed me because I thought the whole
point was that like Egg, you know, seeing Egg growing up,
witnessing that the Black Fire rebellions and taking part in
the earlier ones that like this led to this decision to like
rather than be on the defensive as the Targaryens had been in
the first questionably the second, because that's sort of a
case of entrapment. But definitely like on the
defensive in the 3rd and 4th, that like the decision to be
like, no, this time we're going to stop them in the step stones.
We're not going to wait for it to hit Westeros.
I always thought was like the the learning, you know, policy
learning. So the fact that it's Joe Harris
the second, you know, that we later learned who did that
always kind of slightly wrong footed me.
But it does sort of suggest that House Targaryen as a whole is
sort of trying to be more decisive about this crisis,
trying to put it to bed once and for all after, you know, at this
point, you know, a generation of turmoil.
It also gives the black fires a bit more of an opportunity
because obviously with having, whether that was a, a, a change
or not, it, it certainly means now that summer hall happens
right before the 9th penny kings take the step stone.
So it's kind of like, well, this might be them seeing their
opportunity because there's a new regime.
And like you say, Jaharius the second, not a not a weakling in
terms of his his mental fortitude, but not a warrior in
terms of his physical abilities. He was he stayed home because he
was not capable of going on campaign.
But you like you say, he's the one that was gung ho about
taking the initiative. Yeah, that would fit a pattern
like we've sort of seen, you know, not so much, but the
first, the first kind of happened by accident.
Is is not a the the right word for it, but you know, the arrest
warrant being set out for Damon. The first sort of started the
war kind of ahead of schedule. But like certainly we've seen in
the later rebellions that the black fires wait for some sort
of crisis, right, Whether it's the great spring sickness or the
drought or an unpopular king, something like that, to kind of,
you know, give them an Ed, you know, and you know, you can sort
of see this, you know, you know, maybe this time it's like
getting tips on horses for like gambling addicts.
You know, maybe this time, you know, I've got the I've got the
good scoop. I've got the inside line.
That could be sort of propaganda, like a propaganda
battle. The Westerosi would say, oh,
look, Maelice is born a kinslayer.
He's got all the genetic flaws. It's clearly, he's clearly a bad
omen for the Blackfires. And then they could turn around
and say, Oh yeah, well, look at Summer Hall.
What does that say? What does that say about
ominousness, y'all? Oh, and Kinslang.
Yeah, and Kinslang, you just killed, you just killed your own
dynasty there, Aegon. So yeah, that's, that's a pretty
tough one. That's a tough sell.
You can see that the propaganda battle being pretty fierce on
that side. And like you said, Aegon the 5th
wasn't worried too much about the black fires, maybe because
of how weak the 4th Rebellion was.
I mean he was there for that. And Dunk, his Kingsguard Lord
Commander, fought in three of them and had so much to do
there. So they may have just been that
may have been part of the reason why they weren't too worried
about it. And it may have also been a
little bit of remembering that they took it too seriously
during Blood Ravens time. Maybe a little of we took it too
seriously then let's not overextend ourselves this time.
Something like that. Lots of possibilities.
And it's A and it's to be fair to them too.
It is in a world of cell swords and and pirates and and all
these cutthroat type individuals expecting the band of nine to
not succeed. I don't think that's a too much
of A gamble. I think that is sort of a
reasonable expectation for a group of of scumbags like that
to turn on each other. But apparently the the the long
odds came out this time. So yeah, you mentioned that
Naley's the killing of his own cousin to win the command of the
Golden Company puts puts any doubts to rest of whether he was
a kinslayer by birth or not 'cause he certainly won after
that point. And also, as you said, the the
nomination process may have changed for the Golden Company.
That's really interesting. Whether this was a one time
thing where Mailee's was like, look, you're a coward if you
refuse to fight me, or if this was just something that they
were trying to establish like a lot, maybe a lot of the other
sell swords thought it was a good policy to have the
strongest need them. But clearly, as you pointed out,
there is no way Harry Strickland fought for command of the Golden
Company. So something has either changed
or either they either was a temporary change or they changed
back so. Yeah, I mean it, I, I think
that's a, a really good point, which is that like there's these
dueling principles at work, right?
Command by the strongest versus internal solidarity, right.
You don't kill your own comrades.
Yeah. Because you know, if, if you
know, as we've seen in the War of 5 Kings, right, if succession
is settled with knives, then it's very hard to limit it and
sort of say, well, only once you know, and then you have to stop.
It's like, you know, they may have decided like, no, an
election and then that's it. You know, we're just going to,
like, limit any political conflict within the group
because, you know, this is what it leads to.
So it'd be really interesting. Just we should consider just
briefly that George is is going to be all Georgie with us here
and and pull a actually Maliis was well spoken and all this
other stuff that just he looked the way he did and had this
reputation was brutal and savage.
But there's a lot of you know, oh, he's got this look.
So his reputation is not what he entirely deserved.
Like Tyrion. Tyrion's a great example.
Bloodrayne, you know, these guys had reputations.
They were dirty, they were nasty, they did brutal things,
but the stories told about them are still pumped up a few
degrees, if not more. You definitely get the sense
that like he wasn't stupid. Like, you know, if if there's
one major difference between him and Gregor, it's like you get
the sense there was a whether he was good with, you know, he must
have been good with people at some level, otherwise the band
of of nine would not have formed, maybe like Robert.
Not good with people where they just were like not charisma but
they knew they could follow him into battle you.
Know personality, but certainly there is a mind it.
Yes, he, he. Was thinking about what would he
need to win this war in terms of like who was in the, the, the
band of eight? And obviously, you know, when
when we eventually get to the actual fighting itself, there is
some interesting strategy going on.
Yeah, that's a great point. I'll allude to that briefly.
And what's even referring to is the fact that they and the
Golden Company and the and the black fires in the past mostly
went straight for King's Landing or tried to.
And whereas this is not that sort sort of a campaign at all.
But we'll, like Stephen said, we'll get to that a little
later. Let's talk a little bit more
about the, the, the interim time and maybe Meili's building his
reputation. As we said, we don't know how
old he was. It's hard to guess at that.
My, I intend to lean towards the younger side because of his, you
know, his size and brutality and all that.
Just what this, the advantage that gives him to the warrior.
And, and again, if if we were assuming that he took over the
Golden Company by killing his cousin, let's say that was just
a couple years before the Band of nine was formed.
It's possibly longer, but it couldn't be a whole lot longer.
There's only 15 years or 17 years between the Band of Nine
forming officially and the death of Bitter Steel.
So, and, and it's hard to imagine that Naileys didn't have
command of the Golden Company for at least a little while, a
year or two, if not more, to at least establish a Rep to at
least prove he was capable to, you know, if these other guys
are going to join him in this alliance, he had to show
something besides a claim And, and you know, being good at
fighting. Would you would you agree with
that? Yeah, cool.
I mean, you know, especially if you're a mercenary, right?
You. You have to work all the time
otherwise you don't get paid. So it it's not like you sort of
you take several years off between wars.
It's like, no, you know, what are we?
You know, who are we fighting for this season?
OK, you know, let's let's go there and fight.
So I imagine, you know, you would have had, you know, at
least a few campaigning years under his belt by the time, you
know. If not, why would anyone you
know agree to not just sort of work with him but like take this
huge gamble? Yeah, backing him for an
invasion of Westeros. I mean, that is huge.
Like the only time that's been done was with Aegon the
Conqueror and Dragons. I mean, this is a major, major
undertaking. So yeah, you got to really have
people really got to have confidence in you.
That's why I, I entertained the notion that he was actually
somehow like good at speaking or, or anything like that.
Imagine him being the son of the Anies that was killed by
Bloodraven, the one who tried to convince the Seven Kingdoms to
give him the crown. And maybe he was that guy's son
and actually had some upbringing that involved eloquence and
learning how to speak well. But of course, we're just
spitballing here. There is nothing specifically to
point us in that direction. It is just within the realm of
possibility and that is it. So let's talk about some of the
other eight members of the band. Actually, let's not do that real
quick. Let's see, let's let's talk
about a few questions that we let's let's handle a few Q&A
stuff here. Oh my goodness.
Look at is what? Look what is said in the Q and
AI. Just scrolled to our QA section
here. Steven, Chloe, Ketchum and
Emmett have gotten engaged. Yes, I I just saw that.
I I took a second to to wish them well on Twitter.
That is awesome. Well Congrats to Emmett Booth of
Nada Cast and Chloe of Girls Gone Cannon and Drunk ASOIF
History who are also our our friends.
We've hung out many times, that is.
Awesome. Can we also chalk this up to a
win for Ice and Fire con? Yes, ice and fire con.
Sean and Rita also met there and they're also engaged.
So if you're looking for your nerdy love interest, come to Ice
and Fire Con, my new ad for it. That's a good ad for it.
That is a very good sell salesmanship job there.
And yeah. Chloe is in charge of marketing,
so now she knows to be like I. I found my fiance.
So yeah, if you are interested in going to Ice and Firecon,
here's the sales pitch too. We you can get $5 off your
ticket by using the code history on your ticket price.
Go to iceandfirecon.com and go to the store and see us there.
So well, that was a fun little distraction.
That was really cool. But let's let's go to the, the,
the questions that are on topic here from Pat Doherty, who made
this shirt blood Raven shot first that I'm wearing.
He is a very much a fan of the black dragon side of things.
So he wants to know if Maelice's condition says anything about
the black flame theories. Now before you answer Steven,
I'll explain real quickly for those of of us who don't know
what Black flame means, and also I have my own thing to wrap up
into this question. So let's have a little fun here.
Black Flame, also called Bright Flame or is rather related to
bright flame is is a reference to Aryan as an Aryan, the one
named Brightflame or Aryan Brightfire.
He has two different nicknames. That's the guy who drank
wildfire when he was drunk and it of course killed him.
He had spent some time in the Free Cities particularly.
He was, of course, sent, sent there on exile after the hedge
night. And there are because of the
kind of guy he was, there are theories that he may or may not
have sired a few bastards of his own.
And if those bastards were out there, they may have been
become, they either may have become somewhat important or
become part of the Golden Company, been scooped up by
these dynastic agents wanting to grab that bloodline.
And thus you get the combination of Black Flyer and Bright Flame
in the name Black Flame. So that's just a fan made name,
of course. But I wonder.
Yeah. So we, we should consider all
that in light of this, whether we, because you, you brought
this up, Steven, the idea that they may have been trying to
play like the Targaryens and, and keep their dynasty pure in a
sense, if there was some Targaryen blood out there, they
may have tried to abscond. With them in this case I don't
think so because the way that World of Ice and Fire talks
about Aryan Bright Flames actions during the third
rebellion. They would not be a fan of his,
would they? Yeah, I mean, I get the sense
that, like, if he didn't personally wield the knife to
kill Hagon, then he was very much involved in that.
So, you know, that's always kind of been my problem with the this
particular theory is just that like, no, like if the, you know,
if the Golden Company don't like Targaryens, they especially
aren't going to like this asshole.
Yeah, that is very true so. But the other thing I wanted to
work into this is the idea of the the kind of parallel concept
of Maelice's interesting unusual deformity in light of the
deformities that have occurred, mutations that occurred in the
Targaryen line. Of course, I refer to Rago and
Maelice's or Megor's many strange progeny, and then the
example of little Visenya Rainier's kid.
And I wonder if that's sort of a thematic parallel.
Do you think there's anything to?
That Yeah. Well, you know, it's, it's a
little unclear because, you know, I don't think like George
is getting out of Punnett Square.
No. The, the, you know, genetic load
or any of the, IT, it's more than just like, you get the
sense that like Targaryen deformity is more about like the
spirit within, right? That, you know, people of bad
character, you know, it, it comes out in.
So that may be what's going on with, with Maelis that like,
and, and This is why I, I, I made the comparison to Richard.
The third is because Thomas Moore wrote a, a book about
Richard in which he argued that like Richard was born sinful.
He was. Born a murderer, right, even
before he he ever killed anybody.
And you sort of get that idea with with Maelis that like he
was born having already in some sense committed, you know, the
the most sort of, you know, primal sins.
Yeah, certain aspects of his personality were defined for him
when he was still a baby without actually earning or or
deserving. Yeah, Yep, that's very true.
So, yeah, that's an interesting point about the the particular
Targaryens that have had these issues with their children.
And of course, for bringing up Daenerys in that light is a
touchy subject, but no doubt that it's it's a possibility.
And it also brings us another parallel, which is that if Magor
was very clearly sterile or near sort of sterile, pseudo sterile,
and Daenerys now can't told she can't bear kids.
And now we have the same thing. The idea that maybe melees
couldn't have kids because of well, people with lots of
mutations like that are often sterile.
That's just the way the world seems to work, genetics and
biology. But so that's just, you know,
maybe some thematic ties together there.
Speaking of the genetics here or not genetics but more of a
lineage, couple questions from Matt Reese.
He says I would like to know who was Damon the third's father and
who was Maelise's father from Damon the 1st 5 surviving sons.
Any guesses and well. I think that.
Hey, I wonder about this is tough because I wonder Hagon
when it was killed, after he surrendered, after he yielded.
You wonder if he had had kids before, whether he had I, I, I
kind of guess he, there's a decent chance he's dead because
it's pretty normal before King goes off to war, to sire and air
and kind of take care of that. 3rd is listed as Hagon's eldest
son, right? So that means that he had at
least 2. Yes, he probably didn't name
them both Damon, so it's unlikely The second one was this
was was this cousin Damon that bitter steal or that Meili's
killed for command of the Golden Company?
So there's a lot of possibility that is, it is difficult to
track these possibilities down because there are so many.
There's 7 Black Fire sons from Damon and.
Yeah. And we know there's the whole
business with like Anus, technically Anus Black Fire
technically jumping the the Black Fire line.
Yes, that's true. When he put himself forward at
the Great Council of 230. Three, which fits in really
interestingly with my little anus is the father of Megore
theory or Melee's theory, because if if he kind of figured
his father had already done that, he's like, well, I deserve
this. My father already took at the
front spot. I don't know, it's a little bit
of a stretch, but it fits anyway.
Yeah, it's just, I mean, you know, the truth is just like the
house black fire family tree is really is just riddled with
unknown. Yeah, really, really unknown.
I, I, I think like just a couple more like one or two sperm dates
would do a lot for us. We could work because the
extrapolations were kind of stuck and but like one or two
firm dates would would enable us to extrapolate a lot more, I
think, or at least to or it could just spin us out of
control and give us even more possibilities.
You never know. So Matt Reese also asked maybe
after Bittersteel leadership might have devolved to whomever
was the black Fire pretender. Then after Meilis, they went to
election. Yeah, that's entirely possible
that because Bittersteel had such a tight grip on it for so
long that after him maybe he didn't do a great job of of
naming A successor to the to his own.
You know, that is an interesting thing because, you know,
Bittersteel was so involved in, you know, he really was the sort
of black fire kingmaker. Yeah, and he didn't die
suddenly, right? He died.
We know on his deathbed he commanded them to do that stuff
with his skull so he had a chance to name a successor.
And, you know, he was very clearly saying like, OK, no, not
Damon. The second, you know, I want
Hagon instead, you know, not, you know, so, so he was very
much like, he was not sort of faithfully following any line of
succession. He was sort of saying who I
think is the best person for the job.
So an interesting possibility. Did he name a claim what
happened after he died? Was there any in, you know,
'cause it's, it's not like you, you never see infighting within
political exile community. It's like nothing is more
poisonous and more bitter than like, people who are on the
outs, you know, fighting over, you know, some, you know,
completely abstract claim to power.
And of course, we've got plenty of examples of, you know,
Robert, Robert and Cersei slash Bessarius the second they name
their heir. And then everybody just throws
that out like, Nope, you, your your your piece of paper is not
who we're going to go with here. J 17 Any chance we'll find out
more about Meili's in a sell me chapter and wins?
I think there's a very good chance of that, especially
because George has mentioned Meili's in light of Tyrion and
we're we're really getting into this whole Young Griff plot
line. So I would bet fairly strongly
on that. I'm maybe I'm hope, maybe I'm
too hopeful for it, but I think that there's a very good yes,
that is a good question. Yeah.
Jace also asked do you think Agor dismissed Damon the
second's claim due his due to due to his sexuality?
I think there's a good chance he did.
But I think there's that probably wasn't the only reason
because there's if you look at the the way the second quote UN
quote rebellion plays out, there's clearly other issues
with Damon the second not just I don't think his his
homosexuality is a would really be a big deal.
I mean, it could beat Agor, obviously.
Yeah, who knows what Agor thinks, but the.
Way that like the Westerosi tend to talk about it, yeah, but
they're sort of like, you know, look, as long as you sire and
air and no one really cares what you do in private.
Yeah, the TV show gave people the wrong impression about how
much Westeros seems to care about.
That I, I think it's more that just like Damon really was kind
of more mystical. Yeah.
And thought that he was going to burst Dragons and you know,
that's how he was going to win, I think.
It's far more problematic. I mean, homosexuality isn't
problematic at all. Like, but also from from a
personal standpoint, right? Bitter Steel's lifelong oldest
enemy is the like the sorcerer. Good point.
He doesn't trust that. Like, yeah.
Yeah, I I think he'd, he'd look at at at Jamon the second say
like, no, this. I am not like nurturing another
blood Raven in my own camp. This guy is a dreamer and a
madman. I want someone you know and a
good practical warrior like his older brother.
The guy who thinks he's going to be king because he dreamt it is
not. Yeah, that's not something you
can, you can put a lot of military backing behind without
some proof. And there was none.
There was that he had his dreams, but there was no, oh,
these dreams are coming true. And we this is something we
talked about in our earlier black bar coverage, whether he
had proved himself with any of his dreams or not.
And and the fact that better still didn't back him kind of
argues that he hadn't, because if his dreams had been proven to
come true, then I would argue that maybe better Steel would be
like. This.
Guy, his dreams are coming true, so maybe we should back him.
But because of the blood Raven point you just made, maybe not.
Maybe he was just so against any of that stuff that he would just
I don't want to get involved in any of that magical stuff.
Maybe he's got like a virus type attitude about it.
OK, so let's let's give some shout outs here.
Appropriately enough for this episode.
We'll do some shout outs for our cell sword captains.
That seems to fit right? That is appropriate for an
episode featuring so many cell swords.
Peter Blaze of the Emerald Isle is captain of the Weirwood
Wanderers to Long live quick desk, cold beer and warm women.
Degron is Marshall of the axe, captain of the red tide.
Resistance is futile. Chiron calls Bane captain of the
stone Shields. The torrent breaks upon the
stone. Aima Helmand, captain of the
Whispering Children. Dead men tell no secrets.
Shepard, his son, the Shepard of Essos.
All men are sheep before the Shepard.
Heir to the Whispering Children. Lady Lajara Dajo is the Iron
Lily. Master Archer, Castellan of the
Summer Island Keep. Arboreal Point, Captain of the
all female whaling widows. Women and children first.
Cody the Crimson is Bashard of Bracken, captain of the Red
Waste Exiles and recruiter of the Free Folk.
Cameron is the Hammer of Hornwood, captain of the English
Lions. Their motto, Honor is the reward
of virtue. Lord Brandon Brewer of Castle
Blackroon is captain of the Shadow Wolves.
Their motto? Our steel is cold, our vengeance
colder. Black Alex Sand is the Bastard
of Spears and leader of the Bermuda Vanguard.
Bitter Steel is Captain General of the Golden Company.
Beneath the gold, the bitter steel, and our word is good as
gold. They get 2 mottos, that's how
cool they are. Also want to give shout outs to
our Queens of Love and Beauty. I'm determined to get it right
this time. From the depths of Flea Bottom,
Lord Ken of House Hammer is declared for Queen Carrie, Fire
of the North who recovered Dark Sister from beyond the Wall and
a Laurel of glory in the name of love to Bud of House Beresford,
Knight of Tokian and Arbiter of Scotch from Sandy, the dragon
blood of Queen Daenerys and Lady of Jameson.
And last but not least, our Blood Rider patrons, Vorsaki,
wielder of a versus Valyrian steel air act with a dragon bone
hilt. Kohal Kohli, called Sun Piercer,
wielder of a dragon bone bow, and Kakabo the Tamer, wielder of
the wildfire whipped Gehenna. I think Steven, since the last
time we've had you on, you now have a patron.
I don't think you had one the last time we did, so why don't
you give that a shout out? OK, so yeah, I have a a patron
that's been going for God almost the better part of a year now, I
feel. Like you launched in May,
What's? That right?
Yeah, something like that. And it's got a number of levels
of benefits. So if you join at the $1.00 Poor
Fellows level, you just get access to the patron feed, which
gives early access to bonus content.
If you join at the $5 Brotherhood Without Banners
level, get a you get a shout out at the end of every essay.
If you join at the team small folk level of $10 a month, you
also get a guaranteed ask per month.
Where like, you know, I do regular answering people's asks
on social media and I put them together in posts and you get to
ask a question on any topic you want.
If you join small council level of $25 or more a month, you can
suggest topics for future historical analysis essay
sections because every time I write about a chapter, I come up
with a historical topic. Of course I know the.
Feeling. Yeah.
And then my secret inner counsel, at $50 or more a month,
is Privy to all of my schemes and machinations, including to,
when I eventually get round to it, early access to my first
original novel. Oh, you're writing a novel?
I will be doing. I am currently in the research
project face the project. Do you want to give a little
teaser about what it's about or is it not really?
Sure. It's going to be set in
Renaissance Brugge, and it's about a sort of in, you know, a
fantasy version of Renaissance Brugge.
Basically, an Italian mercenary comes to Brugge and tries to
make his fortune. Cool, sounds great.
I will definitely read that. That sounds right up my alley.
Yes, I just have to, to write it.
My, my, my plan at the moment is to, you know, 'cause like at the
moment I've got this like 20 page like planning document and
I'm using Zotero for all of my research.
But like, I'm going to do basically Nanowrimo this coming
year and just try to bang out like a a first draft.
Very cool. Well, good luck with that.
That sounds excellent. I hope you thank you make you
make great progress this year. Let's get back to it.
The other eight members of the Band of nine, we haven't.
I don't know if we've mentioned any of them by name yet.
We'll start off by a quick primer.
I've you sometimes see the word cell sword company, sometimes
see the word free company. As best as I can tell, that's
the same thing you had You interpret that differently.
Do you know otherwise? So the free companies, I think
just remind myself, are specifically the ones in Essos
and they, they, they emerge out of the, the, the free cities.
So I think it's just a contraction, right?
Free cities company into free companies.
That makes sense. But the, you know, I think the
difference is basically like they're not individual
mercenaries, right? And they're not these sort of
like temporary, you know, clumping together of broken men
or bandits or whatever. They are these permanent or not
permanent, but these long lasting institutions that have
these like charters and they sign contracts with city states
that are more based on these like historical.
Capital C mercenary companies. I thought maybe it had something
to do with the, the type commitment they made to the
company, but I, I apparently I was wrong.
I thought maybe for example or or certain companies to sign a
contract and if you leave they'll cut your foot off or
something. But that may have to do with it
or or it could be, you know, another possibility is that like
free company, IE free of political.
Influence, right? They don't belong to a given
state. They are not subjects of a any
one city or you know in in you know the case of like Westerosi
mercenaries, right? You know subjects of the king.
You know the the Golden Company is a law unto itself.
Right on. OK, Yeah, that makes a lot of
sense. So the other eight members of
the band, and the reason we brought that up is because
there's a lot of Cell sword slash Free Company commanders in
this group, as well as pirates. It's a very interesting group
and that doesn't describe all of them.
They're not all pirates and cell sword, but that is a large chunk
of them. So well, one of the things we
tried to do is kind of figure out where some of them came
from. Some of them we do know.
Some of them we we know because of their name gives it away.
We're wondering things like, and we also wonder what they
expected. What is their reward?
As in the the goal of the band of nine was to carve out
kingdoms for each other and well, no one could possibly have
gotten the Kingdom as large as the one they at least wanted.
There's no nothing else was on the board as a prize as large as
Westeros. So the one of them was Aleko
Adaris. We'll talk about him in a minute
in more detail. But he wanted Ty Rosh and he got
it. But the rest of the band, it's
not clear both what they wanted and whether or not any of them
got it because, well, probably they didn't get it.
The only other place they conquered was the disputed
lands, which may have been what one of them wanted for his own
territory, or hers anyway. So we're wondering if any of
them maybe wanted Bravos or Pentos.
I mean, that kind of thing we see, for example, who is it?
The the, the tattered Prince, his reward for backing Danny as
he wants Pentos. And obviously this is the kind
of thing that you would expect to not be so unique.
We wonder if anyone came or wanted Basilisk Isles or
something like that. We see commanders and and pirate
captains setting themselves up in places like that.
As far as we know, there's no connection to Volantis or the
farther E like I'm. None of these band of nines seem
to be associated with, say, Slaver's Bay or UT or Ashey or
anything like that. But you never know because these
aren't people who necessarily establish themselves in their
own country. Some of them also came from
Westeros very clearly. So let's go through the one at a
time. The the first one is the old
mother. She apparently is the one woman
in the group, although some there's a possibility of one
other. I suppose so.
To me, that name, she's a pirate.
And that reminds me of the Chinese pirate in real life,
Qingxi, who is the most successful pirate of all time.
But that is literally. And just like Qingxi, we get
very little about the old mother.
The real sources tell us very little about Qingxi, even though
she was only like 200 years ago. But old mother, I don't know
what do you any any thoughts on the old mother?
Pirate suggests so probably somewhere coastal right?
You know, unlikely to be one of the yoga snai even though they
are matriarchs. One possibility is just
reminding my like Lang, just because that is a more
matriarchal society. Yeah, that's a good call.
I didn't think of that. And obviously that would fit
Ching Chi right, You know, more Eastern than the rest.
But we, you know, again, we're, we're working with scraps.
Here, scrap, total scrap. Ching Chi inherited her
basically kind of her husband was the pirate Lord and and when
he died, she took over. And which is unusual that
someone else didn't step up or attack her, or if they did, she
defeated them. So it's not to say that's how
this woman rose to the ranks. It could be she did it on her
own, but there it is unusual to see a woman rise so high amongst
very male dominated profession of piracy.
There's all sorts of superstitions about women being
on board, things like that, which some of which probably
exist in Essos and Westeros as well as in the real world.
They're not so prominent nowadays, but they were back in
the day on the in in on our planet.
But like he says, like Steven says, there's not a whole lot we
can we can say here that isn't just guesswork.
Samarosan is another pirate Lord.
We can say more about him because that name is very
familiar, isn't it? Yeah, we know the sons.
Yep. So he's a Salador's family.
We also have, we also know of a Safo's son.
And This is why I brought up Basiloskiles, because Safo's son
was king of Basilskiles and he was active not too long before
this. I mean, it could have been as
much as 200 years before, but we're not talking like many,
many hundreds of years ago. And it seems like Samarosan was
defeated in the Stepstones by Megor the Cruel and Athan
Valerian and some of these other guys.
So there's some chance that this is what Samaro San wanted was
either the vessel Skiles or the Stepstones.
What do you think about the OR at least possibly because that's
where they come from. What do you think about Samaro?
One thing that's interesting about Samaro San is his nickname
that separates him out a little bit from the rest of his family.
He called himself the last Valyrian, right?
That's interesting. And you know, you mentioned that
like none of these people seem to have come from Volantis.
It's possible he wanted Volantis, right?
Because the, because the Valentines like see themselves
and talk about themselves as like the most Valyrian of
Valyrian. Yes.
So it's possible that like Samarosan, if he thought of
himself as like more Valyrian than anyone else would have been
like, great, I'll take that, right.
I, I can live inside the black walls.
I can, you know, ruled this enormous empire and you know
that's, you know, you can't rule Valyria itself unless you want
to die by, you know, horrible worm things and demons, but you
know, closest thing. Right.
Yeah, definitely. That's a great guess.
Yeah. I like that.
The whole last Valyrian title is very evocative.
And you wonder because it's like, well, yeah, Salvador is
not calling himself anything like that.
He doesn't really refer to himself for that aspect of his
heritage much at all. It's it's, it's inferred.
We learn. Yeah.
Well, after A Clash of Kings, I think that that that about like
the Lyseny connection. I think it may, although he
does. Call himself Prince of the
Narrow Sea. That's true.
So there is this like, tendency among the Sahm family to, like,
hunger for, for royal title. Yeah.
Yeah, you wonder cause Salador is still out there.
I mean, he's not currently not associated with any of the major
factions. He is a faction of his own right
now. That's probably not going to
maintain there's he'll probably take a side again and there's an
opportunity for him to maybe mention more about his family or
anything like that. So I'm hoping that Salador drops
a few paragraphs about his his own family now that George has
expanded on him so much, because this was not the kind of
expansion on a family that we expect.
There's so many sons that popped up over the all the all over the
extra secondary sources here. It's it's pretty fun.
Let's talk about Jobar Jakhua, which is almost certainly not
how to pronounce it, but whatever.
AKA the Ebon Prince. That's a much easier thing to
say. So this guy was a Summer
Islander and the summer Islander.
One thing summer Islanders know very well is sailing.
Another thing they know pretty well is archery.
Not to assume that he is either of those things, but it's a good
start for a guest. So of course, a comp for this
guy is Jalibar Jo, who is an exile Prince at court.
Yeah. What do you think about Zobar
Jacquia here? So the interesting thing Or
Jacqua. Yeah, yeah.
The interesting thing is like for a place that it that, you
know, Martin clearly sort of sees as like almost paradise in
nature, it does seem to have this nasty tendency of producing
exiled Princess who wants to retake their lands by force.
So I would not be surprised because, you know, it's not a
very long sail from the step stones to the Summer Isles if
that's what he wanted. He just needed an army to get
back home in style as a point. And we know that Jamie
particularly interested in the stories about this guy.
There's a there's a passage where Jamie is when he's getting
ready to meet with Blackfish and have their parlay.
He thinks of how when he first met Blackfish, he was, you know,
there was talk of him marrying Lysa Tully or being engaged to
Lysa Tully. That never happened, but it was
sort of a a thing. And they were.
They were sat next to each other and Jamie remembers how he
completely ignored Lisa because he wanted to talk to Brendan
about Maelys the Monstrous and the Ebon Prince.
He mentions those 2 specifically.
Yeah, well, in that case, even though Summer Islanders are
better known for archery, maybe he was a very good swordsman.
That's because Jamie has a disdain for bows.
You're right. Well, and also that a young
Jamie was absolutely obsessed with swords.
That was the only thing he was really interested.
In. That's a great point.
Yeah. And this guy was probably a Cell
sword captain, which means probably.
He had an. Opportunity.
Yeah, that's a great point. I like that guess a lot.
So I so. And the fact that, yeah, maybe
those were the 2 best swordsmen of the batch, that might be a
subtle hint that because Jamie was just interested in nothing
but swords, especially that, I mean, he wasn't interested in
much by the time he came of age. But but when he was, you know,
seven years older, whenever that was, he must have been super
hyper focused on this. So yeah, that's a great theory.
I like that a lot. The idea that that the Evan
Prince was a was an excellent swordsman.
You had a good theory on this next one as well.
Lyman Lashar, whose nickname is the Lord of Battles, also a cell
sword captain. That much is confirmed.
You'd think a name like that would imply significant
experience, maybe more on the command side rather than.
Yeah, I was going to say a tactician as opposed to a
warrior. A clever strategist and you you
suggest that he might be Lysine because of that name.
Lashar is kind of like Rogar. Yeah, it's, it's the same sort
of construction. So I mean, you know, look, if,
if it's Valyrian in nature, it could be any of the free Cities.
But there is a certain, you know, and, and this gets rather
difficult because, right, they all can't pick the same
territory. Yeah.
You know, the the whole way that this thing works is each of them
pick a territory and agree that they'll they'll take it for
themselves. If if he's Lysini, you know,
maybe Samara Osan didn't want Lys and you know, that's the way
it goes, but you know it, it is interesting.
Definitely sort of. Lord of Battles has a ring to.
It you wonder, maybe he's the engineer of their their
strategy, their campaign strategy.
It might have been him who said, yeah, let's take, let's take the
disputed lands first, then we'll take Tyros, then we'll go for
the step stones and then we'll go for Westeros.
And then Westeros will empower us to do all these other things,
which that is a decent plan, I guess.
You know, there's a lot of a lot of details to work out.
But the idea of making Westeros the the base for seizing all
these other kingdoms, well, that you can see the logic in that
because if you have the power of Westeros, it shouldn't be that
hard to take some of these smaller kingdoms that are
relatively independent. The next one is the other one
who might be. There's a chance this one's
female because there's no name here.
It's just nine eyes cell sword captain.
Maybe it's a cell sail fleet because they're they're called
the Jolly Fellows. Which that does sound very
piratical. Yeah, it really does.
So and cell sail fleets are a thing we don't see.
I don't think we've seen one to up close other than Solid or
Sons, which is pretty much that is what he's doing with it.
He. He's the only one who gets a A.
Well, yeah, I mean, he's the only one who gets a name.
A name that isn't without a real name like we have.
Well, no. The old mother, that's also.
Yeah, we don't know her. Real name in in the in the main
song of bison fire. Oh, I see.
OK. And yeah, so you're right.
You mean you mean out of sell sale capital?
I see. OK.
Yeah, I, I wonder like 9 eyes, you know, I, I get more of a
baseless styles feel here just cause like 9 eyes.
It's almost like it's almost like wildling, like you know
that or, or like the clan, you know, the the mountain clans,
the the mountains of the moon. Like it it's not a a civilized
Valyrian name. It's not summer Islander, it's
not Westerosi. This sounds like.
His given name isn't something that apparently he thinks would
help make him famous I guess. Like yeah, if you had some sort
of Valyrian sounding name that would probably be a part of his
shtick, but apparently maybe his name is is is not important.
So Next up we have one of the Westeros.
So this one's pretty important. Spotted Tom the Butcher and now
anyone named the Butcher is generally not a nice fellow.
Yeah. So you have a theory on where he
might have come from and I like I like this theory a lot too.
Yeah, so this is a theory, the Santagars of Spotswood.
As in Santagar, who was of course important for the early
parts of of the Song of Ice and Fire.
And you know their sigil is a spotted leopard and you know
they they, they are the Knights of Spotswood.
So it's like Spots is very much a thing, you know, for them.
So you know, it's possible he is a a bastard instead of a full
blood Santagar. The other thing that makes me
lean towards Santagar is that if you look at where the Spotswood
is, it's pretty close to the lands of the Ironwoods, who were
the we know they were black, black fire loyalists and you
know, good point were were ride or die many times.
So the idea that their vassals would have come along with that
strong possibility. You know, we know that like you
know, from world of ice and fire and fire and blood and all that
that like the Dornish subtle internal politics very
violently. You know what Rosie do.
So it's doesn't seem impossible to me that, you know, he wound
up on the wrong side of some blood feud or coup d'et, you
know, failed coup or something, and that's how you went into the
name, like the butcher. That's a great theory.
Now I have my own little theory to add on to this, which is that
I figure given the timeline this this spotted time the butcher
Probably not a really old man. Maybe you never know.
Probably not though. Probably more middle age ish
young on the younger side but not young young.
And the reason for that is, well, that's just a typical age
for for ambitious warrior types, it's hard to be a really old guy
leading a campaign to take a throne or.
Something like that sword and the bold sulk.
Exactly like some there are, there are exceptions.
Tattered Prince is a perfect one, but he is an exception to
be clear. So my guess is that he was
exiled during Egg's time during Egg on the 5th time, because Egg
had been king for 25 years when the band pledged beneath Tree of
Crowns to to become this band of nine.
Yeah. And, and that also fits because,
you know, we know from the rains of Castamere that Egg put an
unusual amount of emphasis into royal law enforcement on the
local level. So, you know, it's it's quite
possible that sort of he was involved in some local feud.
And then, you know, Egon the Fifth said, Nope, royal justice
is going to be brought against you when he fled to Essos and
joined up with the black fires because like, you know, a few.
Exactly. Why not?
Yeah, so. And that brings us to another
connection to Dunkin Egg, which is Derek Fosaway.
Sir, Excuse me Sir, Derek Fosaway AKA the Bad Apple.
I love this nickname. It's bad apple, yeah.
Don't throw out the whole bunch because of 1 bad apple.
But no, he's of course a Fossaway.
And then the Fossaways are like a microcosm of Blackfyre
Targaryen. And and they happened during the
Dunkin Egg series. And in the in the Hedge night,
we see the formation of the green apple fossaways breaking
off from the red apple fossaways.
And this guy is like some third sort of branch of his own in a
sense. And of course, so you have a
sigil that is by changing the color you represent this cadet
branch, which is obviously exactly what the black buyers do
to represent their connection to the Targaryen.
So this just is a a nice little George is having fun with this
one, I think. But we don't know a whole lot
about him other than him being a knight.
And an interesting point here is that unlike all these other
characters, he's not necessarily a cell sort captain.
He might be, but he's not listed as one.
He's a knight with an I'll repute, which is, well, he must
be more than just that. A knight like some nasty knight
doesn't sound like he's on the same level as a cell sword
captain or a pirate Lord, or may lease the monstrous, so this guy
had to have something else going for him that maybe isn't
mentioned. This could be another example of
like, some of these people are more kind of organizational,
right, They run an organization. Others, it may be more about who
they are as people individually. And you know, one of the things
that you see with the first rebellion, not so much the 2nd,
3rd, 4th is Damon. The first liked to have famous
Knights around him. That was a big part of kind of
burnishing his image. So, you know, if Derek Fossaway
was a a knight who is very good at the sort of the Marshall side
of things, but not so good at sort of keeping to his oath and,
you know, the the more chivalrous side of things, you
know, you could see someone like Neilis the monstrous being like,
you know, hey, no, I need Knights around me if I want to
be a king. But, you know, this is the kind
of knight that appeals to me as this kind of, you know,
distrusted, despised figure. A typical.
Part of a conspiracy slash cartel like this would be
someone who is strong in intelligence.
I don't mean like a smart guy, I mean like spy stuff, right?
Yeah, I mean, certainly, especially by this point, right?
It had been so long since the black fires were on Westerosi
soil and had a real following. I mean, really not since the
Third you, you really get the sense that the third rebellion
was like the high watermark. That was the closest they got
since the 1st that, you know, they needed someone who knew
the, the political scene in West Rooms, you know, and it's also,
you know, one of the things that I think we should keep our eyes
for is like, who are the Golden Company's friends?
Exactly. That's exactly where I'm going
with this. Yes, I'm glad you picked that
up. Yeah, and the Fossaways are are,
are good options, although you know, they're both are Brune
unfortunately swept a lot of them off the board.
He sure did, Apple leader. That is unfortunate.
The Apple leader. Yeah.
So that's a great theory because we definitely, they definitely
need that in their group. They need people that have
connections to Westeros because as you say, they they're those
connections have fallen off over the years.
The the bitter steel loyalists are probably gone, or at least
the ones that he had connected to.
Oh yeah. I mean like a whole, you know,
at least one generation if not 2 have now backed.
And that's part of why this is a conquest, not a rebellion.
That's why some people call it it's it's sometimes referred to
as the 5th Blackfyre Rebellion. That's kind of a misnomer.
Then again, so is the second. But this is more of a.
Conquest, I mean, you know, even compared like the second
rebellion was a failure on a military level, but like you,
you know, the one thing you could say is like Damon the
second actually did have some powerful Westerosi houses
backing his play here. It seems like entirely nothing
doing West of the Narrow Sea. Yeah, this is more like what the
Golden Company is doing right now, where they are coming in
during chaos and they're going to, if they look strong, people
will follow them because they don't want to fight them.
And so that might be the case here.
Someone like Derek Fossaway, guys like that are are planning
that strategy and looking for to subvert or bribe or look for
people they can turn and find like offers.
Like let's say you join us now and we'll make you King, Lord
Paramount of the reach. Things like that betray the
Tyrells and you know the same exact thing that's happening.
The friends in the reach thing that we're talking about with
that that is comes up so often with Young Griff, like who is
going to support the Golden Company in the reach now, like
is it is it the Rowans? Is it the Tarly's, etcetera.
That's the kind of thing. And it's interesting again that
this is a House of the reach. The fossil ways are a reach
house. Again, that is where the prime
support for the black fires was. And even if that's fallen off a
lot, that's still, you'd think that's still the place they
would start again to look for help unless something else
obvious popped up elsewhere. And of course, they would do
both. Yeah.
Like, you know, Ironwood, like you said, Ironwood, They were
super tight with the Black fires, one of the most important
major houses that had a recurring connection to them.
And so like thinking about places like that, that, you
know, that maybe this maybe Fossaway had some sort of
connection to them. Less likely, but possible.
Did you guys mention Franklin Flowers?
Franklin Flowers is a good. Example.
Actually, we didn't. Let's.
Talk about him just because Everett Cooper brought that up.
The brown apple Fossaway. That's a that's a actually a
very good point. So to remind us of who that was,
Franklin Flowers is a member of the Golden Company, current
member of the Golden Company, and he's someone that remembered
Connington, someone that's been in there for a while.
The bastard of Cider Hall, although he's he's an
interesting case because he came over all right, seemingly, you
know, because he has this like, you know, immediate rudge
against the fossa ways. And it's a little bit, you know,
he he's reminds me a lot of like Raleigh duck view, right, where
it's like they've got this like very close.
This is not a thing where like he inherited this thing from his
father and his father and his father who, like, you know, kept
the banners in secret, like asked down the story of, you
know, the rightful king over the waves.
Like no, he's got a grudge and he's like looking for someone
who can empower him to to deal with his grudge.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you wonder.
It's a chance that he's even a descendant of of Derek Fossaway,
a bastard of. Derek Fossaway It's tricky
because the there's also this whole tendency among the modern
Golden Company to lie about your ancestry.
So you know that really like, are there Muds?
Are there, you know, like, you know, all of these like ancient,
you know? Strong Spider or Weber?
Yeah, Yeah. Strong.
That's got to be a lie. The strong's got to be a lie.
But. But this one.
Yeah. But but this guy, Franklin
Flowers, seems to have a grudge because he says as long as I get
to kill some fossaways. Maybe that's just something he
worked himself up over, but it sounds like it's personal to
him. Yeah.
So that's interesting. OK then.
Aleco Edaris, the last one. His nickname was the Silver
Tongue. He's a merchant Prince which
sets him apart from the rest because none of the others are
merchant Princess. You can you can argue that
merchant Princess and and pirates start to have some
things in common after a while, but I do imagine him a a lot.
Like when I think of a comp for him I think of Zarozo and Daxos.
Is that kind of where your head goes as well?
Actually, I thought of Valyrian, OK.
Yeah, that does fit. Yeah, if.
If we're if we're thinking of the band of nine, like Ocean's
11, they're heist crew. He's definitely the money.
Yeah, he's the money, That's true.
Right. And it, you know, other people
are like the, the brown or the, the brains or whatever, he's
definitely the money, you know, because, hey, if you want to
fight a War, One of the many, many things you're going to need
is a lot of financial resources. Because, you know, arms and
armor cost money, horses cost money, food cost money, clothing
cost money, ships cost money, supplies cost money.
You need all of that stuff, especially if you know you're
going to launch this incredibly complicated amphibious assault
on Westeros. Yeah.
Not to mention their plans after Westeros, right?
They're going to need to, yeah, conquer all these other Kingdom,
whichever Kingdom they had their sights on.
Whether it was Volantis Lease, Summer Islands, who knows, but
it was something and that is a you're right, that requires a
huge outlay of cash to get going.
So that also fits really well with the procession of events,
which we'll get into more detail later.
But the fact is they first took the the disputed lands, which
like also we'll talk about in more detail later, but they next
took Ty rush, which is what Aleko wanted, and he's the one
that held on to his take from the band of nine longest.
He's the one that fell last after all of them and and he got
Tyrod. And so Tyrod was kind of became
their base of operations in a sense.
And it makes sense that the guy that's funding things would get
his money and his goal taken care of kind of early on, right?
That that fits like pay the pay the back or back his money.
And, and very noticeably, he didn't go to the stepstone.
He. Doesn't seem like a warrior,
yeah. You know, he, he made very sure
that he would be, you know, nice and and safe right up until he.
Wasn't. Didn't pay attention to matters
closer to home. Yeah, no one, no one.
He was not taken out by a sword, let's put it that way.
So yeah, the thing that reminds me of Zarro is how you have
someone that is not warlike necessarily.
And not that he wasn't for sure, it just he doesn't seem like it
with a name like the silver tongue and being a merchant
Prince, just like you say, he seems like the money man, not
the violent man. He's he's totally fine with
violence being done, but it's not him specifically personally
dealing it out. He's paying other people to do
that, like a mob accountant or something.
Yeah. And so this guy.
Actually, actually, I was, I was going to say he reminds me a lot
of like Meyer Lansky, right? A sort of, you know, more of
this sort of businessman gangster, but also someone who
was very good at like convincing other people to do stuff
organizationally, which he would benefit from enormously.
That's a great. Comp yeah, I've I love to listen
to mafia podcast and I've been listening to some I recently
listened to something about Mayer Lansky, so that's fresh in
my mind. That's a great comp and like
Zaro Zaro was just like flattery and just constantly giving Danny
gifts and just trying to get what he wanted out of her by and
and never seemed to get. I mean, eventually he got
frustrated, but he was just always just playing it off like,
oh, you know, you make me sad with your with this and that.
Why not just sail around the gold, you know, sail around UT
with me and drink from the wine of poetry, whatever he says all
his flowery language, but it sounds like very silvery, you
know, and I think of silver tongue.
I'm like, this is the kind of tough star he's.
Very, very flattering. And also you get the sense
someone who tremendously insincere, right?
Doxos's whole thing is that he's always like the thing that he
claims to want is not never the thing that he actually wants,
right, 'cause he's like, you know, oh, Danny, I'm so in love
with you. I'm totally not sexually
interested in you in any way. But it's like, you know, but I
need to marry you because I want this dragon, because I want.
You know, good point. Yeah.
You wonder like how would Aliquot speak to Meili see this
like say the nicest thing is like this guy is just so full of
it. It's like you're you're
frightening visit. He just the most clever ways to
call him frightening without calling him ugly.
You know, just. You know, in terms of like, you
know, how how much honor was there among thieves?
I definitely get the sense that like, yeah, they were, they were
going to use this guy for his money and like, yeah, he can
have Ty Roche. Like, I'm sure that Malus
thought to himself every second he was around this guy.
I could crush your skull with my fear.
Yeah. And he and he probably was right
about that. Yeah, Yeah.
Just like, you know, give me an excuse, I'll do it for fun.
Yeah, and then and then once he, if he were able to take
Westeros, then he really wouldn't have to worry about
Aloquoa. It would, it would be like an
Illyria situation where they'd be like, you better give us what
we, what we paid for or we're going to start sending a, a
Faceless man or what have you after you.
So if we summarize all that, we have at least 4 cell sword
captains there. There's some uncertainty with
with some of those characters there.
And one of them is crown the king Meilis.
That is 2 pirates and a merchant.
And as we said, a merchant Prince is there's some
similarities to pirates there, especially because they both
have fleets and then an exile knight.
So I would guess that these cell sword companies, these cell
sword captains, their their companies must have been pretty
successful, even though apart from the golden Company, of
course, none of them seem to still exist that we know of.
It's possible they're out there somewhere, but.
Yeah, well, I mean, the sons are still, you know, they're.
That's true. The Sons.
Family. It's obviously a A.
Going concern, but as far as we know, that's a good point.
But as far as we know the rest of them, if they have
descendants that are active, we're not aware of it.
Of course some of them their names, we don't even know their
names so we wouldn't know. But that's a lot of power they
have. It's a it's a variety of types
of characters and a lot of it's very military oriented.
But I wonder how much when they started off in the step stones,
I wonder how much action they had right, how much fighting
they had to do. This is jumping ahead a little
bit, but I wonder if it wasn't already partially theirs cause
somebody needed pirate. The Step Stones is almost always
in the hands of pirates and so. Yeah, it's a good question.
One of the sort of interesting questions.
Obviously, you know, there's different groups of pirates,
right? They don't always get along.
So how much did they have to sort of clear out the locals
first? Because, you know, you
definitely see in, in the, like, long history of the war from the
step stones, right? Different groups of pirates and
privateers and, you know, official navies all kind of like
warring for these little rocky harbors that nonetheless can,
like, let them, you know, sneak in, you know, pirate ships in
and out. Yeah.
The fact that like Jamie was talking about the Ebon Prince
suggests he was on the ground fighting like some of them
probably did get away, right? And especially the cell sales,
it's much easier if if they get away, they.
Can just. Take a boat.
You know they're gone. You're not.
Going to chase them to the Basilisk Isles or what have you
like. Oh well, they got away.
Yeah, yeah, the, the, it's, it's the fighting men.
Especially if their their cell sale fleets go away, then
they're stuck. Then they have to just win or
die. Yeah, that's a good point.
So yeah, we have as far as our document goes, this is a 20 page
document and we are roughly on page 9.
So let's we've got a little more time.
Let's start with the beginning of the procession of events and
then we'll we'll call it an episode and come back.
But let's talk about since we've been focused on the SO side,
let's stick with that. We'll come back to the Westeros
side when we probably next time. So on the western side of the
Narrow Sea, you've got this formation of the Golden of the
Band of Nine. Now there's a large gap here.
We don't know what led to this. We don't know who was
particularly responsible. Of course, it seems it's
tempting to think that someone like Alec Lo, the the guy who's
a good talker, would have, would be really important in terms of
bringing them together and convincing them this was
possible. But still, no matter who did it,
it's quite a feat. Sell swords and sell sword.
Captains and pirates like trusting each other to carve out
kingdoms under, you know, to have to stick to this agreement.
And what the heck is the tree of crown, this thing they met under
to make this pledge? What on earth is that?
And why is it in the disputed lands of all place?
A place that first of all, the fact that it's called the
disputed lands, it needs some conversation like the natives
call it that. I kind of doubt it, but it's a
place that doesn't know kings and Queens very well.
It's a place that has rejected kings and Queens.
It's a place that has archons and and whatever they're called
in Volantis. Yeah, fences like that.
They're not. They don't have triarchs.
Yeah. That, that slipped my mind there
for a second. So kings and Queens aren't a big
thing in Essos. So the Tree of Crowns is, it's a
strange kind. It might be where these dreams
go to die. It might be like an homage to
the fact that they don't have kings and Queens.
But I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
It's a very evocative name, but. Yeah.
I mean, I get the sense that like almost, you know, if if you
were gonna like, you know, mount a stage production of the story,
right, that it's like Alekro or whoever had that there was some
tree that they agreed to meet under and he had crowns put
there and like each one was taking one off the tree.
That's so cool. This needs to be ATV show or
something. We need to see that on screen.
That's a great. Idea.
Well, we'll, we'll see what you know, how far blood of the
dragon gets. Yeah, one day we might get
there. Yeah, you never know.
It it definitely seemed, you know, it, it has this sort of
slightly mythic feel to it that they're all kind of like making
this pled. Oh, actually, you know what it
reminds me of a little bit? The romance of the Three
Kingdom. OK.
I'm not super familiar with that.
I mean, I know it's a Chinese. Yeah, so there's an oath.
The Oath of the Peach. That's what he got it from.
Son of a bitch. You nailed it.
All right, tell us. So in the Romance of the Three
Kingdoms right, which is explaining this Warring States
period, these three generals, Lube, Guan Yu and Sheng Fei take
this oath in a Peach guard that they will all be sworn brothers
from here on out. And that they will all, you
know, band together to defeat this the Yellow Turban Rebellion
and then later take on try to conquer the all of China.
And then it didn't end well. There's a there's a thing they
have in common. Yeah, Yeah.
So. Tree of Crowns, Oath of the
Peach Garden, it's got this sort of sense of like these these
guys coming together to, you know, pledge undying loyalty.
And that's going to last right up until the moment it doesn't.
Right when you know the moment in the heist when Reservoir
docks, right when everyone pulls their guns and on everyone else,
right there's the stand off. Right on you, You got you
definitely got some attention here in the chat.
I can see that Jim. Let's say, let's say hey, to
give a shout out to our buddy Jim, AKA something like a
lawyer. Who is he said I'm getting
shades of the oats of the Peach orchard here.
So I think he typed that into the chat before you thought of
it. So he was he was right there
with you. You guys were on the same page.
Great. Times think a lot.
Exactly, exactly. Well done, y'all.
That was great live stuff happening right in front of our
eyes. We didn't plan for that.
So that's a great idea that fits perfectly.
And of course, we know George has to be aware of that.
He's a fan of history and and great stories like that fits too
well to to not be on to it fits too well to throw that idea
away. So let's move on a little bit
though. We've got the another
interesting topic that I want to think about the the change to
the Golden Company. This is something we talked
about in prior episodes, but I want to think about the middle
portion here. What we've talked about before
was what the Golden Company was like at the beginning versus
what they're like now and how they've changed, which is to say
that nowadays they're more of a evolved fighting force.
At the beginning they were surely mostly just Knights and
and and Westerosi style of fighting, but over generations
of living in Essos fighting against Dothraki and other free
companies and all these other things, they would learn and
adapt and change. For example, they have a large
archery contingent led by Black Balak, which almost certainly
was not part of the original batch of Golden Company.
Or, or or maybe it was to a smaller degree.
A bigger thing is the elephants, right?
There were no elephants in the original Golden Company, as far
as we know. Certainly got from fighting the
volunteer. Yeah.
So here we have roughly, it's not the midway point.
Obviously the Golden Company had been around since about 2:12.
So. So by the time the Golden
Company invades during the 9 Penny Kings War would be about
50, almost 50 years after their founding.
And nowadays they're about 90 years after their founding.
So it's close to the halfway point.
Yeah, it's been a couple generations.
The the people who are like Ancestral Golden Company are now
what you know, potentially 3 generations deep.
Yes. But also, a lot of people would
have died and had to, you know, be.
Replaced. So I wonder, I mean, I kind of
doubt that that that this level, this aspect of the Golden
Company had elephants, but they might have.
I don't know that they would have used elephants on the step
stones. That seems like the kind of
thing they would if they had them.
They would wait to use them on Westeros proper.
It doesn't seem like the kind of island fighting isn't really for
elephants. So I don't know about that.
It's a transportation would be too difficult, but maybe.
But just it's just for fun. Think about Meili Sumonstress on
an elephant. That's not as terrifying as
Magor on Valerian, but hey, in a dragonless world, that's as
close as we can get. Like what's next?
What's the next closest thing? Meili's on a shark or on a
Kraken? Meili's riding to battle on a
Kraken. That's pretty sweet.
Yeah, and they definitely, I mean by this point they they
must have picked up the close in spear fighting of the Ansulli.
Oh yeah. Calling the pipe that's true
'cause. They fought.
They fought them already. It's it's.
So this is probably you're right, some sort of intermediary
state. Yeah.
And I wonder if they took special preparations to prepare
for the fact that they'd be doing this island hopping, like,
you know, planning how to outfit yourself for such a battle.
Or if it's a campaign is is possibly quite different than
anything they've done before. Certainly very different from
most W Rossi. Like, there's some examples of
that, but not many incredibly. Complicated, we can see from,
you know, Dance with Dragons, right?
They're landing on one coast of a big continent, right?
And even then they are spread the fuck out and not all of the
ships have arrived. And here, you know, they're
trying to take all of these tiny little islands and, you know, a
lot of island hopping and, you know, so it's not just like 1
offloading of ships. It's a lot of like, OK, get on
board the ship, go to this island, take this island, get
back on the ship, take the next, you know, it's.
Without any communication, right?
Like in a normal like continental battle, you send a
fast rider to send news or or even a Raven.
But these are islands. Yeah, you can't that that level
of communication is impossible. You can't just send a rider to
another island to coordinate on whether you've been successful
or what to do next. Is that?
Yeah, it's. Really what you can do is is
send fast ships with message flags.
Really. And this messiness is going to
be a big part of what we talked about in Part 2.
And it's a big part of why Sept and Maribald is so traumatized,
because this type of fighting is right.
It's more difficult, it's more stressful, it's less certain.
And it's it's in a foreign land too.
Like that's another major difference about this war is
that most of the wars in the history of Westeros were civil
wars or fighting Dorn, right? Or Kingdom versus Kingdom.
I mean, I'm, I guess in the more recent history of Westeros, it's
fighting Dorn, but in the long history of Westeros, it's just
in in fighting between Kingdom and Kingdom or within in a
Kingdom. Having Westerosi peasant levies
taken outside of Westeros is. I can't think of another time
that's happened. You know, we'll, we'll talk
about this more when we when we get to this, but seems like they
were on those islands for a while.
Yeah, not a short time. Just 'cause you don't normally
get, you know, epidemic diseases, you know, if it's just
a brief campaign that suggests, you know, settling down for for
a while. Yeah, I definitely agree with
that. So there's it's it's, it's a big
part of it. There's probably, like you say,
there's probably part of that is due to the uncertainty and the
lack of communication. You have squadrons of men or
groups of men that don't know what their orders are and
they're cut off from the main body, which means they're not
going to be supplied, which means there you go.
That's where the disease and stuff can really, really hit
hard. And then they're in court.
Then let's say they find their way back to the main group and
then they infect the rest of their fellows or some of them.
Yeah. It just, it's so there's so many
ways things that can go wrong in a situation like this.
Like you said, that is something we're going to get into much
more detail with the next episode.
I definitely wanted to kind of set the stage for that because I
think it's super fascinating, super interesting, and I also
wanted to give you all a little tease of what we're going to be
talking about in the next episode.
In addition to that, of course, as I mentioned the beginning, a
big part of this is the aftermath, the coordination of
people like John Aron and Blackfish and Hoster Tulley and
Peter Baelish's dad. All these people came together,
Tywin Aries, we didn't get a chance to talk about any of
these guys in this episode. And we have a ton of quotes we
pulled, but most of them are Part 2 because they describe the
action and the and the back and forth.
So we probably pulled like 15 or 20 quotes, but I think only
three of them were in Part 1 here.
So Ashaya will be reading a lot more quotes for y'all next time
around. So let us say thanks to
everybody. Thanks you to y'all who came
live and watched and upvoted the episode and and added to the
great discussion. It looked like the chat was was
moving very rapidly. Lots of you guys had great
comments and and things that were added in.
I wish I could have watched all of that.
I'll have to go back and look at it.
Quite a quite a lot. Quite a lot of it was off topic.
OK, well still, I bet it was fun.
Oh yeah, more fun. Cool.
Excellent. Another character who's going to
come up a lot is Brienne. Surprisingly, next episode,
because Brienne is is kind of our windowed aftermath.
And it's not just the windowed aftermath of the War of 5 Kings
because she encounters people who fought in the War of 9 Penny
things. And that is like Sept and
Maribald prime example, but he's not the only one.
So I'm excited to share some of these other details with you
that y'all might not have been aware of.
I think most of you remember Sept and Maribald, but maybe not
some of these other characters. All right, So thanks to Ashea
for doing so many things at once.
As always, thank you to everybody.
Like I said, everybody who watched and liked and subscribed
and shared. Thank you to anyone who's who
subscribes to our Patreon and Stevens Patreon.
Steven, please tell everyone, remind everybody what you've
been up to, what you've got coming.
I know we did that at the beginning, but if you have
different things to share or if you want to just emphasize, go
for it. So John 5 of Storm of Swords is
live on the Patreon right now. Next up, I've got a you know, I
want to start my Duncan Egg essays, you know, which is going
to be very much about the whole kind of black fire element.
All of them excellent. I've got some like leftover
projects from back in the day where like I had the whole life
of the high spider that like I never I was going to pull
together into one document and give a good edit because there's
like some continuity problems. Never did the third part of our
of the wolf. So like, I've got some, some
projects to do while I'm taking a little bit of a break from
Storm of Swords. But like once I've, I've, you
know, once I, I, I get my hankering for storm of Swords
back. The big thing is going to be
that like push to the Red Wedding because it's only 11
chapters away. We're getting close, huh?
Right on. I think we're getting there in
maybe April. I'm not sure.
I have to look at our schedule, but something like maybe March.
But yeah, a little ways away for us, too.
OK, well, thank you very much, Steven.
We'll work offline to figure out when to do Part 2, but it won't
be 7 or 8 months like last time. It'll be more like a few weeks
or one month perhaps, most likely.
Oh, absolutely. Cool.
Excellent. Yeah.
I mean, the episode's already written.
It's not like one of those things where I'm almost done.
No, it's done. Sometimes.
My, it's almost done. It's turned into months.
But this one is done. So there's no.
Oh, maybe the last little bit will take me months.
Nope. I might add a few more notes,
but this is good to go already. So yeah, that's exciting.
And let me say thanks to all of our other folks who support us
and give some Patreon shout outs and some audioses.
So thanks to everybody, First off.
Wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait.
Some audioses. Audioses is that?
Yeah. Audios.
Like, like audios, plural? Yeah.
Audio. Oh yeah, I see audios.
That's a serial. It's a, it's a very loud serial.
Audio stays crispy and more so. Our peers of the realm include
the mysterious BR, our Hand of the King, Lord Stephen Stark
titles titles Hand of Queen Ishaya who is known as the best
Lord Jim, The fortuitous of Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire
Blog is Warden of the West and a big member of our chat today.
Hey Jim, Lord George Stormsville the Cunning is Lord of the
Chiliad and Warden of East Kabeth the Unfrozen, Lord of the
Bricks and Castle Crimson Light, Defender of the Old Gods and
Warden of the North. Lord Brendan Lannister is the
bloodline ruler of Castle Everor and Warden of the South.
Lord James Tuttle is King of the Stepstones on the Narrow Sea,
commander of the Royal Fleet consisting of the Narrow fleet
led by flagship Corrections and the Bloodstone fleet led by
flagship Prince Damon. He's wondering why it is these
people are having such trouble holding the Stepstones.
It hasn't been any trouble for him, and he's controlling the
Narrow Sea at the same time. Well, show me how it's done.
Lord James King Beyond the Wall. Sydney Jesse, the Fallborn Lord
of Blue Spring and the Haunted Forest wields a dagger of
dragonglass and the Valyrian steel blade Red Frost.
He cannot understand why anyone would want to live on an island
chain when there's a perfectly good Beyond the Wall area to
live in. Huh.
Some people. Lady Sarah Connolly is the
willful. She says wit beyond measure is
man's greatest treasure. Treasure.
What did I say? Treasure.
And she is Jenny's patron. White Walkers include a ray of
Flint of the mountain flints captured by the Weeper, only to
be raised in valley oak, water, blue eyes and golden memories.
Alexander Greyblood is first of the first men now crowned in ice
called Silence, Bringer, Wood Blinder and the Snow of Night,
wielder of the ice forged great sword Pale Frost.
Our small council includes Lord Daniel the sneaky Russian master
of ships, Lord Benjen of House Horn Wood, Master of Laws, Lord
Fabian Flowers the Bastard of Green Shield, Master of Coin,
and Lord Johan of House Orcos called Shadowhawk, Master of
Whispers. Our Lords and ladies in their
castles include Lord Excuse me, Lady Dyer, Liz of Castle Nachi,
the Alpha patron, Lord Dan of the Red Mountains and Castle
Great Bell is breaker of the second stone.
Gregor the Tosti is Lord of the Red Fort.
Lord Ryan of Castle Stonegate is guardian of the Rocky Mountain
Pass Ashland Winner is the Hawks Eye Lady of Castle Skyfall.
Lady Michaela Moonacre is leader of the Weirwood Protectorate
Alliance. The Lord of the Halls of Castle
Hillcrest is wielder of the Valyrian steel machete.
Ever Lord of Alistair Whitaker, the Lord of the Donahoe, Lord
Bemi Snugglebunny is guardian Ranger of the hidden 100 acre
weirwood, dual wielder of the Valyrian short swords, Glorious
Morning and little light wives, sharpshooter of the weirwood in
Ironwood, laminated Longbow Todd von Oben.
When you fear things cannot get worse, Snugglebunny enters the
fray. The Bastard of the Wolf's Wood
is First Forester of the Old Gods, sworn to house iron
weirwood. Listen for the silence.
Lady Liana Kelly of Wolf Island is protectress of the steel.
Casey Stark is of House Acres. Lady K of House Archer is Lady
of the Earth Dog Hall, huntress of Wolf's of the Wolf's Wood,
and guardian of Matty Squirrel's vein.
The mighty Dire One, Lady Raywin of House Dils Dane is the star
spear. Peter Rivers is the pale dragon
and heir to Bloodraven, and Lady Carlin Carey of Castle Stone
Sharp, whose horses shot in Valyrian steel, is Lady Rider of
the Rising Pools. King's Justice, Sir Troy the
Steady is wielder of the Valyrian steel blade.
Fate. And because we've got our audio
situation better worked out, now Shaya can read her Queen's High
Counsel. Yeah, we've got bloody Ben
Blackwood, Master of Whispers, Rebeya, Star Eyes, Lady of Waves
and Mistress of Ships, Captain of the Iron Shadow, Cat in the
Shadows. We bear our.
Claws. Catherine the Wise of House
Trondheim, master of coin, Grandmaester.
I'm Elizabeth Middle, daughter of Liana Mormont, first lady to
forge both the silver and Valyrian still steel.
Link and Laura Burrows, the Lady of Infinity and Master of Laws.
Our Lord Commander is Miriam R, We have Sir Glennon of House
Leanne called Lion Cloak, our longest tenured white sword, Sir
Dean the White is Knight of the Black Star, Sir George of House
Pepsi is the Beverage Knight, Gregor Snow is called Snow Bear,
a Bastard of Winterfell. Sir Jan Seaworth is Knight of
the Southern Snows, and Lisa is Water Witch of Dorn.
And we also have our Queen's Guard for a chanterine.
Led by Lord Captain Commander Hema Helmet, the Cell Sword
Sentinel Alexander of House of Tradies from the seat of Dune.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer.
SER Rambo, Knight of House Cannon, Thirst, Blood, SER Leon
of House Walk, House Walker, Wielder of the two Valyrian
steel blades, Fire and Ice, and the weirwood bow.
Rain, Amber, the Adamant, the Knight of the Mist and Mother of
Squids, the wintry Wolverine. We finish what you begin.
And finally, Nora Neko. Nora Neko.
I'm not sure, but I've said it
both ways to cover all bases. Red.
Our Red Wedding band includes Sir Newt of the Rock, lead
lutist wielding his weirwood loot dwer.
See Dwemer note. He's explained how to pronounce
it to me in an e-mail and so I'm trying after the Dwemer note.
I hope I said that right. It's a loot with where would
loot with Valyrian steel strings?
Now that is a fine instrument. Our beer guard is led by Lord
Commander George the Golden, backed up by Sir Joshua Oakhart,
the White Oak, Lady Rita of the Copper Man, The Unbound Dance,
the Fervor, Sir Jeff, Warden of the AC, wielder of Triad, the
multifaceted beard of platinum, red and Brown.
His motto State Frosty and Sir Tim Corgile is Mad Boy of the
Western Desert. Last but not least is our
history of Westeros Nights Watch and that is commanded by Lord
benjen Umber the Silent Giant. Who I'm.
I'm doing this from memory until I find it.
I hope I said that right. Yeah, Lord Commander benjen
Umber the silent Giant, wielder of the Valyrian still great
sword. Winter's Kiss backed up by first
builder Magor Snow AKA Magor the Cool.
The fire in the snow. 1st Ranger Source * Stellica of House
Grand. Thanks to everyone who helped
contribute. There were of as usual
contributions from Flick and Facebook, a lot of the usual
suspects including Nina and a lot of our other usual
contributors. So thanks for that.
Thanks for the great questions. And if you have questions based
on this episode, well, that's one of the great things about
the fact we're doing 2 episodes is we can catch those questions
and handle them during the next week.
So until that is, until that time comes when the next episode
begins, whenever we figure that out, we'll see you then.
And I'll also see you on Sunday for the return of Valerie Ritas.
We are getting into the 1st 4 chapters of Storm of Swords and
we're looking forward to that. So until then, you know what to
do folks. Valerie Ritas.