Daron was spindly and round of shoulder, with a little belly
that wobbled when he walked. Damon stood straight and proud,
and his stomach was flat and hard as an oaken shield, and he
could fight with axe or Lance or flail.
He was as good as any knight I ever saw, but with the sword he
was the warrior himself. When Prince Damon had black fire
in his hand, there was not a man to equal him.
Not Ulrich Dane with Dawn, no, nor even the Dragon Knight with
Dark Sister. If you're a sucker for cool
sounding names like I am, you saw the name Damon Blackfire for
the first time and immediately wondered who the heck that was
and wanted to know more. This, then, is the episode for
you. We've got more Damon Blackfire
than you can handle. He's immensely popular in the
fandom. A lot of you have been waiting
for this episode for a long time.
It's one of the most requested episodes we've had in our 3 1/2
year run. Likewise, he was immensely
popular in the world as well, overflowing with charisma and
the traits that Westerosi from all social classes admire and
seek to embody. He was one of the greatest
fighters of all time, some would say the best.
Many of those same would also say that he was never truly
beaten in the field. No one could stand against him
in single combat. It took arrows to bring him
down. Cowardly, cowardly arrows.
This only enhanced his legend and made him a quasi martyr.
No wonder his descendants troubled the realm for
generations after his death. Hello and welcome to another
episode of History of Westeros Podcast, The podcast dedicated
to George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire book series as well
as HB OS Game of Thrones. No Game of Thrones talk today.
This is all A Song of Ice and Fire history.
There are some spoilers from the Dunkin Egg series, Actually
quite a few spoilers from the Dunkin Egg series as well as
from the World of Ice and Fire. It's very mild on A Song of Ice
and Fire spoilers. If you are a show only watcher,
this episode is pretty safe for you as far as I can tell.
It's a possibility that I missed something, but I've gone over
this the script a few times and I don't see anything that would
be considered a spoiler. Now you may notice that we don't
have a Shaya this time. That was kind of a last minute
thing. She's had some things come up
and we took the show must go on attitude since we really wanted
to get this episode out as soon as possible.
As I said, a lot of people have been waiting it, waiting on it
for a long time. And hey, I'm not alone.
I have a very special guest returning from it's.
It was our last Blackfyre episode, but that was many
months ago before the TV season. Welcome back Steven Atwell.
Hello, good to be here. Yeah, so a lot of people
remember you from last time, but why don't you just go ahead and
list your string of titles? Sure.
My name is Steven Atwell. I'm a PhD historian.
I rate I write Race for the Iron Throne, A blog dedicated to
historical and political analysis of The Song of Ice and
Fire, and I also write essays for Tower of the Hand, and I've
published a number of books on Sound of Ice and Fire.
Right on, right on. Very good.
We're doing another one of these hybrid episodes.
This is, this is only, I think it's only the second or third
one of these that we've done, which is partly scripted and
part discussion format. And I would love to hear your
feedback as to what you think of this hybrid format.
Some people prefer the script, some people before discussions.
So we're trying to do a bit of both.
Sometimes doing both might not work out the way we think.
I like it, but I would love to hear what you all think.
Minor schedule change. We're not going to do Bitter
Steal episode next. We're going to do the Red Grass
Field episode next. And we're going to have another
guest, 2 guests in fact. We're going to have Steven and
Jim Mcgeehan from Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire, the
Brendan B Fish blog, very excited to have him coming as
well. We're going to have a great
discussion on that. We're going to break down all
the battles of the war. This episode is all about Damon
Blackfire, his character, his personalities, and his impact as
a person. We're not going to get too deep
into the actual war itself. We might, of course, interject
another episode before Bitter Steal and Bloodraven.
You never know what the way the way we work is.
We don't put out an episode till it's ready.
We're not going to. We're not going to rush things.
We're going to make sure it's right.
We're going to make sure we have all the details where they need
to be. I can't count the number of
episodes we have that are only about 1/3 to half finished.
Now you can help us finish more of these episodes and get others
started by signing up to give us a recurring pledge on Patreon.
They'll charge you the amount you decide in advance once per
month, and we give you benefits. Sir Joshua Hayes Cutter called
Joshua the Raw the history of Westeros First sword, for
example. He and other supporters got to
see this episode and download it a full week early
www.patreon.com/history of Westeros.
Now, one of the things we'll be doing in this episode is trying
to separate the man from the myth.
His supporters loved him so much that they tended to exaggerate.
Case in point, the opening quote from Sir Eustis Osgre there
claims Damon was better than the Dragon Knight.
This is pure speculation on his part, aiming the Dragon Knight
died when Damon was maybe 8 or 9 years old.
They clearly never fought. Given that, he probably didn't
fight this Ulrich Dame guy either.
Despite these exaggerations though, he really was
incredible. So of course we'll cover that
too. That's more fun.
David's place in the fandom stands out, and this episode
reflects that. Though his life story is
extremely compelling, he doesn't really have that much impact on
A Song of Ice and Fire. Not directly, anyway.
His descendants and allies and other parts of his legacy.
Now, those things have and might continue to have a major impact,
but a lot of his appeal comes down to the fact that he's just
flat out cool. He's definitely one of the most
popular characters in all of A Song of Ice and Fire, giving him
kind of a a Boba Fett type quality, meaning huge popularity
with little to no screen time. The thing is too, that we've
actually heard Boba Fett speak. And while this episode is full
of direct quotes from the source material, as usual, none of them
are from Damon himself. None such has been given to us.
We don't have a Damon Blackfire quote.
We've not even seen him on screen really.
Unless you count the graphic novels which show the battle of
a redgrass field. Highly recommended.
By the way, you can get those through Amazon, The Hedge Knight
and the Swansword graphic novels.
You can go to historyofwesteros.com.
We've got links there on the on the right side.
You can also pre-order the Knight of Seven kingdoms.
Well, maybe by the time you've you're seeing this episode, it
won't be a pre-order that's due out on October 6th, I believe
2015 and this episode's coming out right before that.
So most of you it'll already be out either way.
You want to get your hands on it.
The Dunkin Egg stories are great.
Real quick. First some meta history.
We always like to start with the meta history.
The first ever mention of Damon Blackfire was by Stannis.
I am not a cruel man, Sir Davos, you know me, have known me long.
This is not my decree. It has always been so since
Aegon's day and before Damon Blackfire, the brothers, Toyn,
the Vulture King, Grand Maester Harris, traitors have always
paid with their lives. Now, some would take this to
mean that George RR Martin hadn't invented the Blackfires
nor given them a role in A Song of Ice and Fire until around
that time, but references to Eamon the Dragon Knight loving
Queen Nerys and vice versa are plentiful in book one.
This relationship, of course, is a major part of the Black Fire
scenario. Rumors that King Darren the
Second was actually the son of Nerys and the Dragon Knight
persisted for quite a while and were a main factor in Damon's
proclamation that he was the true king.
So I think it more likely George RR Martin come up with parts of
the subplot ahead of time before eventually giving it a name.
I think the reason that Blackfyre as a name doesn't
appear until Book 3 is in part because of this meaning he
simply hadn't come up with all all of it, but he had, you know,
the broad strokes. What do you think about that,
Stephen? You think that's accurate or do
you think you have a different take on when he came up with?
It sounds possible. Certainly I mean it, you know
the I think the tricky thing here is just figuring out when
certain drafts were started around other you know, so for
example, like Damon Blackfyre, you know, we really don't see
much of him until sworn sort. Now, when did Martin first start
writing Swan Sword? You know, when was the very
first draft of that? A little hard to say, but it's
certainly pause. Right on.
Yeah. And of course, with these
things, we never can't tell. Maybe one day George will tell
us in an interview, but he honestly may not even remember
exactly when he came up with it. It's like, yeah, I was, I don't
know, 15 years ago. I don't know when exactly he
might have something to kind of place it, but yeah.
Anyway. So he may have intended it all
as historical backdrop only, but along the way the idea to wave
it into the main storyline struck him and the rest is
history. Meta history.
Now a comparison to Robert Baratheon works really nicely
here thanks to the second ever mention of Damon.
Not only was Mr. Blackfyre similar and prowess to Mr.
Robert, both were elite fighters, but as rebels, they
were similar in terms of threat level.
Here's Jamie Speaking of Aries. He had finally realized that
Robert was no mere outlaw to be crushed at whim, but the
greatest threat House Targaryen had faced since Damon Blackfire.
Now a major difference, of course, was that Robert actually
won, slaying crowns Prince Rhaegar in the process.
Upon his arrival at King's Landing, Robert found Aries and
his family dead or fled, betrayed by a certain Kingsguard
knight. The one who provided us with
that last quote. On the other hand, Damon was
defeated in large part thanks to Crown Prince Baylor and King
Garron's Kingsguard face no such conundrums.
So let's go to Part 1. Born under a bad name, starting
with Damon's childhood, Damon was the name Dana gave to this
child. For Prince Damon had been the
wonder and the terror of his age, and in later days that was
seen as a warning of what the boy would become.
Damon Waters was his full name when he was born in 170 AC.
So 40 years prior to that his great grandfather, Prince Damon
Targaryen AKA the Rogue Prince died in battle against another
Targaryen Prince. 27 years later, Damon, a Targaryen
bastard, would fall in battle against another Targaryen
bastard. There's quite a few other things
they had in common. Both wanted crowns and both were
contentious via their very existence.
Both wielded Targaryen Valyrian steel blades. 1 fought for the
blacks versus the greens and rode a real red dragon.
The other was the not real black dragon who fought against the
red. Lots of colors in there now.
Both came very close to kingship through war.
In his lifetime, Prince Damon personally killed or had killed
at least two other Targaryen Princess.
But Damon Blackfyre had already killed a Targaryen king at 41
days old. How about that?
Well, sort of. King Baylor the Blessed was so
shamed by Damon's birth that he fasted himself to death, but he
never ended up killing any Targaryens in battle.
Make no mistake though, they had very, very different
personalities, these two Damons. Despite these parallels, since
our purpose is to continue our in depth analysis of the major
players in the Blackfyre Rebellions, focusing on their
early lives as much as anything else in order to understand who
they are and the environment and events that molded their
personalities. The young are susceptible, thus
it is crucial to look at these early phases when we can.
So of course we start with the person who tends to be the prime
factor for most human beings ever, The mother.
Damon's mother was Dana Targaryen, eldest daughter of
Aegon the Third sister to Deron the First, the Young Dragon and
Baylor the Blessed. It was planned for her to be
Baylor's wife, of course, but as we know well, she was instead
confined to the Maiden Vault and the marriage was not
consummated, and she was entirely set aside by the Septon
King in his Earl early in his reign rather.
Despite this isolation, her life story is quite interesting,
though honestly and unfortunately there are huge
gaps in the available knowledge on her.
It's disappointing to realize that we probably won't learn
anything more until Fire and Blood, the history book that's
going to come after the series, but we'll look at the bright
side. What we have is very cool and
helps us considerably in understanding Damon.
There's no mistaking that many of the strongest beliefs she
held were also seen in Damon and or many of his followers.
Perhaps the most important detail, missing detail rather,
is that we have no idea when Dana even died, other than it
wasn't during childbirth or soon after.
But it could have been anywhere from early in the Rain of Egg on
the 4th to to much later to after the Blackfyre Rebellion
for example. She did not reveal who the
father was ever, as far as we know, at least not publicly.
It was his father that revealed the truth much later.
His prowess and charisma would draw quite a lot of attention
later on, but that probably didn't get going until a while
after he first picked up a sword.
So we can guess that she was his primary influence early on.
So, Steven, let's discuss Damon's parentage.
What do you think about the possibility that Dana died
before Aegon the 4th claimed him as his son?
I'm a little skeptical of that simply because, you know, given
Aegon's rather lazy nature, I think he needed an outside, you
know, influence pushing him to do this.
I think that was that was probably Dana.
That's a good point too, in general, that I think that a lot
of things that Aegon did may have been somebody else's idea.
There may have, like when Joffrey executed Ned on the
steps of Baylor's accept. That probably wasn't his idea.
He loved the idea. But I think it's pretty widely
believed that Littlefinger is the one who, you know, made that
suggestion and Joffrey ceased on it.
Aegon the 4th, I wonder how many things like that happen with
him. George R Martin himself said
from an S from a Sosbek Martin later as a pampered prisoner in
her brother's court, Dana made several escapes, usually by
dressing as a washerwoman or serving girl, once with the
connivance of her cousin Aegon. And that is Aegon the 4th, who
was only a Prince at that time. So several escapes.
Do you think it's possible maybe that she got pregnant from
somebody else and then it's just a popular rumor that Aegon the
4th was the one? Or is that a bit of a bit of a
stretch? You know, it's always possible.
What I would say is that everything we know about Dana
seems to infer that she really, really believed in Targaryen
incest as a principle, as a kind of ethos for living, that, you
know, she desperately wanted to shame Baylor into, you know, in
her mind, doing the right thing. So if it wasn't Aegon, it had to
have been another Targaryen. I don't think she would have
gone for anything else. Especially, you know, given the
way that we see that that Damon was raised emphasis on his pure
Targaryen nature clearly seems to have come from her emphasis
on sort of the purity of the bloodline.
I think I agree with that. I don't think she would have
tried to get pregnant from another from a non Targaryen.
And we know that she wanted to get pregnant, which is
interesting and we'll talk about that in a little a little bit
later. But do you think, how much of A
secret do you think it was at court?
It's it's said that it was rumored that he was the father.
It was what you think it was kind of an open secret or just
something that was whispered or what's your take on that?
Well, I mean, you know, when you're sleeping with with
everyone else, you know, you make yourself kind of an obvious
target. It's like it must have been that
guy. Yeah, I'm trying to remember the
the like, who else could it have been at the time?
Yeah, I don't. Think there's any other really
strong options as far as Targaryens go?
I mean, maybe the Sarah's, but I doubt it.
Yeah, he would have been kind of older and he seems kind of
proper. Yeah.
So I don't know, I guess you're right.
There's it probably has to be Egon by process of elimination
and and given what we think of Dana's personality.
Now, you know, the the interesting thing to me has
always been, you know, did she want to be in terms of sort of
who she would have preferred the father to be is I think she
always wanted to be with, with Dara the first.
Yeah, she did. I think you're right.
She wanted, she, she certainly idolized him and she thought
highly of him. And this is the basis for much
of why we think that she hated the Dornish because of their
betrayal like against him in the parley, etcetera.
So that and that of course, leads us to how Damon was given
a hatred of the Dornish early in his life.
We'll get what we'll get into that a little bit later.
But it kind of came from both her and his father, apparently,
which is very interesting. So we can believe that even if
Dana was alive in 182 when the king announced that Damon was
his son, that she was fine with it, true or not?
Because after all, that means he's, you know, the son of the
king. That's harder to be higher in
the hierarchy than that. Even though he's a bastard.
Now, she may have thought that there was more to it than that.
She may have had. Her ambition may have gone even
farther. So I want to take a look at how
ambitious she was, because an ambitious mother with a child
like Damon would be a huge influencer.
And again, even if he wasn't ambitious or only moderately so,
he wasn't raised by his father until later, as far as we know.
So that only serves to make it crystal clear that if we want to
know Damon, we have to know his mother because she seems to have
been the only one around for a while now.
Here we go. She even contrived toward the
end of Baylor's reign to get herself with child, though some
might say it would have been better had she been less defiant
for all the trouble that son brought to the realm.
So let's talk about that ambition.
What do you think she contrived to get pregnant?
Was it just a shame, Baylor, Or do you think there was some
ambition behind it? Maybe that she had plans to win
over Aegon himself and get him to declare their child
legitimate? Or possible or possibly to
basically pass Damon off as the son and heir of Baylor the
blessed, you know, she was, after all, his, you know,
Baylor's wife, at least initially.
And it would be, you know, well, well, certainly the
circumstantial evidence for consummation would have been
weak. It it's kind of hard to, you
know, there's no DNA testing and even then they're all related.
So that would be a little bit tricky.
Yeah, they all have the Targaryen DNA, right?
That's funny. So, yeah, so the fact that it's
towards the end of Baylor's reign, maybe she thought that,
you know, she could and even despite the the precedence of
the Great Council of 101 and you know, the precedence of of Joe
Harris, the 1st that she might have been able to get, Damon
declared the error right then and there.
Absolutely. And there's some more backdrop
we need to make sure people are aware of here.
And that is that she may have felt the crown belonged to her
rather than her uncle, because after Baylor died, the crown
passed to Viserys the Second. But there was a brief movement,
a brief effort to consider crowning Dana because she was
the next in the line of succession.
If you do the all male issue followed by female issue plan
rather than the no women can inherit the throne plan.
Which of course that had been sort of decided by the Dance of
the Dragons, but it wasn't set in stone clearly, or else this
wouldn't have even been an issue.
Now Dana's isolation in the maiden vault prevented her from
having a lot of political allies.
So as well as Viserys being the Hand of the king for so long,
this this didn't amount to much. But she that doesn't mean she
didn't feel it. That doesn't mean she didn't
feel like it belonged to her and she may not have given up the
her chance to be close to the crown even though it was given
to Viserys and that would be through her son Damon that she
had with the later king. So here's another quote.
Though both of the sons of King Egon the Third were dead, his
three daughters yet survived, and there were some amongst the
small folk and even some Lords who felt that the Iron Throne
should buy rights now pass to Princess Dana.
They were few, however. A decade of isolation in the
Maiden Vault had left Dana and her sisters without powerful
allies and memories of the woes that had to fall in the realm.
And last a woman sat the Iron Throne were still fresh.
Dana the Defiant was seen by many Lords as being wild and
unmanageable besides, and wants him as well, For a year earlier
she had given birth to a bastard son she named Damon, who's sire
she steadfastly refused to name. The presidents of the Great
Council of 101 and the Dance of the Dragons were therefore
sighted and the claims of Baylor's sisters were set aside.
Instead, the crown passed his uncle, the King's Hand Prince
Viserys. And that's just because she's
Targaryen, but because she was arguably the heir to the throne
instead of Viserys, like we said.
So this precedent made it easy for him to come out ahead.
Though her claim may have been easily brushed aside.
Like I said, her feelings doesn't.
Who knows what she felt. She may have felt really bad.
And this is a stubborn person, defiant.
And we talked last Black Fire episode about the possibility
that Aegon was the one who poisoned his own father.
It's possible that was Dana. Do you have any thoughts on
that, Stephen? Do you think that's even
remotely possible or is that is that kind of crackpot?
Certainly, it does seem that Dana preferred the the archery
poison. Yeah, it's true.
Viserys was not shot by arrows. And it seems like, you know,
yeah, her her personality would have would have tended more to a
sort of an open confrontation rather than, you know, poison is
is very subtle and past. But they say poison is a woman's
weapon. No, but yeah.
But we don't have any evidence for that.
It's pure conjecture. Now, Dana did hate the Dornish,
we're pretty sure about that. That her her idolized brother,
as we just discussed, was killed by them via treachery.
And the Saris's ascension to the throne not only set aside Dana
and her potential ambitions, but it also meant that eventually
1/2 Dornish Prince would sit the throne.
And there are a lot of Targaryens and a lot of other
people who really are offended by that idea.
So how could Dana have prevented this?
Well, the answer is she went off and made her own Targaryen by,
you know, getting pregnant via Egon.
They're both Targaryens. They made themselves an incest
Targaryen. And this, the timing of this
pregnancy is really interesting. She contrived to get pregnant.
She planned on it, but it it was within months of Prince Darren's
wife Mariah getting pregnant with avenge the eventual bail or
breaks beer. So perhaps that was the trigger.
It was like now's the time to act.
There's we can see in the future that there will be a Dornish
Prince sitting the Iron Throne. No more incest, no more
Targaryen traditions. That's a big deal.
Traditions are a big deal in Westeros.
What do you think about that? Do you think that puts a little
a little extra color and the and her possibilities there?
Yeah, I mean, you know, the, the, the timeline is all coming
together and there's so many motivations swirling around at
the same time. There's, you know, who, who
takes over after Baylor dies. You know, is it going to be a
Targaryen? Is it going, you know, and given
that Baylor's life itself had been, you know, so much sort of
wrapped around this whole question of, you know, the
Targaryen tradition of incest. So yeah, I could definitely see,
you know, both Dana and Aegon deciding that they wanted to
establish a sort of a pure blooded alternative to, you
know, the eventual Daryl on the second.
Yeah, yeah. Darnish encroachment, we'll say.
And how interesting that when I just, when I noticed that
timing, it really stood out to me.
It was like, well, hmm, she intentionally got pregnant right
at that time. Interesting.
And then not long after Viserys died, you know, like a year,
year and a half later, Viserys is dead too.
Very interesting, very interesting.
Anyway, that has to remain a mystery 'cause we have no
evidence for that. So.
But there's another possibility here, concealing and it refer,
it's Harkins back to what I just said about the Dornish or the
poisoners. Now, well, I said the women and
the poisoners, but that's what people say.
That's the thing, right? Poison is for women and Dornish
men, whatever that saying is. It's said different ways by
different people. But maybe that's something she
had in mind. Maybe she was protecting Damon
by concealing his identity. I don't know.
This is a bit of a stretch to me, but I think it bears mention
again if if she think buys into that propaganda of the Dornish
being poisoners. We don't know much about
Princess Mariah, Darren's wife. We don't know if she was the,
you know, a nice person like Melissa Blackwood or a schemer
like Barbara Bracken. No idea.
Somewhere in the middle. I have no idea at all.
So it's possible that Dana was worried about this child of
hers, even though he was a bastard.
I don't know. What do you think about this?
Yeah, I I learn more towards this sort of idea that she was
hedging her bets in terms of trying to pass him off as as
Baylor's kid. OK, so that we I gave her the
option of of naming the father later based on whatever the
political climate was at the time.
Makes sense. Play her cards close to her
chest. I like it.
Now Aegon of course, as we know, did not claim Dana as one of his
nine great loves amongst his many mistresses.
I wouldn't even say that she was ever his mistress, really.
Apparently they only slept together the one time.
Maybe more than once, but certainly she doesn't qualify as
a mistress. But either way, he doesn't.
He didn't seem to love her, and maybe she didn't I I can't
imagine that she really liked him that much either given the
types of men she was she respected and was attracted to.
As far as we know, Aegon's the opposite.
So. But not when he was young
enough. Not when he was young so, but
over time when as he got fat and greedy and lusty.
There's no way she continued to respect him if she ever did.
But that doesn't mean she didn't have influence over him.
Though the personalities are different here.
Consider this possible parallel to Robert's deathbed and Aegon
the Unworthy, setting aside the fact that they were both lusty,
gluttonous, formerly promising kings.
No, that's not where we're going, as fun as that is.
We're talking the politics of succession here.
Dana convinces Aegon to legitimize his bachelor children
on his deathbed. Consider that possibility again.
Aegon may not have been the one to have that idea.
Of course. The idea had been around for a
while. The idea of Aegon legitimizing
one of his bastards. The whole idea of legitimizing
all of them. I don't know if Dana suggested
that or if it was his own idea, but I love the I love
considering the possibility that someone else gave him that idea.
So, Ned Stark, compare this parallel here.
Ned Stark gets Robert to unwittingly delegitimize his own
children because they're actually bastards.
And this didn't work because Cersei used the threat of
violence and the General and General Corruption court to cast
aside Robert's proclamation. Only Sir Barristan reacted to
Cersei shredding Robert's will. But dare on the good is no
Cersei. He's not going to do that sort
of thing. He was pious.
He was lawful, he did things by the book for the most part, as
far as we know. So whether this particular
imagining of the circumstances is remotely accurate or not,
Darren did not challenge the legitimizations.
They stood regardless of why they happened or who suggested
it. But we're not there yet.
We're getting ahead of ourselves.
The point of all this though, it does have a point.
We're not getting ahead of ourselves for no reason.
It's a show where Damon got a lot of his attitudes this the
attitudes of his mother and his father towards the Dornish,
towards these other things. Even though Damon didn't know
who his father was, Aegon was still going to be an influential
guy, being the heir to the throne, being a a Prince,
etcetera. So later we'll see how Fireball
and Bittersteel and some other Lords and Knights of the realm
encouraged Damon to take the the crown.
But he may have been on that path from day one via his
mother, Dana the Defiant. He was certainly set on a path
to succeed. Raised at the Red Keep, this
handsome youth was given the instruction of the wisest
maesters and the best masters at arms at court, including Sir
Quentin Ball, the fiery knight called Fireball.
He loved nothing better than deeds of arms and excelled at
them, and many saw in him a warrior who would one day be
another Dragon Knight. Now, it's unclear what age he is
for this quote, but regardless, the Dragon Knight had died
fairly recently. He died a hero, and he lived as
one too, so the fact that people were making comparisons to him
is a very big deal. Damon was charming, Marshall
courtly, thus popular. He was also kind of
unthreatening because despite all that appeal, he was Damon
Waters. Despite his Targaryen looks and
talent, he was bastard and we all know what that means in
Westeros. Besides, his father liked him
even during the time before he admitted he was his father.
One wonders if being a bastard wasn't slightly less bad back
then. What do you think Steve?
Do you think bastard? Do you think that black fire
rebellions, the whole black fire situation made the made bastards
look down even more? Or you think it was just more of
the same? Or that Damon transcended some
of. That I think it certainly didn't
help. I mean, you know, the, the, I
think the classic example here is if you look at the way that
Catelyn brings up the black fires over and over again, you
know, it's certainly seems to have put a kind of taboo or kind
of prejudice against legitimizing Basque.
Right on. What did Damon make of his own
situation? What do you think he Do you
think he knew who his father was?
Do you think he had any thoughts on that?
Do you think the other kids called him names for not having
a father? Damon.
No, dad. Damon waters in his breeches.
And what do you think he made of Aegon before knowing he was his
father? I mean, he's this lusty, greedy
guy. I don't think you don't think
Damon would have liked that. It's kind of an interesting
conundrum there. Yeah, I mean, you know it.
It's hard to say because, you know, obviously, you know, while
his mother kept Shtum in public, we don't know what she told him
in private. Certainly he might have had his
own suspicions. I mean, clearly, you know, just
by looking in the mirror, he was, he must have been pretty
clear that he was a Targaryen on both sides, you know, 'cause if
you just sort of look and, you know, he, he just needed to look
at his, his relatives really and just sort of see, well, OK,
Baylor doesn't look anything like me.
You know, the, the thing about Aegon the 4th, though, is, you
know, he was, for all that he was a drunk and a letcher, you
know, and just sort of unable to kind of rein in his.
He also had that kind of Henry the charisma going on.
So, you know, there might be the sort of attitude of like, you
know, he might have been told about, you know, what his dad
was like when he was young. That's true.
He he might have had a kind of a, a kind of a rivalry thing.
He's like, you know, showing that he can outdo his dad.
I agree with that. You know, kind of follow through
on on the potential and actually make something of it.
You know, it's possible that he just, you know, either didn't
have a kind of and sorry, the what I was going for.
It's possible he'd sort of displaced his kind of male role
model thing onto Fireball or, you know, other sort of strong
male figures in his life. That makes sense.
A fireball would probably be one of the most important ones.
Maybe some of the Kingsguard would be good examples as well.
Not knowing exactly which Kingsguard, we don't even know
all their names at that time, but that's a good possibility.
I like that idea. And you know, despite how bad
Aegon's court was, it probably wasn't that bad for Damon
because, you know, he, he had his mother around his, his life
is probably fairly simple because he wasn't the target of
Damon, of Aegon's excesses. He wasn't in the, you know, in
his political wheelhouse in any way being so young.
So he was probably pretty safe despite court being dangerous
for a lot of people, especially young women.
And he might have learned a few things about intrigue, about
courtly life. We certainly think of him as a
warrior, but he obviously got involved in politics.
And we'll we'll touch on more of that later when he's a bit
older, but he had to Start learning some things about, you
know, the Game of Thrones and and training, especially.
Definitely training. Let's look a little bit more
Speaking of rivalries, let's look a little more about who he
grew up with. There's a couple of interesting
possibilities here. Baylor breaks beer again.
As we said, he was born only a maybe six months, maybe as few
as four months, somewhere in that range before David
Blackfash. So they grew up together, side
by side, potentially the whole for many, many years.
Now, if Dana had any sort of dislike, A rivalry with Princess
Moriah, do you think that that could bleed over?
I really have a hard time struggling with whether or not
these two got along. They had a lot in common, yet
they also had some big things that could have put it driven a
wedge between them. What's your take on that?
Yeah. You know, I, I think ultimately
a friendship was probably outside of the realm of
possibilities. There's just too many sort of
structural factors, you know, that that would kind of strain
affections. But, you know, I could
definitely see, you know, certainly I think there must
have been an element of rivalry there.
The two guys were just too good, too competitive not to have some
element of rivalry. But at the same time, both of
them are known for being extremely chivalrous.
And that kind of code of behavior would structure
relationships between the two of them that you know, even if you
dislike the other person, even if you desperately want to beat
them, you have to be gracious in public.
You have to be a good sportsman. Yeah, it's true.
I my one of my takes on this is I think that the two of them, I
have no idea how they got along without outside influences.
I would think that Dana and probably Aegon the 4th as well
wouldn't have wanted them to get close, but I think Deron would
have because that's Deron's way of doing things.
Deron was a was a peace through personal relationships kind of
guy. Like that's what he did with the
great bastards himself. He kept them close later.
We'll see how that might have backfired on him.
But given his attitudes, I bet that's what he had in my I bet
he wanted them to be friends. He may have looked in the, you
know, seen ahead and expected that this could be problematic
if they weren't friends. Yeah, he might have been right.
What about some of the other kids at court at the time?
Darren's other children after Baylor, Ares, Regal and Makar.
Now Makar would probably have been a good 5-6 years younger.
These dates are a little loose. We don't know exactly when these
guys were born. They were all born within a
range of about 171 to 178. Aries and Regal they don't have.
I mean Regal was kind of crazy. Aries was bookish, not not the
warrior type. So Damon and him maybe didn't
interact a lot. But Makar, Makar is 1 I think
about. What do you think of Makar and
Damon? I mean, it's interesting, you
know, I, yeah, you definitely get the sense that Makar was not
someone who made, who played well with others, you know,
someone who definitely would have not been a great sport at
losing anything. And, you know, the, I think the
age gap also would have played a role there, that Damon is, you
know, older, has seniority over him, so to speak, certainly
would have been bigger and taller and so forth.
And I think that of all the people he'd be the most prideful
about, like a bastard being put above him in any way.
Given his reaction to Bloodraven being made Hand later.
That's that's part of where I get that guess.
So not sure about that, but it seems to be logical.
But then there's the really big one, moving away from the men.
There's Daenerys Targaryen, the one that he supposedly loved.
Now, interestingly, we don't really know if she loved him.
We know that he loved her. That's pretty straightforward.
Now, it's interesting, right? Or do you have a different take
on that? You maybe she, maybe you don't
think he did. Yeah.
There's there's actually a quote from Sospic Martin where he
basically says that they it was a mutual.
Effect. OK.
So it is confirmed. Excellent.
That's good to know. Now, obviously, you know, love
does not always last, so it's possible that, you know, she
loved him for a while and then moved on and he never did.
Although, as we'll talk about later, he does marry someone
else, so. Yeah, he marries someone else.
And it's weird that this became a thing.
It kind of in retrospect, it's it's it's almost like the
singers made a bigger deal out of it than anyone else ever did.
Of course, singers do that all the time.
That's nothing new. But it it's interesting.
If you all anyone who missed the detail that Daenerys and Damon
grew up together, they're only two years apart in age, roughly.
That's pretty major. I understand.
It can explain why they, you know, could, could have fallen
in love at a young age. Well, they almost certainly did.
And. But like you said, childhood
love doesn't always last. And another interesting quirk
here, Baylor is her nephew, though he's older.
Yeah, that's because Argonne the 4th had his kids so far apart.
One wonders if he was protective of her or if he can considered
her as a possible bride for himself.
Probably not because Daron didn't want the incest stuff
happening and so he probably part of that on to Baylor.
And if he did, Daron would have discouraged it.
So and it didn't happen. Well, let's talk about some of
the other bastards. What about Agor Rivers, who
would have been around around 172?
Of course, we're going to do a whole episode on him, so we
don't need to get too deep into here.
But we do want to talk about his potential early influence on
Damon and vice versa. What do you?
What's your take on that? Well, that's the that's the
tricky thing with Agor is that we don't know when he comes back
into the picture. Now, I don't get the sense that
Agor was exactly a secret, right because of the great bastards.
He was the one who Aegon the 4th actually went and visited away
from King's land. The Riverlands is not exactly
hugely far from the capital either.
So, you know, it's quite possible that Damon and Agor met
at some point. They would have a sort of a
potentially a shared sense of grievance and a similar identity
as great bastards. That Damon, you know, had
probably been told from a very young age that he should have
been king. And here is Agor, another
bastard who's been wrong, who has been denied his birthright
and set aside. So you can definitely see that
there might be some mutual sympathies.
They're also both very skilled swordsmen and, and, and soldiers
in general, so you know, there's possibly that as well.
Appreciate a theory handed over to us by Rainey's Targaryen
which was that she believes the best option for Agor returning
to court would be right after Agon died and that makes that
fits. Yeah, when he's he's newly
legitimate. Right when he's he's newly
legitimized and we know that he trained with fireball it when
his family was sent away from court.
He was too young to have trained with fireball.
Plus he fought with blood Raven over sheer sea star.
He's not going to do that from afar.
You don't when he's not doing that by by Raven.
He's also not encouraging gay men to become king by Raven.
That's that's personal chats right there.
And. And it requires, you know, in
addition to sort of face to face communication, you need a, a, a
relationship, you need, you know, some deep levels of trust
to ensure that the other person is not just going to rat you
out. Yeah, exactly.
And that's that explains also probably how bitter Steel got to
marry his daughter. Yeah, and Agor was about 12 when
when A got the course A. Little like a yeah a year
younger. So he would have been, you know,
just the right age to start to start training an arm.
Yeah, it's perfect. Yeah, it really fits nicely.
And I I also don't think that he could have, you know, convinced
Damon to give his daughter's hand in marriage to him without
that kind of connection. So, yeah, it's pretty clear that
they at least spend a couple years together at court.
Probably the last few years right before the rebellion.
He may have we'll talk about where where Bitter Steel was
when the rebellion actually broke out later.
He may have been to court, maybe not, but it's interesting stuff.
So, but the final important character who would have grown
up around Damon, of course, is Blood Raven himself, Brendan
Rivers. He's about five years younger
than Damon. So it's interesting.
We have a quote from A Song of Ice and Fire much later from
Blood Raven, where he says there was a brother he loved, a
brother he hated, and a woman he desired.
Well, we know the woman he desired is Sierra Sea Star.
The brother he hated was clearly Bitter Steel.
The brother he loved. That's harder.
Did he love Damon Blackfire or did he love Daron?
They're both his brothers. They're both his half brothers
and there's good arguments for both.
Who do you think he's referring to personally?
Stephen. I, I come down on the side that
I think it's Damon because it works better with George RR
Martin's theme of sort of the human heart at war with itself.
I mean, ultimately, you know, if he was, if he cared more about
dare on to begin with, there's no real conflict, there's no
real drama there. But you know, in a literal civil
war of brother against brother, if he's having to go to war
against the brother he loves out of a sense of what's right for
the the realm, you know, or, you know, possibly just hating
bitter steel that much. I think that that is the more
sort of, you know, interesting scenario, especially given how
they the two of them very personal in clash during the
war. Absolutely.
Now of course, we'll be doing an episode on on blood.
Raven will be a lot more on him, so we won't spend too much time
on him right now. But there may have been other
bastards of Agons around at court or you know, focus is
always on the great bastard. But there were others.
There were some who were nameless.
Some of them may have been at court, but some of them weren't
nameless. We just don't know anything
about them besides their names. So these are kind of nameless,
faceless others. We can't say much about them,
but it's interesting to note that they were probably around.
But there was Princess Elena's kids, sister to Dana the
Defiant. She had twins with Oakenfest
John and Jane Waters. We don't know their exact ages,
but it was sometime between 171 and 176.
So as early as just after Damon's birth to around bitter
rather blood Raven's birth time. The perfect age for them to be
there, just a few years younger than Damon.
That's the perfect age for them to idolize him as a fellow
Waters at court. But you never know, they may
have hated him. Now there would have been other
influences around court, not just the kids.
There would have been these adults, especially these who
both who would have been charmed by him, by his youthful charisma
and his, you know, clear upcomingness.
Quentin Ball. We mentioned the King's Guard,
potentially, especially this Gwen Corbray fellow who he's
going to fight at the Battle of the Redgrass Field later.
And we wonder, did they have a relationship before this epic
duel? Did they know each other?
That just makes it even more tragic.
I mean they must have known each other.
Right. Yeah, unless he was a recent
addition. They, they must have known each
other, you know, at, at, at a basic level, 'cause they would
have spent years in, in one another's company cause 'cause
Damon lived at court for, for a lot of his life.
But you know, how close that relationship was.
Were they friends? Were they rivals?
Were they near acquaintances? I don't know.
I, I think it works better dramatically if they were
friends because then, you know, again, it's that sort of finding
yourself on the opposite end of a battlefield in the time of
civil war thing. I think that works a little bit
more dramatically, but we don't know.
It's true, George loves to do that and it would just be kind
of heart wrenching is both blood Raven and a guy like Wayne
Corbrae really like Damon and they just had to fight him.
Blood Raven would have been he might have had a lot of self
loathing for killing Damon or maybe he just like, no, I had to
do it. That's it.
You know, I got to do my job and same with Corbrae and that, you
know, Damon was a chivalrous guy, but we know quite famously
that he when when he defeated Gwen Korbra, he made sure his
body was well cared for and the major took care of him and that
cost him. Is that evidence of their
friendship or is that just evidence of his chivalry?
No way to know. Finally, as far as that court in
these early days, just as important but less noticed,
Aegon's corrupt court, they're, we don't know the names of these
people, but they were lickspittles.
They were flatterers. They get told Aegon what he
wanted to hear. They gave him they, they helped
him satisfy his desires. And we don't know these people's
names, but we know they were there.
They're referred to many times. They're important though,
despite not having names for them.
Later, when Deron ascends to the throne, he's going to clean
house to try to end this corruption.
He's going to kick a lot of these guys out of office.
Ambitious people don't just stop being ambitious because they get
kicked out of office. Who do you think they're going
to turn to when Damon Blackfire begins to emerge?
Who do you think they're going to support?
The guys who got kicked out of office by Deron?
Of course they're going to turn to Damon.
Of course. They're going to add their power
to his cause. Of course.
They're going to encourage him to take the throne in exchange
for getting their positions back, of course.
So that's kind of bad for Damon to have characters like that on
his side, but there you go. Now another major issue at court
outside of the people as far as things going on.
Aegon's attempts to invade dorm awkward not just because of how
badly the actual war efforts went, but because his own
grandchild, not to mention his son's wife, were Dornish.
Darren was a strong Prince and was able to prevent some of his
father's aggressive plans, but his father resented this and
began that famous intrigue. Now, King Aegon, well before was
public knowledge that Damon was his son, began to threaten to
set aside Prince Daron. This would keep the Dornish
blood from reaching the throne. But of course, we know he's not
actually ever going to do it. Now, given this, and the near
certainty we discussed earlier that Dana hated the Dornish too,
well, you've got a boy whose parents both hated Dorn, though
he would later have at least a couple of Dornish allies.
Damon himself was quite likely among those who dislike Dorn, or
at least he had a lot of people encouraging him to, a lot of
role models. So when we see years later how a
lot of Lords and Knights were unhappy with Dornish influence
at court and with the king, well, that says a bit a lot
already, doesn't it? In short, Damon found natural
allies with those who shared these feelings, and these early
years would have been when these feelings were established and
made known. So these guys who if Damon's
dislike of the Dornish, if that was a thing at all, that would
have gotten attention and he would have started getting
allies from a very early age. People who looked at him as an
up and Comer, someone perhaps to put throw their ambition behind
later. It may have been these people
who who encouraged Aegon to start the rumors of Darren's
bastardy, in fact, and we're looking for culprits for that.
These guys are prime candidates. What do you think of that,
Steven? Do you think that some of these
what, what or or any other thing you want to attribute to these
shadowy figures? I mean, well, you know, in
addition to the sort of the usual spoilsmanship, I mean, you
know, we can guess at who some of these people were.
Butterwell Lofts. I can never pronounce that
right. Lofts.
You. Know, those are certainly prime
candidates. There must have been others
because the royal bureaucracy is, is, you know, not huge, but
it's significant. And, you know, the, the
interesting thing, you know, for me is given the sort of
ambiguity about when he knew, you know, this period must have
been very interesting for Damon. Because if he did, if he was
told ahead of time that he was Aegon's son, then every time
that rumor comes up, every time that that Aegon threatens to
disinherit his son, it's like he's getting right to the edge
of being named the Crown Prince of Westeros.
That's true. And then having that pulled back
and that, you know, that could really do a number on you.
And of course, because of the the marriage alliances, the
nature of legitimacy is very much tied to the politics that
if you are pro Dorn, then you believe that Deron is
legitimate. If you're not, then not.
And for Damon himself, this is extremely personal, right?
Because the only thing that anyone could ever say against
him is that he's a bastard, right?
He's too good at everything else.
Yeah. There's really nothing to insult
him with. So the idea that his major
rival, right, That, you know, 'cause it's not just, you know,
what he himself feels or you know just what his mother says,
But everyone is comparing the two of them.
Yeah. It's very, it's a, it's a public
process. So the knowledge, you know, or
the, the, the possibility that his rival might be the bastard
and he might be the rightful that you know, that's a really
powerful drive then. And it's intoxicating and he,
and it's not like, like you said, there's no evidence one
way or another. If he, if he's bought into the
story, he'll believe it. There's no, it's not like
there's anything to disprove it. And if he once he believes it,
he takes it because it's partly because it's self-serving and
partly because so many people, other people believe it.
There's no way to to convince him that he's wrong.
It's just, it's all hearsay. It's all just opinion.
So it's, it's it's very interesting that way.
And I think that's how a lot of other, a lot of the supporters
on both sides felt. They just like, no, this is the
truth. They just both believe in their
version of reality and they're there's no nothing to gainsay
either side really. Now to compound this issue of
Dornish hatred from potentially from Damon and certainly from
Dana and Aegon, we go back to Daenerys for a moment.
Now consider that anti Dornish sentiment when you consider the
Daenerys was some people saw her as being sold to the Dornish.
So it's not just that Damon lost to Daenerys, it's that he lost
her to them, to the hated Dornish.
Now, the singer is, like we said earlier, they played up this
relationship perhaps well more than it should have been.
And some of them say it's the biggest reason Damon rebelled.
Well, that's taking it too far. Clearly.
Now, the World of Ice and Fire's majorly point of view downplays
the relationship by pointing to how far apart Daenerys marriage
when Damon was 16 or 17 and the Black Fire Rebellion was.
He was 2627. The truth is probably somewhere
in between. It probably did matter.
But as we know, there were a lot of reasons Damon rebelled.
It wasn't just one thing. Now, for one thing, there's also
not a very good thing 'cause to get behind, if you're rebelling
because you didn't get the girl, that's just not a lot of, that's
not a good political statement to make.
It's not like, yeah, follow me, I'm the guy who didn't get the
Princess he wanted. That's it's nothing you can get
behind. Much will be made of how many
loved him for his prowess, even at a very young age.
But that's also not enough to get behind.
So what could these people get behind?
What was the what was the tangible thing that Damon
offered that made him legitimate?
Besides the claims that Daron was a bastard, there's Damon's
claim. It always comes down to having a
claim. It's a concept that we needn't
get too deep into right now. I think we're all basically
familiar with the gist of it. A blood connection to the throne
equals a claim to the throne, basically, and this is what most
claims are based upon. Damon had two such blood claims,
not just because he was Targaryen on both sides, but
because both of those sides had direct claims to the throne
itself. We've already discussed Dana's
claim, but the the one he had since birth despite his bastard
stature. But for a long time, Damon only
had this one. Later, however, he would gain
not just a second claim, but 1/3 through.
His father, of course, ascended to the throne when Damon was
about two, but Aegon hadn't yet named him his son.
The state. This state of affairs continued
for a decade, until a singular event resulted in Damon's second
claim being revealed, and the third materializing almost from
thin air. It was something that no one saw
coming, yet, perhaps in hindsight, was kind of
unsurprising. Now, real quick, I want to
mention again the Tower of the Hand publication, A Hymn for
Spring. There's a great essay about the
Blackfyre Rebellions by Stefan Sasa in there.
I helped edit it myself. And I think you got some great
takes on some of the backgrounds from the meta analysis of it as
far as how people felt and what Damon represented and what Daron
represented, the great stuff. And of course, Steven and I both
have essays in him for Spring as well.
Steven, real quick, a bit of a teaser on yours.
Sure. So I have two essays, one of
which has to do with the application of Machiavellian
theory to Song of Ice and Fire and trying to figure out, you
know, exactly who wins and who loses in the Game of Thrones.
And the other essay is specifically about this
difficult question over the realm's finances, namely, did
Robert Baratheon bankrupt the Kingdom or did Littlefingers
steal Westeros? That's a great subject and I've
read the essays and I like them, so I can vouch for them.
And a Shay and I's essay is on the curse of Harrenhal, whether
it was real and whether being real or not matters because
people believed it to be real. So check out the Hymn for
Spring. It's available through History
of westeros.com. There's a link directly for it.
And of course, you'll be not only supporting us, but Steven
and Stefan Sasa and the Tower of the Hand.
So Part 2, becoming Black Fire King Aegon knighted Damon in his
12th year when he won a squire's tourney, thereby making him the
youngest knight ever made in the time of the Targaryen,
surpassing Megor the 1st, and shocked his court kin and
counsel by bestowing upon him the sword of Aegon the
Conqueror, Blackfire, as well as lands and other honors.
Damon took the name Blackfire thereafter.
The year was 182. What a moment.
Aegon had given away dragon eggs largely for sex.
This is what we mean by it not being so surprising in hindsight
that he would give away such a valuable thing almost out of
nowhere. But still, if anyone saw it
coming, they were in the great minority.
Or we're dealing with some little finger like shadowy
figure who suggested this to him as well.
Hey, why not give black fire to this guy?
That's possible too. We don't know what it's
interesting to think about where Aegon was he the idea it's his
own or not? I keep coming back to that.
No reason to suspect it though. Again, it's just an idea, no
evidence for it. Egon liked Damon and he was
proud of him. As far as the Westerosi ideal
for any son or a son any man would be proud to have, Damon
was ideal. He was the ideal ideal.
Other than being a bastard again, well, the only thing like
Steven said, that's the only thing people could say against
him. So the.
So not only was Black Fire a completely unprecedented gift,
it upped the threat level for Prince Daron.
The rumor she was the Dragon Knight's son had gotten louder
after both the Dragon Knight and Queen Naries herself were dead.
Those were the main defenders of Daron's honor besides Daron
himself, and they were gone. And for almost 30 years, Though
even bigger factor perhaps the Dragons had been dead.
This made black fire more important.
For those of you who have read the Princess and the Queen and
other sources on the Dance of the Dragons, Black fire is
mentioned as one of the many symbols possessed by egg on the
second, but not even by name. And it is it was.
It's almost mentioned in passive.
The sword wasn't as big deal back then.
It was valuable, it was awesome, but it didn't pack nearly as
much of a punch as a kingly symbol Back when you got Amy's
just giving it to Megor, you know, that's obviously.
How big a deal could it have been?
Why did it become a big deal? Well, partly it's propaganda.
Damon's supporters played up the sword in its importance.
And also the other major throwback to egg on the
Conqueror was his crown, and that was lost.
So the sword shared less of the spotlight, so to speak.
But Stephen, I think the biggest part is the recently dead
Dragons. What do you think about that?
Is that you agree with that? Yeah, I agree.
You know, I, I, I don't think it hurts that as a symbol goes,
right, It's, it is a symbol of not so much kingship as warrior
kingship, right? You didn't give him, you know,
even if he had it right, giving Aegon's crown is a statement
about political power and sovereignty.
The sword is about stepping into a mythos.
And, you know, especially because the big distinction
between Damon and Daron as people was between the scholar
and the warrior, this is kind of drawing that line even more
sharply. It's like, not only is he just
an amazing warrior, he is now carrying the sword of the
Conqueror. That signifies, you know, this
kind of not just kingship, but this kind of kingship that a lot
of people in court feel is lacking, right.
You know, that, you know, maybe Aegon had it once, right, But
doesn't have it again, you know, doesn't have it anymore.
He's gotten too old. Yeah.
I like Daron is Daron's never going to have that.
No never. And the so the the Dragons were
the real symbol of might too. That's why I like to think about
it. The when the Targaryens, back
when they had the Dragons, when they fought against non
Targaryens, it was dragon versus human.
When Targaryens fought Targaryens, it was dragon versus
dragon. Huge claws, massive jaws, flame
breath, etcetera. What is a sword against?
You know, massive jaws, huge claws, and flame breath.
Even an awesome sword like black fire.
This doesn't mean as much with that kind of firepower around.
Pun intended of course. But in the era of Damon Deron,
Aegon the Unworthy, Dragons were a thing.
In the past, everything was human versus human.
And when the best weapons available are made of steel,
having a vastly superior sword native.
Vastly superior steel. Well that makes more sense now,
doesn't it? Damon was the best warrior of
his era, wielding the best sword available.
That's pretty pretty bad ass. So things progressed quickly for
him. At some point his father also
arranged a marriage for him. It was a political marriage with
war in mind and it probably further pushed Damon into the
anti Dornish court or side of things if he wasn't already
firmly entrenched there. The king had lost his royal
fleet to storms. So this marriage to Rohan, The
Who was probably the daughter of the Archon of Tairash.
This was probably meant to bolster that weakness by giving
him an alliance with someone who had a big Navy again should he
wish to make another attempt at invading Dorn.
Which was pretty important because the Dornish problem is
probably the existence of Dorn and this, this rivalry and the
political situation was probably one of the main things, if not
the main thing, preventing Aegon from setting Daron aside in
favor of Damon. Cause of course if he did that
they would mean war. But if Doran was taken out of
the picture, there would be no threat of war and he'd be free
to do the legitimizations. What do you think about that,
Stephen? You think that's part of what
Aegon had in mind with that marriage?
You think it's possible someone else gave him that idea?
Or is it just something else entirely?
I think, you know, most likely it was about the power politics.
He wanted the fleet. He probably also wanted money
because he spent it like water. And, you know, you also get the
sense somewhat that he the that Aegon the 4th rather treated
marriages or the troubles, at least with a certain amount of
flippancy, that they were political game pieces to be
moved around and and sort of changed around when it suited
it. So we can't even I think, be
that clear how much of A lasting alliance this was supposed to be
or whether it was just sort of, you know, in the moment.
I need this fleet. What do I need to get this
fleet? OK, I've got this fleet now.
That's a good point. And it's, it's certainly and you
it, it's a great segue because it's true.
This was a betrothal, not a marriage.
It was it, it was a become a, it did become a marriage
eventually. It was consummated.
Damon and Rohan at seven sons plus at least two daughters.
So. But in the meantime, they had to
wait until they were old enough to marry.
And before that happened, King Aegon died in 184.
So the IT was soon after that they were married, but it didn't
quite happen before that. Now, another thing I want to
throw out there just before we get to Aegon's death is that
it's also possible that Aegon had something else in mind,
which is that he wanted to. Well, it's not clear what he
wanted to do, but it's interesting that the Archon of
Tire Rush would have even agreed to this marriage in the 1st
place. He agrees to marry this, this
daughter of his to a bastard, even though he's a royal
bastard. Still.
That's interesting. It could be something about the
Tirashi. Maybe they don't care about
bastards as much, Maybe that's not a thing for them, but it's a
little curious. And it's also interesting
because as we'll see a little later, we may as well bring it
up now. It was not there was normally.
It's the bride's family that pays the dowry, but that was not
the case in this. Deron paid the dowry that Aegon
had arranged, which is interesting.
Maybe that's because he was a basher.
Maybe that was the deal there. I don't know.
But anyway, while he was dying, and to be sure he knew he was
dying, he did that that thing he did that thing that had he not
done it would have probably removed him from the category of
worst Targaryen king ever discussions.
He'd be relegated to the really bad category instead, but not
the worst. The thing, of course, that I'm
referring to is legitimizing all his bastard children.
So, Steven, right away, what do you think happened?
Like what was the initial reaction, the shock, the
surprise? You think they tried to dissuade
him maybe. Like what?
You really want to do that? Are you sure?
I mean, I think he probably kept it a surprise.
It was sort of, you know, a last shot fire sort.
Of saying. You know, screw you to everyone
who I didn't like, but the problem is the moment it's
public, you can't really undo it, right?
I mean, that is the nature of royal proclamation is that in
saying a thing is so, you have made it so.
And, and given that this is ultimately all about kind of
perceived status, right, the moment that everyone hears that
someone's been legitimized, legitimized, they're they're
effectively legitimized, whether the, you know, all the i's are
dotted and the, the T's are crossed doesn't really matter as
much. That's true.
The legitimization, it's interesting.
Now the reasons are different for each individual, but Agor,
Bloodraven, Chiara, all of them were legitimized, but none of
them took the name Targaryen there.
Like I said, there's different reasons for that.
But in Damon's case, he was already established as Black
Fire. That was a name.
That was his name. He had a castle already.
He had the sword. Doesn't really make sense to
take the name Targaryen when you've got yourself established
as your as your own thing. Plus it might be a bit more
threatening to to do that. It's like, well, I'm if if Damon
had called himself Damon Targaryen, he would be directly
challenging Darren's authority. I think it also makes him stand
out more, sort of saying I'm not just a Targaryen, I'm the one
who's got the damn. Sword I agree so now though the
big thing Aegon is dead and Deron is king and that has a
large impact because all that anti Dornish sentiment that was
boiling up well now it's going to come to the fore even more
because the Dornish are that much closer to the throne.
Deron's family is at court. They already were, but there's
now he's got counselors that are Dornish, he's got more and more
people that the standard Westerosi culture don't like so.
But Darren, he knew he recognized this and he used his
methods, friendship, peace, generosity to try and keep
things together. He did what he could to keep the
great bastards close, treating them honorably and continuing
the incomes that the King had bestowed on them.
He paid the dowry that Aegon had promised to the Archon of
Tairash, thereby seeing his half brother Damon Blackfyre wed to
Rohan of Tairash as Aegon had desired.
For all that Sir Damon was only four and 10.
On their wedding day, he granted Damon a tractive land near the
Blackwater with the right to raise a castle.
Some said he did such things to assert his rule and legitimacy
over the great bastards and others because he was kind and
just. But whatever the truth, such
efforts sadly proved in vain. This is another thing we talked
about briefly earlier, the marriage.
This marriage happened well before Daenerys went S to marry
Prince Marion Martel, so it's even weirder that he was upset
about this or that the rumors were that he was upset about it.
Unless we credit these rumors that Damon thought he could
marry twice. A different tale claims that
Damon was not so much opposed to wedding Rohan of Tyraj as he was
convinced that he could follow in the footsteps of Aegon the
Conqueror and Megor the Cruel and have more than one bride.
Aegon might have even promised to indulge him in this.
Some of Blackfyre's partisans later claimed this was the case,
but Daron was of a different mind entirely.
What do you think about that? Is is anything, do you credit
that rumor at all? In one hand, it seems like it
could be true because Damon was just so pumped up.
His ego may have been so big that he believed he was could do
this. On the other hand, it's so
against the worship of the seven.
It's so not chivalrous and. Well, on the other hand, it is
very Targaryen. You know, the, you know, you got
to think he's got Egon's sword, right?
He is a descendant of Aegon. Aegon had multiple wives.
You know, certainly his mother, you know, was kind of a quasi
sister wife with, you know, her two sisters in Baylor.
Even though she was the sort of the technically supposed to be
the bride, there was sort of a commonality there, you know, So
it, it's possible that, you know, all of this emphasis on
Targaryen tradition and purity of blood, that he, he may have
gone all in for that. It's also possible that he
thought that maybe Rohan could just go away one way or another.
We don't really know. But it it certainly suggests
that he thought very highly of himself.
Very if he did, yeah, it's true. And I and I can totally buy that
because of the like I said, he had people around him constantly
telling him how great he was. And yeah, that's going to have
an effect even on someone who's stubborn and very self assured.
But the this marriage would prove to be problematic for King
Daron. And as it followed him on the
Iron Throne over the years, Tie Rush and the Blackfyre cause
were aligned several times. Damon's descendants spent quite
a bit of time there. Bitter Steel spent quite a lot
of time there. But the more immediate effect
was the making of said descendants.
Damon and Rohan would have, like I said earlier, seven sons and
at least two daughters. When Damon was only 14, the
first two of these seven sons arrived, Twins named after his
father and uncle that he was said to be like Amon, the other
being Aegon. Notably Targaryen names too,
which is unlike what Baylor chose for his sons.
Baylor breaks through. That is because Baylor, the bus,
it had no sons. Valar and Mataris, these are
like quasi Targaryen names. I don't know where they come
from, but they're not traditional Targaryen names.
And you wonder if that fits in with the whole Targaryen pure
blood versus Dornish kind of meta struggle that was happening
at court at this time. What do you think about that?
You think the names tell us anything or?
Possibly. I mean, you know, the Valar and
Mataris, it's, it's a little bit tricky to figure out where those
names are coming from. You know, I, I think they were
probably Valyrian names in general, but just not that
associated with the family. Yeah.
Whereas, you know, on the, on the flip side of it, Aegon and
Amon, he's being very, very clear, right?
You know my kids are named after King.
So as an aside, it's interesting that shortly after the red grass
field, or just before, around the same time that eventually
Makar named two of his kids, Eamon and Aegon as well.
It's almost like, well, no, we're taking that back.
Or it was just traditional, I don't know.
Having kids, though, is a big deal.
And no doubt this enhanced Damon's burgeoning fame and
popularity. It's like twin sons is like the
jackpot, you know, for from Westerosi, you know,
perceptions. And surely some of this took it
as a sign of godly favors, like the gods have given Damon twin
sons. Especially seven son.
Yeah, the seven son. Yeah, eventually when it got to
that point, I mean, Dang, that's like, what kind of a sign is
that, right? Surely some people really build
up that angle now. It'd be interesting to see their
dynamic though. We don't know hardly anything
about Rohan. Was she an ambitious one too?
Was she also pushing him for the throne or was she in awe of him?
We don't know if she was even older than him or not.
I I don't know. Well, hopefully at least a
little bit older given how many kids she's having and how
quickly. Yes, because if he had a kid at
14 and she was younger, then that means she was 12 or 13,
which is like, oh all right, then it wouldn't be the first
time. But yeah, anyway, so.
But like we said, yeah. So Damon's only 14 at this point
and the rebellion is still many years away.
Still plenty of time for him to gain popularity, establish
himself further and to play fight more tournaments more.
There weren't real battles for him to fight in, but people care
about tournaments well outside the North anyway.
A semi famous example of this came a few years later at
Princess Daenerys wedding. Prince Baylor won the name break
spear at the age of 17 following his famous victory at Princess
Daenerys wedding tourney. He defeated Damon Blackfyre in
the final tilt. Interesting.
A few things came out of that quote.
Baylor was also gaining fame. Let's not forget that.
He wasn't as flashy, but he was legit.
He was actually in the line of succession.
So that's a pretty big deal. So here's a good time chance for
us to briefly re speculate on the rival between those two.
How big a deal was this too? Just from their respective
followers? This victory in a tournament,
especially Daenerys's wedding tournament, which is kind of a
big deal. Yeah, I was going to say there,
there's an interesting symbolism here.
You know, I'm thinking back to the the tournaments that went on
before the Dance of the Dragons where there was all kinds of
sort of interpersonal dynamics being played out in terms of who
had whose favor, who won, who lost.
So, you know, definitely, I'm guessing that Damon was very
unhappy about losing. I mean, especially the fact that
he fought in that tournament and made it all the way to the final
tilt does suggest that he was planning to make some sort of a
kind of Rhaegar like statement about, you know, his
relationship with Daenerys. And to get beaten by Baylor, you
know, at that moment, that really must have stung.
He must have hated it so much so did his supporters.
And like, damn it. How you got lucky though, you
know, Damon's horse slipped or I don't know.
Well, especially given given the name Break Spear.
Yeah, it must have been several. Well, it's possible that it went
to a split decision. I mean literally a split
decision. Because.
One of the ways that you settle jousts is, you know, obviously
one person gets knocked off. But we've seen many cases where
if they're just tied basically, and they're smashing Lance after
Lance, the king decides, well, if the king is dare on, you
know, so I could I could, you know, unless Damon got unseeded,
I could definitely see a sense in which, you know, certainly
the people around Damon might have been telling you, you got
robbed. You really won that, you know,
you should have been the champion.
This guy Baylor, you know he's he's, you know, he's all mouth.
He's all reputation. That's awesome, I hadn't thought
about the possibility of it being a decision.
That's a great idea. Well, in any case, it would have
helped Baylor's popularity winning that regardless of
whether it was a decision or not.
But, but it's popularity. It didn't work the same for
Baylor that it did for Dara or for Damon.
It certainly worked. He was very popular, no doubt,
but too many men looked upon Baylor's dark hair and eyes and
muttered that he was more Martel than Targaryen, even though he
proved a man who could win respect with ease and was as
open handed and just as his father.
Knights and Lords of the Dornish Marshes, Marches.
Marches came to mistrust Aaron and Baylor as well, and began to
look more and more to the old days when Dartish men were the
enemy to fight, not rivals for the King's attention or
largesse. And then they would look at
Damon Blackfire, grown tall and powerful, half a God among
mortal men, and with the conqueror's sword in his
possession, and wonder. Part 3 The Living Legend That
quote really shows you why he was seen as a living legend,
doesn't it? Damon's now in his early 20s,
and people were thinking of him as half a God among mortal men.
That gives you an idea of the kind of hero worship, the cult
of personality, shall we say, that accompanied this man.
Damon had appealed to a wide variety of people, from highborn
to commoner. He was a lot like a rock star,
but more than that, he was the perfect knight.
Skill and chivalry blended together, but more than that, he
represented ideals that were commonly held in tradition.
Worshipping Westeros. Damon embodied the attitudes
many of the noble houses of Westeros have upheld for eons.
So let's discuss Damon's appeal as a way to settle old scores.
The way things were the old days.
And you got to keep in mind the old days had been the old days
for thousands of years. And this new Deron King was just
trying to change all that in just a few years.
That's hard. That's it's hard to break from
tradition like that. These guys don't like peace.
What do you take? What's your take on that?
Yeah, I mean, you know, in, I think at a, at a fundamental
level, right as we can see, Damon acquires a constituency of
marcher Lords and Knights who their very identity is wound up
in fighting the dorm. You know, the the war may have
ended between Princess, but you know, when when the Raiders come
every year to, you know, grab, you know, sheep or cattle or or
whatever, you know, that doesn't really matter very much to the
martyr Lord. So immediately he's got this,
this kind of anti Dornish pro kind of military, pro chivalry
coalition building around him. And you know, there's sort of
both a push and a pull factor, right?
They don't like what Deron and Baylor represents, and they
really like what he represents because he's seen as kind of a
throwback to Aegon, to this old warrior kingship model.
Yeah, which which they really like and which they really
appreciate. You're right.
It's not only that that they don't like Deron's peace
overtures. They don't want to lose their
identity as a warrior culture or as warrior houses or as
defenders of the marches or, or what have you.
It's not just that they hate that.
It's that, like you say, Damon is that he is the opposite of
that. He is the one that represents
that, that warrior nature and that, you know, fighting.
Then damn Darren. If Darren had his way, there
would be no no one to fight, although the only ones to fight
would be overseas. Doran was the last frontier, the
last combative frontier in Westeros at that time.
And dare I was trying to take that away.
Our modern sensibilities are like, yeah, take that away.
Don't fight anymore. It don't just maintain this
state of thousands of years of war, but it goes to show that
how much these there are these these houses identities were
wrapped up in this and how much they did not want to lose it.
The marcher Lords like Karen, Selmy and Swan, they hate the
dorms. They've been fighting them for
so long. They did not want to stop doing
that just because this king said so.
And on top of that, of course we have those same shadowy figures.
We've been going back and forth referencing them.
The ones that Deron kicked out of office were otherwise pissed
off. Now, the problem with that is
that these are scummy, ambitious types.
They're not the chivalrous type that Damon himself is.
They may act chivalrous around Damon and project chivalry
because that's Damon's cause and they want to be in line with
the, you know, the campaign ideals.
But behind that, they're working for their own ambition for sure,
and poisoning the well, so to speak.
So, and I wonder how far back some of these guys were, were
realizing the opportunity they had with.
Damon and certainly, you know, as far back as when the rumors
about Damon, excuse me, about Deron were being spread during
Aegon's reign. It sure is annoying that these
two guys names are so similar. You mean Deron and there's so
many Derons and it's just that's the way it's funny.
Real history works that way too. It's just another feature of
this fake history that makes it more feel more authentic and has
the same confusing, repetitive names.
Now. As far as Damon's appeal goes,
though, it didn't work that way everywhere.
The Iron Islands, they probably didn't care as much about Damon.
They didn't care about chivalry. They don't care about worship of
the Seven. It's having him having seven
sons is, you know, they care. It might have been cool for them
to think, oh, he's man enough to have seven sons.
They didn't care about the fact that it was 7 specifically.
And but the North, same thing. The North, I don't think the
North cared much about Damon. I think that because, for one
thing, the North doesn't care much about knighthood.
They don't care that he was handsome, they don't care about
his tournament successes. They might not mind as much that
he's a bastard. What do you think?
What do you think the North's attitude towards Damon was?
We we For all we know, they weren't involved in the black
flower bunions at all. So we're trying to come up with
why. I, I, I think that ultimately
the north is a lot more pragmatic about those, you know,
elements of, of knighthood. You know, they like a strong
fighter, but given that they're so far away from everything, all
right, Also, you know, they've, you know, with the with one
significant, significant exception, I don't think a
Northman has ever, you know, had ever really fought adornishment
before. They're just way too separated
from that whole conflict. So they're just.
Yeah, other than the Dance of the Dragons.
So they're just, you know, they're not emotionally primed
in the same way that, you know, the the Reach and the Storm
Lands and the Riverlands and the Westerlands.
You know how those houses are kind of wired almost for, you
know, this kind of conflict. Yeah, getting back closer to
people that were around him and the Kingsguard, that would be
some of them probably really struggled with this 'cause, you
know, the Kingsguard are supposed to be loyal and and the
long history the Kingsguard shows that the vast majority of
them had were loyal to their king.
But there's always the Jaime Lannisters and the other types
that felt like they had to switch sides.
We have no evidence that any Kingsguard took Damon's side in
this. But it's still interesting to
consider that some of them might have been tort.
Some of them might have hesitated to do their duty when
it came to Damon because they liked him.
They grew. Some of them grew up with him at
court. And you know, that's a hard
thing to to to set aside is that friendship, these personal
relationships, especially a guy like the influence of a guy like
Fireball, who was supposed to get a Kingsguard spot.
Aegon promised him one, but there was no spot during his
life. And then when Daron's kingship
came around, he gave it to Willem Wilde instead.
Ah, so did he. He may have made it.
He certainly made an enemy there.
Daron did. He may have that enemy may have
already been there. Fireball may have been kind of a
natural enemy. Regardless of what happened.
What about a situation like a character named Red Tusk, who we
all both of us believe that he was a Cray call knight.
He was someone who has fought for Damon, but there was a
Kingsguard named Roland Crakehall.
What a conundrum that would be. And I do believe it's possible
that we had houses that probably were split with their
allegiances. What do you think about that?
You think there were a lot of cases like that?
If I think there were, I think there were quite a few.
I mean it definitely seems to be a running theme in the sort of
Westerosi civil wars of literally brother against.
Brother. You know, and you got to think,
you know, OK, so if Roland Crakehall is joins the
Kingsguard, that means that someone else has to be the Lord
of Crakehall. Yeah.
If he's also a famous knight, that creates a certain amount of
tension and rival, right? Which of us, you know,
ultimately when it comes down to it, which is the better man?
Likewise, Fireball versus William Wild, you know, there's
got to be this kind of tension about, well, did you actually
get this position because you were the better Knights or
because, you know, Deron was playing politics?
So you can definitely sort of see that there and you know,
we're told. And this is, I think what makes
this complicated is that Damon had special appeal with Knights
and some of the best Knights of the age.
So that I, I think it's sort of the kind of the aficionado
thing. It's like, you know, he he's
like that kind of the jazz man that real jazz aficionados are
just crazy about. You know, it's sort of, you
know, oh, yeah. There's a lot of great nights.
But if you really know you're fighting, if you're one of those
like Jaime Lannister types who can, who just gushes about, you
know, painting in red in red, you know, that to see Damon is
like, OK, that's the real thing. That's what I want.
He's one of them, yeah. He was so, yeah.
That makes it Yeah, it's true. And as his appeal grew and his
popularity, so did his power. Those things are somewhat
correlated in Westeros and in other places.
Apparently he challenged Deron on some of his royal policies
and decisions, which says a lot. And even though even though
Darren was a nice guy, openly disagreeing with the King to his
face is not something regular folk or even regular Lords do.
Whether this emboldened his followers or whether they
emboldened him is tough to answer, but either way, it got
worse. So let's talk about Damon's
political skills, or lack thereof potentially.
He there these disagreements on policy.
Of course, some of them surely revolved around Dorn and things
like that, but what about other things?
I'm sure there was tension regarding other people just
coming out and saying that Daron's a bastard or that Damon
was more worthy. Like apparently that was just
said openly, partly because Daron didn't crack down hard on
that kind of talk. So do you think Daron was too
soft on these things or do you think it just didn't he?
He had a good plan that just didn't work?
Well, it's certainly the problem is it didn't work.
It festered. And you get the sense from the
quote from from Martin about the decision to to marry Daenerys
into House Martel, that part of the reason that happened is that
the two of them had been clashing repeatedly over public
policy and that people in King's Landing were taking sides
between them. And that one of the things that
Daron did not want to have happen is to give Damon a
massive shot of legitimacy. You know, you give him that
Targaryen marriage, it's going to make him once again have an
even stronger claim to the throne.
You don't want that. So, you know, it definitely
seems like as a, as a kind of a, a conflict goes, it was not one
sided. This was not just Damon being an
asshole because he's an. Asshole.
It's these are two guys who recognize that there's a certain
0 sum game when it comes to legitimacy and authority in
court. Right on.
And let's jump ahead to something that he did while he
was king to get an idea of the type of politician he was.
Now, of course, you take this the grain of salt because we
don't know that this was his idea, as as we've said many
times, he had plenty of advisors and it's impossible to know
whether some of these policies were his own ideas or whether
they were suggestions pushed on him by his followers, his his
inner circle. He makes his own coins during
his rebellion, he mints his own coins.
So, Stephen, I know you have a lot to say about the coin issue,
so fire away. Yeah, I think we can learn a lot
about Damon's qualities as a politician from the fact that he
he minted his own coins. You know, all too often, I think
it's kind of easy to dismiss Damon as a mindless jock, as
someone who just sort of cavalierly charged his way into
glory and death. But I think this coin shows that
Damon was also someone who understood institutional power,
that Senorage literally the right of the sovereign to make
coins and taxation, IE that you can compel people to use this
coin to pay their taxes and to buy good, you know, goods and
services. These things are really
important in terms of being able to equip and supply armies and
buy mercenaries. And during the, you know, as
we'll talk about during the Red Grass episode, he needed those
things. If you're going to start a
rebellion, you know, and this is the kind of the amazing thing,
right? He starts a rebellion not as a
Lord paramount, as a landed knight.
That's unusual. You know.
At the lowest, yeah, At really the lowest point on the feudal
totem pole. And he almost gets away with it.
Well, in order to do that, you really need a strong financial,
you know, foundation. Likewise, I think it also shows
an understanding of the power of symbolism.
Obviously, he already had black fire.
He kind of knew that symbols were a big deal.
But the thing about coins is if people are willing to take them,
if they're willing to pay taxes with them, if the Lords accept
those as payment for taxes and then use them to pay their own
taxes, that means at a certain basic level you are the king.
If if you think about it, for 90% of the population, right,
they're never going to see the king.
They're never going to interact with the king.
Chances are no royal decree is ever really going to change
their lives that much unless there's a war.
But coins are that one aspect are that one thing that really
kind of act as a connection between the individual subject
and their and their monarch. And Damon understood that in a
way that no other royal pretender in A Song of Ice and
Fire understood. I mean, Renly who understood
symbolism, you know, we saw that with the the pageants and the
tourneys, but he didn't really understand institutions.
Rob, who at least, you know, at least tried to make his own
coins. But again, that was a, a
suggestion from outside, you know, that came from the
Mandarin Joffrey Baylon. They didn't really seem to get
this. It is really quite interesting
that one of the first things he does when he raises his banners
is to set up a royal bureaucracy.
Yeah, it's really neat. He he, he, he was in it for the
long run. This wasn't a go straight for
the throat, take out the king and then take the throne.
This was a set and this is all campaign.
It was a long series of getting followers, you know, trying to
swing people to his side of the cause, getting the neutrals on
his side and and like you said, establishing himself like
saying, look, I've got coins. I'm I'm legit.
You know, he crowned himself, did all these things.
And there's another recurring theme here that the Black Fire
propagandists, I'll call them, drew attention to.
It seemed to be effective because it was true in a sense.
It may not be true how much it mattered, but it was true on the
surface, which is that Daron was not martial at all.
He had a weak body, along with his Dornish court, which gave
greater rights to women, which is very relevant here.
That's not very traditional. That's progressive.
And his looks, or his books, rather.
And his looks. They found a lot of fodder.
Basically, a lot of things considered feminine or not
masculine about Daron were whispered or flat out trumpeted,
and this eroded his authority a bit in favor of Damon.
What could Daron do about it? Well, it's hard to go after such
a popular figure. Daron wasn't the kind of guy to
play dirty either, so he was left with weathering the storm
and seeing what happened. As we detailed in the last Black
Fire episode, the big shift was the addition of Doron not only
to the realm, but to court. They advised, Entertained.
We're part of the family. More fodder for propaganda,
though again, we don't know how Damon himself felt.
Meanwhile, Damon Blackfire was built up as some kind of arch
alpha male aligned to the ideals of chivalrous Westeros. 1 mark
of manhood in Westeros's fathering sons.
Of course it's ridiculous to us. But again, he had seven.
That's huge. But what's funny about that is
Daron had four. And over time, Daron's sons
fought Damon's sons several times.
And Daron's sons were the ones that kept coming out ahead.
They would just Damons would just keep losing.
But back to where we were. That's way in the future.
We're in the one 90s now, the early one 90s, and the rebellion
will break out in 196. These same ambitious men, the
Nameless ones, along with Bitter Steel Fireball, possibly Day in
the Defiant and surely some others pushed him to become
king. At first we hear that he may be
entertained the idea because it propped up his ego, his vanity.
He liked it. He liked being told how great he
was, but it just kept going. And maybe that's what they knew.
Maybe his supporters realized they were on something.
They're like, look, if we just keep pushing him, eventually
he'll do it. He likes being told this.
All I got to do is keep pushing him and he'll get to that
breaking point. Is that kind of what how you
feel about it or do you think there was something else before?
We're getting close to the point where he actually rebels and
we'll review the thing that was the trigger.
But what do you think about this?
It took so long and there were so many people pushing him for
so long. Yeah, that, that is the tricky
thing because there's a lack of a catalyst, because there's a
lack of a sort of, you know, an incident that sets everything
off and because we don't know how long the preparations went
on for. Did you know, had had he been
planning this ever since the marriage?
Had he been planning this ever since?
I don't know. He had a really bad fight with
with Deron over something we don't know, but clearly, you
know, at some point he was getting very, very close to
this. And the interesting question is,
what is what he thought the next step was?
Yes, really it's true and that we'll get into a little bit more
in the red grass field episode like what his plans were what he
was thinking and how he would you know how he proceeded
because we're actually going to see some of those things put
into into play. But in the meantime, Damon's,
whether directly from him or his followers, mostly from his
followers, I assume it was basically this kind of I'm the
best propaganda and it was rooted in some truth.
He in a lot of ways, he kind of was the best, depending on how
you define the best. I'm not saying he was the best
king, but in in the the things that Damon's followers cared
about, he was #1 in those regards, he was really a
chivalrous guy. That doesn't seem to be an act
or, or. He was an incredible actor.
So as much as I harp on Damon's reasons for rebelling, I'm
guessing his men were far better behaved than most.
It's real hard to be that drawn to someone's charisma and not
emulate their most conspicuous traits so well.
Except those ambitious men, of course.
They would at least have to pretend to be decent men though,
right? Maybe not actually.
So that's kind of good though, right?
That Damon's inspiring nightly virtues and his followers?
Well, maybe not because the guy who was king was already a very
virtuous, ethical, fair, capable man of peace.
He wasn't perfect, but what was the need for a change in that
regard? It wasn't.
It wasn't about those things. It wasn't about being more
chivalrous. It was about hating the Dornish,
being ambitious, and a lot of other things.
So let's look at how that went though, because we're about
ready for Damon to declare himself 1st.
A shout out to Dagron Marshall of the Axe and captain of the
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Part 4 The Black Dragon arises. There was no final insult, no
great wrong that led Damon Blackfyre to turn against King
Daron. Nor do we know exactly when
plans to do so, to actually do the usurping, got underway.
So let's discuss that and the convergence of all these factors
that led to it. First of all, there's these
questions of legitimacy remaining.
Another quote here. Others still named him Daron
Falseborn, repeating the calumny that Aegon the Unworthy himself
was said to have circulated in the later years of his reign,
that he had been sired not by the king, but by his brother,
the Dragon Knight. Funny how rumors stick around
when so many are resting such hopes on people believing it so.
And, of course, those rumors got stronger the later, you know,
the closer we got to the rebellion, I would assume.
So what do you think about some of these things?
We have these. We have this.
The factional disputes carried over from his father's
administration. That's a big one.
Yeah. We'll start there.
Yeah. And especially the way that the
the factional disputes kind of play into these regional
differences that, you know, the these factions are not evenly
spread across the whole of Westeros, that they're very
concentrated in the Reach, in the Stormlands, in the Dornish
Marches. You know, that gives it a real
kind of an intensity, you know, people, you know, because
there's a concentration that means that a lot of people are
around other people who agree with them most of the time, so
that they begin to see their position as more self evidently
true and less up for debate. Now, so that's, those are those
are obviously all huge factors, many others that we've covered
already. We've got bitter steel pushing
him. We've got the Dornish situation,
we've got Daenerys situation, we've got the propaganda against
Darren. There's so many things yet none
of these things were the trigger.
None of them. They were all reasons why things
were boiling up. But the actual trigger still is
a little bit yet to come. We're almost there if the
stories are true. Damon was planning on crowning
himself, but Bloodraven discovered it somehow.
We don't know exactly how. And he was outed.
And we'll get to those details in a minute.
But what do we think Damon's actual plan was for taking the
throne? Was it a palace coup, do you
think? Or a plan to go out and Marshall
some armies and, and come out? That might have been too easy to
detect. I don't know.
It's, it's, it's hard to say. What do you think, Steven?
Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of possibilities.
A palace to obviously kind of appeals to the kind of Marshall,
you know, just do it. And on the chilli, Chilli, on
the other hand, you know, you do need to present a good image.
You know, he doesn't want to be seen as a Magor.
He wants to be seen as a rightful kid.
So it is quite possible that he thought that, for example, you
know, he would bring forward some sort of proof about Daron
being a bastard. And, you know, maybe, you know,
the the interesting thing is, you know, there was always, you
know, given all of these rumors about, you know, Aegon the 4th
disinheriting his his son, you know, maybe there was a a draft
will made at some point that disinherited him that he could
produce. It's possible that he would have
wanted to prove this at a trial by combat.
Oh, Damon's followers would love that idea, I think.
Yeah. I don't know about the rest of
the realm, but Damon's followers were like, yes, you know,
followed by combat. It could have been a trial of
seven. That's another kind of, you
know, again, traditional old school martial, you know,
religious way of doing things. Is it possible that he could
have wanted to call a great council?
Yeah, I, I, I kind of, Yeah, it's possible.
The great call. I'm a little bit down on that
idea because he seemed to want to force the issue rather than
letting people decide. But it's definitely possible.
Definitely. Especially if he thought his
support was popular enough and that would be a peaceful way to
take the throne instead of fighting for it.
Yeah, definitely possible, but probably lower on the list of
possibilities. So what apparently happened was
Darren was told by Bloodraven that this plan was going to
happen. Now, we'll talk about that more
in the Blood Raven episode. If it's possible Blood Raven
made this up, it's possible or he exaggerated the the threat to
make to make Deron take action. He may have been tired of Deron
just letting the situation develop getting worse and worse.
It's like, hey, you need to take action.
I'm going to trick you into taking action.
We'll talk about that possibly more on the Blood Raven episode.
I like that idea, so keep it in the back of your head.
But for now, just sticking to the surface.
Damon's arrest was ordered. Either Fireball was there when
it happened or he knew of the pending arrest through his own
kind of background channels. And in what must have been a
really epic scene that I hope we get to see somehow.
I don't know where we get to see it.
Fireball helped Damon escape the Kingsguard, the Red Keep and
presumably the city. That there was probably some
fighting involved. We don't hear about anyone
getting killed, but I bet swords were drawn, you know, and, and
may have. It probably wasn't like
Barristan's escape because Barristan was faced with, you
know, gold cloaks who were kind of, you know, out of his, you
know, well beneath him. This was this.
This is taking no chances, Yeah. And but you wonder what we
talked about before. Maybe the Kingsguard hesitated a
little. Maybe they were like, do we have
to? Maybe one or two of them did.
Some of them are like, finally we're going to get rid of this
stupid traitor. Maybe Gwen Corbray was one of
the guys that was sent to arrest Damon, and maybe Gwen Corbray
felt that he failed, and maybe that's why he sought Damon out
on the red grass field later to avenge his failure.
I like that idea. I have nothing to back it up
other than conjecture, but it sounds cool to me.
Now who else? Let's talk about who else would
have gone with Damon? Who escaped with him?
Damon and Fireball, of course, got out.
If Bittersteel was there, maybe he got out with them.
What if Damon, if Dana the Defiant was around, I don't know
if she would have escaped. Yeah.
You know, certainly his Damon's family, we're probably, you
know, the, the, the tricky thing is we're not exactly sure where
his, his, his land, Damon's lands were.
You know, we're told that they were on the Blackwater.
That's probably too close to the city to actually stay, But he
definitely got his family out. I mean, because we know from the
case of Damon the Second that, you know, they were living
fairly close to the Cockshaws. Yes.
And you know, while I don't really have much of A basis of
this besides just counting which houses supported him, I think he
went to the reach. I agree.
I think that was the only. I mean storm lands are way too
close to the the capital. Brath.
With Brath, he's probably being loyal to Deron as well.
Yeah, it's, it's, you know, the reach is big.
There's a lot of places that you can hide out.
There's a lot of his supporters are there.
They're not going to be, you know, friendly to the Dornish.
Yeah, it's the heart of chivalry too.
I would imagine that his supporters very largely came
from the Reach, like a very high percentage.
He probably had more support there than any other region.
And like you said, the the the Reach is very full of the
Dornish xenophobias or out. You can call it racism if you
want. And they're not big fans of
peace. They're they love fighting, they
love tournaments, they love chivalry and all those things.
And Deron was a threat to all that.
But Despite that, despite all this talk of chivalry, it's it
doesn't necessarily fit in some regards.
This is kind of interesting, I think as Damon escaped, you
know, words are are wind. Of course, there's lots of
people who said they'd support him, who indicated they probably
would, They were backing him. Who amongst Damon supporters
would actually rise for him when it came to war?
Ultimately? Well, a lot.
In our episode on the war itself, we'll list as many as we
can. We're going to offer some
conjectures, some good theories on which houses fought for which
side. But for now, old Sir Eustace
will tell us why he did so. Why lad?
You ask me why? Because Damon was the better
man. The old King saw it too.
He gave the sword to Damon Blackfyre, the Sword of Egon the
Conqueror, the blade that every Targaryen king had wielded since
the Conquest. He put that sword in Damon's
hand the day he knighted him, a boy of 12.
We get the sense a lot of people felt this way about Damon, about
the sword, about what it meant, about being the better man.
But how honest were they being with themselves?
This is not a good reason to rebel.
Not in my opinion, anyway. There was no tyranny, no
oppression. Damon wasn't treated unfairly.
Even arguably, there's a there's a good more.
Here's another good opportunity for a comparison to A Song of
Ice and Pyre proper. Damon has several things in
common with Robert Baratheon, as we said at the beginning of this
episode. In this spot, he's more like
Renly, A charismatic guy with a claim clearly trumped by a close
relative. For both Renly Baratheon and
Damon Blackfyre, popularity trumped the rule of law.
People loved these two way more than they loved Stannis and
Deron, respectively. So, Tywin, you're wrong.
Love is stronger than fear, man. As an aside, Stannis actually
understood this. He knew love was better than
respect or fear, but he knew no one loved him.
And you can't be what you're not.
You can't make people love you. But look at their examples.
It's it's really interesting. It's another example of George
really making sure all these details fit to.
So let's look at that. Stannis had Robert to see the
power of charisma first hand. All his life he lived in that
shadow. Meanwhile, Tywin's father tried
to be loved but turned out to be an ultra disgrace, especially
from Tywin's point of view. Now who else?
Things like Tywin in this regard, Tywin's descendants,
Joffrey, Cersei, etcetera. They both have said things
almost exactly like this. Now of course they got that from
Tywin. Despite this love everyone had
for Damon, it's generally a positive thing to love somebody.
Love is generally a positive emotion, but it sometimes it can
lead you to do things that are wrong or unfortunate.
So discussion here on the thoughts of black fire
supporters and their unattractive themes that I see
here. Ambition is not a good reason to
challenge the throne. Racism of the Dornish, not a
good reason to challenge the throne, not a good reason to to
over to usurp the throne. Disliking peace, Horrible reason
to overthrow the king in my opinion.
So they didn't have justice or law on their side, isn't that?
Do you agree with that, Stephen? Well, I mean, I think the the
the way I look at it is more it's a sense of grievances
boiling over that, you know, if you look at the arguably boiling
over for the better part of 300 years, you know, that the
Targaryens had come in and completely rearranged a
political order that had existed for thousands.
And that leads to a lot of discontent now.
I mean, in terms of, you know, justice injustice, Well, think
about Sir Eustis Osgre, right? To him, losing Cold Moat was an
injustice, right? Losing the title of, you know,
Warden of the North March wasn't injustice.
That's the kind of thing that we're talking about because
we're we're dealing with a feudal political structure.
Ultimately, you know, questions of justice come down to these
very personal, you know, material concerns.
They're who's got what castle with what belongs to whom,
because everything belongs to someone.
You can't give someone anything without taking it away from
someone 1st and that creates sets of winners and losers.
So you know all of those, you know, scummy, you know,
ambitious types who had who had profited from Hagon the fourth,
Well, their kids are not going to say, well, my dad was scummy,
ergo I don't deserve to have. Yeah, they're going to double
down, Yeah. My inheritance, They're going to
say, hell no. Yeah.
They're going to say, you know, by all the laws of Westeros,
that's my castle. I'm going to take it back, you
know. And if you look, you know,
throughout the history of the Middle Ages, you know, all of
these lordly rebellions, they're all driven by this deep sense of
grievance over those kind of local issues.
And especially given that, you know, as we'll talk about during
the Red Grass episode, that a lot of his supporters for these
second best houses who were in some ways reacting to the the
very existence of the Lord Paramountcy system and sort of
saying, why is it them and not me?
You know, is that a question of justice?
I mean, are the Lannisters being in charge more just than the the
reigns or, you know, the Casterlys for that matter?
You know, the Tyrells didn't gain power particularly in a
just fashion. And that builds up resentment
from the Oak Hearts and the Hightowers and everyone else.
So I think it's, I think it's very complicated.
I think in in some circumstances, you know, justice
is in the eye of the beholder. That's true.
You're that's a great point. That's a very great point and
it's it's all about it. And it goes to show that what
Damon's supporters believed and what Darren's supporters
believed about Damon's supporters were very different.
There are the Damon supporters thought they were doing
something just Deron supporters are like, look at these assholes
just going after and purely motivated by ambition and this
hero worship. And they they probably just were
disgusted by the whole thing. And we can see that point of
view or at least competing point of view from what Sir used to
said from Egg's response in that conversation where he quotes his
own father Makar. My father says that was because
Damon was a swordsman and Deron never was, said Egg.
Why give a horse to a man who cannot ride?
The sword was not the Kingdom, he says.
We get the sense that this is also how a lot of people felt,
just how a lot of people agreed with Sir Eustis.
A lot of people are going to agree with Makar Slash Egg here.
Why did this sword become such a big deal all of a sudden?
You act like it's important that Aegon gave it to Damon, but we
say the opposite. The fact that he gave it away to
a bastard while never setting aside Darren in the line of
succession argues that the sword is not that important.
This is the same guy that gave dragon eggs away for sex.
You can't possibly tell me this is meaningful, but Damon's
supporters thoroughly disagreed with that line of thinking, so
that's why it came down to fighting, I suppose.
So, regardless of the truth or justice of his cause or lack
thereof, didn't stop Damon's adherence.
When King Damon, the first Black Fire was crowned in 196, he had
many supporters. In this manner did the first
Blackfyre Rebellion begin in the year 196 AC, reversing the
colors of the traditional Targaryen arms to show a black
dragon on a red field. The rebels declared for Princess
Dana's bastard son Damon Blackfyre, first of his name,
proclaiming him the eldest true son of King Agon the 4th and his
half brother Darren the bastard. Calling Darren a bastard was
necessary, and so it's not to be seen as pure Ursupation.
But of course, we know that Darren's supporters knew that
for what? It was propaganda, and Damon's
supporters believed it. Well, most of them probably did.
The ambitious ones were just, yeah, this is going to get me
what I want. Now, that also might explain
some of the harshness that comes after the war.
And they're like, well, you jerks, look at what you did to
the realm. You tore everything apart for
this man's vanity, for your own ambition.
Certainly Blood Raven felt that way.
Some of the others wanted the penalties imposed on these folks
to be a little mild, but that's something to discuss later.
Now that conversation between Egg and Sir Eustace comes from
The Sworn Sword, I particularly enjoy the audio book version of
this one as the reader, Graham Malcolm, not Reuter Trice, does
a great job with Sir Eustace's voice when he speaks of Damon.
You can feel the change in his voice as he laments what could
have been for himself, his sons, and his beloved King Damon.
Go to historyofwesteros.com Click on the link to the right
to get a free 30 day audible.com audiobook trial.
It comes with one free download that you get to keep even if you
don't keep your subscription. The Swarm Sword makes an
excellent choice. It's small, it's short, it's not
a big investment of time. It's a great way to see if you
like the audiobook experience and it's got the most
information on the Blackfyre rebellions of all the sources,
save perhaps the World of Ice and Fire, which is also
available on Audible as an audio download.
It's also a great choice for that one free download.
So again, history of westeros.com Audible trial link
on the right to get started. OK, we're going to close out
this episode. We had a few other things
planned for it, but we plan to be flexible.
So this last part, which is the legacy of Damon Blackfyre, we're
going to save that for after the red grass field action.
It will be in the red grass field episode, to be clear, But
after the action is done, a good spot for it.
I want to thank Steven for being our guest today.
Really excellent discussion. Steven, thanks again.
My pleasure. Tell everybody where to find you
again. You can find me at
racefortheironthrone.wordpress.com. Awesome.
And of course, they'll find you again here for the Red Grass
Field episode, which we're really looking forward to.
Thanks also to Jesse Koal for the cover of our excellent theme
song originally by Joey Townsend.
Jesse, you did a great job. Really happy to include this.
It's always awesome to include things from the fandom, from our
own fans, as well as the Song of Ice and Fire fandom in our show.
Really appreciative of that so that we could put this up here
for you. So we need to go through our
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He came to play the game with us at Dragon Con a few weeks ago.
Great time. The winner was House Lannister,
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We were defeated. I was House Aaron, I was close
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As we were setting up the game and explaining the rules, it
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He only, of course he listened to us on audio, not on YouTube,
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listener. Always fun to meet people out in
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Fate. Now remember folks, Patreon has
a messaging system. Some of you guys signed up to
pledge to us and we responded to you trying to get some of your
information, thanking you. And we didn't get responses
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we responded to you. And hopefully you didn't feel
like we just left you hanging. We didn't.
So thanks also to queen of the timeline, Rainey's Targaryen.
She corrected me on several dates by about a year.
I was about a year off on a couple people's ages.
Really excellent to have those things tightened up.
She also posed some other interesting questions that aided
to our discussions in this episode.
And of course, thanks to Ashaya for being working behind the
scenes. She couldn't be in this episode,
which was disappointing to myself and some others.
But you know, life, life is life and things happen.
So she'll be back very soon now. Also, thanks again to Steven and
to everyone for listening. So we'll see you all next time,
folks. I want to close out with
something kind of unusual and interesting.
You. Some of you have heard me
advertise DraftKings through the site before.
And sports some people. Some of a Song of Ice and Fire
fan who does not give a crap about sports.
And I get that. This is something different.
Now DraftKings is doing League of Legends drafting.
Whoa. They're getting into E gaming.
This is just the start. They're going to do other games.
They're going to be allowing you.
Tell me when they do Hearthstone.
Yeah, I imagine Hearthstone is coming.
So that's pretty cool. That's and it's also a lot more
relevant to the Song of Ice and Fire fandom, where sports is not
such a great connector. But but if you're interested in
drafting from a sports perspective, because I can't
explain how the League of Lessons drafting works, it was
literally announced today that it's going live, so I couldn't
tell you a thing about it. I will report back for a future
ad as to what what the deal is. I think it's going to be pretty
cool. It's a fun idea.
Something outside of sports for sure.
I, I, I'm OK, I like baseball, I like football, but I prefer
games. I prefer fantasy games
particularly. So this is very exciting to me.
But if you do like sports, DraftKings has literally has
first places in their NFL prizes of 1 to $2,000,000.
I know someone personally that won $2,000,000 on DraftKings or
$1 million on DraftKings last year.
Holy crap, that was kind of life changing money for him.
Yeah. Anyway, you can sign up for
DraftKings through History of Westeros bottom right corner
DraftKings link. If you sign up and deposit, you
will get a free $20 ticket to enter a tournament of any kind,
including those NFL tournaments which have these 1 1/2 to
$2,000,000 first prizes. Fun stuff, even if you're not a
big football fan. It's it's the idea of being able
to win $2,000,000 off of a $20 entry fee.
It's kind of crazy. So check that out if you're
interested and we will see you all next time.
Thanks for tuning into History of Westeros.
Thanks again, Steven Valar Morgulis.