Prince Baylor Targaryen, AKA Baylor Break Spear.
A hero, a legend, beloved and accomplished, and all the more
memorable because he died well before his time.
And that death left a huge hole in the Seven Kingdoms.
Though his father was a good king, he was called Deron the
Good, after all. The realm looked forward to the
day when Baylor would take his place.
They weren't, you know, eager for Deron to die.
But the outlook for the Seven Kingdoms had rarely been so
upbeat. The future was very bright.
There was a sense of optimism knowing he was next.
You have a good king, followed by someone else who seems to be
able to fill his shoes well. 2 kings in a row of good quality,
maybe even a good one followed by a great one, was what some
people saw coming. Rarely have we seen such a
thing, if ever it was needed. Following the terrible rule of
Baylor's grandfather Aegon the Unworthy, and the strangeness of
his own namesake, Baylor the Blesseds time not long before.
Not to mention Baylor the Blesseds older brother Daron the
First, the young dragon who had led the realm into failed wars
with Dorn. Baylor breaks Beer, on the other
hand, had gained a reputation in the first Blackfyre Rebellion,
as a defender of the realm, as a victor over rebels, as a man who
helped turn the realm to peace rather casting it into war.
By the way, it's awfully confusing that we have Deron,
Baylor, then Deron, and then Baylor.
They're basically Yikes. I had to check my notes several
times, yeah. Yeah, it's no wonder these
characters always have their nicknames included, because
that's what you wouldn't know which one they are.
But the era Baylor was born into is 1.
We've said many times it falls amongst the most interesting
created by George for Westeros with the Dance already on TV
along with the Song of Ice and fires those versions.
It's arguably the most well developed era that isn't yet on
TVI say yet because, well, at least some of it will be on TV
through the Night of the Seven Kingdoms adaptation.
So we will see Baylor on screen. Of course, that will only be a
small snippet at the end of his life, and he deserves more.
So today we will cover his early life.
Think of how beloved he was, how terrible his loss was throughout
the realm, how deeply that was felt, and realize to have that
reputation, for that loss to have been felt so greatly.
He must have been quite a guy to have all that regard in the 1st
place. But not everyone loved him,
though he was a great warrior. He favored peace like his
namesake. But peace isn't always popular
in Marshall Westeros society and some people don't like too much
perfection that can engender jealousy or envy.
Well I guess jealousy and envy are pretty similar.
Others just misliked how Dornish he looked though.
So popular but also hated. A perfect Prince but also one
who faced racial animosity. Charismatic, but also someone
who may be engendered jealousy here and there.
Other people wanted to be like him.
Other people wanted him to die. So you know, a lot of
dichotomies here. And we'll explore all that and
more on this episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Hello and welcome everybody back with another fun historical
character study today. You excited for this one, Sean?
You got a beverage ready for you.
Look at that brands. You get the Branzig shirt on
last week you said you forgot to wear it this week.
Here we go. Yeah, trying to make up for it.
It was more fitting for the the Ned Stark, Ned Stark youth
episode, I think, but I don't think I've worn it on stream
yet. So here we go and I am excited.
I do have a beverage here. I found a bang.
I found a Blue Raz bang at the grocery store.
So I snagged it up, mixed it with the Raspberry sparkling ice
and the protein make drink so you could.
Say we're razzed today, huh? It's a purplish drink, which I
think is fitting for Targaryens. It's like the, it's like their
eye color, you know, there's a variety of purples that come in
their eyes and I'm not sure what purple that is, but it's more of
a medium purple. I think about a pale purple, so
I didn't want to interrupt your your intro, but I had a couple
thoughts, a couple shapes or whatever it is the.
Course of it, yeah. Yeah, at the beginning you said
that his death left a huge hole in the Seven Kingdoms.
Also left a huge hole in his head.
True, a little more sentimental, though, I want to point out that
the feeling of loss that you point out that the Kingdom had,
you know, that this sort of like optimism that people had for
what a great person and leader and everything that he was and a
terrible loss that was to individual people close to him,
into the realm as a whole, but also to the reader.
When you read that scene, it's so devastating.
I was to me, I imagine most people were really one of the
saddest moments in the whole story.
So I I think it that's worth noting too.
I don't know if that's like a worst level or a metal level,
but but a level I think that's worth considering.
I agree. I mean, that's why I.
Thought, I thought. It was worth mentioning right
away, even though we're not going to get to that part of his
life in episode 1, you know, but it's the, it's spoiler alert.
It's the right way to start because, you know, his tragic
death is is, is you're right. That is part of why he's so
remembered. And the way George wrote it is
particularly memorable and hits hard.
So yeah, that's part of why I think he's a he's a big part of
why he's compelling figure. The way he died just kind of
permanently sets it in stone like that.
So yeah, everybody welcome. We're as I just said, this is a
two-part episode. We're going to take plenty of
time describing him. The early life is very full.
We're going to get to up about the point where he earns his
nickname. So it's a pretty apartment place
to stop. I think it sets up the Black
Fire rebellions later. Good shout out to our friend
Good Queen. ali.tumblr.com is her blog.
That's Anina's blog of course, and we usually shout out the
most recent post, but we shouted out the most recent post a few
days ago. So I'm going to go back and
point to 1 before that, which is a cool what if question.
What if Jamie had discovered some of the ways that Robert had
been treating Cersei and his lost his temper and and killed
him? What would have happened?
Would Tywin have been able to protect him from those
consequences as he was protected from the consequences of killing
Aries, which you know, the double king.
So he's like, look, he's already double king.
So he can do that. That's who is his name, right?
He can do that. So if anyone could save Jamie
from those consequences, it would be Tywin.
So that is an interesting question.
So you'll have to check out good queenalley.tumblr.com for Nina's
take on that. This episode was voted on by
patrons. Baylor got 39% of the vote.
Visenya got 30%. Lyman the Sea Lion, the Last
King of the Hightower got 16%, and so did Maria the Yellow
Toad. So you want to join Patreon and
get involved in the voting? Well, I highly encourage it as
well. As usual, if the episode ends
and you are still feeling like you want to stay in Westeros,
you still want to be where you've been here and enjoy
further stories, Well, we've got you covered with suggestions for
topics related to this one. That'll be at the end of the
episode along with the answer to this trivia question, which is
George loves alliteration and nicknames.
It makes sense. Alliterative nicknames are more
memorable. That's true.
In real life, sometimes you get a nickname and doesn't stick
because it's just not snappy enough.
But some names that they're fun to say, that they're memorable,
well, they stick. Baylor Breaks Beer is a good
example. His namesake, Baylor the
Blessed, they have the Double B sound.
Or Baylor the Blessed's alternate, less flattering
nickname. Baylor the Befuddled.
Baylor Breaks Beer didn't have a mocking name that I know of.
That just goes to show it says a little something about him
currently living. A Song of Ice and Fire character
is named Baylor and they also have two nicknames. 1 is
compliment, one is mocking just like this.
What are those nicknames? Yes, yes this has been a long
time coming. It's always been a bit of a
missing piece from our long ago created Black Fire series, which
focused on the Black fires, but not entirely.
We did one episode on Deron himself, Deron the good Baylor's
father. So this is probably almost
certainly the most important character from that time period
that we didn't give a dedicated episode to.
And now we're going to make up for that lack by doing 2
episodes on him. And that's fitting because
there's that much to say, which further highlights how much he's
deserved an episode for a while. And in terms of tone, this
episode will feel a bit like the Eamon episode, which is also two
parts. A lot of talk about his early
life because the time period he grew up in was so interesting.
This is about 30-4 years later. That's Eamonn and Baila were
born 34 years apart. We talked in the Eamonn episode
about how he would have been a inspiration, a figure for other
boys of martial nature, especially other Targaryens, to
be like. And arguably Baylor is the one
who most succeeded in being like the Dragon Knight.
I say that with a few caveats because we don't fully know what
the Dragon Knight was like. In some ways, there's a lot of
unknowns there, and the same goes for Baylor.
But what we do know is very positive.
It's, it's something I have to remind myself sometimes that I
think of this as just being like a completely different time
period, you know, this Dunkin egg time period.
I think it's completely different from the Game of
Thrones, you know, the main series time period, and each of
them are completely different from the Dance of Dragon time
periods. I think of them as just being
completely removed and separated from each other.
But there are contiguous characters.
It's not that far removed. You know, it's neat.
It's it's weird to think about that sometimes.
Yeah, and of course this is just like the Eamon episode as well.
We don't have Fire and blood to help us cuz Fire and Blood
covers the period right before that.
In fact, as we mentioned at the time, Fire and Blood basically
ends with the birth of Aegon and Amon.
So let's get started here. His birth was in 170 during the
final year of Baylor, the Blessed reign.
Technically Baylor reign into 171, but it was literally like a
week or two into the year that he lives.
So basically 170 was his final year.
Technically 171 was as first born to King Dara or Prince
Deron, later King Deron. He was immediately pretty high
in the line of succession. Baylor the first was King, his
uncle Viserys was next, then Aegon who became Aegon the
Unworthy, then Deron, then baby Baylor.
That's a straight line right? That would only change if Baylor
had kids. But Baylor died really soon
after our Baylor was born. By the time Baylor was 2, he
would have already moved from fifth in line to third in line
because Baylor the blessed died. And then Viserys, too, ruled
less than two years. So things change pretty quickly.
So among other things, he was expected to be a king one day
from very early on, Nina says. Although I don't know to what
extent the succession question was certain at the moment of his
birth that King Baylor did have the three sisters.
And while the dance hadn't exactly validated that a woman
could rule as queen, it wasn't also exactly settled either.
Maybe it became settled over time.
As more and more time passed and more and more women have been
passed over. It's arguably still not settled.
I mean, these, these are Rainiers grandchildren we're
talking about here. So it's it's we can't assume
that everyone had just been OK. Women don't get to inherit
anymore. That's it, period.
It probably probably was not the sentiment, even if some people
did feel that way, even if a lot of people felt that way.
Nor do we know what Baylor himself had intended for the
succession because he knew he didn't have any sons or
daughters. What did he want?
It was never known. Or maybe it was hidden by
Viserys after his death. After Baylor's death, maybe they
kept his his will on the down low.
Maybe a little something like what Cersei tried to pull off.
But but in this case it would have been more successful in
terms of keeping it under wraps. Either way, we don't know what
Baylor would have wanted and if it would have gone the same way.
So it's the point being we can't be entirely clear on what the
discussion looked like. But no matter what, Baylor would
have looked like a strong candidate, and even more so
after Baylor and the saris were dead.
But I remember talking about the idea that because it seemed like
Ned and branded his brother Rickard, we're kind of
progressive. They were doing some some very
non standard things given the tradition of of the time that
that starts especially. But the quote UN quote
traditions of the Targaryens in this more modern time are even
less established. And there was even the point I
think we're making in that episode was that there have been
a lot of other changes recently, just the Dragons being gone by
itself, like some precedent that might have been set in some some
council a few years ago. You can't really expect that to
hold true when the Dragons go away and it's all the other
changes that have come. Maybe is a default that that
certainly seems to be how it went.
But, but I, I, I agree with you at that time, it's it's not an
absolute by any means. And of course, there had also
been the gradual shifting within the Targaryen family culturally
towards more matters of the Faith, partly because of King
Baylor and a few others. Daron himself the father of
Baylor Break Spear was was very pious.
And joining with Dorn who don't have this first son birthright
thing going on, which is another angle of shifting that can
happen. Yeah, and the joining with Dorn
is a big part of what's going to happen in this episode today.
That, that whole way that plays out during this as well as on
top of that, we have the, the fact that it's not just a
cultural shift because the Dragons are gone and they're
getting more into the matters of faith.
It's also a power thing, as we discussed in the Eamon episode
as well. That's they, they leaned more
into that. For someone like Eamon, it was
more heartfelt. But for some Targaryens, it was
just a matter of maintaining power.
Like what we need to be cozying up to the faith more because we
need their, their power, their authority level that we no
longer have with the Dragons. We need their endorsement more
than ever. And that means playing along,
being part of the faith, being the Champions of the faith,
showing that they're at the top of that ladder.
And Daron was a big believer in Baylor the Blessed's faith and
virtues. So he very likely passed that on
to the son he named after Baylor, the Blessed, right
before Baylor was even dead. So, and recall much later at the
end of this episode, we're going to get to this moment.
Daron's going to say, Baylor, your work is done like in front
of the crowd very memorably when Dorne officially joins the
Kingdom through marriage. So he really sees himself as
carrying on Baylor's works. And of course, he's going to
impart a lot of that to the son he named after that very king,
right? That seems very straightforward.
Darren's wife, of course, was a Martel, Mariah Martel.
That's important, too. They're bringing Dorne into the
realm. This is his wife.
And of course, Baylor is half Dornish, so that's huge, but
also part of why people didn't like him.
Some people didn't like him because he was Dornish.
Now it was also this peace treaty that King Baylor made in
the 1st place that allowed this Prince, the Prince of Dorn, to
make these arrangements in the 1st place.
And then the later second marriage between Darren's sister
Daenerys and Maron Martel himself.
So this first marriage between Daron and Mariah set up the
second one and all these other things in between made that even
stronger, Nina writes. It's maybe a little bit of an
insult or push back against Aegon the Unworthy.
Daron's naming his son Baylor is choosing the figure that is so
much unlike his own father. And this is relevant in a lot of
ways because Aegon, of course, spends so much of his reign
trying to undermine Deron, saying, oh, you're not really my
son, you're the son of the Dragon Knight trying to under
which of course is very relevant today because trying to cancel
Deron's inheritance would be cancelling Baylor's as well.
Now, no one calls Baylor a bastard because there's no
question that Deron and Mariah were married.
That was a huge public marriage and there's no question about
their parentage. But if Darren's cut out of the
line of succession, then Baylor would be too.
Even being true born now, the event that actually sort of
quote took King Baylor's life was when Damon Waters was born,
AKA Damon Blackfyre. He was of course born to Dana
the Defiant, who would have been Baylor King Baylor's wife had he
not set her aside. Technically, as I said, he died
in 171 because he fasted in response to Damon Waters, his
birth. And that fast, which was 40 days
long, spanned the end of the year into the beginning of the
next year. Now, of course, there's debate
other whether the fast killed him or whether Viserys actually
poisoned him for making crazy decisions about attacking the
North and the Iron Islands and things like that.
So it was a pretty big deal. And either way, the timing was
important, Nina says. I wonder what King Baylor
thought of this infant name saying he didn't have much time
to think about it because he was only alive for a few months.
Was he glad to see the peace peace plan coming into into
play? Because they needed these
marriages and these children to be born in order for this to
work. Like if you have a marriage to
Dorn and it produces no children, well, it's not going
to work nearly as well, right? If you have a Dornish, half
Dornish, half Targaryen Prince that ascends to the throne, that
is a much better result for this plan than just a marriage that
produces no children. And then maybe you're back to
square one because no longer a marriage, the marriage is no
longer like holding things together.
If you have children and a family, well, that's a big deal
to hold the peace. So he probably thought pretty
well of that, but then immediately became disappointed
or sad or whatever the emotion was that led him to fast for 40
days and then die. I can't really put myself in
that headspace so I'm just like, your guess is as good as mine
y'all? Whatever he thought at the
beginning of that fast would not have necessarily been the same
or rational after 20 days, you know?
Yeah, that's true. Regardless, this is quite a
setup. You have Baylor, an infant
basically are very young when his namesake died, so he never
really knew him but certainly lived in his shadow.
And Damon Blackfyre, who I, you know, joke about as being the
killer of Baylor the Blessed, killing baby, killing kings as a
baby from the cradle. He's born only like a couple
months after. These two were just constantly
compared throughout their life. And this is part of why they're
born at the same time, basically in the same era, at the same
court, with a lot of the same influences.
Around them and yeah, and it just goes from there.
So what a great start. What an interesting start.
And they're the only two that can measure up to each other in
terms of genetic lottery because they both just hit the jackpot
with being big and strong and smart and really good looking.
And of course, Baylor's birth was even better than Damon's.
But they both had really high birth, excellent, near perfect
Princess, born within months of each other, but with a lot of
contrast, despite the high quality, quote, UN quote of both
of them. They're both physically great,
but they're pretty different. Damon actually had the silver
hair and purple eyes. Baylor looked more Martel.
And yeah, even though they're both Princess, I don't know if
you you would, they're still pretty far apart in terms of the
line of succession and the way they're viewed because of their
upbringing. Like 1's a bastard, but one's
got 2 Targaryen parents, the same one who's the bastard and
the on the other hand, the other was higher in the line of
succession, but he looks doesn't look like a Targaryen.
And yeah, so it's a lot of just comparable extreme qualities
here. It's pretty interesting.
You can see why it would get competitive or maybe not.
This is probably too complex of a question.
How far apart were they in the line of succession?
How far down would it have to go?
That would be a lot of true born Targaryens would have had to
die. And since Baylor ended up with a
lot of brothers and then his kid, he had kids and then his
brothers had kids. I mean his youngest brother with
Makar, and that's where Egg and Eamon and another Deron and an
Areon all came from. So yeah.
Even before that, I don't know if it makes it more or less
complicated, but like at birth, how far separated was Damon?
Well, Aegon, it's super. It is complicated because Damon
wasn't acknowledged as Aegon's at first.
Dana the Defiant wouldn't admit who the father was until much
later. So they wouldn't have seen him
in the line of succession like, at all necessarily.
And that's like he was the only one, literally the only male of
Targaryen blood left potentially even then, because even because
of like a year later, Agor was born.
Now, Agor is younger than the Damon.
This is bitter steel we're talking about.
Whoever he knew he was a Aegon the Unworthy son.
Even though Damon was older, Agor was the one that would have
been in the spotlight because he was the oldest acknowledged
bastard son of Aegon when that that state of affairs was for
several years. So yeah, so it is complicated.
Like maybe again, still probably complicated, but say at the
point that Aegon legitimize the bastards.
Yeah, then. He all the brothers wouldn't
have been born yet. All the sons and brothers
wouldn't have been born yet. But even still it would have
been like 5 deeper, 20 deeper. It's tricky too, because when
you legitimize someone, do they just come in line as of where
their age is or do they fall to the back of the line or the of
the ones who were born Targaryen?
It's it's that's unclear too, because technically he was still
born after Baylor by by like a couple of months.
So he would still have been behind Baylor.
But if you want to get it down to that level, if he was
legitimate and the legitimatization counted, he
would be right behind Baylor until Baylor had kids of his own
right. So he would have come before
Baylor's younger brothers, Aries and Regal and then Makar, two of
whom did eventually inherit the throne.
So yeah. So maybe more of a claim.
Not that Robert Brathen ever tried to make this claim, but he
would have had more claim than Robert had as a Targaryen right.
Maybe, yeah. At that point, at that point,
yeah, maybe less down the road. Once all the kids and brothers
are born, then he has less claims.
Yeah, I guess that's true because because Damon, if we're
still saying he's legitimized, then yes, he would be ahead of
someone like Robert who's got a cousin relationship, just in
cousinship. Yeah.
So yeah, Yeah, it does get tricky and see why these things
often get decided by sorts instead of and why they want the
suggestion to be clear. It's like, well, we can't even
have questions. Yeah, so.
And of course, who caused so many questions?
Hang on the unworthy. He made he.
Instead of making the line secure, the king himself set it
up to be unstable. Not just by questioning his own
son's parentage, but by bestowing black fire on his
bastard son Damon, and setting all that up.
But but we're not to that. Having a bunch of bastard sons
in the 1st place. Also.
He just did it. He just.
The smorgasbord of things you're not supposed to do this game.
He did them all. He was really good about doing
the the most of the worst things possible.
Is the worst best king? Best, worst king.
You got to be proud of something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's the winner.
Yeah. So as much as we're making
comparisons to Baylor and Damon here and how easy those
comparisons flow, you got to think they were being made in
world, too. I mean, we talk like people love
to gossip. These are the two most famous
Princess. Maybe not when they were first
born, but even this to the stories of their birth would be
worthy of gossip. Like you hear the new Prince was
born and the king starved to death over it and the other ones
named after him like whoa, you know all.
But did you hear his hair is brown?
You know, it's like, oh, you know, and the other one, we
don't know who's dad is they won't admit it's probably Aegon,
but we, you know, could be someone else, you know, So
people already gossiping about them when they're babies, like
this is how their life started. So these are in terms of
comparing the lives of like human beings to other human
beings. These, these, these people are
very incomparable because except to each other, because there's
just very people have lives like this.
This is like having a family that's already famous, it's
already on TV all the time, and then you have babies on it with
strange circumstances with drama surrounding it and death
surrounding it. And like, yeah, people are going
to talk about that a lot. So a huge open question, though.
And this is something that we just can't possibly know until
maybe some screenwriter or George or something, someone
decides someday if this ever hits the screen or is is more
stories are written about it. George May writes about this in
Fire and Blood, for example. That's perhaps one of the most
likely. Fire and Blood, too, that is.
What did Damon and Baylor think of each other?
We know that plenty of people would pit them against each
other through gossip and and through expectations and just
through being similar. But what did they actually
think? Were they competitive of each
other? I ask that now, even though they
couldn't have possibly felt that way when they were babies, but
since they were already set up this way when they were babies,
it was like the world they were born into.
Or maybe almost expected them to be competitive, or maybe to
expect them to work really well together.
I'm not entirely sure. Ultimately, it would come down
to them, even though there would be other people, whatever other
people say and whatever they gossip about, the lots would
come down to how they actually felt about each other and how
they behaved in public toward each other, which is not
necessarily how they really felt because they were both known to
be very chivalrous. So if they sort of hated one
another, they might not have shown it.
They might have kept that under wraps, you know, because it's
this is an era where you're supposed to like behave really
well towards your opponents. And chivalry was particularly
high on the list of of how to behave.
You know, it's always been relatively important in the time
of the Targaryens, but more so now because of the increased
impetus on piety and following the Seven.
So that is important set up, even though a lot of it doesn't
play out till they're older. Let's talk about what it was
actually like the year they were born, the Red Keep circa 17171.
Because as impressive as young Baylor and young Damon and
eventually Agor and Brendan, who were born not too long after
this, it was Amon the Dragon Knight who was the one
recognizes the finest knight in the realm.
He would be the road map, the guy to emulate.
And this is kind of towards the end of his career because he's
going to die young ish too. Amon died around 4344.
So yeah. So Amon would have been about 10
years before that now, so about 3433 peak of his prowess before
he started to get older. And while his legend is still
fresh, he'd been to Dorn. He had, you know, he had his
fancy helmet. He had been given Dark Sister.
He had his knighthood from a young age.
Yeah. No, there's pretty much no
doubt. This was the guy that they want
to emulate, especially because Baylor's namesake was rescued by
him from the pit of Vipers. I mean that story they would all
grow up here in that one amongst like that's like a top five
story they grew up hearing. I could I'd feel confident with
that guess because what a great story and it was recent.
I mean, let's be honest, that's crazy.
That story. It's amazing and it's kind of
interesting, right, because Baylor and Damon seem
chivalrous, as I say, but agor bitter steal.
Nah, not so much. Not very chivalrous and neither
did Brendan blood Raven. Not very chivalrous either.
Not like a bad guy, but not not a chivalrous guy either.
And so that's kind of interesting.
Maybe the guys who were a little closer to the legend of Eamon,
or maybe just for other reasons, story reasons, random reasons.
But it is interesting that the ones who came along a little bit
later didn't have this quality while these ones dead.
Yeah. And they were the ones closest
to achieving Eamon's both level of fame and skill.
And again, the warrior culture aspect was at a high point as
well. It wasn't just a piety that was
at a high point, it was the proving that they could still
rule without Dragons. So it's really important for
them to showcase their Marshall abilities like Darren the young
dragon tried to do by invading Dorn, which he brought Eamon
along with him. Smart choice.
I mean, kind of an obvious choice, but it made a big
difference. Worth noting that Baylor and
Damon were such good warriors it might over shadow the fact that
Brendan and Bittersteel were pretty good warriors too, right?
They weren't like the greatest, but, but they just happened to
be competing with the greatest. And they were, like we pointed
out with Ned and Brandon, doesn't matter.
Like you're a little bit younger and that means everything at
that age because one or two years is a big deal when you're
that young. Like the difference between 12
and 10 is huge in terms of your physical development, especially
when you have two guys who are developing faster than normal.
So they're like, yeah, like Agor did develop faster than normal
too, but those other guys had a two year head start and they
were probably a little better at the finish line anyway.
And Brendan was a little small, but he wasn't a big robust guy.
He was good at fighting, but he was more quick than strong.
Now the saris the Second probably had a relatively smooth
transition to power because he had been Hand, but of course
that short period of stability would be so.
It was so early in Baylor break Spears life that he would hardly
know about it, hardly remember it, nor would he actually
remember much of King Viserys the Second, his great
grandfather, because he died when he was about two.
Nina wonders whether his mother, Mariah Martel would have had
opinions on the accession of Viserys the Second on on one
hand, Viserys becoming king put her husband and now her son on
the path of the throne. She was now on track to become
queen, which is a good development for the Martel's,
you would think. And from Dorn's political
position. However, to become king, Viserys
had to disinherit his nieces, right?
Which as we just said, maybe wasn't a settled way of doing
things just yet. And so that rankles if you're
from Dorn, where women aren't passed over at all.
So that's like a big kind of a big deal.
She may have been expecting that, but it may not.
Another wrinkle to throw into this whole matter of succession
and and women inheritance is that we have garnish mixed in
here now and they expect women to inherit and they might push
for that rule to be re established or say, hey, we like
it's worked for us really well. Why not have y'all do it here?
It also has prevented a lot of civil war because it isn't just
about gender equity. It's about avoiding war because
the line of succession is a lot clearer when you don't skip
people. So there's a lot of possible
feelings and attitudes that could have that could be thrown
into the the mix to the the blender of of court feelings
these days and what attitudes were being espoused by different
people. And this is what Daylor and
Damon would have grown up in. It's very important to consider
because later Deron's proximity to Dorne and Daylor's Dornish
blood will be a huge point of fixation for the opposition.
The rebel party that forms that eventually becomes the Black
Dragons of this era. Not to be confused with the
Black Dragons of the Dance era. They don't have anything in
common other than that color and the fact that they were
competing for the Iron Throne. That's a pretty big deal.
So much of this early upbringing came during the reign of his
grandfather, and the Princess in the in the Maiden Vault would
have been freed upon the death of Baylor 2.
So those three would also have been around during Baylor's
upbringing. And those are his ants.
So they would, you know, talk to him, help be part of the village
that raised the child sort of thing.
They might have liked him because he's, you know, next in
line or or eventually in line. And who knows what they thought
of him. There's three very different
women here. Dana the Defiant may not have
liked him because she's the mother of Damon Blackfyre and
looks at him as someone that took her place in the line of
succession. But and her sisters might have
felt similarly. On the other hand, Rayna was
were very pious and they have favored the the pious faction of
Targaryens rather than her side of things.
But these are pure guesses and probably didn't have a huge
impact on Baylor all together, but just worth mentioning.
Sure. A couple thoughts here.
In the same way you were wondering earlier about and
maybe we're constantly wondering about what relationship Baylor
and Damon had with each other. You know, it's also interesting
to think about how these women or other characters, you know,
we're talking about these women at this moment, you know, being
freed. How how do they feel?
And how would they communicate that to Baylor and other people?
Like they were just put in jail pretty much just because they
were women, right? But the person who did that to
them was on some level trying to do the right thing and starved
himself to death doing so. So do they come out of that like
angry? Do they want vengeance?
Do they find understanding? Do they think they got
vengeance? Do they forgive him?
Do they preach forgiveness? Do they?
It's weird to think the types of different reactions and, and,
and lessons that someone might learn from that and how Baylor
might take it. And I feel like as a default,
he's a forgiving guy. He's a merciful guy.
He's not looking for vengeance. He's not looking.
You know, I wonder if they felt similarly and that rubbed off on
him. Maybe other people too.
Not true. Yeah, it's it's tricky.
Yeah, you it's it's hard to say you're right.
Like with such a wide variety of personalities and such a double
sided scenario, or you're right, Baylor, the blessed, he was
clearly believed in what he was doing, even though they they
wouldn't, couldn't, they couldn't have liked being locked
up too much. Although maybe Reyna wasn't so
so mad about it. Yeah, I mean, that's The thing
is they probably all had slightly different reactions
that someone might have been depressed about having gone
through that, and some might have been angry.
And yeah, Reyna might have been like, oh, it was for it was for
the best. It was right.
It was it was it. Was for the realm, yeah.
You know, they all might have had a very different reactions.
But and Elena is the one we haven't even barely mentioned.
She's the one that had the longest life.
It sounds like the most interesting of them.
She had so many different jobs and she was highly intelligent.
She's someone that would have been around.
She I mean, she outlived Baylor breaks beer.
Of course she outlived Baylor blessed all of those guys did.
But she someone will have to reconsider in Part 2 because she
would have been an adult and kind of a power behind the
throne running running master of coin through her like her
husband was master of coin, but she was the one who had the
skills. It was one of those like he's
the cover story. She's the one who's actually
doing the job. So Baylor, the breaks for his
hand to the king in that, you know, up until he died.
So very likely he was aware of Elena's competence, and they
would have had a lot of doings together, you know, as family
members and all. But it's entirely unclear what
those dealings were. Anyway, let's talk about Aegon
the Unworthy. He was named for Baylor, the
Blessed Aegon the Fourth was his grandfather.
So that's not the best thing to have this guy as your
grandfather. We had a good father, Darren,
the good, but a bad grandfather. Aegon ruled from 172 to 184,
which would be for Baylor and Damon Blackfire, their age 2 to
14 range. So a huge number of important
characters were born in this decade following Baylor and
Damon. It's like they kicked off the
wave of really important births in the year, in this decade of
170 to 179, the same year as Agor was born, which is 172,
Baylor's aunt Daenerys was born. Yeah, kind of weird to have your
aunt be younger than you. Not that weird for the
Targaryens. Nowhere near the most unusual
family relationship he'd have too, because, I mean, his
grandfather just kept having children, you know, with bastard
children. So.
Yeah. So Agor Brendan and Damon
Blackfriar, those are his uncles, technically.
Not like they're more like brothers, but in terms of actual
family structure, they were his uncles.
So he was also older than all his uncles and his one aunt
there. Yeah.
Very strange. And Baylor's brothers were born
over the next seven years as well.
We don't know exactly when, but in a fairly short period,
because seven years is pretty narrow for three births.
You know, Aries, Regal and Makar, right?
And in 175 S kind of in between that seven-year period, I guess
was when Brendan Bloodraven was born.
A huge number of important characters, huge number of
interesting characters, all within a short period of time.
At some point, you become aware of this.
Baylor's a young man. He's a young boy, a toddler.
At some point he's going to become aware of the fact that
his father and grandfather are constantly fighting.
And at some point he's going to learn and understand what it is
they're fighting about, right? He's not going to be able to
perceive that as like a three-year old.
Like, what are they? Why are dad and granddad always
arguing? He's not under.
He's not able to get it yet, right, but by maybe age 4567,
he's going to understand on some level what's happening.
And you got to figure that other kids his age would be able to
perceive it around the time he is.
Damon Blackfyre again, being one of them, although he's still
Damon Waters at that point. So you have Aegon of course,
constantly trying to undermine Daron and Daron trying to curb
his father, the King's worst behaviors, especially towards
Queen Naris, Daron's mother, which would be Baylor's
grandmother. So while his grandfather was a
crappy guy, his grandmother was excellent, very pious, very
sweet, very gentle, so someone he may have felt protective
over. So you could see pretty easily,
especially given how his personality comes out.
If he took sides at all as a young boy, it would take it
would be take his father and grandmother's side, especially
with Eamon the Dragon Knight, the heroic man, also taking his
grandmother's side. It's pretty easy to see who the
bad guy is, even from a young boy's perspective.
I wonder if he remembers Missy Blackwood.
Melissa Blackwood leaving around age 7 or 8 for him.
That would have been when that happens.
She was very popular and well loved at court, so her departure
might have been cause for, you know, him to.
I don't suppose he'd cry over it, but he might feel sad to
lose her. Even even nary's like her he
would be able to perceive that. So she was very popular at court
and of course it would be very hard for him not to have
remembered the ensuing incident with the next mistress of Aegon
the 4th, which was the Terrence 20, Bethany Bracken double or
triple execution and torturer scenario.
Still, Aegon throughout this this decade off and on tried to
disown Deron. Now that's the thing that would
really. As Baylor as a kid, he might
almost be a little confused. He's like, wait, they're trying
to argue that that dad, that you're the son of the dragon
knight, isn't that good? You know, he's like, well,
actually son, that means I would make me a bastard and mean that
I'm no longer in the line of succession to be king.
So it's not good in that sense. He's like might be a little torn
as a 7 year old trying to grasp that like, but but he's the
dragon knight. Like you want to be his son,
right? Like isn't that isn't that even
better? Like, it's like, well, son, I
see where you're coming from. However, you know, the seven
look very unkindly. It's another tough, difficult
conversation to have about children born out of wedlock and
using his grandfather, for example, look at all the harm,
look at all the problems our grandfather.
And this is before the legitimizations, before the
problems got really serious. Like, this was more like an
ongoing nuisance where as later it was like a legitimate threat
to the safety of the Kingdom. So yeah.
So there's a lot of things that had to be explained to Baylor, a
lot of things that you normal 6 and seven-year olds aren't
having to learn about. So yet another example of how
his upbringing was really the type that would make you grow up
quickly. You know, it was privileged for
sure, but also very like big on responsibility in in adult
scenarios. And may also have motivated him
to be a all around good person. He might have realized, like I
have a lot of challenges out in front of me.
You know, even these other great powerful, you know, people,
whether their positions or their ability as a night or whatever,
they're struggling. I've I've got to be at least as
good as them. You know, like there's going to
be some time when especially some of the things he's
witnessing, he thinks are wrong and maybe feels like someone
should have stopped it like that.
That's like maybe the fault of the Dragon Knight Amon the
Dragon Knight, right? That sometimes just he maybe
chose the wrong loyalty or whatever, right?
That if we're going to fault him, that's what it would be.
Baylor might have witnessed that and might have realized, like,
if I want to step up and stop the thing that I think is wrong,
I can't be a skinny little boy. I've got to be a big, strong
knight, you know, I can't have any character flaws for someone
to attack. I need to be fully righteous.
He I think he might have realized that I need to hit
every base if I'm going to fulfill the position that's in
front. Of me.
I like that. I like that idea a lot, Sean.
That's really good. Yeah.
And it fits as well because maybe more so than a lot of
courts, the the good guys and the bad guys would be clearer.
Yeah, some people it's not so clear with.
But like, when you compare Aegon the Unworthy to his own father
and his own grandmother, it's pretty clear who the good guys
are in this situation, right? Even for a young boy.
So he would emulate their behaviors and look at whatever
Aegon the Unworthy is doing as bad behavior, even if it's even
some of it's just stuff he did. And so he associates that as bad
behavior. The the big things like sleeping
around and drinking a lot, those would be the things that Baylor
would be most keyed in on. Those are the negatives.
And yeah, in some level, in some ways that sounds literally
straightforward. But we're talking about a child
and what they're learning as a child.
And and it's not so obvious. It's not so clear when you're
when you're that young. And also things that maybe are
not as like maybe slipping around isn't inherently bad, but
it's bad for a king, you know? But being vindictive like Aegon
was, that's something that universally anyone in any
position shouldn't be that way. But when the king is that way,
what do you do about that? You, you, if you're going to do
something about it, you really have to be a strong person all.
Around That's a great point, Sean, because one thing Baylor
was known for was his mercy. He was known to be lenient
towards his enemies or some wouldn't, some wouldn't call it
lenient, but some like hardliners would call it
lenient. But he was known to like think
of forgiveness first and peace first, which is very similar to
his namesake and his father who followed in his namesake's
footsteps. So yeah.
So that's a really, that's a great point, Sean, because that
is super important to his development and it is how he
came out. So it's likely that this is when
he learned all that when he was young, when he was most
influenceable, when he was just a young boy.
Yeah. And his mother's reactions would
be really interesting too. When Aegon's undermining of this
part of his family, his main family, got to the point where
he tried to invade Dorn. That's his in laws country.
Like, what a strange thing to have your grandfather start a
war against half of your own family, right?
Like, he just launches an invasion.
It's like, that's my grandfather down there.
You're invading my granddad. Like, granddad, why are you
invading my other granddad? You know, what are you doing?
Of course, it was a disaster of an invasion, which that wasn't
great for the soldiers who were sent down there, but it was
great for keeping the peace in the long term.
And yeah, like how strange Nina writes, especially because part
of his antagonism was expressed in Aegon's attempted campaigns
against Dorn. While Aegon likely and correctly
saw that explicitly disinheriting Darren would
provoke a declaration of war from the Prince of Dorn, he
probably also decided that marching against Dorn would be a
neat way of doing an end around on that.
Like, well, if you're going to bring Doran against me, well
I'll just take Doran out first and then maybe I can disinherit
you later. That may have been his longer
term plan, although it might be too much to think that Aegon the
Unworthy had long term plans. He may have more like been
reactive and not think that thought that far ahead.
There certainly are examples of that that we can point to, but
either way, he was shooting himself in the foot.
Didn't work. Whatever his plans were, it
backfired horribly and it certainly would have
consequences later. It would be remembered by the
Dornish, but they would still ultimately rise for the Red
Dragons. And Baylor breaks me here was
part of why. So he clearly managed the
situation well later, despite the damage his grandfather tried
to do to it. Now, of course, his own, his own
father, the king Darren probably did even more to re establish
this piece. He's the one that that really
settled it and made the final moves.
But Baylor would have been right with him there all the way.
He would have been at his side when these things were done.
Baylor was a bit older. So we'll get to that as we're
going along here. And this too, like how would all
of this impacted the talk of human Damon?
Because Aegon the Unworthy was threatening to name one of his
bastard sons King. He never did it.
But to put him ahead of the line of session ahead of Garon by
eliminating Garon instead. So what is young Damon
Blackfyre, Damon Waters and Agor and and Baylor?
They're all like maybe hanging out of court together at this
point. Maybe Agor had been sent home by
this point. He would have been back later,
but how would this perceive the discourse around them?
Like, oh, you might get disinherited, you know, because
your father isn't maybe really who he says he is.
He might be the son of the Dragon Knight.
There would have been weird. It's a weird stuff for six and
seven-year olds to be to have thrown at them already.
Damon's being taught that he's a bastard, so he has to, you know,
live with that and learn to live with that.
And Baylor has to learn what that means too.
And they have to learn about these differences that's set up
between them when they're when they're three and four.
They, I, I figured this decent chance they got along, unless
their parents were already like telling them to not like each
other or something like, oh, you don't want to like him, don't be
like him. But as the world took shape
around them and they realized the very different places they
were in terms of the line of succession and cultural beliefs,
and those differences would have gotten larger.
And again, the drag, the personal proximity and legend of
the Dragon knight comes up big. Because remember, one of the
ways this culminated, one of the culminations, climaxes of the
Aegon trying to disinherit Deron was the formal accusation that
he made that was settled by trial by combat.
Sorry. The formal accusation made by
his cat's paw, Sir Morgill Haystwick, that he never
admitted was his cat's paw. But we're pretty much all 99%
sure that is. That was totally through Aegon,
who stepped up to beat Morgill Haystwick.
It was aiming the dragon knight. So from Baylor's perspective,
young Baylor's perspective, aiming the Dragon Knight won the
duel that proved his line of the family was legit, so that he
saved his family's branch from being disinherited.
That's a he was already a heroic figure, like the biggest heroic
fear. And then it became even more
personal when his heroic legend was used to save his inheritance
and his his father from being declared a bastard and his
grandmother from being declared, you know, cuckold or heard
cuckold of the king. These would have been terrible
had Morgill defeated Amon or heard one whoever he against
someone else if Amon hadn't stepped up and it would have
been something else. So and then people would make
sure that he was aware of the gravity of that result.
Then Baylor would know quite well.
He probably even witnessed the duel.
He may have been old enough. It's people are seeing
executions when they're seven in this world.
So duels of this import when you're on a track to be Crown
Prince anyway, Yeah, you're probably getting exposed to this
at an early age, especially when your own fate is hanging in the
balance. What a thing to see at age 7.
Your own future depends on this dual.
Wow, don't. Know how to process, you know, a
couple of thoughts about that. By the way, sometimes it's hard
for us to to put ourselves in their shoes of, of this type of
trial by combat, you know, this belief that God is or a God or
whatever is causing or deciding the result based on this.
But that I mean it. I mean, I suppose in modern
times, there's still people that have that same sort of
devoutness or whatever. And but for a large portion of
history of for a large portion of the world, it really was a
genuine belief. You know, I'm sure here and
there there was some like some cynical people taking advantage
of the system, just trying to manipulate the crowds or
whatever. But the crowds really believed
it. You know, they really believe
that God said this thing, that this was a sign, etcetera,
etcetera, and it especially a six or seven-year old boy
growing up being taught this stuff, of course he's going to
truly believe it. You know you're.
Right. He's not going to see it as
like, you're not going to have the cynicism that older people
have. Like, yeah, maybe the gods
aren't really. This is something we talk, but
it's something we say. No, you're right.
The seven-year old who was raised like he's Baylor's
namesake. Yeah, his father was pious.
You're right. Like, he would have really taken
the result to Hartman, Like, oh, this really proved it, you know?
My other thought is once again, we've sort of wondered about the
realities of the day-to-day life and interactions, different
characters. One model we have for this is
House of the Dragon. Seeing how Ammond and and Jason,
Luke and all, you know, all those interactions and, and even
the the the idea like if if it ever had happened, that if
Harwin had ever had a fight with the, you know, if someone had
found with someone trial by combat, like how they would have
witnessed that, how they would have played out depending on who
won or lost, you know. Yeah, maybe not perfect
parallels, but a good model how it might have been, you know?
Like 2 households growing within one.
Like 2 exactly, but they're relatives.
But they're separate branches of the same royal family, have
similar ages, and there's lots of them, yeah.
There might be some phases or some couples that get along well
or understand or aren't ambitious, but there are some
who are going to be vindictive or angling or night or and
there's violence or whatever else.
There's this sort of same, like, arguing over what is bastard
status Really, like trying to change what it means or ignore
that it's real in the case of the Dance of the Dragon.
So yeah, it's like, yeah. But Damon's a different bastard.
Yeah, but Jace is a different sort of bastard.
Yeah. Like, no, he's not a bastard at
all. Yeah, he is, but he's a
different. Yeah.
So it's. It's kind of like that.
By the way, that's a comparison here, too, that that should be
made as Jace's look, he doesn't look Targaryen, right.
Same as Baylor doesn't look Targaryen.
That would have been a factor for Baylor, yeah.
So that's something we can make a loose comparison on.
And Speaking of them being used and all that, and rather than
witnessing fights, they also start early, especially in this
setting, especially given their way to responsibility and what
what's expected of them in their future.
So yeah, a lot of boys start training with sword and shield
and getting used to the weight of armor as soon as they can.
As soon as you're able to put that on, as soon as you can lift
that sword and shield, you're pretty much doing it.
It isn't age so much as just when your body can physically do
it. You might be 3, you might be 6,
I don't know. But we're pretty sure that
Westerosi Marshall culture puts them at it as soon as possible.
So Baylor. Baylor and Damon were likely
very early starters because they both seem to be physically
gifted. They both seem to grow up
quickly. And I mean, Damon wound up being
literally the earliest knighted in the history of the Seven
Kingdoms. So when there was training
between the two of them in terms of swords, Damon probably won
more than he lost versus Baylor, but Baylor probably exceeded him
in other areas. Horsemanship is a strong
contender for being something that Baylor was better at.
Baylor will defeat Damon in the finals.
Attorney that we're going to talk about very famously at the
end of this episode. There's also clues that he's
better in other ways, like in planning for consider what he
does in the hedge night where he's like, let's use turning
lances because they're longer and they're like, oh, but that's
dangerous because his lances aren't as good.
He's like, yeah, but but we're good enough to pull this off.
Like you need to be skilled for that move to work.
Otherwise you're it's going to backfire horribly.
And you've got like weak lances against real lances.
So if you don't do it just right, then you've screwed
yourself. And we know of other times that
Baylor has won tournaments. So he's clearly not just a
winner a couple times here. Like there's that whole scene
where Dunk refers to hit Arlen breaking 7 lances against him
and Baylor's like actually it was only four.
But don't think anyway. Like, you know, the tail grows
in the tail. He's again showing.
His man, he's still alive, Yeah. He's he's still magnanimous
about it. Then that's that's something we
should keep in mind that Baylor, he's always doing that sort of
thing. He's always like trying to be
humble. And it's kind of hard to because
he's just so great. It's like when these guys, it's
like, yeah, you're not, you're trying to be humble.
I appreciate that. But you're great.
Yeah. Your greatness exudes from you
wherever you walk, like your charisma, your your ability or
high birth. Like, yeah, we appreciate the
humbleness, but there's you're not actually.
Yeah. So Fireball the Redkeep master
at arms who was said to have trained all the great bastards.
Would you have trained Baylor as well?
I think so, at least in part because he was the Red Keys
Master Arms, not the great bastards mastered Arms.
His position was Red Keep mastered arms.
But Gaylor would have spent a lot of time on Dragonstone
because his father was Prince of Dragonstone.
But we don't have to assume that just because you're Prince of
Dragonstone, you spend a lot of time there.
That's the trick here. How much time did Darren spend
at court trying to stop his father from doing crappy things?
We I feel like it was a lot. I feel like Darren stayed at
court quite a bit because of this and because of other
reasons, but it's possible there were long periods of time where
they were just on Dragonstone kind of out of it.
I can also imagine, especially if you got these young, growing,
boisterous, excited Princess, if they like Hey, Fireball, come to
Dragonstone with this. Hey, we want to train on Dragon.
Hey, so and so's and Dragon. So let's go visit him.
You would probably not have much choice about it, right?
Yeah, it's. True.
Yeah, it may have been kind of. More of you might even be
excited to do it. Yeah, Dragonstone, I'll train
you guys. Yeah, it's, it's, you're right.
We should look at it as like a fluid situation.
Just again bringing up the blacks and greens, the dance
hair, like they were there a lot.
They were there. They were back at Dragonstone a
lot. There was some back and forth.
Now there was more reason for those two groups to be separated
because the Sun started fighting so much.
They had to be sort of for for reasons of potential violence.
They needed to be separated. We do not have that indication
here that there's need. They needed to be separated.
So that adds to the possibility that they spent more time
together. In fact, you would want them to
spend time together if they're not fighting each other, if
they're not violent for each other, because they're all going
to, They're all of similar rank and you don't want there to be
animosity between them. And if they're hanging out and
otherwise not hating each other, then that's probably good, you
know, as long as no news is bad news or no news is good news in
that sort of scenario. Now, in terms of Baylor's
brothers, Makar would have been eventually part of this group as
well, even though he was a bit younger.
But probably not the two middle brothers, Aries and Regal,
because those two were not Marshall at all.
Aries was bookish. Regal, well, we just don't know
much about Regal. He's the real unknown of this
for a group of four here, for sure.
I suspect Aries, he did come to the Red Keep sometimes though,
because of the library there. He was bookish and the Red Keep
had a great library, so he would want to he would have plenty of
incentive to be there, but he wouldn't be paying attention to
much else. You know, as worth noting in the
mystery Night Egg says Fireball taught my father and my uncles
how to fight the great bastards too.
So that does pretty much confirm that.
He may not have trained them their whole lives, but he he
started them off right. If Baylor left later for more
time at Dragonstone, then that would apply as well.
But that clearly he fireball was there early on.
Now again, because Bitter Steel's mom was sent away.
He was proud he was sent away too.
We're later told that Aegon the Unworthy at least one point
visited Aegor at Stonehedge, which means he was at
Stonehedge, not at court. But clearly Aegor came back to
court at some point because again, Fireball Todd is the
great bastards out of fight. So bitter steel had to have been
there for part of that. Plus eventually Agor's
constantly pouring bitterness and poison into Damon's ear,
which he had to do in person. Like I don't think he's just
constantly sending him letters, is he?
That doesn't doesn't sound very convincing like that good of a
writer that he's just that convincing with his word.
I don't know. It's it says pouring poison in
his ear. Sounds like they were in
proximity to each other. And the final piece of evidence
for that is that Deron was said to have kept to the great
bastards close. So he kept that sound implies
that they were at court where he could keep an eye on them, not
back at their respective home castles.
So even if Agor wasn't around in Baylor's early years, he was
around later when they would have been in court together when
they were maybe teenagers as well.
I wonder Dragon Knight probably got in there with some lessons,
some training. They would have loved to get
some teaching from him. You might have Aegon not happy
with that. The king might have been like
no, you can't do that. He might have been petty about
it and they'd the dragon knight stay around him or give him like
humiliating duty instead. But this might have been beneath
his notice. Such a small thing, training the
young Princess at sword fighting.
He might not have cared about that, but if Baylor did train
with Eamon, it might fuel the rumor mongering that he's his
grandson. He's like, yeah, see, yeah.
That's like father, like grandson.
That's proof. So there may have been some,
like, optics reason to not let them be around each other so
much. Kind of like Harwin in the
training yard trying to pretend he's like, he's at the opposite
of that because Harwin really is father.
Where this is like, I promise that is not my grandson, you
know, sure. Dragon Knight.
Sure. It's like, so will you believe
me? I'm the pious dragon knight?
Yeah, but but you're you're dishonest.
Brother said otherwise. So I got to believe him.
He's the king. I'm feeling it.
Not many people really believe that it.
Some people might have like pretended to believe it for the
sake of some political positioning.
You know what I mean? But I don't think they really
believe. I don't think they really.
Believe it also to keeping our timeline straight here aiming
the Dragon Knight died probably when Baylor was only about 10,
and so Damon would about the same age.
So there's not there couldn't have been that much training
from him in their upbringing. Oh, there could have been a
decent bit, but it definitely wasn't happening later in life.
And let's talk about that. The death of Amon is our next
bid subsection here. It would have been a very sad
day at court indeed that he was the living legend for this
generation of royal youth. And it asks the question like,
who else were they idolizing? You know, there would have been
a lot of figures from recent history that they possibly could
have idolized or maybe would have looked at as controversial.
Prince Damon, writer of cracksies most martial figure of
recent times other than who had been dead before their time.
He'd been dead for less than 40 years.
So this isn't this isn't just memory here.
He was very famous, obviously. And of course, Baylor,
technically Prince Damon, writer of Craxies, was his great, great
grandfather. So that's, you know, it's a
family connection too, a bit distant, but still there.
Now, I could see Baylor looking at Damon as a bit of a
cautionary tale, though, Like he's because they he's not.
He didn't emulate him except maybe in Marshall skill, but not
in terms of decisions making, personality, attitudes, just
very different in terms of temperament and all these other
things like they're, they're opposites in a lot of ways.
So a lot depends on what kind of stories he was told.
Maybe there's the stories told about his great great
grandfather were sanitized a bit, you know, And of course
there's just things that you can't emulate, like being a
dragon rider. Jaharis and Aegon the Conquer
seem like more likely idols or figures to emulate.
Jairus was so wise and ruled so long and did so many, built so
many things that were still in use.
They would have revered him. I don't think the the shine
would have worn off wouldn't have worn off on him even though
we're talking in like 100 years before.
And of course, the Conqueror, they're never going to forget
him because like, yeah, back to Jaharius real quick though, like
Jaharius is the conciliator. And there's we were just saying
like there's absolutely some conciliator, if not a lot of
conciliator in the personality of bail or break spirit.
This is the guy that we just got from saying is all about
forgiveness and mercy and trying to like reach accords rather
than I mean, it's like that old world's most interesting man
commercial for for Dos Equis for the like.
He's a lover, not a fighter, but he's also a fighter.
So watch yourself. So that's that's Baylor like he
he's a peaceful guy, but he'll throw down and he's good at it.
So which is also Jaharis, like Jaharis, that was the was the
attitude Jaharis had to it towards a lot of his Lords.
He would fly to these castles by himself without his protection
on Vermithor, a huge dragon. So you're like, yeah, look at
me, I'm brave. But if you mess I'm and I'm
coming here in peace. But don't forget about this huge
beast behind me. Now, of course, Baylor can't
exactly go about it that way. He has to be.
There's no dragon backing him. But he still is formidable.
And I feel is tactful too, like he he doesn't necessarily even
have to use those threats right? But like it maybe either it's
known that they're there, but I feel like his wisdom and logic
are strong enough to solve a lot of stuff without the.
Maybe the threat in the background helps, but without
having to go. There and the respect he carries
and yeah, and the threat is there.
Like you say, if you go against him, well, you're going against
his popularity, which is substantial, which means a lot
of people are going to follow him.
So whatever decisions popular guy makes, well, you're if
you're going against that, you're going against all those
people supporting him. And that's that's a lot of
weight. Nina had a great take here as
well. I really like she suggested not
just Damon, writer of Craxies, but his father Baylon, almost
the same name, who was also a hand of the king and heir at the
same time, which Baylor will eventually be.
And he was well regarded both as a warrior and as a statesman.
And yeah, and that's only one generation back farther.
So that's a that's good. Sadly, they also both died while
hand. Baylon lived only five years
longer than Baylor is going to live.
Baylon died at age 44 and Baylor died at age 39.
So. But of all these heroic figures,
we just named all these ones that maybe Baylor and some of
these other ones could have idolized, Dragon Knight is the
only one that didn't have a dragon.
And of course, he's the only one that they lived to see his
passing. They would go to his funeral,
whereas the others, they would maybe just see their tombs or
the hear their stories. So there's it's undoubtedly more
personal and more momentous in terms of a life event.
You almost figure like, remember what Rob did when he heard about
what happened? He like draws his sword and the
gods would is like, I'm going to get here.
I'm so mad. And the saris does the same
thing with Danny's brother when he's like, I'm going to go kill
Robert myself. You know, this just ridiculous,
like drawing their sword and Rodrick Cassell's like, don't
draw your sword unless you mean to use it.
Boy, You know, I almost figured this was a moment like that
where like Damon or maybe even Baylor or stuff are like drawing
their swords. Like those toynes, they killed
the dragon knight. Like, oh, we're going to go get
them, you know, And then the Knights 1/4 like, all right,
chill, 10 year olds, come on. We appreciate the the courage
here, but you're going to have to let the adults handle this
one. Speaking of Jon Snow has that
memory of him and Rob yelling out the names of their heroes.
Speaking of like idolizing figures when one of whom was the
young was King Daron the young dragon, right.
So that would be another one that I didn't mention that one.
That's one that they might have thought of as a hero.
So John thinks of how they would do that all the time.
And then one day Rob's like, you can't be Lord of Winterfell.
You're a bastard, you know? And it's like the weight of
reality just hits him like cold water.
Like, Rob wasn't trying to be me.
He was just like stating facts, like, but you can't be, you
know, It's like, yeah, you can't be the young dragon either, Rob.
Like these are all, this is all fantasy, you know, and it was
the young dragon, but never mind.
But so this is what I was saying earlier with these divisions,
they would idolize people, but even who they idolize might come
up as as a wedge to who they could really be, who they're
allowed to be within society. And it's just a really
interesting thing to think about, like how no matter how
innocent you are, no matter how you're trying to be a kid, this
this royal culture is just like telling you what your place is
and all your friends too, or who people who might be your
friends. You know, this might be a little
bit of a tangent, but it's I still think it's the same
concept. Imagine growing up a young black
girl in America anytime before, I don't know, the past 10 years.
Like who are all the idols? Who are all the leaders?
Who are all the presidents? Who are all the center business?
It's all white men, right? Like, what do you think is a
young child if you're not a a white boy?
What are you? Who are your idols?
Who are you allowed to be? You know what I mean?
Like if you try to pretend like you're president, you're going
to get scoffed at. You know, that's a good point.
Yeah. Let's talk about competition,
jealousy and swords. That's the next section here.
This raises the question, questions like this, like
jealousy and these divisions and, and how the children would
handle it. One example that I think is very
visual that that maybe wouldn't have occurred to y'all that I
thought of when we were thinking about this episode is that the
Kingsguard would be around Baylor a lot because he's in the
line of succession. They would be protecting him as
one of the crown, eventual inheritors of the throne.
Damon Blackfyer would not have that protection.
He would have Kingsguard following him around all the
time. He's a bastard, right?
And he's not. They're not.
They wouldn't be thinking of him in those terms.
They would have respect for him because of his martial prowess
and his bearing and his skills. But he wouldn't be someone they
need to protect. You know that he's not like an
important figure that must be kept alive.
So, you know, that kind of thing might rankle.
And that's the kind of thing someone like Bitter Steel would
maybe point to to be like. Look at how he's getting more
regard than you like the kind of thing that if you're trying to
draw drive a wedge, you're trying to start something.
You would point at these little differences and try to make them
about your pride and just the devil on one shoulder whispering
and why you should be upset. Kind of like a lot of modern
media, like telling us what we should be mad about, you know,
like outrage media. Like you should be outraged.
Baylor or Damon, rather. Look at what he's getting.
All these things that you deserve, you know.
Yeah, Very similar to that I think and now again, so.
Shocking news about Damon's sword.
And so again, so much hinges on what they actually thought of
each other. Did they get along?
Did the possible wrangling of their own factions, you know,
work and get them to dislike each other?
Or did they kind of rise above that?
Do they respect each other? No idea.
So, but it's a very compelling question.
Somewhere around 181, when they were about 11, Chiara Sea Star
was born. Her mother Sereni died.
This is when Aegon had become grossly overweight and diseased.
So he wasn't very mobile anymore.
Now we're guessing Chiara and Daylord didn't have much to do
with each other throughout their lives, but they would have had
something to do, kind of like Elena.
She was around court a lot. So is Chiara.
I mean, Chiara would have been at court while Baylor was Hand
and Baylor was Hand for 13 years later.
So that's maybe we'll come back to that in Part 2 if we have
some ideas on it. But also around the year 181,
maybe 182, that's when Nerys died.
So that would, although it could have been as late as 183.
So that's his grandmother and that's also the queen.
So this is a pretty big deal because let's not forget the
quirk of incestuous dynastic marriages.
Sometimes you only have one grandmother and one grandfather.
So yes, this is his one grandmother that passed.
So that's kind of like, Oh yeah. And he?
All half the grieving that that silver lining of incense.
Definitely looking at the bright side, Sean.
Yeah. So he also only had one great
grandmother. Yeah.
If you go back far enough, you know, he's got the lysine.
The lysine. Great, great grandparents or
what have you. Anyway, so Nary's also was one
of the few remaining connections to the Dance aftermath.
She was born about five years after it ended.
So she was one of the few people that lived around Dragons that
was still there since AIM and died first.
One of the few left at this point was Aegon the Unworthy,
who outlived his younger brother and sister despite his ill
health. In 182 came the famous Squires
tournament. The Damon won.
This is it's when he got his unusually young knighting, which
was probably done in part by Aegon because it was scandalous
and noteworthy. Part of why he did it.
Maybe also because he might have had a rare moment of of
realizing his own life wouldn't last much longer given his
health and he was also just known for ignoring traditions
and things like that. He floundered them constantly.
Did Baylor participate in this choirs tournament?
No idea, but seems pretty likely.
Definitely not a guarantee. He might have been on
Dragonstone or something. Maybe his father didn't want him
competing against these boys, but that doesn't seem likely
because he did later in other tournaments.
So I think that's important. Something else to consider
though, the sword Black Fire was given to Damon as part of his
prize for winning this tournament.
That was going to be Baylor's sword.
It would have passed to him. Did Baylor care or was he like,
hey, that was going to be my sword?
Now, Daron didn't wouldn't have cared.
He, I mean, he might have cared in terms of the symbol, but he
wasn't going to have used the sword himself or else he might
have already had it. But he was the heir, although
his father didn't give it to him.
But it would have been Gaylors one day had it not been given to
Damon because he was a warrior. And that's just typically how
it's used. If you're the king and you're
not a Marshall guy, you often give it to your heir.
This son there who is Marshall and let them wield it and be the
family is stronger for it. So interesting.
How old? About how old were they at this
time? 12 12 Both.
Of them would have been. 12, yeah, 12 seems pretty young to
give him that sword. Yeah.
And I, I was also wondering if maybe Baylor would have been.
Maybe that tournament made him realize he needed to be a better
night. Maybe he was in it and didn't do
well and realized he needs to get better, you know?
But even if that's the case, it's still how good could damn
it have been to get this sort of age, 12?
I don't know. Well, you hear how Sir Eustis
talks about him, But I mean, Eustis is a little, you know, in
love with the past, but still like Damon was maybe, yeah,
maybe was the best warrior since AIM in the Dragon Night.
I know that. Not that that was that long
after Aim in the Dragon Night, but still, a lot of people put
Damon Blackfire in the top five of all time warriors.
That's kind of a, I mean, that's really a matter of opinion.
There's no way to really know. But yeah, now Baylor, again, we
talk about him being chivalrous and graceful.
So I don't think he would have like he'd, I really doubt he
like made a scene or anything like that or got publicly upset.
But in private, he might have been kind of upset about it.
And his father as well might have been upset about, his
father would have definitely been upset about the symbolism
of it and what it might mean in terms of just besides the sword
itself, in terms of what his father was doing.
Like, oh, here my dad goes again with trying to undermine our
side of the family. You might be worried about what
would come after that. And he would be right to be
because two years later came the deathbed proclamation of
legitimization of all these fellows.
So, yeah, so there would have been some discussions in private
at the very least about what this might mean.
And Baylor himself might have been asked to wait.
And he's like, well, father, I don't.
I don't want to cause a scene. I don't want to have this be a
problem on my back. He's like, OK, well, that's good
of you, son. But it's more than that.
It is bigger than just the sword, right?
It might mean the sword is a symbol of the Conqueror.
And, you know, we've seen him try to undermine our line
before. This might be a prelude to
another attempt to throw us out of the line of succession, which
it kind of was, wasn't fully, but it kind of was.
So, yeah, Baylor would have probably been if he didn't
realize the implied threat to his own place in the line of
succession. He would have had it explained
to him. And I think he probably did
because he was wise beyond his years.
Most likely, given everything he was faced with from young age
on, he just was expected to have all these adult responsibilities
and he took to it. So I feel like he would have
seen this. He would have understand at
least some of the significance. Yeah.
This is public. Let's not forget this was a
public gift of the sword. It wasn't like in in private,
you know, you've earned this sword, kid.
You know. Here you go.
No, this was in front of everybody who watched the
tournament. Big public courtly thing.
Yeah. The whole realm, what I heard
about it, like right away would have been the subject of gossip.
Just like their bursts were just like some of these other things
that happened along the way. The whole court, the realm.
Talk of the talk of the week or the next few months or whatever,
and then then beyond that as it, as the situation continued to
evolve. I definitely feel like it was AI
don't know political optical move or whatever more so than
they do. Just like just like time when
making Jamie on a hands guard. Maybe they there's some
ostensible reasoning behind it, but that's not really what it
was. If that's what it really was, it
could have been done in private. It could have been done in a
bunch of other ways, but the fact that it was done in public,
I think that it was a strategic move.
Yeah, now Darren. Spiteful move, yeah.
Darren might have counseled, you know, just let's roll with the
punches here. You might have said things like,
well, like a non sarcastic Stannis.
You could have said, well, let's just pray harder about the
situation, you know, let's not get violent.
You know, and Nina also adds a great point.
You could have counseled Baylor if Baylor was feeling jilted or
like he lost something. He's like look man, look son,
yeah he got the sword you're going to get the Kingdom you
know you're going to you, you have more than him.
You're ahead of him you know be gracious about it.
You know he he still has less than you and that might have
that might have worked that argument might have worked.
Nina says. We also think of the arguments
Egg uses in the sworn sword when Eustace Ozgre explains his
allegiance to the Black fire cause the Damon was simply the
best swordsman and the gift of black fire was just an
expression of that. You're the best swordsman you
get the best sword. It doesn't mean anything more
than that it doesn't mean you you should be king.
Although absolutely some people did see it that way later.
This is in the immediate aftermath of the gift and and
before anyone knew the full consequences of what it would
mean. Darren could also remind his son
lots of Targaryen warriors were great without wielding black
fire. Magor was giving was given black
fire by Amis and there was no disinheriting his own children
of that. Now Magor did usurp Amis's
children, but it wasn't because of the sword, it was because of
other factors. And it was, it wasn't done with
the sword either. That was more about Valerian.
That's certainly had more to do with it.
And of course Amon, not Amon the Dragon Knight, but Amon's son of
Jaharis and Alsan, the first born son of theirs, who was
father of Raines the Queen who never was.
He was master of laws and Prince of Dragonstone and a great
warrior, and he didn't wield either Black Fire or Dark
Sister. So, yeah, there's just, there's
some good examples, historical examples Darren could have
pointed to. And Baylor probably had, you
know, enough of an education to have already known about these
figures. So it would just be like a
reminder, you know, like, you know, think of your great,
great, great, great grandfather this, who did this and that, you
know, And furthermore, Darren again, using the path of least
resistance, using the path of peace, using clever moved,
subtle maneuvers rather than violent, you know, public
displays, things like that. Darren would devalue the
ancestral swords in general by giving Dark Sister to blood.
Raven is sort of further suggested that these weren't
that big a deal. So it kind of devalued Black
Fire by giving Dark Sister blood.
It was pretty clever. Now we don't know when that
happened, but it was at some point, you know, blood.
Raven was only 7 at the start of the Squires tournament, so it
wasn't that early, but of course he couldn't have done it when
Aegon was still alive anyway. But so this came at some point
later and Darren would also start giving.
The the sooner he does it though, the sooner it has the
effect right, the more clear it is to to that it's meant to have
that effect, the the quicker it does have that effect that I, I
feel like he probably did it like so if he's 7 at that
tournament and and Aegon died two years later.
I think he gave the sword of blood Raven when he was like 9
or 10 years. Old.
That's what I think, yeah. Now, there's also the opposite
side reactions where there may be Baylor's close relatives
would be, you know, having their own reactions to the Black Fire
incident. But what about Damon's people?
Like if Dana the Defiant was still alive, she'd be like,
yeah, he deserves that, you know, and he she might even be
outspoken about it. And that might rankle some
feathers even more because it's it's a public discussion about
things like this that maybe you're better kept private.
So it's just everyone's gossiping and all that.
So the whole discourse is a little loud perhaps, and it
might be it might offend some people.
She might be saying things like, oh, he's does he if she says he
deserves this and people take that to me and he deserves to be
king, you know, public statements.
So one of the problems with them is they can be misinterpreted by
people. You can you can read things that
aren't there. And in the world like this,
where most of the information is second hand anyway, you got
people inserting their own biases in these statements in
the game of telephone is all the more toxic.
So that could have really gotten back to the Red Faction, which
wasn't the Red Faction yet, but the people that would eventually
become the Red Faction. They might hear all this talk
about how oh, look at them uppity.
Well, they wouldn't be the black fires yet.
They just got the sword. But this whoever here, they
would be referred to at the stage they like, oh, that look
at them stepping out of line, you know, this kind of thing.
So. Yeah, it's very interesting.
Now, maybe Damon, maybe Dana, the Defiant wasn't even alive at
this point. So this this might not have even
happened. But there would have been some
fans of Damon, you know, he would have had his entourage or,
or whatever, and they would have been all for it.
So that the bottom line is still there.
The question for another time. I don't think we asked this in
the Damon Blackfyre episode. Would he have gotten a dragon if
they were still around? Is someone does?
Does a bastard, a double Targaryen bastard, get a dragon?
Does that? Like who qualifies for Dragons
and who doesn't? You know?
I think he would have been allowed to claim one probably
given how popular he was, but it's interesting.
Could they have stopped him? Good question, too.
Yeah, well, Amen. Just pick one, right?
Yeah, what if they just say no, you can't have one or just
banned him from trying? But what if he got one anyway?
Would they make him give it up? I mean, yeah, I don't know.
Once he's. Bonded to him.
How can they make them? Yeah.
Can you make them give? I think one way or the other he
would have got one. That's right.
Nina points out Damon tried to give his own mistress a dragon
egg. They made him.
They made him give that back. But still, like if if that was
even remotely on the table, then I think Damon Blackfriars
several levels higher in terms of like he's at least got the
Targaryen blood like Mazaria did not.
So that's not a question for Baylor.
He definitely would have gotten a dragon, even though he looks
Martel like, yeah, that wouldn't matter.
So and would he who would he have married to if he if he if
it wasn't for the incest marriage is being kind of out of
fashion in this era. Interesting to point out for
another discussion for another time.
The incest marriages came back pretty quickly after this era,
like off and on. But this is the era when they
were pretty off. He might have married his aunt
Daenerys. That's my best guess.
The one that married Maron Martel.
But then who? How would they have united the
realm then? So yeah, maybe not, I don't
know. But very likely not the person
he did marry, which we'll discuss in the second-half
because this marriage was a very unusual.
And we'll also discuss Damon's marriage and a few other things.
Our midway point in the episode is here.
The year 184, Aegon has passed the king, Aegon the Forth, the
unworthy. But on his deathbed, he made
that famous, well, infamous rather, decree legitimizing his
bastards, all of them. The man most responsible for
taking care of the mess he made, not to mention the other messes
the unworthy king made, was of course his son, now King Garon.
And the next most important figure is our subject, Baylor.
Not yet called Baylor, breaks beer, but earning that
reputation, who is now the Crown Prince of Dragonstone upon the
death of his grandfather. So his responsibilities, his
proximity to the throne, all these things are on the upswing
and let's see how he handled it. And we come back for the
second-half here. Shout out to patron Matthew
Chase, who correctly predicted in our poll that this would be a
2 episode topic. You nailed it, Matthew.
You did indeed. When you said it, I was like,
yeah, I commented, I responded, your comments said yeah, you
know, you're probably right about that, and indeed very much
so. We're a couple months out from
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Like how much do you spend at a movie?
A 2 1/2 hour movie is like 15 or 20 bucks.
We do 2 1/2 hour movies 4 * a month.
Hey, yeah. I mean, you've got a point
there, Sean, with the swirl of possibilities largely rooted in
the unknowns of individual personalities, Damon and Baylor
being the central example there. But there's lots of other
examples. We've run into this question
many times. It's compelling and we wish we
knew more. But it's also why Hollywood
looks at these things and nods knowingly, seeing the potential
for so much of this on the screen.
They look at these relationships and these unknowns and and
without specifics, they can still look at it and see a lot
of greatness or possible greatness. 2 Princess who are
close to perfect. Those imperfections are the
source of much debate and factionalizing.
Damon's a bastard. Well, Baylor is Dornish.
Damon looks like a perfect Targaryen.
Baylor looks like a Martel. Yeah, Damon might have been the
better warrior, but Baylor was pretty much unbeatable, except
by someone like Damon, perhaps, and there wasn't really anyone
else like him. And no advantage, though, is
greater than birth, which is clearly in Baylor's favor.
So I know we talked about a lot of those things during the first
half, but I wanted to summarize them here going into the
second-half. So Baylor had a lot of
responsibility and pressure from an early age.
As we discussed, it never let up.
In fact, it probably got more so as he got older, in part because
he was not only able to handle most of it, but rise above it.
An unfortunate potential side effect of being good at solving
problems is that you were handed a lot of problems to solve.
Like, oh, you're good at this. Well, let's give you more
problems. So it started in a hurry when
his father became king in 184. Daron ascended at age 30 and
Baylor was 13 when this happened.
So he became Crown Prince as a 13 year old.
His father started off with major reforms, which Baylor
would have been hearing the logic of.
This would have been part of the decisions, part of his counsel.
We've seen how often the the first born is just right there
with the father for all these important decision making
sessions. Or not always, but often.
How often the first born son? Is right there.
Yeah, you're right. First born son.
Yeah, that does. That does require a caveat in
the setting. First off, Daron did sack the
small council, getting rid of Aegon's appointments.
They were all very corrupt. He choose new, new people all
around. Maybe Baylor was part of that
decision making process on who to appoint.
She may have had a little bit of a say they would want him to be
involved. He didn't say with the gold
cloaks rooting out corruption there.
Took a year to settle that apparently.
Because while it's easy enough to maybe fire the people at the
top, it's harder to root out corruption amongst the rank and
file amongst the lower ranking officers.
It's harder to like find that because while it can be a big
problem, it's smaller scale that's just not as obvious when
you're at the top looking for the smaller problems.
Baylor himself wouldn't have been on the small council at
this point, as we said, but he was being groomed for it.
He would eventually be handed the king, and it seems likely
his father had that in mind already at this point.
He's like, my son is very capable.
And the best way to make sure he's going to be a good king is
to make sure he's taking part in all these responsibilities that
he'll have his own decisions to make on when he's when he's
older. So that seems pretty
straightforward. And he would have, of course,
been very influenced by his father's demeanor.
And we can say that with confidence because adult Baylor
did share a lot of his father's traits.
But Baylor could pull it off better than his father in a lot
of ways because Daron was mocked for his physique.
Baylor was physically gifted. So that's why when we said the
beginning in the opening statement in the intro talk
about how people really look forward to Baylor being king in
a lot of ways, because he was not just had the personality and
demeanor of a king, he looked like 1.
And as we've seen in Westeros, they care about that.
I don't think I don't personally think they should, but they
clearly do. You mean you get that right away
in the Game of Thrones when Jamie looks like a king to John
and and Tyrion stands as tall as a king with it when his shadow
is cast. So this is all this is just this
is how people think of this office of king.
It's you're supposed to look like a king, you know, and act
like one. Well, Darren acted like one, but
according to their, you know, ideal model, he didn't look like
1 Daylor did, except for looking Dornish, which that was a part
that was a small problem, but not for everyone.
He. Might have looked like a king,
but not a Targaryen king there. You go.
That's a good way to put it. Yeah, I like that.
But it was still, despite these small problems, probably one of
the most effective father, son, king, Crown Prince pairings
we've seen. Darren may have been
particularly grateful for that, given how contentious his
father's relationship with him was.
He's like, I can work with my son in a way I was never able to
work with my father because my father was Aegon the Unworthy.
I mean, I've got a good son, Baylor, to work with here.
And Baylor may have also seen that because he saw how terrible
his grandfather was. He's like, thank the seven that
I have a father like this and not like my grandfather.
So, I mean, because again, let's repeat just how distinctly
obvious it was. Like, but in some families, you
kind of lose sight of who's right and who's wrong when
you're so in it right. But it's just so much easier.
To tell or when everyone's wrong, or when everyone's wrong.
Yeah, but here it's just so much easier to tell now.
A good example. This is why we talked back about
who would have been potential idol figures or, or people to
emulate in the Targaryen history.
Jarius worked really well with his son Eamon and then with
Bailon after Eamon died. So of course, those both ended
in tragedy. So they're too similar because
this one will too. But yeah, still, those would be
maybe what they were trying to project.
Like we're the next Jairus and Ayman or Jairus and Bailon,
whichever. And this point about Deron's own
relationship with his father is an important one.
You know, rights. Aegon the 4th and not just hated
Deron, he's specifically and publicly acted to undermine him,
tried to disinherit him. This is calling it a contentious
relationship was a bit of an understatement on my part.
But either way, this is the polar opposite.
Someone you can work with and respect.
And Baylor like, wants to learn from his father and takes these
lessons to heart. And yeah, it must have been just
night and day. Like there's other examples of
kings not getting along well with their sons that we can
point to. They're more like Deron and Egg
on on the opposite end like that.
Like Aries is not getting along with Rhaegar those.
That was a very contentious relationship.
Egg didn't have contentious relationships with his children
so much as he quarreled with them over marriages.
Like they had differences of opinion there, but that wasn't
the same as like them trying to constantly undermine each other.
But it wasn't, those weren't great relationships, at least
later in life. And Makar and his sons, those
there were some, there were some struggles there too, although
also not with one trying to overthrow the other.
So yeah, really, Deron and Aegon was about as bad as it got.
So what a refreshing not just for them personally within the
family, but for the realm. Like, ah, the king and the
Prince, they're working together, it's great, right?
Let's take a moment to discuss the supernatural though.
I mean, given the cultural shift at court, one of the things that
Darren did apart from his reforms politically and getting
rid of the small council, was he brought in septons, maesters,
Part of those, some of them were Dornish, which was caused some
more additional consternation about the Dornification of the
court. But that's not really the point
at the moment. We're more in interested in how
that affected the magical discourse.
Baylor's court was very pious. Derrons is pretty pious too, but
clearly he wasn't against magic. Like even Baylor the Blessed
prayed over his dragon eggs. So he, even though he was all
about the the pious, he still had that angle of syncretism
where they wanted to sort of take the best of their own stuff
and combine it with the faith rather than just throw away all
that old stuff and like, let's still keep some of that, you
know. So there was a little like.
Especially the Dragons. Yeah, so it's very utilitarian,
very like, have it both, have it your way, you know, have it both
ways, have your cake, eat it too, kind of logic.
But hey, you're the king and queen and royal family.
You can get away with that. Sort of have your cake and eat
it too. Well, you can't if you're very
infinite, but you can if you're the Targaryens, at least these
Targaryens. So.
And again, yeah. So Darren was pro faith, you
might say, well, maybe he was against the supernatural stuff,
but really there doesn't seem to be any indication to that.
In addition to the syncretism arguments, we have him very much
trusting Blood Raven. Like Blood Raven was one of his
most trusted companions in addition to being his half
brother. And Chiara was apparently just
allowed to do her thing at court and no one seemed to be bothered
by that too much. Aries his his his next son,
Daron's son Baylor's younger brother was very bookish and
into this prophet. He's the one that this
rediscovers the Dragons being born prophecy.
So there does not seem to be much at all.
In fact, there seems to be the opposite of evidence that they
were against supernatural studies and magical delving into
prophecies. So yeah, now Egg mentions that
Aries discovers the prophecy. He says that in the mystery
night, but he doesn't say it was just like a year ago or two
years ago. So we don't know when he
rediscovered the prophecy. So it might have been like 10
years before Egg makes that statement, which would have
meant it came while Baylor was hand.
But if it did come in the ensuing three years after the
hedge night that Baylor didn't know about that, But that's a
pretty big deal. I think it's more likely he
discovered it before Baylor's death.
Baylor breaks Pier's death, that is then after, but we're not
sure. So at some point Aries found a
book that said the Dragons would come back.
We don't know when that was. It might have been before the
Hedge 9. It might have been after, but
there's no indication Aries was a dreamer.
There's no indication, certainly no indication Baylor was a
dreamer. Baylor breaks beer or dare on
the good Baylor's brother Ray Girl.
Well, again, there's just he's the most unknown of this whole
group. We don't know much about him.
He was maybe not all mentally there, which maybe is a sign he
had dreams. But he maybe he was all mentally
there, but they blew him off because he kept going on about
these dreams. Yeah, see, he's the Helena in
this scenario. If they're going to make a
character a dreamer that wasn't made one Regal fits Makar.
We don't know if he had dreams, we don't think he did.
There's no indication he did. But but Makar's children were
the ones that Eamon said all my brothers dreamed of Dragons and
killed them all or whatever. I forget the exact wording but
y'all have heard that quote a few times on this show and
elsewhere. Not to mention Damon Blackfyre's
son Damon the second did as well.
So there were there was like this current generation, the
ones born in the one 70s, except for maybe Bloodraven, there
wasn't a whole lot of evidence of direct supernatural ability
or aptitude, But right after them came a wave of them of
potential. And if not actual.
So it was, it's definitely part of Baylor's life, if even if
it's not part of his own dreams. But what?
So we'll come back to this in Part 2 because the the only
obvious dream or the one for sure besides Damon the second
was Darren the drunkard and he's not born until 190 or 191 Right
now we're around the year 185. So we're we're a few years still
from that. None of make our sons have been
born yet because Darren was the oldest now.
And Bloodraven also just casually points out in the
mystery night that it. Yeah, dreamers.
Yeah. They come up sometimes in the
Targaryen family. Why not the Blackfires here and
there? You just kind of casually says
that. So it's pretty well known.
So there's no way that Baylor didn't know about this part of
his family's history. It's just like very clearly a
part of their history. And if this ever hits TV or
something like that, well, they would certainly draw this
element out a bit because it's just a thing that would be
happening. If Blood Raven had these
abilities. Well, he was only nine years old
when Darren became king, so it may not have been clear.
And of course with Blood Raven, was he having dragon dreams?
Was he doing old God's dreams? Was he having both?
It's just no wonder we did 3 episodes on him.
And again, Baylor the blessed would come back to him.
He prayed over his dragon eggs, but he also had visions.
Were they supernatural or they just the fact that he was
fasting like, like crazy and you see things when you fast, you
know, like you have. You're going to start seeing
things if you don't eat for several days.
Like I, I, I think I explained at the time, or maybe I didn't
because we haven't actually done the Baylor the Blessed episode
yet because it's on the shelf. I've personally experienced that
hallucinating because of lack of food and sleep.
So, yeah, I can speak to that from experience.
That doesn't mean they were dragon dreams, but it doesn't
mean he didn't have them either. You know, it could be both,
yeah. Like Baylor, for example, Baylor
the Blessed had a vision telling him to build what became known
as the Great Sept of Baylor. So, you know, that probably
doesn't sound like a dragon dream, but it was.
It was something, you know. It may not have been magical at
all though. It's interesting for us to
speculate where the dream came from or how to name it properly,
but to these characters themselves and the people they
might tell, it's not like, it's not like blood, Raven says.
You know, I had this vision of a usurper coming and they're like,
wait, well, was that vision of Dragon Dream?
No, no, no. It was front of faith.
Oh, well, it doesn't count. I don't think that's how the
conversation would go. Like you had a vision, they're
not going to care what the source of it was.
That's true, yeah. So now we don't know how long
the Great Sept of Baylor took to build.
It was definitely not finished during Baylor's life.
And it's one of those things where, like the Death Star, it
might have been used before it was fully completed.
Like it you can, for example, Daenerys married Maron in the
year 187, a few years ahead of where we are right now at the
Great Sept. That doesn't mean the Great Sept
was finished, but it was finished enough if they could
hold marriages there. So yeah.
For example, here in Denver, they're going to reopen Casa
Bonita, but they're not going to fully open it before they start
letting guests in, so. Right on.
Now it's big news here in Denver.
Speaking of marriages, with all these characters of similar age,
it makes sense they would all start to get married around the
same time because these, you know, they're of marriageable
age. And the way it goes with Royals
is they tend to have their betrothals and marriages fairly
early on, especially when you're in the line of succession,
because alliances are part of that.
And this is where we get something a little odd.
Somewhere between the age of 13 and 15, which is the year 184 to
186, Baylor would have become married to Jenna Dondarian.
Highly unusual marriage. As I said, a future queen from a
Marcher house. Never.
Nothing like this has ever happened.
In fact, nothing even close to this has ever happened
intentionally. Now, I say intentionally because
this is a really big difference when you look at who's been
queen before. There's been some unexpected
names because of people dying unexpectedly.
But in terms of we know this person's going to become king
and queen one day. This was the first time in the
history of the Targaryen history history of the Targaryen history
that it wasn't a Baratheon, Valerian, or Targaryen for the
Crown Prince to marry. And it was the Donderian, which
is a far drop in prestige, right?
And you got to think, well, why? Like, what's the deal here?
Why did what goes into that choice?
Part of this week's Playing in the dare on the good episode.
But to recap some of it and maybe look at it from a little
bit of a different angle is that, well, the Marcher Lords
are unhappy that the wars with Doran are over.
This is part of what makes them it's their reason to exist, to
defend the realm against Dornish incursions.
And it's been that way for so long.
All of a sudden their important job is gone.
It doesn't need to exist except for unauthorized raids, which
would still be a thing, but it's just a big drop in their
prestige because they're no longer needed for this point.
And that's stinks. You know, for some people,
they're like, we had an important job and now we don't.
We've been we're we're no longer relevant.
They don't like that, so he lifts them back up by making one
of them queen or eventual queen. She didn't actually become
queen, but would have become queen.
So with all that counts. Yeah, and it also, it's also
important because the marchers would have been upset that the
king was going to be half Nornish.
So now they have their stake in it that's relatively equal
because their children will be both, right?
Warning pun incoming. The marchers and the Dornish
were arch enemies. The Dornish would see them as
March enemies though. Boom, by the way.
I feel like once again, this is another example of how times
were changing. You know that it's, it's
relatively new for the Targaryens to be in charge in
the 1st place. And with the Targaryens in
charge, it's new for them to not have Dragons backing it up.
And so this is precedent setting, like not only their
details of why this particular marriage was arranged at this
time, but it also sets the president to marry other houses
to get out of this rut of trying to maintain these certain houses
that Despite that, we still have the Dance Dragons.
You know what I mean? That didn't exactly work.
So let's spread it out some. We're not as worried about the
dragon blood because there aren't Dragons anymore.
There's all these reasons that to do this, and not the least of
which, in my opinion, is to establish a new precedent.
Well said. Also well said is what Nina
writes here. Wedding Baylor to Jenna also
served as a signal that Daron was creating a single realm.
Not merely joining Dorn in the Targaryen Kingdom, but forging A
unified state. Child of Baylor and Jenna would
be a microcosm of this peace. Dornish blood and marcher blood,
each eternally spilled at the other's expense, would now be
mingled in a single person, A future king of the unified state
of Westeros. Yeah, boom.
Nina's also points out there isn't a little bit of an
exception to the Crown Prince is only marrying Targaryen,
Valerian or Baratheon, and that's Magor.
He married like six women and had, you know, didn't have any
real children amongst that. So yeah, we could forget about
Magor. They like to forget about Magor.
We don't talk about Magor. Yeah, it's the Enconto song.
It's from Enconto talk about. Bruno Oh, yeah.
OK, I do know that song. We don't talk about Magor.
We'll have to work on that workshop, that one further.
So the wedding itself would have been a big deal, given the
weight behind this union and what it meant for the realm.
And as you say, Sean, it was a signifier of a a change, a big
change in this new Westeros that was emerging.
It's a big change because of how long the state of affairs had
existed, especially because of how it happened.
It wasn't that one side finally defeated the other in combat.
It was peace, it was marriage, it was the you know, the good
way. So a lot of people would have
been there probably would have been a wedding at Daylord Sept
as well. Again, if it was finished
enough, because this is even a little bit before Daenerys's
wedding, probably there may have been people booing.
It might have been people like not happy about it.
There may have been some some people might have been paid to
riot, you know, like maybe someone was there could some
good stuff could be written about this.
I think This Is Us is all very rich.
Even though it's just a wedding, which isn't always the most
exciting thing, this could be pretty good.
There could be some pretty good stuff happening here.
I think if we get this in Fire and Blood too, I think it's got
a lot of potential. Just to remind you earlier,
again, thinking about the idea of what kind of relationship
Baylor and would have had I I want them to have been like
strong close friends that end up pitted against each other.
I think that would make for the best time.
Like Rainier and Allison kind of like that.
Yes. Exactly.
I agree, because that worked pretty well.
They might not want to do that twice, but it could be different
enough, you know, because we've also already done that.
They both hate each other thing plenty of time.
We've seen that more in the world.
You know, rivals from the beginning.
Yeah, like that's that's that's more standard, but it's less
tragic too. Yeah.
If they're friends and then they had like the world makes them
into edit Yeah, I like that more too.
That's why I like the more tragic one more.
Remember when we meet Baylor in the hedge night, which is 25
years from now, we're at the time we're talking about.
He's with Lord Dondarian. And this will continue to come
up in other ways. It won't do This Dondarian
connection isn't just a a side topic here.
It's going to come back in Part 2.
Now, before King Aegon's death, he had arranged for Damon's
bride to be Rohan of Tyros, But before Damon came of age, Aegon
passed. Now, Daron fulfilled that
arrangement. He went ahead and honored that
match. And probably around the same
time as Baylor's wedding to Jenna, maybe a little before,
I'm guessing before, not as big a wedding because it's not the
Crown Prince, but a pretty big deal, you know?
And I, I'm guessing it was before because we know that they
had kids right away. In the same year, in the year
184, the twins Aegon and Amon Blackfyre were born, which
implies the marriage was that same year earlier that year.
Because Damon wasn't even 14 until 184.
So he probably wasn't married when he was 13.
He was knighted young, but he probably wasn't married young
because that was up to that was up to Daron.
He was a little more about traditions here. 14 is still
pretty young. Either way, that does strongly
imply that he, the Damon, was married before Baylor.
And unusually, the Archon of Tie Rush was paid a dowry for his
daughter to marry Damon, where it's usually the woman's family
that pays the dowry. But I think this is because
Damon was a bastard. Damon was also given money by
Daron to build a small castle on the Blackwater rush.
We're not sure where it was, but it was probably close because
again, Daron quote, UN quote kept the great bastards close.
And it's on the Blackwater rush, which is, you know, the King
King's Landing is also on the Blackwater rush.
It's probably gone now, though that keep because, you know,
Bloodraven tried to eradicate all signs of David Blackfyres
existed so that people wouldn't like visit the red grass field
and leave flowers and, you know, leave.
He doesn't want them leaving homages.
And so they would, if he had to keep, they would go there.
He'd probably raise that thing to the ground, especially
because we haven't heard of it at any point elsewhere.
Like it's the thing that apparently used to exist.
Maybe it's someone else's now. But yeah, I think, I think
Brendan tore that thing down. Now, of course, another
important marriage here. Much is made of Daron.
I mean, Damon wanting to marry his half sister Daenerys, the
King's much younger sister. Remember, Daron and and Daenerys
were brother, sister. They were born very far apart.
I think it was 15 years apart in fact, so big gap in their age
there. Now, Darren was not up for that.
He's like, no, first of all, it's a rumor that he even that
Damon even wanted this. And it's also a rumor that he it
upset him afterwards. He thought maybe he could have
two wives, which is also a rumor.
We don't know if that's true. There's some evidence of that.
It's suggested that the Aegon was going to allow that but take
and have him take two wives. But obviously that didn't
happen. And De Lore may have had a say
in that, like they may have discussed it with his father,
may have said like, yeah, no, we we're not going to bring back
polygamy. You know, no, let's not do that.
Especially in an era of hewing closer to the faith.
It's very much not in there under their umbrella.
Yeah, They don't like that. They don't like double
marriages. They're not.
They're not big on polygamy. So again, with respect to not
knowing which rumors were true either way, the bottom line was
Damon the married Rohan of Tairash and this very political
there's there's suggestions that Aegon arranged this marriage
originally to get the Tairashi fleet maybe to make more
attempts at attacking Dorn. And so that's why this decision
needed to be handled delicately because, well, we.
So it went upset Dorn. Dorn was probably aware of the
political machinations Aegon was making.
He certainly knew he tried to send a fleet against them.
So he may have been looking to get a new fleet by allying with
Tyraj. So it would have been a delicate
scenario potentially. But Darren wanted to honor
agreements and just turn them into something more passive.
He wanted to get rid of the element of violence that was
lurking behind these moves and make them smoother, smooth them
out rather than breaking the deal, you know?
And then Baylor seemed to follow his lead on all that, which is a
continuing theme. Baylor, learning from his father
and carrying forward a lot of those wishes, continued to seem
to work together well even at this young age.
It took a full 2 years to negotiate Marrons Martel's
marriage to Daenerys, which that two year period apparently
overlapped with all these other marriages because while the two
year negotiation was happening, that's apparently when Damon
married Rohan and Baylor married Jenna.
So a lot of this new Kingdom is emerging.
The alliances, the things keeping it held up, the people
that are going to fight for it later, all being set up here.
Very good, very good groundwork here.
Our last section of the day is called Breakspear because it is
the moment where he earns his nickname.
We have to call him Baylor Breakspear to avoid confusion
with the other Baylor's, but he didn't earn that nickname until
the year 188 or run. Wait a 7?
Excuse me when he was 17? I wonder I.
Wonder what they did call him up to that point?
Young Breakspear or young Baylor?
Baylor junior Little Bailey. Brake pair.
Brakes pair. Yeah.
It's like, it's like the damp hair.
Yeah, instead of damp hair. Damn fair people.
Cuz people like, including myself read it as damn fair, you
know? But no, this is brakes pair.
Yeah, I like that. It's brakes pair.
Yeah. He did not like pears.
He was a Peach guy in the great Peach versus Pair wars of 189.
Many of fruit was broken. Those stone fruits went to war
as Crown Prince. He was of course, Prince of
Dragonstone, but again, he probably like his father,
probably spent most of his time at court helping his father rule
and learning from him and and working side by side.
So he was probably there. Actually, let me amend that.
He was certainly there in the year 187 when his father led the
procession with Marin Martel marching through the streets
towards the Great Sept where they laid that golden wreath of
Baylor's statue and said your work is complete.
Baylor in front of probably a monstrous crowd, right?
Because they wanted to show this off and announce the piece to as
many people as possible. Make a as big a spectacle out of
it as possible. This is followed by a wedding
tournament as there so often is wedding tournaments.
So the tournament would have been giant as well, most likely
a lot of people watching. And fittingly, at the end of the
tournament, Damon Blackfyre met Prince Baylor Targaryen for the
final tilt. Now we're not sure What built up
to this is another thing. I'm looking forward to seeing
exactly how this came about, Sean, with our discussion on
tournaments before, there could have been some arranging to make
sure the two luminaries met in the finals, like a little
arranging of the matches to make sure they didn't meet prior to
that, to make sure it was at the end.
But it's also possible that it was one of those ones where you
get to challenge who you want. And they did it like they they
made it a spectacle on purpose. Who knows who arranged it, but
it's an awfully convenient that they fought right at the final
tilt. So yeah.
We have in our minds this idea of like brackets, you know, like
tournaments are a pretty kind of standard thing in modern
society. But in in the real world,
tournaments of this sort weren't always run the same way.
They didn't always have neat brackets and in Martins world
clearly we've seen different formats for it like the the the
specific one and and the hedge knight was not a standard racket
tournament at all. So.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
They had the tapping of the shield.
You get to challenge who you want.
They had the 5 champions and you could pick who you want.
Which of them? You wanted to challenge, Yeah,
rounds of anyone in a crowd challenging one of these five
and rotating out and like a completely different from any
other formats. And by the way, when Harding was
injured because of Aryan cheating and Spearing his horse,
they decided on suggestion that they should only have 4
champions and that the 5th champion he should be able to
retire as a champion and no one should be to challenge him
because he broke his leg. Whose suggestion was that Baylor
breaks Pier, the chivalrous, the honorable, the thinking of
trying to think of everyone and trying to make sure no one's
feelings are rankled and trying to keep the drama from
developing. Someone who sees the drama
develop ahead of time and shuts it down.
Someone who has a lot of experience with that because he
saw so much of it as a child, like so much chord drama.
He's like, no, I'm good at seeing this coming and I have
the authority to shut it down and people will listen to me.
And he's like his suggestion, Lord Ashford's like, you're
right, Prince Baylor, let's do that.
You know, it's a reasonable suggestion too.
You know what I mean? There's a lot of other things
you could have suggested that people might have been like,
well, what about this and how about if?
And well, that's not fair because but this one's like,
yeah, good idea. Like then on, there's not really
any argument. Yeah, and he had to rule against
his own, you know, nephew Aryan to to make that ruling too.
So what, you know, he he showed that he wasn't biased against
his own family there. So that was that looked really
good, you know, and you're like, yeah, he's justice is justice,
right? But back to this tournament.
This is before Baylor was known as a deliverer of justice.
He's just, you know, still a young up and coming Prince at
this point. We can only imagine the setting
here, the stage, the excitement as they tilted repeatedly back
and forth. And we know they did back and
forth because that's exactly why he got the name break spear
because it took a lot of tilts. He kept breaking lances,
splintering them. Eventually, Baylor emerged the
victor, knocked him off his horse.
It must have been such a moment, like a like the overtime in the
finals of some sporting match, overtime in the Super Bowl,
extra innings in the World Series, fifth quarter in NBA or
the 4th period in NHL overtime. I forget how that works.
Really exciting. The equivalent of sudden death,
except without, you know, death being just as not literal in
this setting for once as as it is in the real world sports.
Well, yeah, right. The potential was there.
One of them could have had an could have had an accident, and
it would have been really exciting, the roar, the crowd,
minus the disappointment of some of them who really wanted Damon
to win because they would have been there would have been some
like rooting against the Dornish guy or rooting for the Valyrian
guy or rooting for that. Yeah.
Just they had their favorites for whatever reason.
And it's more than just their favorites.
It also represented like who they thought was more worthy,
which faction they thought was better.
A lot of the same vibes in episode 1 of House of the Dragon
season one with that tournament sort of showcasing off some of
the same things here. So that was a lot bloodier and a
lot less honorable. Like this was chivalrous.
Like Baylor and Damon were chivalrous guys.
There wasn't going to be someone Spearing the other guy's horse,
right? So as many similarities as there
may have been, there were also some big differences.
And this is an era where that mattered more.
Dance era is where those things had kind of fallen off, where a
lot of those values had been forgotten.
This was an era that was more accustomed to the horrors of
war, and it started to back off. Like I'll start to be so eager
to get into war again. That said, they would be getting
into war again pretty soon, only a few years later.
So by this point, Baylor was probably already a tournament
winner. He may have maybe had already
won a couple, but maybe not. Maybe this was his first big
win. I mean, he was only 17 years
old, and it was fantastic timing.
I mean, what a tournament to win in front of everybody.
With this reputation, his success as a jouster would
continue to rise. The whole realm saw it after
such an epic battle. I mean, no wonder both his
nickname and the memories stuck with people for so long.
Maybe Damon took his loss graciously.
Maybe Agor was there to whisper in his ear and say this should
be you getting all the cheers. Maybe a 13 year old Brendan
Rivers saw this whispering, saw this division, and started to
understand where things were going.
Were people already wary? Were people people already
seeing where this was headed? Some few may have, but mostly I
would guess they didn't. They didn't see what was coming
in about nine years after Baylor won that tournament, he probably
did what most champions do. He created the crowd.
He celebrated. He accepted their acclaim.
He was probably very gracious. I mean, everything about him
suggests that he would have been, you know, not a braggart
or anything like that. He would have bowed or whatever
he needs to do, like shown homage to the gods.
And his father congratulated the the the marriage, the bride and
groom and all that honored why they were there.
Imagine he helped Damon to his feet.
Sure, sure. Yeah.
And, you know, held his hands up and all that.
Yeah. All the all the things that
gracious Winter does. I predict that.
But he would have taken his helmet off of 2 during this and
people would see and be reminded of what he looked like.
And here's interestingly, you may have noticed, folks, that
this episode has not had any quotes yet, but we're leaving
you with one here, one that sticks out for its application
here. Yet 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
Marches came to mistrust Aaron and Baylor as well, and began to
look more and more to the old days when Dornish 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. Now, among those cheering loudly
for Baylor would certainly be whatever Dornish were in
attendance. They would certainly approve of
his victory over Damon. And of course, looking Dornish
would have just helped fuel their applause and their acclaim
for him, at least in part. And the cheers of those Dornish
might further inflamed those who were upset by this state of
affairs. Those same people who looked at
Damon. Blackfire growing tall and
powerful, half a God among mortal men.
And indeed, wonder. Yeah, many would be doing both.
Some of these would be marcher Lords.
Some of these would be just fans of Damon Blackfire, who thought
he was better the better man, like the Sir Eustaces of the
world. As we've said before, one of the
purposes of tourneys, and some of this wisdom is forgotten at
times, is to prepare for battles, for real wars.
That this competition ended with the 2 greatest young Knights of
the era, both perhaps eager to be the next Dragon Knight was
apartment because they're entertaining spectacle would
turn out to be just that, a prelude to real war.
Next week, Baylor Part 2, we will begin in the year 188 cover
the prelude to the Blackfyre Rebellions.
The Blackfyre Rebellion. Well, just the 1.
He only lived through 1 and his time is hand to the king that
followed which was 13 year reign right up until his death in the
Hedge night. Lots more interesting things to
come. He's going to have children,
he's going to have war, he's going to have more disputes.
Lots of other things we'll come up with for you.
Can't wait. And whatever else y'all think
because this one was recorded in the studio without live viewers.
But Part 2 will be live so y'all will have a chance to do live
feedback and send in any other questions you may have.
Feel free to do so. Your question may get answered
live on the show. Let's have our trivia answer.
The question again was Baylor the Blessed AKA Baylor the
Befuddled alongside the name Baylor Breaks beer, reminds us
that George likes alliteration in his nicknames, and my
question was in A Song of Ice and Fire there's a character
named Baylor and he has two nicknames as well, one mocking,
1 complimentary. What are those names?
Baylor Hightower is the answer. His nickname is Baylor Bright
Smile. But if you ask Ober and Martel
and the deceased Elia Martel, you know, I guess Ober is also
deceased. They called him Baylor Breakwind
because he he farted in front of Elia when she was presented to
him as a possible suitor. So that didn't work out so well.
He's couldn't take him seriously after he farted, so Baylor
Breakwind he was. What a miss.
Yeah, what a miss. We mentioned a lot of our
episodes in this one, aiming the Dragon Knight Part 1 and 2, of
course, the Black Fire Rebellions, obviously the Summer
Hall episode got a brief mention.
And The Trouble with Tourneys, a very fairly recent episode from
the end of 2022 that discusses some of the things we discussed
here in terms of how tournaments are set up for bigger things
and, and opportunity for chicanery and tricks and
intrigue and all sorts of symbolic developments and all
sorts, just all sorts of things. We spent a whole episode on it.
So you didn't check that one out.
Maybe you should. Thanks to those of you who
support us on Patreon or Spotify or who send us donations through
our website. Those are all ways you can
support us financially. If you wish to contribute, you
can follow the links to do that yourself.
We would much appreciate it. Thanks to Nina for her great
notes on this episode and for nearly all our episodes.
She had some great insight that we were able to discuss and add
to and fill out what we had already said.
So yeah, again, another win for her and for us for having her in
our corner. Thanks to Joey, Jesse and Bran
for the music assistance and video intro and Bran's part,
What a great contribution that has been for us over the years.
And to Michael Klarfeld for that, plus his excellent maps
that you see behind us in every single episode.
And thanks to our Benjen Ear for sound quality assistance, making
sure we sound as good as we can. Recording is tricky, and it's
good to have someone who really knows what they're doing helping
us out with the things that go wrong and making it all go
smoothly when it does or when it does.
Either way, smooth sound is what we try to deliver.
Until next time, my friends, fellow historians and listeners
and watchingers, whatever your preferred term is, we appreciate
your presence. We appreciate your listenage and
until next time, Valar re re.