While Egon and his sisters were busy conquering the Storm Lands,
the River Lands, the Vale, and what would become the Crown
Lands, the Iron Islands was in chaos after the fall of Hair in
the Black. So we'll speak of them later.
And the Darnish continued to bide their time, so we'll speak
of them later too. The Restoros includes 3 major
kingdoms, the North, the West, and the Reach.
Torrance Stark, King of the North, gathered his strength,
preparing to March S it took him longer, so we'll speak of him
later. At the same time, the West in
the Reach decided to ally and fight the Dragons together and
gathered their army quickly, so we'll speak of them now.
For once, two of the kingdoms were united and this resulted in
the largest army ever fielded in Westeros.
Aegon, far from fearing this conflict, seems to have almost
welcomed it. I mean, he would have preferred
they knelt, but this gave him the opportunity to teach a
lesson. If Heron Hall was his chance to
prove that no castle is safe by destroying the largest one ever
built, why not teach the same lesson when it comes to the
largest army ever fielded? If the West and Reach were going
to gather all that many men in one place, he would gladly come
and make an example of them. Teach them why you shouldn't do
that. Aegon knew that the biggest army
ever seen in Westeros wouldn't fare much better than the
biggest castle had. And he was right.
It was a spectacular and unique battle, but it wasn't a close
battle. But it definitely wasn't simple
either. There were many considerations,
issues of timing, and uncertainty.
Aegon had such a huge advantage, compounded by the fact that his
enemies were ignorant of how big his advantage was, so he was
able to think ahead about the aftermath.
During the battle, he was able to coordinate the outcome a
little bit in ways that you can't normally plan war.
It's war like, ah well, what happens happens.
Like there's only so much you can plan, right?
It's a little easier to plan when you know you're going to
win. Yes, right.
When you know. I guess it's a little easier to
plan when you know you're going to lose.
Also, I guess so yeah, your choices are smaller.
Anyway, He could decide who lived and who died on the field
of battle instead of having to make uncomfortable decisions
later, right? He could curtail the outcome in
a way that you normally can't. Put a different way.
Killing on nobles on the battlefield is kingly, while
executing them afterwards is. That kind of comes off wrong.
It looks tyrannical, Even if either way you're killing
someone who has no chance. That's not really how it's
perceived in Westeros. We can argue the similarities to
that scenario, but there's no doubt in my mind that it comes
off way differently to the other nobles and the the peasants if
we're if we're getting into it. So this factor determined much
of his strategy, determined this factor, determined much of his
strategy during and after, and arguably the short period of
time after the battle was more compelling than the battle
itself. I'll tell you right now that
there's a lot unsaid here, which means a lot of our filling in
the blanks and reading between the lines is going to happen.
So you get to decide yourself which is more interesting, judge
for, judge that on your own. We'll give you all the info we
can, and either way, it's going to come up quite a few times in
the Song of Ice and Fire and Duncan Egg, meaning the Field of
Fire as a historical anecdote or as a lesson or as a piece of
history, something that fits in the world building pretty often.
So we'll be bringing all that into the reread is discussion
today as well. Yes, all that and more on this
episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Hello and welcome everybody. Every Sunday, almost every
Sunday, that is. We get together for a live
stream at 3:00 PM Eastern on YouTube.
Afterwards, you can still see that video on YouTube, but you
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And it's ad free if you join us on Patreon.
Sean, how's it going today? You got a special drink for us
today or for you? You're not sharing it, I assume.
I wish I could. This is a fiery red drink for
the field of fire that is very red.
Maybe for the blood of the Dragons as well, it's This is
the Rainbow machine with Mountain Dew with.
Sparkling Ice Black Raspberry. And it's delicious as always.
Doubt it as as always. I also got this new Mastodon
shirt. Nice.
I like that. Mastodon, which I think I'll
wear this the next time we do any kind of Hightower centered
thing. It's like a torch of green
lights. Yeah, that is like a Hightower
thing. You're right.
Yeah, maybe. I own several Mastodon shirts
and I'm a big fan of Mastodon, but I don't think I've seen that
shirt before. That's cool.
I hadn't either. I snatched it right.
I've got my Mazaria shirt on nice and purple for Targaryen
eyes and the silver lighting. By Fox and Brambles who did our
logo shout out to Ashton. So shout out as well to our good
friend Nina. That's good Queen Alley with 17
L's and I mean 1L in good queen alley tom.tumblr.com Very
interesting question she was asked and a very excellent
answer she gives to what about Davos being offered the chance
to make a shadow baby with Melisandra?
What's her deal there? Is she trying to bring him under
her power? Seduce him?
Gain his loyalty? It's a really interesting
question. And would and has she offered
that to other people? Like, wouldn't there be other
people want lining up to make shadow babies for their king,
given the offer, the context of the offer.
So it's a it's a very good question and Nina gives a really
good answer. You're going to want to go over
there and read about that. One point she brings up is,
well, it becomes an interesting moral conundrum because Davos is
the center of Davos's moral morality is loyalty to Stannis,
and Melisandra frames it as a deed done for his king.
So it's kind of like, well, he did it, Stannis did this.
Shouldn't you do it too? Shouldn't you be willing to do
the same thing your king has given?
It's a really. Yeah, that's a really good.
That's a really good question and answer and Kylie encourage
you to read that and and think about it yourself too, because
it is a it is a tough question. I I think it's another option is
that she might have been testing him.
It might not even worked, but she might just wanted to know
how he would take it. She's sizing him up, you know?
Absolutely. Nina brings that up too.
So you're you're right to point to that and Nina caught that as
well. All right.
And I, we talked about this a little head of time.
I'm going to point out that I would have been like, heck yeah.
I mean, he's in jail. That's.
Yeah, that's the part I bring up.
Take part in a magical spell like let's say.
It just keeps do it for my kids. What's the downside?
So take out our enemy. Yeah, yeah, that's the big fail
in Davis's PAR, I'm gonna say. So ask questions if you have
them, whether you're watching live.
You can send them right here for Asheya to catch and we'll put
them in the stream, or you can send them to us anywhere that
you interact with. Us.westeroshistory@gmail.com is
one of those places. If you want to find links to
everything I ever talk about, whether it's links to our other
products, linked to Nina, linked to our other pages, anything
like that, go to historyofwesteros.com.
That's where all that's it's stored in one place.
As well as Ashaya's excellent episode Sorter.
You can find a version of that. There lots of things on our
website that you will find useful.
And at the end of this episode, of course I'll mention some that
are relevant to this one and I'll give the answer to this
trivia question. But one thing I'm going to do a
little different with these trivia questions going forward
is the answer to this question comes during the episode.
Like I'm the answer appears during the episode.
So if you're paying close attention, you might catch it
either way. I'll tell you at the end.
And the question is, there were four commanders on the field of
fire on the side of the two kings.
So the reach West side had four commanders, the right, the left,
the center and the vanguard. One was King Merne, one was his
son Edmond, one was King Lauren. And who was the other?
So one that was not a king or the son of a king cuz it wasn't
King Lauren's son. The answer comes during the
episode. Like I said all right setup and
1st mention. I kind of wanted to call this
one the field of fire and friendship for everyone cuz
that's that's cuz that is basically what happened, right?
Everyone either got burned or peace got peace.
They got friendship for everyone, right?
It may have been a forced friendship, but it was enforced
pretty heavily. Because, you know, if you didn't
stay friends, you you got the burn.
You're right, like those are your options.
And they remained your options even afterwards.
So yeah, the field of fire comes up quite a lot In The Song of
Ice and Fire. It is well remembered, as Agon
surely expected it to be. And as we'll see, it was
probably at least in part by design, an example to stand the
test of time in the vein of Heron Hall.
The singers call it the Field of Fire, right.
I wonder if it was like a Blood Raven thing where we we theorize
or a Tywin thing where we theorize the Tywin like,
encouraged the singing of the reigns of Casimir or Blood Raven
encouraged the singing of 1000 Eyes in one.
Like Air guns. Like yeah, think about the Field
of Fire. Absolutely.
Keep that one going. Make sure it's a good song that
people keep singing And it's it's it kind of rolls off the
tongue field of Fire, the burning of hair.
And Hall doesn't have like a name, doesn't have a nickname.
It just the burning of Heron Hall, right?
It's no fancy clever nickname for it.
This is kind of like it is a little poetic.
The field of Fire it. Would have been so much better
if it was Baron Hall or something.
Baron Hall. That's really good.
I like that. Yeah, that's what it should have
been renamed to afterwards. It was built Heron Hall, but it
became Baron Hall pretty quickly.
Yeah, so that is needed too, because Heron Hall, there's the
long lasting visual evidence you've got that sitting there
still now to this day as a testament to the power of of the
dragon. Well, at least of 1 Dragon in
particular, but it works for the others in in a in a lesser
sense. So this is remembered more by
song and memory and clever naming and things like that and
history books. So there wouldn't be a lot of
there'd be more of that, right? More.
Maybe we'll hear a song of it one day.
Here's an example which also happens to be the first ever
mention of the Field of Fire from Tyrion to A Game of
Thrones. Tyrion stood in that dank cellar
for a long time, staring at Valerians huge empty eyed skull
until his torch burned low, trying to grasp the size of the
living animal to imagine how it must have looked when it spread
its great black wings. And swept across the skies
breathing fire. His own remote ancestor, King
Lauren of the Rock, had tried to stand against the fire when he
joined with King Merne of the Reach to oppose the Targaryen
conquest that was close on 300 years ago when the Seven
Kingdoms were kingdoms and not mere provinces of a greater
realm. Between them the 2 kings had 600
banners flying 5000 mounted Knights.
And 10 times as many free riders and men at arms.
Aegon Dragon Lord had perhaps 1/5 that number, the chroniclers
said, and most of those were conscripts from the ranks of the
Last King he had slain. Their loyalties uncertain, the
hosts met on the broad plains of the Reach amidst golden fields
of wheat ripe for harvest. When the 2 kings charged, the
Targaryen army shivered and shattered and began to run for a
few moments. The chroniclers wrote the
conquest was at an end, but only for those few moments before
Aegon Targaryen and his sisters joined the battle.
It was the only time that Vegar, Moraxis and Balerian were all
unleashed at once. The Singers called it the Field
of Fire. Near 4000 men had burned that
day, among them King Merne of the Reach.
King Lauren had escaped and lived long enough to surrender,
pledge his fealty to the Targaryens and beget a son, for
which Tyrion was duly grateful. Nice, long, excellent, fun
quote. There just goes to show how much
of that detail George included really early in the story.
That's the 14th chapter of the series, and along with Tyrion,
we will be imagining what it must have been like.
And it's pretty intense. I mean, think about that.
He's just trying to grasp the size of this creature as he's
standing, looking at its skull and how large its flames must
have been, and then all that. There's been a few examples of
Dragons on T We have an easier time imagining it than Tyrion
does, I think, because we've gotten to see Dragons on TV that
were rendered with really excellent CGI and against army.
That Loot Train episode of season seven of Game of Thrones
is a probably our best visual similarity.
It was an army of Westermen enrichment even, right?
Like there were Thraki at the Field of Fire.
So that's pretty different. And there was really only one
dragon there that did anything significant.
So there's still substantial differences in that battle and
this one, but still, it's the visuals there.
A lot of those would apply here. So the Field of Fire belongs in
the pantheon of early world building.
George likely had this stuff written well before he even
expanded the series beyond a trilogy, which is why we should
be more sure that it matters as a historical analogy.
Slash parallel slash lesson, or some kind of foreshadowing or
all the above. Because George included it so
early and he kept so many of the original details exactly the
same very detailed numbers. He doesn't usually do that with
these historical anecdotes, right?
Usually it's more vague, like the armies were large or the
toast was the largest ever seen. No, He gives us the exact
numbers, and those exact numbers are the exact same in Fire and
Blood 600 banners, which is 600 Lords or 600 landed people like
some of them could be Knights with castles.
Same difference, they're both. It's called the 2 kings in
capital, right? 5000 Knights with 55,000 total
and 11,000 for Agon. All those details are the exact
same. The only things that I can see
that change selling of Vagar Causeway.
Vagar used to have an extra H in it and the calling agon agon
Dragon Lord which didn't really stick as a as a nickname even
though it was retty early in the book.
Comes U once or twice the never again, then it's just egg on the
Conqueror, egg on Targaryen, egg on the first whatever.
They just didn't call him that anymore.
George just kind of pivoted away from that nickname.
Well, that was kind of my question is the other times that
he was mentioned like I got the idea that Tyrion said it like
that because he was emphasizing that aspect of egg on like.
It almost seemed dominion, like diminutive of him, like he was
saying diminishing what he did, like Aegon Dragon Lord.
Interesting, you know it was. But like I don't think that is
how it's said in the other times it's it's mentioned like that.
I don't recall exactly the context of the other times he
calls it's called dragon. Maybe it's a question for
another time I think. But yeah it's only a few times.
That's a really interesting interpretation to share.
I like that. And Tyrion is, of all the
characters, is someone who's thought about Dragons and dragon
Lords the most. So, and this is our introduction
to that, is literally the chapter where we first find out
that he's obsessed with Dragons. This is this is where it comes
this is our introduction to Tyrion's Dragonosity.
It would be an interesting but although maybe difficult thing
to analyze the the different people and when when they refer
to Agon what they call them, you know the context of the
conversation or the perspective of the person was because it is,
it is. I didn't think about it until
she said that, but it does make me think that it kind of.
He's a dragon Lord. Of course he won this big
battle. He had a freaking dragon like.
I guess he's a conqueror, but really it's a Dragon Lord.
It does take away a little bit, you know.
He didn't call him egg on the Y. Yeah, but if I'm picturing
Tyrion narrating that line, there's a little snark in there
to me. And he's talking to a little
Stark at the time, or he's talking to John.
John's a little stark, yeah. He's a little stark, yeah.
It's not a whole Stark, but. I want to point also.
That the numbers George gave us aren't preposterously inflated?
No, you're right. Big.
But they're not out of control like the wall or a few other
things that he's named. Yeah, you're right.
That might. Be with a little regret.
Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.
These armies are not absurdly large.
These are, these are reasonable size.
In fact, they would be. This is something we'll talk
about a little later is the size of the army and how this
reflects the population of the era and how like a similar sized
gathering of armies now would probably be larger like Renley's
army was larger for example. It just didn't see battle.
So it doesn't get this is the largest army that ever saw a
battle, right that that we know of.
There have been other ones that were larger that just were an
army but never did any fighting, at least not in that form.
So yeah, I like that interpretation as well If you
think back, I mean they would have been different names he had
at the time, like when did he start getting called Egg on the
Conqueror like right away maybe. But there he would have maybe
had other nicknames that, some of which may be predated the
Conquest, and then some of those would have faded.
And yeah, different eras might have called him different
things, just despite the the main name.
I suppose, yeah. If you're talking about Joe
Biden in the 80s, you might refer to him as Senator Biden
cuz he wasn't president yet. That's true.
Yeah sure he might have had different like no one called
him. Like people call him Sleepy Joe
now. I don't think anyone called him
Sleepy Joe in the 90s, you know? Pete Holmes bit about yeah.
Whenever there's some mean bully person that's scaring you, just
remember in a few hours he's going to be.
The cold side of the pillow. Everyone sleeps to take some
fear away from the bullies. That's a good point.
Even Dragons, right? Like Valerians.
Just like. A sleeping dragon is still
pretty scary. Yeah, that's true.
That's true. Just like this snore would knock
you off your feet. Just like, accidentally, yeah,
they snort. Little bits of flame, just like
little tiny bits pop out right? Like, by accident.
Here's another fun aspect to that quote.
It sounds like Tyrion is down in the cellar looking at the
skulls, but if you remember your your books, that never happens.
He's never down in the Cellars looking at the skulls.
This is a memory he's thinking about.
This time that he was down there.
He's actually on his way to the wall.
What? What's brings up this memory is
he's reading about the properties of dragon bone.
He sits down at a tree to read his academic treatise on dragon
bone, starts thinking about dragon skulls, and he's taken
back to the cellar where he's thinking about that.
And that leads him to think of the Field of Fire.
Which is cool, because as I said, this is the introduction
to Tyrion being so into Dragons. It's basically our first real
introduction to any sort of dragon lore, and it's the field
of fire. That's what we get.
The first thing we get is Valerian Skull, then a
description of the field of fire.
That's our introduction to Dragons and Westeros.
But for like, Danny's had her first chapter, but she's not
really thinking about Dragons that much.
She's like getting out of the bath and anxious about her
wedding, and visceras is being all crappy to her, like he
always is. Like there's not much talk of
actual Dragons there. So this is where it starts.
It's also a good writing device because it makes the world feel
more real, Yeah. When characters in the world
think about other things, historical events in the world,
it makes it seem like the world itself is more real.
It's. I agree.
It's good on so many levels. Yeah, and George has this great
way of like, you might think like a lot of authors would have
put this history in Danny's chapters because they are there.
It's her ancestors. But Tyrion's the one obsessed
with Dragons. He's the one that's really into
it. So he's the one gives U.S.
history for that. That's something George does a
lot of where back story comes in a chapter that applies to a
different plotline, and we pointed a lot of that out during
the standard valor. Read us for A Song of Ice and
Fire and I. Pointed this out one time too,
and we were trying to like, categorize, if you will,
Martin's writings. It's fantasy.
Intrigue. Whore.
But I think mystery as much as any of those, Yeah.
And that's one way to present it as a mystery is to kind of
scatter the information, you know?
And Speaking of the mid, one of the mysteries comes up here, the
next line as Tyrion's thinking. It's one of the first examples
of the interruption trick that George uses of he's in the
middle of lore and rather than finding a spot to end the lore
lesson, it gets interrupted by the characters, something that's
actually happening that's more pressing or present.
Like in this case, John says one of the most famous lines in the
early books or if not all the books, why do you read so much,
Which is by itself like, oh, we love that question because
Tyrion gives a fantastic answer. It's a beloved answer and it's
the irony in this moment is gigantic because he's reading
about Targaryen history which probably doesn't apply to
Tyrion. But there's a chance it does
because he might be one. But John is right like that we
can be 99.9% sure of. And so the guy who's lore this
applies to it's it applies to Danny who's chapter who's had
one or two chapters by this point.
But it also applies to John who's the one interrupting.
So that's really neat. And yeah, and Nina points out
that the the the point about Tyrion being duly grateful for
the burning there, the outcome of the battle, right.
Also, John should be duly grateful cuz the Agon lived long
enough to Cyrus son and become John's remote ancestor as well.
So those both John and Tyrion would be grateful if they knew
the full story there. All right, so actual camp, let's
bring it back to the timeline of right before the field of fire
rather than during John and Tyrigan's walk to the wall.
The campaign begins. And here we have another quote
of just that. The two Great Western kings had
made common cause and assembled their own armies, intent on
putting an end to egg on for good and all.
From High Garden marched Merne, the 9th of House Gardener, King
of the Reach, with a mighty host.
Beneath the walls of Castle Golden Grove, seat of House
Rowan, he met Lauren, the first Lannister King of the Rock,
leading his own host down from the Westerlands.
Together the 2 kings commanded the mightiest host ever seen in
Westeros, an army 55,000 strong including some 600 Lords, great
and small. And more than 5000 mounted
Knights. Our iron fist, boasted King
Merne. His four sons rode beside him
and both of his young grandsons attended him as Squires for
once. Like I said, or we've said a few
times, this is an example of kings uniting against a common
foe. We don't see it a whole lot.
That for Agon created an opportunity to show that yes,
you bring together all these people and I will beat it easily
and that will send a message. Shay is gonna put up the map of
Golden Groves. We can see roughly the location
of this. Now, we don't know exactly where
the battle take place. It's somewhere in the general
area, Golden near Castle Golden Grove, and perhaps it's a little
bit like the Red Grass Field where it's just a field.
It doesn't have a lot of things to market as special.
I'm sure in the short term there were things to market like
carnage and bones and pieces of metal, but 300 years later you
can see why. Maybe the exact location has
been lost like it has been for some other things.
Now to be fair, the Red Grass Field Blood Raven may have
manipulated things a little bit to keep people from knowing
where it was because he saw that people would go there and like
leave homages to to Damon Blackfire and he didn't like
that, so he didn't want people like remembering fondly what was
and and and paying their respects like that.
So now I'm not sure that was necessarily a problem here, and
I don't know that Agon was worried about them paying homage
to the dead gardeners, but I mean it's possible it is
possible and that might be why the the site has been somewhat
lost. I lean towards it.
Just, you know, it was a big field, like there's nothing
terribly notable about it other than what took place there.
But in the long run there's no physical reminders.
So yeah, comparing this to other large armies for scale etcetera,
the the army size was beaten by Renley Renley's didn't actually
see battle. As I said, now all the regions
can field larger armies and they used to because of the conquest,
because of the longer term peace, because of lasting peace
instead of very frequent war which was the norm prior to the
conquest O the overall population increased.
People farms were larger, farms were more fertile people, farms
weren't destroyed as often more trade haened.
Less disruption of resources like that.
Less setbacks, less times where half the male population was
slain and a bunch of the women too in because of a war.
Like just yeah, they're these things all like, it's really
stack. Up and investments.
Longterm plans are more worth making or it's more safe to
decide to build a farm in this area, to lend money to buy, you
know, horses and plows and such they need for.
Farm because you don't expect the farm to get attacked by
invaders 2 years later, right? You'll your investment will pay
off. The farmers want to commit his
life to it, to settle down where he is and etcetera, etcetera.
Which again, more farms means more food.
Which means because as populations grow, you need more
food too. It's true.
A lot of connecting factors that war disrupts all of, you know,
every single part of it. Yeah.
War. It's it's it's the more you
study the war, the more disruptive you realize it is to
just everything and and everyone.
Even when it's contained to a smaller area like the sillover
factor. Yeah, I mean just just think
about it from a from a vibes perspective, just from like your
anxiety. Just like sitting around going
when's the next war coming? You just know it's gonna happen
in the back of your mind. You just like any day now like
my whole land could get taken away and just everyone killed in
the back. But under Agon you might have a
little optimism like well actually maybe it's been 10
years and we haven't had anything go wrong.
Maybe it's too much to hope for that to continue.
But maybe, maybe it will and yeah so like you say that's the
kind of financial investment you're talking about an
emotional investment in your own future and and being able to
feel like you might have a future, whereas you might not
have felt that way under the the prior scenarios.
Rhagar had about 40,000 at the Trident for comparison the
Rebels have less, so not a whole lot less than 55,000 but but
still definitely less. And that was towards the end of
the war. There already been a lot of
battles and and this like that. Whereas this was the first
battle not for Agon obviously, but the first battle at the West
or Reach had fought and the only.
So these things were all wrapped up much quicker.
Agon himself would have one of the next most largest armies
fielded right after this battle. Basically all the people that
conscripted into his army after he beat them.
Plus his existing army added up to about 45,000, which he would
take N to confront Torin, which will be getting to pretty
shortly. In our read through here, King
Merne called it an iron fist, our iron fist.
But like, how useful is a fist against a dragon?
Not it's not. It's use, it's useless.
Like try punching a dragon even with a iron fist.
Not going to help, it's just going to be annoyed like.
If you can even reach it. If you can, yeah.
Can you even get close enough? Exactly like this is a very bad
metaphor, Mr. Mr. Merne. Fists don't have much range.
I mean, it's hard to hit a dragon with an arrow like with a
fist. Yeah, good luck now, Argal.
I can see. In his arms I said go.
He's like Inspector Gadget. Yeah, like it still doesn't do
much damage, though. It's like, hey, stop that, you
can tickle him. Like, can you tickle a dragon?
Margelac had actually come fairly close to winning, or at
least it kind of looked like he would.
Maybe he wasn't really that close to winning, but he
defeated much of the army sent against him before finally
losing when his men came in contact with Moraxis and then
Aris directly. So this might have been learned,
the 2 kings might have heard about this, and then that might
have given them a boost of confidence.
Like hey, these guys almost won, and we have way more men than
them. And we're better, of course,
because they are. They're going to think that
anyway because they're proud of their gardeners and Lannisters
and they've ruled these domains for 8000 years.
They've got the level of pride they must have is just we can't
fathom. And that's important because to
us it's easy to look at what they did and think, God, that
was dumb. So we have to kind of wrap our
heads around why to them, it didn't seem so dumb.
Like what made them think this would work?
What made them think this would be successful?
What made them think it was a good idea?
Or why did they do it blindly Anyway, all these things, a lot
of questions here they could think.
And this is the start of that. Well, our Galac was an old man.
We have more men. We have more nights.
The way they think about war and the way way Merne was so proud.
He's like, yeah, we got this iron fist.
He's like the way they think about war.
Nothing like this has ever happened before from their side
not, let alone nothing's ever happened like this with Dragons.
But they're thinking about their own army and like we've got the
biggest army Westeros has ever seen, more nights than anyone's
ever put together. Like, how could we lose the way
they think about war? Numbers are a really important
thing, especially when you're in the reach, when numbers are
often your path to victory because you have that advantage
kind of built in because that's the the population of the reach
is the largest. So it's the advantage they lean
on. They're used to that being, and
it usually works. It's usually going to.
I mean, yes, smaller armies can beat larger ones.
That happens all the time. But I don't think that's what's
in their mind here. They're not like, well, maybe he
could beat it. That's just not how they're.
Also like small armies beating larger ones.
It's like the 17,000 soldier army beat the 22.
Yeah, right. Not the 5000 soldier army did
not beat the 50,000 soldier army.
That doesn't happen, right? And and that's what this is 5 to
1 basically you you said 50 to 10, this is 55 to 11, it's
pretty much the same math. And another another factor that
normally would be to their advantage is this open field,
right? Normally that's something that
all the cavalry that they've amassed all the horses.
Another thing that when you have more wealth, you have more
horses and Knights, right? That is an advantage it's hard
to take advantage of. In the the woods, that's true on
a coastal area or a Cliff side or in the rain.
But here we have this open field and a clear day.
They don't realize that the same advantages for their cavalry is
an advantage for the it's a bigger advantage.
Yeah, they're like all the conditions are perfect, but
they're perfect dir for for the Dragons.
Need to point out something else that's a really that I hadn't
thought of. Which is, given the way these
other campaigns went, one dragon per region, the West and the
region might have thought they were only going to have to face
one dragon, so whoops. And and they might one, even if
they had to face two, if they don't realize how big and
powerful the Dragons are. Because I remember early on when
we were discussing this, I thought about the idea of like,
you know, I mean even now we and and and maybe Agon doesn't.
Fully understand the power of dragon, right?
I mean, George can sort of make it whatever he wants, I guess.
But if there seem to be certain parameters that we can sort of
make sense of and that these characters in this world might
have tried to do the same. One reason you have big numbers,
Dragons aside, is because when that first clash comes a punch
of people die and then the next wave and then the next wave.
And so if one army can withstand 3 waves and one can withstand 8
waves, yeah, well, the bigger army wins that, right?
So. If the dragon swoops in
breathing fire and kills, you know, 300 soldiers, and then it
swings around and breathes again and kills 300 murder soldiers,
swings around like well, how many times can it swing around
and do that? Even if we can never hit with an
arrow, even if it's totally impenetrable, we can't get the
dragon around. Eventually it gets tired, right?
And it might kill 78000 troops before he gets tired.
We still have 30,000 more, yeah. What if they wipe out your whole
arm? Take.
Yeah, like they the Dragons eventually get tired, The army
spreads out. I can still see how they thought
they might overcome it. Yeah, you know, I agree.
And and there's some examples later from the real world that
I've got when we get to the actual battle that also show
that there's lots of times in the real world where it looked
hopeless and terribly and and and a terrible idea to fight and
they did anyway and got slaughtered like there's often
it becomes because of improper framing of a new technological
advancement which isn't a new technological advancement.
It's it's just them not being used to the it's new to them.
Right. The Dragons aren't new but it's
new to the to the western reach. So yeah so they didn't know and
to be fair as well no dragon had destroyed an army to this point
like Moraxis's didn't destroy Oris's army or Argalax army.
That was more of a the rain was beating down so hard Moraxis
couldn't take flight. The army's kind of just
destroyed each other slogging it out through the mud until it
came to hand to hand. And Moraxis was was still really
nasty up close without being able to fly.
But these combined West and reach forces had not seen an
example of a of a dragon or multiple Dragons destroying a
full army. Yet they were they were the
example of that. And Aegon was happy to to set
that example because it's like, well, if you're going to try
coming at me with an army less than 55,000, like look how easy
this one was. You know what are you going to,
you're going to really try 30, you're going to try 25.
Like what are your chances, man? Like do you really want to even
try? So yeah, that's that's a hugely
important factor. And I think Aegon wanted to let
make sure that was known. So we pointed out that making
that example was a goal for him. But the optics regarding
leadership was much different here, much different.
Heron was the big bully on the block and new blood on the
block. The Hore dynasty hadn't been
around for 8000 years as kings. The house probably had been
around a long time, maybe even 8000 years, but they weren't
famous Westeros wide for being kings for so long.
So. And we know how the Country Club
of Westeros functions in a sense, in that the older the
blood, the more value it seems to have to them.
So that the Horrors don't have that sort of ancient nobility
going for them in the same sense that the Gardeners and
Lannisters do. Really, no one had that like the
Gardeners. The Gardeners were the tip top
of all the qualities that makes Noble Blood great in Westeros.
They had it all. It's the oldest.
It's the one that so many other ones descend from.
They get to put themselves at the top of that pyramid and then
most everyone agrees with them. You know, they even try to claim
that Brandon the Builder came from their lines.
So they've really got an argument for almost everyone.
Like, yeah, everyone came from us.
So yeah, and they're popular. That's another factor.
Like, the gardeners had kept stability.
They were pretty well regarded. They may not have been like
popular like the Starks, but they were.
They're pretty well regarded, and that counts for a lot.
And same with the Lannisters. So it's not like, yay, you took
out Heron will gladly join you for that.
No one in the reach flipped to join Aegon ahead of time.
No one in the West flipped to join Aegon ahead of time.
No one said you know what, I want to be on the winning side.
No, they all stayed loyal as far as we know.
We don't have a single example otherwise and that is different.
Even in in Stormland like Argalac had defections before
the campaign even began, before war was even declared.
Some of those Lords of the of the narrow sea were showing up
at Agons council meetings and and shunning Argalacs.
So that by itself shows an example of the level of loyalty
that was in play here and why the political situation was much
different. You can't just take out these
kings and expect everyone to fall in line.
Well, you kind of can, but you have to do it right.
Depends on the nature of how you take, right.
You have to take them all out which is what he did, right.
You could if you could leave a one or two gardeners then they
might try to rally around that one gardener and be like well
this is the family that's led us for 8000 years we're going to
stick with them. What happens when there's no
gardeners left or only female gardeners left as we'll get to
cuz there had to be some. They don't get mentioned.
So that's that's a problem. But we'll we'll that's some of
the reading between the lines we have to do.
But we'll get to that in the second-half.
So that's why he would have just preferred them to bend the knee.
Cuz they already have this love and this following.
If they bend the knee to him then everyone else follows suit
right? And they're like okay, well if
the gardeners bend the knee and then so will we and then it's
just it's nice and smooth and clean and no one dies.
No fields get burned. But of course that's not what
happened. The submission would have to
take war to determine. Nina writes that Aegon's
decision with the Field of Fire is interesting from a
geopolitical perspective because he's setting out with the intent
to, if not have them bend the knee, then to annihilate them.
They either can bend the knee or die.
The two most ancient and well established dynasties in
Westeros. Aegon had every reason to expect
that with Merne and Lauren personally leading the armies,
which would have really rung bells in his mind like, oh,
they're both leading the army. So that gives me a chance to
kill them on the field of battle rather than to execute them more
to do something more unsavory later, let alone like what
Visenia will say about Castilly Rock later.
And like ooh, I'm glad they bent the knee and I don't want to
have to deal with that castle Woo.
So yeah, that might have, that might have gotten ugly, in other
words. And that's not what a gun won.
And he didn't want to show that this castle would slow him down.
You know, I wanted to dominate. These weren't violent tyrants
who were unpopular. These weren't brutes who had
enslaved people. These were not followers of some
dark religion that most of Westeros thought of as like
demons. Like, of course I'm referring to
the Drowned God. No, these are people who not
only worship the Seven like most of Westeros, but are considered
pretty high up in regard and in terms of like hierarchy, like
the Gardeners. And the High Towers, of course,
have kind of a lockdown on the Faith of the Seven in terms of
being having a lot of indirect soft power, even a little bit of
hard power over the Faith. Now, of course, as we discussed
in our Under the Dragons episode, High Towers didn't show
U in the field of Fire, and that's a pretty big deal and a
big separate discussion. But it wouldn't have helped if
they had. I don't like what one oh, oh,
oh, oh, more men. Well, that wouldn't have made
any difference. Like, Right.
No, please, no. They made the right call, and I
will. Say the way it might have helped
if they've if they had deployed 10,000 men somewhere else, OK,
they sent 10,000 men to the Crown lands or whatever, you
know, that's a good point If they rather than just, I don't.
Know if they would have smart enough to do that if they did
show up, but that's the way that could have made it.
I agree. Yeah.
If they had done it, if they deployed their men differently,
this is the worst thing they could have done.
Putting them all in one place where the fire can get them
easily is. Yeah, as we see in The Dance of
the Dragons, no one does this. No one forms huge ass armies and
takes them to the field because everyone knows by that era.
It's a terrible idea when there's Dragons about.
The era of large armies returns when the Dragons are gone right?
The big armies that like go into Dorn to conquer Dorn in the era
of King Daron the First, that's getting back into the the size
armies that existed prior to the Dragons.
Like once once the word got out. You don't put 3040 thousand men
in the field when they could all just get cooked.
It's just a terrible idea. You go smaller, you go 5000
here, 3000 here, 8000 here, maybe even smaller.
And scatter, don't be all in one place, because there's only so
many Dragons. And that's even more true now
than it was than it is during the dance when there's actually
quite a few Dragons. But yeah, so if they'd used a
strategy like that, yeah, I would have given a gun fits.
The strategy that Doran does use does give them fits and ends up
working pretty darn well. It's still very destructive, but
it was a path to victory. And it worked.
May have been the only path to victory, but it's not one that
was perceived by either the West or the reach, at least not by
people in power, not by people in charge.
So yeah, really, really different.
So a gun has to play it delicately.
He either has to wipe them out so that there's no rallying
behind the survivors, or he has to beat them so convincingly
that they bend the knee and then the rest fall.
Or, who knows, it could end up being a really.
It could end up being like what Doran becomes, which is Aegon
probably perceived that was possible for any of these
particular regions. Maybe some more than others.
Maybe the people of the Reach just don't have it in them to
behave like the Darnish, but still, Aegon doesn't necessarily
know that for sure. He wouldn't want to take any
chances necessarily. Make a quick comment to just
thinking about the idea of how one prepared they were how they
just didn't understand what they needed to do in this scenario
it's it's not you know there's and we're different reasons
might be a little bit of naivete a little bit of pride a little
bit of you know I don't know lack of planning and you got to
wonder too if and all the scores of people involved in the
leadership there might have been a few guys in there is like.
I don't know about this know about those dragon.
Like maybe we should spread you know.
But maybe they weren't senior influential enough or they were
looked at as cowardly to and I'm pretty sure in World War 2 that
there was a when the Germans were just coming across France
and France just wasn't used to the rate that the tanks and
planes were plus the Germans were like on methamphetamines
going through the night and stuff.
They were just progressing faster than anyone guessed and.
And eventually they promoted up this young he.
He might have been a Colonel, but they put him in charge of
the whole army. This young guy that said, like I
can, I know how to handle this. All these old generals from the
old days, literally riding horses, they just don't
understand. I've got a plan.
And they're like, all right, after all those generals fail,
they put him in charge. And he died in a car accident
and his plans were lost. What?
Germany took over. I didn't know about that.
I knew about everything. All that lead up I knew about
the fact that France was just they were my perfect example of
just not adapting to Modern Warfare.
You got machine guns now which were new and France kept doing
old style charges into machine gunfire and just 10s of
thousands of soldiers would get mowed down.
This is World War One. I know part of your.
As well, yeah, you're talking about World War 2, some of it.
But yeah, same same difference and there.
And it took. It's like, what are you doing?
Don't just charge machine guns. Stop it.
And be feared, the Germans were doing it too.
Everyone was doing it. No one was adjusting, yeah.
So when you all are like. Makeable casualties.
If you think about this as being unrealistic, like, why would
they charge back? No, it's it's completely
supported by real war. Examples of real war.
Even felt rarely, typically recent.
That's only 100 years ago or 110.
Yeah, so people do ward. People do.
Just takes a few naive, stubborn people in charge.
Of thousands of people in your army to give them some bad
orders. And in all, a bunch of people
who were trying to be loyal and do what they're told, do it, and
then gets everyone killed. Did you remember the movie
Kingdom of Heaven? They.
Lando Bloom. I.
Remember they had a bunch of Game of Thrones star.
It did. It had quite a few.
It had it featured you know like near the after the Crusades.
And it featured one, really. One of the important characters
was a knight who sworn to the king and they all marched into
the desert to confront Saladin. And he's like, one of the guys
is like, why are you doing that? You're going into the desert
where they're like, it's like their home field advantage is
stupid. And he's like, yeah, it's
stupid, but I I follow the king. Like you don't disobey your
king, like, period. And then like, you know like
next the half an hour later this, he finds his head.
He knows like, oh, that guy's dead now.
And like, he followed his king into absolute foolish death.
But that's what they do. Yeah.
It's hard to wrap our modern heads around that level of
loyalty sometimes. Like maybe some of you can do
it, but I have a hard time with that.
But it's real. It's very real.
So it's real. And I have no trouble thinking
of it in terms of Westeros. Which you have.
I have more trouble thinking in terms of stupid humans.
Yeah, shout out. Speaking of not stupid humans,
our good friend Tkok podcast network, that's Tommy Pappas,
sends a super chat says love. Y'all.
Well, we love you too, buddy. Thanks for the love and let's
keep at it here. Let's talk our next moment here
in the preparation for the battle on the March.
Here's a quote. The two kings did not linger
long at Golden Grove. A host of such size must remain
on the March less to eat the surrounding countryside bear.
The Allies set out at once marching north by northeast
through tall grasses and golden fields of wheat.
That is another reason why large armies are rarer because of the
amount of food they require all in one place where in a
distribution and logistics become a big issue once again.
Rent. They gotta poop.
Yeah, it's easy to overlook that.
But I'm telling is a real thing. It's got to be dealt with.
50,000 people. Well, this is a lot of, it's
more people than that too, right?
Sean, this is 55,000 soldiers. How many like other?
People, certain, accompanying, you know, armors and cooks and
everything else like Drogo's. Kalisar is 100,000 people.
That's another good example. 40,000 of them are warriors, is
what we're told so and that's that's a.
Really important culture. They wouldn't have as much of
support, you know, I guess all the family and kids are coming.
That's probably not happening with this Westeros army, right?
Some, some small, some families come, but not too many.
You know, like there's camp followers and people who don't
have a place to live and your children that are born on the
March and yeah, cooks and and grooms and and Squires and
Squires might be counted as part of the army.
That's that's a Gray area. But anyway, yeah, Renly's huge
host is is one of our best examples.
Again, because we actually see this.
We see how they have to keep moving because of the same
reason you can't just take 100,000 people around and and
stay in one place. Like if you've ever been to like
a music festival, you can that's.
Yeah, that's a great example. Like how could you possibly like
that they all the food that gets consumed like the concessions
and once again I'm the how full the porta potties get Sean to
your point like it's. Just just think about how long
it would take to fill up 50,000 water bottles.
Just think about the logistics of that.
And they're going to use more than one water bottle a day of
when it's that hot. Yeah, you.
Got to keep doing it day after day.
It's a huge thing that you get so overlooked at what it takes
to move around an army like that.
Here is the next quote, which refers to Aegon hearing about
what's going on and his own counter move.
Advised of their coming in his camp beside the God's eye, Aegon
gathered his own strength in advance to meet these new foes.
He commanded only 1/5 as many men as the two Kings, and much
of his strength was made-up of men sworn to the River Lords,
whose loyalty to House Targaryen was of recent vintage and
untested. With the smaller host, however,
Aegon was able to move much more quickly than his foes.
At the town of Stony Sept, both his Queens joined him with their
Dragons, Rainey's from Storm's End and Vasenia from Cracklaw
Point, where she had accepted many fervent pledges of fealty
from the local Lords. Together the three Targaryens
watched from the sky as Aegon's army crossed the headwaters of
Blackwater Rush and raced S We discussed Vasenia Cracklaw Point
in our last episode or in our last regular episode, and of
course we discussed Rainy's at Storm's End in our Patrons and
Supporters episode of The Battle of Last Storm.
Agan clearly wanted to move fast, and he knew he needed all
three Dragons. This is some contact clearly
happened. He sent letters, probably by
Raven to his sisters, maybe by Horse Messenger, since there
might might have been inside castles that could be reached at
the time. But one way or another, the
messages were sent. He probably already knew about
King Torrin. He probably wanted to defeat the
host of West and Reach before King Torrin and maybe wanted to
avoid it. The potential of it becoming an
alliance of three kings, because if it does become multiple foes
allied against and then they might kind of find themselves
just naturally going to the strategy that you discuss, Sean,
which is attacking multiple targets, going to different
places and starting more of a traditional campaign where you
attack each other's lands and bring castles back over from one
side to another. This was of course, not a very
traditional campaign to this point.
And that is a big part of why Westeros did so poorly against
the Targaryens. Because their strategies were
bad. They're very bad.
Very bad, bad, bad bad bad. And Agon seemed to have known
that they would use bad strategies, which made his
strategies even more dominating. He had superior military power
and superior strategies. So really, yeah, like I said,
it's not the the outcomes of these battles or the actual
battles themselves that makes this stuff interesting.
It's the before and after. Let's talk about how they set up
before the battle. I call this playing the field.
Here's the first quote. The two armies came together
amongst a wide open plains South of the Black Water, near to
where the Gold Rd. would one day run. 2 Kings rejoice when their
scouts returned to them and reported Targaryen numbers and
dispositions. They had five men for every one
of Aegons, it seemed, and the disparity in Lords and Knights
was even greater. And the land was wide and open,
all grass and wheat as far as the eye could see.
Ideal for heavy. That's what you were saying
earlier Sean. How they were like man it's all
coming up to kings. So he's got our map up.
Shout out to Michael Clarfeld for this great map that we
always use. She has got this area kind of
shaded in gold. This is roughly the area we're
talking about. We don't know exactly where the
battle was fought like I said, but it's generally in this area
as you can see not that far from Stoney Sept.
You can see that up the north, up up just north of where the
Gold Rd. is on the Gold Rd. is on the map.
But as quote reminds us, the Gold Rd. did not exist at this
point and there is not that far. We're not that far from King's
Landing. We're not that far from a lot of
other notable spots. You can see Golden Grove there
to the southwest where the 2 kings first met and you can see
the God's eye. So not super far from Heron
Hall. And this is, like I said, if
more time had had come or more time had elapsed, it may have
been that the Stark army could have moved South and and merged
with the army of the West and reach, which might have actually
given a gun some trouble, especially if they were coming
from multiple directions or things like that.
Yeah. Wouldn't have marched so cleanly
into a trap if it had gone that way.
But effectively they did March into a trap.
That's. Another thing I wonder about
too, we talked about a guns different sorts of superiority
that he had. He would have had superior
intelligence, see the Dragons flying around in the sky, could
see those armies forming up, that's true.
Weeks in advance and and know the general directions that they
were coming from and they you know I I bet he coordinated.
Was it a coincidence? I don't think that this battle
happened at this field. I think that he knew that would
be weird. He think he one, they would
think they had an advantage and he knew they did.
They would. It's like he's like, actually
they're wrong. That's a great point, Sean.
Yeah, he knew. He knew what type of ground
they'd be looking for, and he was all all happy to let them
have it. So I think you're right that he
may. He knows like the general
direction are coming from where the armies are forming up, what
roads they would take, and the the direction are coming All
right, what in the middle is ideal on that route?
Where should we? Yeah, I like that A.
And I wouldn't even be surprised if they lured the scouts to that
spot purposefully. Or maybe the maybe his he
conferred with the Lord of Stoney Sept or some other local
Lords there and that who knew the region were like, oh, this
is where you're going to want to let them go.
Like you're trying to trap them in a big open field that they
think is going to help them. Here's the spot and we'll show
you. You know, and.
Goes back to my thought of him, like bringing Matt Baker's back
to King's Landing or Dragonstone or whatever.
Like those same Matt makers would have so much insights for
them and they would gain so much more insights by getting a
flying or dragon just one time like.
I asked Reshawn the first time you said Map maker.
You said map Baker is what I heard and I like.
Make sure you love things like hot pies, designing maps out of
bread. I would eat that.
Half the map's been eaten. We don't know, damn it.
Don't make maps out of bread. It's foolish, yeah.
Nina wonders if there's any, if there were any residual effects
on the area afterwards, like the the way that in Dorn we we hear
that some of the burnings were so severe that sands turned
glass in some spots. I don't know if it would be
quite that bad here, but you might have some semi permanent
or at least long lasting something that like remained for
a century afterwards. Very possible.
Like like minor level fallout. You know, the heat could have
been such and so intense that. I don't know.
Yeah, who knows? Who knows what the effects of
dragon fire are long term, but I could see it being more than
just a generation or so. Worth noting that the Dragons in
the field of fire might not have had to get so close and burn so
hot. They just set the grass all
around them on fire, you know? But sure, it's not the actual
dragon flame burning, it's the burning field, but some of them.
Did so you get a little boat? Yeah, some of them got the
actual scorching. Now you wonder too, if, like he
said, they found this spot. They were like, oh, look, they
have less men. Was this partly bait?
Was it like, we put our guys in a spot, We knew they would love
to fight us, they would be drawn to this area.
But we also know that it's going to be like a hot box, that we
can contain them. And maybe they kept their
Dragons a little back. Remember we alluded earlier to
the fact that maybe they thought they were only going to face one
dragon. So maybe if maybe they even
concealed even all of them. And so they were like we saw the
army, but we didn't see the Dragons.
Maybe now, maybe now's our chance.
The Dragons aren't here. Maybe, only maybe there's one
here and we don't see it. Maybe they were things to
increase their overconfidence. Like a guns.
Like yeah, let's let them feel confident.
Let's let them feel over. Let's let's boost their
overconfidence just to make sure they keep blundering headlong
into this trap we've set for them.
They don't give them any reason to rethink things, Give them
reasons to confirm what they already believe.
Because that wasn't, you know, according to what we're getting,
you know, from the source material, that wasn't part of
the reports that scouts bring back, right?
Like, no mention of the dragon 5 to one.
Yeah, and even we have even more horses and cavalry.
No mention, no mention. I know, that's peculiar, isn't
it? Like, maybe that's just a given,
but like you would still like, well, which dragon is it?
Which of the is it? 3?
Is it one? Yeah, that you would think that
would matter. But no, it's not mentioned.
So that's peculiar and maybe speaks to a little bit of
cunning on Aegon's part, a little bit of trapiness which
they may not have wanted to emphasize afterwards, cuz they
wanted to show just yeah, we took them on head on and beat
them and that was it. There was no they don't like.
We don't want to point out the tricks cuz tricks you can't rule
through trickery. Strength is something you can
rely on to hold a realm. You can't keep tricking people
into holding the throne. And here's where I suspect
there's some other history, some books were involved.
Agon is. I don't know that he was
bookish, but he wasn't like a jock that didn't like reading.
You know, her lack of a better term for Westeros.
I feel like he was pretty well educated, and between him and
his sisters, it's probably a lot of education, probably a lot of
reading, probably Valyrian freehold War treatises and
manuals. Like what thousands of years of
dragon Lords have written down about how to use a dragon in
battle. How to use a dragon against a
standing army. How to use a dragon against
cavalry, How to use a dragon when there's fields of wheat
around. Like this is Aegon may not have
invented this tactic. He may not have just improvised
this. I strongly suspect this has been
written about in past texts, and Agon may have gotten the idea
from that. Maybe he came up with it on his
own. Maybe Viscenia came up with the
idea. But I suspect this isn't this
wasn't new, it was new to Westeros.
But we got that literally thousands of years of Illyrian
conquests that we don't know much of anything about.
And there's probably plenty of strategy written about best use
of Dragons in war and best uses of keeping men all like the the
Mongols had this, the Mongols had these.
Very not complex, but experienced from from positions
of experience, from long years of war, of knowing how people
retreat, knowing how the patterns like.
It's like fluid dynamics, like the way people run, the way
they'll run away. And the Mongols would understand
how to guide that. They would chase them a certain
way to lead them to a style of retreat they could capitalize
on. Like fear is something you can
understand and predict in large groups.
You might not understand how a particular individual react to
fear, but when it's 405080 thousand people, you know, crowd
dynamics, mob dynamics, how a riot might play out, and there's
thousands of years of Valyrian experience with this sort of
thing that I think Agon and Visanya and Rainey's probably
had to draw on if they so chose, and I suspect that's in play
here. There were only, you know, 50
years of flight existing in World War 2, and we came up with
firebombing, you know? Yeah, right.
We didn't have a long time to come up with that and we did.
So imagine if we had had that long, you know, there would have
been, it would have been maybe more precise or, I don't know,
might have been pretty similar. But the idea wasn't new or
wouldn't have been new. So yeah, so either way, it's
easy to think of. Kind of.
It's a natural enough idea that you can imagine him coming up
without his own, but you can also imagine it being something
that had been written about in a variety of ways over the
preceding eons. Anyway, here is our next quote.
Aegon Targaryen would not command the high ground as Ory's
Baratheon had at the last storm. The ground was firm, not muddy,
nor would they be troubled by rain.
The day was cloudless, though windy.
There had been no rain for more than a fortnight.
Pretty perfect and the exact opposite of the last storm.
And in other words, the rain can be a big disadvantage for the
Dragons and the dryness can be a big advantage.
So yes, indeed, that's something for us to keep an eye out for.
And it's not going by some fire, by the way, just as it's
potential for a muddy battle and the storm lands again, You know,
with the Golden Company and maybe other things, there's a
potential for large scale battle like this in the Reach or in the
West. Something like the Loot Train
battle, vaguely like it could happen from the TV show The
Reach in the West versus an army with Dragons.
You know, might the Dragons won't be as Danny's Dragons
won't be as devastating as these, but Danny's army will be
larger. Presumably it could have
Bethraki and Unsullied, So there is that.
So it won't be the exact same thing.
It won't be history repeating itself exactly, but there will
be some elements that we could probably draw comparisons to
that will be pretty, pretty strong, and we'll just have to
wait and see. Either way, it teaches us to
think about terrain and weather when we're thinking about
Dragons and and the way that they can be helped or hurt, even
more so than the men on the ground and the horses.
Here's our next quote taking us into the preparations for the
beginning of the battle. King Merne had brought half
again as many men to the battle as King born, and so demanded
the honor of commanding the center.
His son and heir Edmond was given the vanguard.
King Lorne and his Knights performed the right, Lord
Oakhart the left. With no natural barriers to
anchor the Targaryen lion, The 2 kings meant to sweep around
Aegon on both flanks then take him in the rear with their iron
fist. A great wedge of armored Knights
and high Lords smashed through Aegon Center.
That's a little that's a little suggestive.
Can you see? Why just him in the rear?
Can you see why I did? Sometimes you can tell which
quotes I'm gonna give to Sean, because I don't think I can.
Possibly because I don't have a dirty mind.
Yeah, I would not have. Made it through that I would
never have made it through that quote.
I was grinning, listening to Sean.
Rita is he talked about taking him in the rear with and the I
and especially the, Sean said with their iron fist.
This is Wedge. Yeah, just wedge it right in
there, right in his rear. God, oh boy.
Real everything. Everywhere.
All at once. Yeah.
So the center and the vanguard both for house gardener, that's
that's really like all the honor and all the doom.
Like you just put your son in air right in the vanguard,
charge right down. Valerian's gullet didn't work
out so well. I suspect.
I suspect Edmond was the 1st to go of these, cuz he was in the
vanguard. Like that makes sense, you know?
So and I suspect that the Hightowers might have had
control of one of those if they were there because they would
have been higher rank, you know, but but that's not what happened
so. Later on, as I was alluding to,
they would probably learn it one day.
It might have dawned on them, maybe the day after, maybe
during, that this was the worst possible strategy they could
have used. Put everyone together in charge.
That's the worst idea. To them, it's the best idea
because it's the thing that defines chivalry.
Like the You get, you get together, you charge, and you
see who's stronger. But in this case, it was
horrible, horrible thinking, you know.
Nope, not not good at all. And.
But these guys have just, this is how they've done war for
countless generations. They don't know anything else.
Yeah, encirclement strategy is very straightforward, very
common, very normal. Aegon probably saw it coming.
He's like, yeah, they're going to try to stick their fist in my
rear. So let's see them do that when
I'm way up in the air. Like, how are they going to?
So if there hadn't been Dragons, or even if there had been one
small dragon and Aegon's army was three times as big, it might
have worked. It might have.
Still might have worked, yeah. Here's an interesting
perspective. Consider here Aegon's allies.
We got like Lord Mooton and Lord Darkland and these other guys
who were in his army, they probably just shaking their
heads like these, Reach and Westerman, they're just we
because they had learned their lesson a few weeks before.
So now they're in the know. They're like, yeah.
Yeah, we've only got five times fewer men than you, but they
probably felt confident to you. They've seen Valerian in action
and they hadn't seen all three Dragons in action.
It's like, wow, all three. We're going to see a site.
This is going to be a spectacle that they are going to tell
their grandchildren, their great grandchildren.
And they would be confident that they'd live to have great
grandchildren because they would feel confident they were going
to win this day because they saw this army making the mistakes
that they made when they faced Agon and how badly it went for
them. And they're like, well, at least
we survived. To see this and to be on the
right side of this and think about some other factors for
Agon and everyone involved, how well this would have gone,
these, these troops in his army. Now it's both sort of a test of
their loyalty and their bravery. Hey, I want you 5000 to face
these 50,000, right? You're going to do this, right?
And and then also it's a chance for them to gain glory.
They are all going to come away as the winners of this battle.
We were outnumbered. We beat the West and the Reach
like all of them. Yeah, you're right.
They got He gives a lot of glory to his army.
It tests their loyalty to him. It gets him a chance to show off
the power of the Dragons. There's such a win and every
break on at least other than maybe, you know, his psyche or
his moral dilemma of slaughtering all these people in
war. But other than that, it's a win
in almost. Yeah, like those, like a lot of
those folks, a lot of the veterans of the Field of Fire,
even if you're on the losing side and survived, but even more
so if you're on the winning side in the short term, you probably
never paid for your own drinks. You know, if you were at a bar,
you know, you're like, let me tell you the day, and
everybody's like, oh, this guy was at the Field of fire.
Shut up, shut up. Everybody shut.
Up I guess you talking about like.
Like Aegon Psyche makes me wonder, I guess it.
I also wonder how up close and personal these Lords would have
been with those horrors. Like, can they like when they
lay in bed trying to sleep, do they smell burning flesh, or
were they kind of ever moved from it a little bit?
You know, I feel like they might.
Yeah, like that's a pretty brutal.
Like war in general was awful, but I feel like that would be a
particularly memorable. Sight because of all of the
senses that you would be really. Smells would be awful too.
You're at the sights would be awful.
The sounds would be awful. The smell.
You're right, just. So, like, if you're, you saw it.
I don't like, yeah, you're telling your grandkids, but
maybe you're like, you tell your grandkids and then you retired
to bed to cry, Yeah. I don't know.
We can. Some people might not want to
tell this. Like, no, I will not tell that
story. Yeah, I don't care about a free
drink. I just want to get past that.
I don't. Want to think about it?
Yeah, you're right. Yeah.
We can't. We shouldn't go over glorify
because you're right. There would be the other end or
people just like no. I've never wanted.
I want to think about that as little as possible, because I
think about it all the time when I'm sleeping, and that's enough.
That's more than enough. And yeah, to bring back visuals,
it was. We got some visuals of this from
that Loot Train Battle episode. The aftermath was pretty nasty,
like Jamie looking around, Tyrion looking around.
Like especially Tyrion wandering the battlefield afterwards, like
because he felt hard to feel responsible for his.
Like, what if like, I'm partly responsible for this?
Which by the way we have a quote later of that Tyrion feeling
responsible for a lot of carnage.
So it kind of comes back around. So we might be we might be
getting something like that in the books Tyrion or maybe Danny
or someone like looking on this we're like wow this isn't really
what I had in mind. This is not what I wanted, you
know. But there could also be in House
of the Dragon. We might see some carnage in
aftermath that gives us other looks besides that one.
So we might have multiple view. I can't wait to see all the
carnage and burnt bodies and I have a thought that I was going
to work in later on, but it's it's pretty relevant now, is it?
It could have been worse. It it's something that I think
that if Aegon, if if this is Megor, he wouldn't have burned a
strife through the vanguard. He would have just burned a
circle around the army and all 4050 thousand of them would have
just been engulfed, inflamed and died of.
All the oxygen would have burned up and he could have just
murdered everyone. Yeah.
Yeah, that's true. He just did enough to like the
battle is over now, right? Like.
A gun was more precise. Yeah, he was.
He was trying to not kill all the troops.
He was trying to kill the leadership and leave the troops
alone as much as possible. So yeah, here, here is what
Aegon actually did. Here's his his battle
preparations quote. Aegon Targaryen drew his own men
up in a rough Crescent, bristling with Spears and Pikes,
with Archers and cross Bowman just behind and light cavalry on
either flank. He gave command of his host to
John Moon, Lord of maidenpool, one of the first foes to come
over to his cause. The king himself intended to do
his fighting from the sky beside his Queens, Aegon had noted the
absence of rain as well. The grass and wheat that
surrounded the armies was tall and ripe for harvest and very
dry. The plan as well ripens, yes.
The Army of the Two Kings was walking right into a fire trap,
basically. That's what we can kind of
gather from this, even if you didn't already know it was
coming. I think that would be pretty
clear. Yeah, Nina wonders if maybe
something we alluded to before if that we started bringing up
in terms of the scouts not talking about the Dragons or
just mentioning the 11,000 men is maybe yeah, maybe there were
the Dragons were kept hidden or at least a little bit off a
little bit off site just to maybe keep them under wraps a
bit maybe. So the gardeners and Lannister
didn't know exactly what they were going to face.
Maybe to again to. Boost that false confidence.
Aegon's like, yeah we're going to they've got this false
confidence. Let's let's increase that even
more And the best way to add is not a lot not let them see the
Dragons because the Dragons will will scare them if they see them
they'll be like, Oh my God, what have what have we done.
But if we keep that concealed to the last minute then the plan
will work optimally which it did.
So there is yeah, I mean on one hand you can read this like man
things just worked out so well for Aegon.
Like they just walked right into his trap.
They it was really dumb of them. But on the other hand.
I think there's plenty of circumstantial evidence or the
suggestion of Aegon doing things to to make them do this, to like
increase this, increase the odds of them falling into this trap
to encourage them to make this mistake.
It wasn't just a full on blundering exactly the right
way, it was some of this was coached I think, or encouraged,
or if or coerced or whatever. Pick your synonym, one or the
other. Let's take a quick break roughly
halfway through the episode here.
When we come back, we'll get to the actual action, then the
aftermath, then all the fun quotes and references that come
during A Song of Ice and Fire and Duncan Egg referring to the
Field of Fire to show how the legend lingers, to show the
lesson that Aegon taught and how it it held.
This episode is brought to you by HelloFresh.
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Yeah, 50% off is no joke either. That's a lot, yeah.
Yeah, that really is a lot. So I'm glad to have the options
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That's one of the things I brought up and we started
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And I really appreciate that, that there's not A1 size fit all
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Happy to see that. Happy to pitch them.
Happy to have them as a sponsor. We also have a bunch of
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Give them history or you know Westeros, Martin World inspired
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have a name, let us know we'll make you a name.
And I just wanted to give a shout out.
We used to do this on a podcast more regularly but we would
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So one of our very first, maybe the first three or four we ever
had, was Archmeister John the Just.
Also Serrambo Knight of House Gannon, First Blood.
I like incorporating some other fandoms into the name.
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He's also one of the earliest ones I was trying to do.
Some new words and older ones spread the.
We've met. We've met George in person at at
yeah, he's you put some freaking army on him.
He could definitely be my real world beer guard.
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He's decided he wants to highlight some random patron
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Yeah. Some of these names haven't been
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shouted out. That's cool.
Thanks for that, Shawn. Also, Herb Thompson asks real
life history. There's a ton of battles where
the vastly outnumbered armies won.
Alexander Versi, Akaminids, Battle of Agincourt.
Yeah, there are a lot of examples of that.
Usually it's because of some advantage that is not cited,
like here. Of course, Dragons are the
advantage. That is very it's a very clear
advantage. In this case, Alexander, his was
superior strategy. He charged right at Drius.
Drius ran away. But it wasn't just.
It wasn't as simple as charging right at him.
It was. He he moved his army, he moved
his cavalry that he led along the front lines towards one
side, towards his own right, if I remember correctly.
And Dorias sent a screen to follow him to, to kind of match
him. And it was, but it wasn't a
horse screen. It was kind of like it was a
bunch of skirmishers and javelin throwers.
And then Alexander, if you can watch my hands, he's kind of cut
back and charged back. They were following him this
way. Then he just kind of pivoted
back in front of them and charged right through that gap.
And right. Dorias ran away and his army ran
away with him. King runs away.
The army runs with it. Yeah.
The other advantage was that Alexander's armies were not
conscripts. And the Persians were like,
we're basically slave soldiers. And they were like, we don't
want to be here. We're not here out of loyalty.
We're here because we'll be killed if we're not.
Whereas Alexander's men were like, we're following this guy
because he's amazing. Well, I mean, they kind of had
to too. But it wasn't.
It wasn't slavery. So the battle of action court,
good example. That's also a technology thing.
Longbow's strategy was the French did not adapt.
To these longbows being shot at them and they just kept charging
right into it. And there was mud and all this
other stuff. Yeah, I also should say that I
may be overstated it. It's not like never does the
5000 army beat the 50,000, but it's so rare that we take note
when it happened. It is the weird rare thing.
There might be a bunch of examples of it, but there are
probably literally 1000 times many more examples of when it.
These battles do. You're right.
These battles are are historically significant, in
part because the smaller force beat the larger.
Force. And they're analyzed because of
that, like the battle of Can I or Car I of in Rome when
Hannibal encircled a larger force with a smaller force,
that's like, whoa, that's incredible.
But it's just an amazing general ship that that accomplished
that, you know, that stuff like that.
Another example from Lolatov reminds me of the Mongols versus
gigantic armies with Expeditionary forces.
Yeah, Subatai. Was sent with 30,000 Mongols and
he to to scout the West and scout Europe and go through all
that area and yeah, he built and instead he took over.
Europe, yeah, he essentially he conquered like half of Europe
with an Expeditionary for the Mongols were just vastly
superior in in on the battlefield and with logistics
and these other things. Yeah, so very good examples,
very good example. If they had had Dragons, it
would have would have been even more onesided, even with their
lack of men. So here is the actual quotes
from the field of fire itself. Let's have it.
The Targaryens waited until the two kings sounded their trumpets
and started forward beneath a sea of banners.
King Merne himself led the charge against the center on his
golden stallion, his son Gawan beside him with his banner, a
great green hand upon a field of white.
Roaring and screaming, urged on by horns and drums, the
Gardeners and Lannisters charged through a storm of arrows down
unto their foes, sweeping aside the Targaryen spearmen,
shattering their ranks. But by then Aegon and his
sisters were in the air. Aegon flew above the ranks of
his foes upon Valerian. Through a storm of Spears and
stones and arrows swooping down repeatedly to bathe his foes in
flame. They were screaming as they
charged and then it turned into a different sort of screaming.
I doubt. And you can see the things we
were talking about with the planning here.
They charged like screaming and excited and then the Dragons
took there. They it says they waited for the
charge to begin, which is like, yeah, they were waiting for the
closing the jaws of the trap. Make sure they're in charge.
They're fully charging before you light the flames behind them
otherwise, because once the charge is going, it's not going
to stop until it hits something. It's not just going to slow
down, but actually, never mind, let's ease down.
Like no, the dude in the front is not stopping.
The dude behind him can't stop. No one can stop except the very
end of the chart like the guys at the back and.
If they stop, that doesn't even matter.
It's lost any sorts of coordination.
Once it's in full charge, it's it's kind of like a snowball or
an avalanche. It's not going to stop till it
collides with something. I doubt the stones and Spears
even got closed, Says he flew through a storm of Spears and
stones and arrows like the Spears.
Like I don't think those even got remotely closed.
The stones really didn't arrows, Maybe.
Maybe that's the only thing that could have even potentially
gotten close. Like he can keep his distance,
right? The Flames, like, he's not like
hundreds of feet away, I don't think.
But the Flames have a bit of range to them.
And he's up above. You know like how?
Like throwing a spear, you got to be really strong.
You got to be like Gregory Clagaine, Olympic champion
javelin thrower, to do something like that.
Real life longbows, let's get real for a second, can penetrate
plate mail at about 200 meters, but it isn't him.
Full penetration. That's just like they can stick
in. The the plate, but not go all
the way through so it wouldn't hurt.
It would just, like be annoying. It would slow you down a little
bit if you had a bunch of those arrows sticking out of you.
So if we were, it might even hurt a little bit.
But it's not going to like, Pierce your heart, right?
And and often you might have some sort of cloth or leather
under You're gonna have layers, just.
Yes, absolutely. You're not wearing plate mail
against bare skin, that's for sure.
I am Shay it is Okay Shay is. I did a Dragon Con with my.
Yeah, you are too. You're right.
I was concerned for Aziz and he's like, it's fine, it's fine.
I don't care. I was like, it's gonna be hot.
It was only on my shoulder. Yeah, it was a little hot, but
not that hot. It was OK, so there's a
misunderstanding about longbows. We, and I'm glad Herb Thompson
brought up agincore because there's a little bit of
misunderstanding about agincore and longbows.
Yes, longbows won the day at agincore, but there's a there's
a belief that these longbows were just killing the French
Knights by piercing their armor. P that's not really what
happened. The arrows were killing their
horses and sticking in them a lot and slowing them down.
So they had to get off their horses because their horses were
getting shot down. And then they had to, which put
them in the mud because it was muddy, which made them slog to
the mud in their heavy army, which was getting worse and
worse as they got filled with arrows, which some of them did
do some damage. Some of them would find the gaps
in the armor and wouldn't hit the plate, would hit like the
legs or in the foot or wherever the spaces are.
And they're also effective against lower quality plate
mail. High quality like the rich guys
armors wouldn't be penetrated, but the lower quality plate mail
that would. You can Pierce that with a
Longbow. So it's a lot more nuanced than
these descriptions are. So again, bring that back to
here. Valerians armors not getting
pierced by longbows? Y'all and egg on the Conqueror
best believe he had that high quality steel armor.
Visenna and Rainey's to no doubt they had the best armor you
could have and I don't think they had Valyrian steel armor,
but they did have the best steel you could make.
So that's why there was only one slight wounding of one of them
during this whole battle. Which was an arrow to the
shoulder, which was almost certainly an extremely lucky
shot because you know, they were aiming for them.
You know, like, yeah, shoot down the dragon.
No. They're they're trying to shoot
the rider. Like, how you going to kill that
thing with an arrow? Like that's just it would defy
all logic and intuition that you could kill that with an arrow
like blaring like even 100 arrows.
Like, no, that's it's silly. Like it's like killing an
elephant with with needles. You know like how many needles
would it take to kill? And I mean I don't know that you
could do and it might not be there might not be enough
needles. I don't know.
So this is a big deal. This is this is how hard it is
to, to hurt a dragon rider. Not to mention the wings
flapping those giant wings. We saw that.
I had never conceived of that before.
We saw it on House of the Dragon when Crack sees his wings were
kind of this like naturally protecting Damon from arrows
just by flapping. They're just large and there's a
lot of space they're taking up when they're flapping.
Valerian's wings are all the larger.
You know, it's Yeah. So really, when you put yourself
in and Add all these details up, it just just gets worse for the
Reach in the West. Like, man, yeah, these Dragons,
just so overwhelming. Apart from the weather, this was
much different than prior engagements for Agon, too.
Heron Hall was at night, right? That's a big factor there.
He had torched some ships on a few occasions, but even he
hadn't faced anything like this. He'd fought and he'd fought
ships before, you know, even well before this war, but and
nothing like this. But again, we can assume history
came into play. Again, he would have read about
engagements like this, and it's not exactly rocket science.
There's certainly ways to maximally use each dive bomb.
You know, like getting maximum results, crowd control, all that
stuff and this, this burning of the field strategy that we're
about to see unfold that was probably had been done before.
Nina points out the Roynar 300 Dragons deployed against them
and Prince Prince Garen and and all that.
There probably would have been strategy there.
Aegon may have read about that. It wasn't just 300 Dragons, just
randomly doing the swooping down and there must have been some
organization to that. You know, wings perhaps like
like fighter planes or something like that.
Groups of five, groups of 10, Red Leader to Red Squadron, you
know they don't have the this. Is like a choreographed Dance of
Dragons. Real dances, Yes, that's right.
And Aegon, of course, it's just common sense to if you kill the
leaders of an army, then the army might fall apart or or lose
its cohesion or start retreating.
Yeah, so he was aiming to cut the head off the snake, so to
speak, even though Valerian's more of the snake here and it's
more burning than cutting. But still, metaphor still works.
And he points out, yeah, it's it's just regular military
logic. Killing the commanders of the
other side is intuitive, right? That makes sense.
It's been a been a thing forever since pre Modern Warfare.
I mean, I'm talking modern in this sense, and as well as
regular modern our modern. You have this less than our
Modern Warfare. We it's like a new thing.
Rank is kind of subdued and camouflaged on modern uniforms
because that once you start to have like.
Range weapons and snipers and and planes or whatever they can
see. You know, a big banner saying
here is the leader. Usually in the past that would
have meant, you know, rally to me, look here for commands.
But now it means the bad guys are going to drop artillery
there, which is exactly what happened here is going to get
you. You're exactly right, Sean.
That's the perfect analogy because that's what happened.
You got these very visible and large and loud white flags with
green hands on them, very rominently displayed at the
middle of the vanguard and the middle of the center.
Of these, two of the four divisions of the army Remember
vanguard center, left and right, right.
The center and the vanguard were led by gardeners and they got
and the order of the green hand is in there midst as well, which
have the same sigil. It's a white flag with green
hand for one time the order, the green hands like maybe we
shouldn't look like the gardeners so much cuz that's
exactly what's getting targeted. So Aegon probably has a pretty
easy time of like, yeah, right there, those guys like, OK,
belaring whispers in his ear. Get those ones with the green
hands. Just just just all the green
hands. Target those banners.
Leave the rest alone. Like it's like a coloring book
set. Those ones on fire don't go over
the line, you know, color inside the lines of that, you know,
bathe it in flame. They just they marked it for him
but it made his job easy. Like again This is why I was
pointed to said at the beginning this is like the worst strategy
they could have used for him. They put themselves in a fire
trap and they marked who to kill like loudly and and yeah, and
plainly. So it says he swooped down
repeatedly but were saying he swooped down repeatedly at the
green hand banners like he wasn't just randomly here and
there. Oh I'll do one over here.
Let's let's hit these guys. They haven't been hit yet.
No. I think it was very precise.
I think it was very organized. And he had a he had a plan and
he wasn't like he had very little incentive to target the
levees. He wants to target the leaders
and like why is he going after the peasants?
Those are his. What's the point?
Well, why would he do? That those are the people he
wants to lead. Yeah, right.
He wants those people to go back home.
And tend their horses and their farms and have kids and pay
taxes and be ready to defend against the Ironborn or all
these other things. He doesn't want them dead.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So it makes so much sense the way this plays out.
He had plenty of incentive to target the gardeners and very
little incentive to target anyone else.
There would have been chaos in those front lines at first.
It would have been like, yeah, we're charging.
Look at how small this target is.
We got them. We we smashed the Targaryen,
Spearm and then uh whoops the Dragons and and or just one
dragon as it says. Moraxis and and Vega apparently
didn't torch the armies at all. They only did the fire trick
here that we're about to have a quote so picture okay.
So let's imagine the center and the the vanguard has charged.
The center is charged behind them.
Probably the right and the left are are still holding back a
little bit or maybe they charge afterwards.
I don't know that all 55,000 men charged, but if so, there would
still be some towards the back that would see what would be
happening as the front part of the charge makes contact.
They're probably cheering just like this.
Front guys were were screaming and victory or an excitement or
exaltation until things went bad.
That first burst of flame would have really changed their
outlook. They were like, whoa, that was
bigger than I thought it would be, but meaning both the flame
and the dragon and then it's black.
The flame is black. It's unnatural.
It's like, not. You're like, okay, I've never
seen anything like that creature before.
And that what's coming out of its mouth is unlike any flame
I've ever seen before. And it's hotter than anything
I've ever felt before. And oh God, what have we done?
Right? And like you said, Sean, maybe
they had hope that he can't just keep doing that, like he'll run
out of flames. But Nope, as it kept coming.
As it kept coming, they were like, uh oh, and then it gets
worse. As grim as that was, they didn't
know how badly they had it until the Queens played their part.
Quote. Rainey's and Vicenia set fires
upwind of the enemy, and behind them the dry grasses and stands
of wheat went up at once. The wind fanned the flames and
blew the smoke into the faces of the advancing ranks of the two
kings. The scent of fire sent their
mounts into panic, and as the smoke thickened, horse and rider
alike were blinded. Their ranks began to break as
walls of fire rose on every side of them.
Lord Mooten's men, safely upwind of the conflagration, waited
with their bows and Spears and made short work of the burned
and burning men who came staggering from the inferno,
which really shows how engineered and planned all this
was. Before they had men waiting to
kill the ones emerging from the flames.
They had preset a group of dudes to wait for that and these were
the same men that were received the initial charge.
A lot of them were cuz Lord Mooton was one of the as he says
he was one of the first to bend the knee and he was given
command of the ground forces. So this was very engineered.
They were like okay they're going to charge at you.
You're going to take the initial brunt.
It's going to be difficult, but then we're going to emerge.
Valerians going to start raking their main lines while Moraxis
and Vagar do the encirclement with flames.
The Mutton's men would have known where their exit would
have been. Like here's where you're going
to exit the conflagration. We're going to have a kind of an
area which will be defended by both.
So you'll be able to move through this while anyone coming
after you will be able to pick off and the Dragons will be
supporting that efforts. All the men probably knew this.
They may have been coached on it and they probably would have
been just like, this is exciting.
Like they may not have wanted to be there, but they were probably
pretty happy with the way it was played out.
They're probably like, yeah, we're gonna win, we're gonna
beat these guys and then be able to experience victory and all
that. So I really wonder, It's pretty
clear what happened with the Vanguard in the center.
They would have been the brunt of it.
I'm wondering about the other two elements of the army and
whether they all charged or whether they held back a little,
and how this affected the encirclement.
Ultimately, doesn't make a huge difference, but it is still a
point of detail and curiosity that I have.
It's sort of like when you're at a stoplight with, you know, six
or eight cars in front of you. You can see the light turn
green, but you still can't go, yet the car in front of you
hasn't gone. It takes a minute for everyone
to get moving, so those front couple cars charge.
Then a dragon burns him up in the last couple.
Cars don't charge. Yeah.
And the green and red really works there too because you've
got green for Gardner and go in the region then go stop stop red
flames. Yep.
Yep.
That's that works really well. That's that's a really good one.
Yeah. You can't charge until the
people the only the person right in front of you is charged.
Yes. So it would take a while to get
going. Which would.
Which is why they had to let it get going, Which is why they had
to receive the. Charge in, the first couple cars
would be coming, yeah. So you want to.
You want to match. My example of six or eight cars,
they would have had 40 cars, right?
Yeah, this big. I don't know quite how to if
every car represents 100 soldiers or whatever, Yeah,
yeah. And Nino says, yeah, let's
consider like, some of these soldiers that are on the winning
side, you know, they, they still might have nightmares, though,
even though they're on the winning side, they might have
nightmares, but all the screaming and trauma, they might
not have taken a single wound and it still might, like, affect
them. They might still like like
there's plenty of veterans, real life veterans, who didn't take a
wound but are traumatized by war.
Like their friend died. Maybe they didn't even see a
friend. I was still traumatizing because
there's still human beings on the other side of that war that
probably don't want to be there either that didn't really have
any choice in being there. Or maybe they thought they were
fighting for a good cause because they've been misled,
which kind of maybe is a lot of these gardeners.
To them, it seems like a good cause.
They're defending their lands. This is a foreign conqueror to
them. This is some guy that just
picked a fight for no good reason as far as they're
concerned and yeah they're standing up for their kings that
have been there for 8000 years. That seems like a pretty in in
in world that seems like you're the good guys.
We're we're the defenders of our territory.
You know they don't know about Aegon's dream.
If if that's even relevant at this point.
If if Aegon even cared about that at this point, which I
suspect he did but he might have done all these things anyway.
But they certainly don't know about it regardless of what's in
his head. So that's not going to be any
balm for their burns afterwards. If they survived like, oh, you
had a good reason. Well, Gee, thanks.
You know, that'll happen in my lifetime, I'm sure.
So Nina asked the question, how much did it bother them?
How much did it bother the winners, not just the the
soldiers, but like Aegon himself and the sisters, were they
bothered by this or were they just so above the common folk,
so superior thinking about themselves that they didn't, you
know, like a they're able to push that aside that they don't
have sympathy for lesser humans or something like that or they
just that royal with their thinking that they can have that
level of contempt for lesser life.
You know, I don't know. This is something that we don't
know very well about Agon. We don't know about Rainey's.
I I kind of have my doubts about the Senia.
We know a little more about her. I kind of doubt she was too
concerned with this kind of thing.
But maybe you know it's possible.
Maybe you know she there's The public persona isn't always what
what's behind the eyes, right? Like what's going on in your
mind might be different than what you present the world.
That's pretty common. I think about a couple.
I mean, I could have a million thoughts on this, but a couple
that kind of mind quickly are the movie Unforgiven.
There's this, this young kid who's going to get the bad guys,
you know, and he finally catches one, kills him.
And it's the first person you ever killed, and he's kind of
sick to his stomach over like, I even though he and his
ostensibly at least, that was a bad guy, he still is not
comfortable with having killed someone.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was a it was a Western
that kind of challenged a lot of Troy.
It was almost like a Martin style Western was sort of
sometimes they would have a hard time getting on a horse.
It wouldn't hold still like everyone did, just jump on a
horse and ride off the kind of the the.
Reality of some of the stuff was presented there, including what
it's like to kill someone and think about Robert McNamara and
that documentary Fog of War, when he's kind of reflecting on.
That's going to bring it up here anyway because he he came up, he
was just this young Air Force, you know, I think he was
Lieutenant or something, but he was just tasked with trying to
figure out how to most efficiently use the planes and
bombs. And to him, it was like this
math problem. Oh, and I figured it out.
We just use incendiaries and it'll burn all the oxygen in the
air and kill everyone. Yay, the airport.
Said, OK, let's do it. And it just killed everyone in
Dresden and killed half the population of Tokyo and just
kept doing it every night, week after week in Germany and Japan
and and now and so this movie Fog of War is interviewing him
and he did a lot of other he put seatbelts in in cars like he was
responsible for that. He did a lot of the great things
through history. But he there was just this
moment in his interview, in the fog of war, where he's just
reflecting like, yeah, I came up with firebombing, huh?
You know, I might not have been the pilot that dropped the bomb
or the general that gave the order, but maybe someone else
would have come up with any. But it's hard for him not to,
like, think about the maybe literally million people that
died to that, you know? And so, yeah, you wonder, like,
does Agon feel like, did he was like, well, I had to do it.
It's like, that's how he justifies it in his mind, you
know? Yeah, they killed those. 4000 to
save the other 4000, killed those 4000 to bring safety to
the realm, stability to the realm.
Like different ways you might justify it.
May maybe just literally not think about it.
Maybe he has justified, Maybe the justifications help him, but
he still has doubts. Like, well, maybe you know, what
if it was just a dream? What if I was wrong?
You know, Like, I don't know. He doesn't seem like the kind of
guy that had a lot of doubts, but that doesn't mean he had
none, you know? Yeah, and maybe he did have
down. Maybe that's why he was kept in
so close to the chest, because he didn't want people to see
his, his, you know, his lack, his lack of confidence, when he
was so important to him project supreme confidence.
He didn't want to show any cracks.
In that And maybe Agon, who needs to be in his leadership
role and has accepted the losses on the short term for the big
scale. Or maybe he has some a dream
that he's trying to fulfill some, you know, destiny.
But what about that Bowman? What about that Bowman from the
Crown lands who's just killing people who are screaming in
flames? Like, how do they feel a week
later, a year later, you know, Yeah, hotels.
Well, that guy was burning. I put him out of his misery like
he he was. Yeah.
And that's when I might. Rationalize it.
Or just maybe it's a good way even to rationalize or justify.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what I would tell
myself if I was in that spot. Another interesting thing about
this too, is like, yeah, it looks maybe it looks a little
less chivalrous. Maybe it's not as quite as
honorable. Maybe that's why the the trap
nature of it all was down, played by the sources Nina
points out a great parallel Oris beat King Argalac in in oneonone
combat that looks really honorable weather.
And we put out in our episode on Battle Last Storm a lot of
suggestions that this maybe didn't go quite so smoothly.
Maybe it was a little like after the battle they dressed it up a
little to make it seem a little more, even, a little more noble
on Oris's side. Our Glock had been thrown from
his horse and fighting all day like he probably was have been
wounded already. Like, was he really?
He wasn't at full strength. He's a lot older like, so it
really wasn't that even. But the sources kind of make it
seem a little more even and make it seem more noble, which is
like, yeah, they would do that, they would do that.
That's the winners that they're writing about.
So the same thing here, like downplaying the level of
subterfuge and cunning that was used, but also you.
But there's no portraying this as Aegon beat Merne one-on-one
in a fair fight that that can't. You can't sell that the period.
Like there's no version of that that works.
They wouldn't even try that. So does anyone like, look at
that little side eye Like, yeah this was kind of UN chivalrous.
This wasn't, this wasn't a fair fight.
Yes. Like we have to bend the knee to
this guy because he has his big ass dragon.
What else can we do? But I don't know.
It might. It doesn't.
In some ways it doesn't fit into the codes of chivalry which are
important in Westeros, you know, I know they, I know that these
things can be convenient, like chivalry is often just forgotten
for expedients. And this could be easily be one
of those times. But I think it's a fair thing to
bring up and like some people might have, it might have
rankled the way that this was done because it was flames and
Dragons and not two enemies meeting on the field of battle
to see who's strong. Those are unnatural supernatural
elements which will later be complained about by the faith
will say, ah, the incest, the drag, these monstrous Dragons.
This stuff is unnatural. It's not of the seven.
We shouldn't guess that those attitudes only came after they
were beaten by the Dragons. I think some of that probably
started before. I like those points, but a
couple, I don't know, counterpoints that might have
made it all the more important for Aegon to do this is like, I
don't care if you beat me one-on-one.
That's not what's happening here.
I'm coming with my Dragons. You better kneel, right?
Part of what he's trying to prove.
This point here is like Sir Orius and Argalac.
They can do whatever. But I would have gone over there
with my Dragons if before he's hadn't won.
Right? Like, I'm going to win, you
know? And furthermore, it makes it all
the more important for Aegon to do what he did is be chivalrous,
otherwise he does win. Okay, you bent the knee.
Now go back to your castle and serve me.
I'm not going to continue to. Maybe in this battle I would.
It was unfair, but I'm going to be fair afterwards.
Yeah, I like that. That's a good point.
Like he. Make all the reason to be more
chivalrous outside of the battlefield.
If there's any doubt on it, that's a great point and we will
see in a couple of cases. A gun does fight people hand to
hand at least a couple times. I don't think it's happened yet,
but it will happen. So that might be part of why to
to counteract an image that was gained here at the Field of
fire. Like okay.
I'm going to balance this out with some victories with black
fire, take out a few people and one-on-one duels just to prove
that hey, I am dangerous without my it's not all the dragon.
Yes, the dragon is important. But I I'm.
I'm a good warrior too. It's not all the dragon, It's
99%. Yeah, right.
All the dragon. So Nina, returning to Nina's
point about feeling conflicted and using this as a parallel to
nuclear weapons, which is something that's come up several
times in the fandom over the years.
Nina's done it before. I think we've done it before,
that it's a a reasonable parallel.
It's back in. Current thinking, I suppose
because of, you know movies like Oppenheim role, that one in
particular. But it's come up before.
And George grew up during the era where during the nuclear
panic era when nukes were new and nobody knew like whether
people would be able to hold back like, oh, should humanity
really have those. It's kind of a bad thing to be
out there. You're not wrong.
Like one of those falls in the hands of the wrong person.
Yeah, like someone who's unstable.
Like, imagine. Like look what happens with Meg
or gets a dragon. Like, he goes around and just
destroys things. I mean, heck, even these sane
Targaryens level that kind of destruction on Dorn.
So it it's Nina suggests maybe George wanted some readers to at
least think about those parallels, or at least have the
potential to notice them if they come up.
Maybe not. Maybe not as direct, but maybe
the ability to unleash total destruction is maybe itself.
An unethical thing, just using it, The having the ability to
use it as a deterrent is one thing, but actually using it as
something else. So it's yeah, it's an
interesting thing to ponder in the modern world, but also to
apply to their world and and with try to use their sense of
ethics and how that might have applied.
All right. So as we said, the battle itself
didn't. There's not much else to say
about the actual battle. The men were surrounded by
flames. A lot of them were burned.
A lot of them were killed. But maybe not as many as we
might think. Here is the full aftermath
quote. The Field of Fire.
The battle was named afterward. More than 4000 men died in the
flames. Another thousand perished by
sword and spear and arrow. 10s of thousands suffered burns.
Some so bad that they would remain scarred for life.
King Merne the 9th was amongst the dead, together with his
sons, grandsons, brothers, cousins and other kin.
One nephew survived for three days.
When he died of his burns, house gardener died with him.
King Lauren of The Rock lived, riding through a wall of flame
and smoke to safety when he saw the battle lost.
The Targaryens lost fewer than 100 men.
Queen Wasenya took an arrow in one shoulder, but soon recovered
as the Dragons gorged themselves on the dead.
Aegon commanded that the swords of the slain be gathered up and
sent downriver. 4000 men dead, which is a huge number of
people, but not a big percentage of the army.
So that's 7000 dead to dragonflame and then or 7% dead
to dragonflame. And then another thousand killed
by swords and arrows and Spears. So it's only about 8%, nine
percent of of the whole forces that were on the field there.
So low casualties isn't unusual in ancient battles.
That's actually fairly normal. But this isn't even necessarily
a low amount of casualties in that side.
But it is a low amount, a low percentage, to have wiped out
all the gardeners. Given that all the gardeners
were wiped out, it's a kind of a low percentage.
So, which really emphasizes what we were saying about them being
targeted. All those banners and
everything's, it's also a huge, huge ratio of losses on one side
to the other. Yes, yes, yes, very true.
Now 40 to one or something when they were when the when the side
that lost 40 to one had outnumbered the other side 5:00
to 1:00. That's an incredibly lopsided.
Yeah. Now, Anita points out this is
probably a little narrative economy on here, this there.
It's kind of hard to imagine there were no Gardner cousins
just elsewhere, like all of them were on the battlefield.
That's a little hard to swallow and no nephew or wife or
daughter back. Home well the wives will account
for separately but yes still even that you like both of the
grandsons were old enough to be in the battle on the field of
battle but no grandsons that weren't you know it was like
yeah so it's a it is kind of convenient but that's that's
fine you know that it's not it's not unrealistic but it's
definitely like maybe a little bit of author thumb on the scale
there it's maybe a little unrealistic but still it's a
little it's a we can well we can write in some more here we can.
Believe that there were other cousins out there that were that
the Tyrells went and did something to they're like, well,
if we want to call it on to power, we better get rid of
these other gardeners. And it's just not written in the
history books that way cuz it looks bad.
It's the same thing like oh so all the gardeners were hunted
down and killed afterwards. That looks bad.
That doesn't look, that doesn't kind of realm agons trying to,
you know. Be perceived as running.
He doesn't want that. He doesn't want to be the guy
who's executing people in front. He wants people to bow to him
because he's strong. Not to bow to him because, or
else you know, tyrannical. Yes, that's the Megor that comes
later. Megor does those things later.
He's didn't learn that subtlety. He didn't learn those
differences. I can imagine there being some
gardeners out there that are like, you know, actually my last
name is Flower. Yeah, let's just avoid this
whole. Yeah, I'm a bastard.
No, really. Yeah, my mom and dad were not
married. Escaped the castle with some
silver and I've got enough to buy a horse and that's good
enough for me. Yeah, now I.
Need to point out how this has happened in other places too.
Like there's George is in the past been a little bit
dismissive about the potential for other Starks being around.
He's like, yeah, there's probably some Stark cousins in
the North somewhere, but that's all you know.
That's it, You know, it would be hard for it to be otherwise,
considering you know this. The bloodlines don't just
vanish, you know, like this. Their Stark cousins married in
these other houses long ago. That bloodline has to still
exist somehow, you know, even if it's been kind of forgotten,
because it's been hundreds of years.
But yeah, there's like Tully's and Aaron, she says the same
thing kind of happens. It's just, yeah, there there
would probably be some other examples out there.
But on the other hand, if we're pointing it that way, the
gardeners really did put themselves in the thick of it.
They were that the gardeners were all piled into the two
frontal positions and charged right at Balarian or charged
right at the army which and advertising themselves.
So. So there is, it's not.
That's part of why it's at least somewhat believable.
And I can also believe they even brought 7 year olds with them
too. I can.
Believe that's true. Yeah.
You want them to see, even confident enough that they would
have brought him just to be part of the adventure.
Just Ned. How old was Bran when he Ned
brought him to see the head be chopped off, you know?
Seven. Yeah.
Seven years old. You're right.
You're not wrong. 8 and 9 year olds. 10 year olds are
occasionally in battle. Yeah, like Agon and Amon.
Blackfire died at the Red Grass Field.
They were Damon Squires. They were like, what, 11-12?
Maybe 13 thirteens. Getting into the range of less
crazy but still that is really young to be in battle.
Geez. And so they stuck together in
battle, which is normal for houses like they they do.
They like you said you have your banner so you know where your
people are which work, which backfires in a spot like this
when there's you know targeting and weaponry that can pick that
out which is also what happened. So, so it was yet yet another
example of why this was a horrible strategic error.
By the army of the two Kings, So many of these things that were
very normal for them were were huge disadvantages.
Another one that was wiped out, Lord Armand Peak.
The Peaks weren't wiped out entirely, but Lord Armand Peak
and his all of his sons were killed.
So it was like a cousin that inherited here.
So there was none of this writing off the Cousins for the
Peaks, but they were for the Gardeners.
But again, no one would probably hunt down and kill the extra
Peaks, except maybe other Peaks that wanted to make sure that
they got it all for themselves. The entire order of the Green
Hand was wiped out. That that makes more sense to
me, cuz they're a martial order. They would all be on the
battlefield. There might be like some scribes
and retired guys, but like those dudes would have just died out.
It's not like your sons don't join the order automatically.
It's not like a it's not a hereditary thing.
Not a There wouldn't have been enough left over to maintain the
order anymore, even if some random people.
And technically the Mandalay still say it exists and it's
them. They still claim more membership
in there. They had already gone N well
before this battle. Lucky for them.
And they're like good. Other reason why we're glad
we're up in the north. We would have been on the field
of fire right there with them, and our little greenish mermaid
might look a little too much like a green hand from a
distance. So that's a good thing.
Like, Yep, woof woo. Yeah, we dodged the.
I would say a bullet but a. Burst of flame.
Fire. Bowling fire, blast.
As for the rest, so that the survivors we're talking about
when I say the rest, all those permanent burn scars, 10s of
thousands it says had burn scars.
That's a way to keep the memory alive for generations.
That's a way to prove if you're one of those dudes at the bar
claiming to have been there, that's one way to kind of back
your your tail up that you like. Look at the burns to prove I was
there. These old.
Do these look like normal burns to you?
No. Those are dragon fire burns.
I took a direct hit. From valerian of my arm, that's
why my arm doesn't look right. Yo, 30,000 in total surrendered.
So with 4000 killed by flame and 1000 killed by conventional
weapons, that means as many as 20,000 got away because 55,000
on the battlefield and 30,000 surrendered.
So that's like, that's a lot Who got away?
And the ones who didn't get away were added to Eggon's army,
which immediately marched N to confront Torin which we'll be
discussing next time. So yeah.
Look at that. It's very common for real life
sources to exaggerate, to under report their losses.
This might be one of those times. 100 deaths for the
Targaryens is all that's reported in an arrow in the
shoulder for Vicenia. But it's possible it might
actually be that small. I can.
I can kind of believe it. I feel like it was probably more
than that because that that big old iron fists did smash into
their front lines. And then the dragon started
coming down. So that just that initial
charge. I feel like that alone could
have taken out more than 100. But maybe not, maybe not.
You know, talk about a bunch of swords for the Iron Throne,
right? That's a lot of swords.
A whole bunch Melted gardener saw some nice swords, some
gardener swords and all that. Now remember how I was talking
about how I'm not sure the right and left had time to fully
charge because of? Size of the center and the
vanguard and how long it would take them to get going and in
full strength, like using your stoplight analogy.
And again, King Lauren got away. So that maybe kind of does imply
that he saw the battle was lost and rode away.
He was the commander of the right or the left.
I forget. It doesn't matter.
He got away perhaps because his his division never fully engaged
which would make sense because two divisions engaged with
11,000 men. That's.
Half of a 655 thousand men army. That's 22,000 men already.
You can see why a guns like okay.
We got to do this now before our 11,000 are completely
overwhelmed. And by that time King Lauren is
not yet charged. And yeah, I could explain it.
They could also explain why there's no mention at all of
what happened to the 4th division.
They might have been they might have gotten away mostly intact,
which that could account for a lot of the 20,000 men who got
away. But, but that's about right if
you think about the math. Divide the 55,000 in fourths.
That's about, what, 14? Almost 15, almost 16,000 per
division. So that's That would be not 64.
My bad. So thirteen 13,013, so close to
like 13 1/2, almost exactly 13 1/2 thousand per per 4th.
So if 1 1/2 of those fourths got away, that's roughly 20,000.
So the half of like half. Roughly 2/3.
Each of the left and the right got away.
Something like that. Anyway, that's not an important
thing to figure out. But you know, we like to get
into weeds with those numbers and those casualties and army
sizes. So the rest, yeah, that's just a
gruesome feast to you. Hear about the Dragons gorging
themselves on the burn, Dad. You know, we know the Dragons
like their meat well cooked, well burned.
There'd be plenty of that. But that's just gruesome to
think about and would intimidate the survivors even more.
Like just sitting there watching the Dragons just eat the dead.
Like. As if they weren't intimidated
enough. It's like if they didn't see
those creatures, it was unnatural enough to be like
animals don't eat cooked meat. Like that's not normal.
Even that is unnatural. Like we're the only animals that
eat cooked meat. I never really thought about
that before. Dragons only.
I think it's even mentioned in the books.
Only humans and Dragons eat cooked meat.
There's some exceptions. Animals that we've domesticated
dogs would eat. Oh, I mean, they don't prepare
it that way. I'm sorry.
They don't look to eat right. Yeah, you're of course right
that they will eat it. It's not part of their natural
diet. They'll happily, yeah.
Like our cats will absolutely put cooked meat in front of
them. Yeah, they'll go for it.
But the crows would show up eventually too, because the
Dragons can't possibly eat all that themselves.
Maybe the wolves and the wild dogs.
And it gets kind of gross. As to the lions worms, yes,
yeah, the worms, Yes, absolutely.
The worms and the worms, the with the Y and the O would be
feasting. The big.
Small. So as we said the line the
Lannisters got away. So as the wolves and crows and
Dragons were feasting well let's have a quote about what
happened. Lauren Lannister was captured
the next day, the King of the Rock latest sword and crown,
Agon's feet, Benthany, and did him homage and Agon, true to his
promises, lifted his beaten foe back to his feet and confirmed
him in his lands and lordship, naming him Lord of Castor Rock
and Warden of the West. Lord Lawrence Bannerman followed
his example, and so too did many Lords of the Reach, those who
had survived the dragon. No description of how this
happened, but it's pretty easy to imagine.
I mean, the dragon would be faster, you'd be able to find
them and they'd be in disarray. But it would be important.
Like, as we said, you don't want them to get back to Castle Rock.
You really do not want them to get inside.
And whole up, you want to stop them before they arrive.
So they probably would have been a pretty big sense of urgency.
Maybe not as much as I'm imagining.
Maybe they don't realize how bad Castly Rock was, but I think
they did, because there's one of those anecdotes about Agon
having visited certain parts of Kings of the of Westeros before.
The Conquest includes him going to Lannis Port, which means he
would see Castly Rock because it's right there.
In fact, it's likely he went inside given he visited.
If he visited the Lannisters, they would probably have him
inside, but who knows. Still, he would have seen it.
I can imagine it being an organized surrender that he
quote UN quote, got away and then assess the situation like,
all right, now what? Army's defeated.
They've got these Dragons. They beat the reach.
They beat everywhere else. They might, they might burn me
alive as I try to run back to castly rock.
And then then when I get back what I yeah, I think he might
have decided I need to just surrender now and and he might
have sent an envoy. And I think it might sound a
little better to both sides too. If he, if it if he was captured
rather than he surrendered. It's not for him.
That sounds better. They got me.
I had no choice. And to the Targaryens it might
sound better too. That like we got him, we
captured rather than it might have been an arranged surrender,
I'm not sure. I can see that, yeah.
How it might have? Played out, the optics are a
little better there. Another factor is that it's a
pretty good way back. Like they would have.
It would have taken a little while to get back to Catholic
Rock. It's not that close.
They had marched A substantial way.
I mean, they were in the West. I mean, they were not in the
West. They had to, they were in the
reach. They had to March all the way
through the West. Catholic Rocks basically at the
shore. So plenty of time to be caught,
which which emphasizes what you're saying.
Like, yeah, they might, we may not be able to get away.
All the more reason to maybe surrender.
Yeah, like you said, he may just torture us if he's flying.
If his dragon gets here but his army is 2 days behind, he might
just decide to use his dragon and we don't need any more of
that. We don't need any more of that.
We're done with that. We're done with being strafed by
unnaturally hot black fire. Sweet bad.
Once was enough. Nina points out, as she is want
to do, an example from the Accursed Kings, which is also an
example from history. In this case, Cuz Historical
Kings is historical fiction. The retreating defeated Philip
the 6th of France following the Battle of Cressy, wandering the
countryside with a handful of men knocking at the door of a
Manor house with the words open to the unhappy king of France,
which is, I believe, a historical anecdote as well as
something that I think Maurice drew on put into the books.
I could be wrong about that. Nina will surely correct me
later if I'm wrong. So Nina, let me know if I'm
wrong about that one. I like what you said about the
surrender. Potentially.
Nina offers another potential that maybe not it doesn't
necessarily look better to say you surrendered but or to say
you were caught. But because it might look
cowardly, but it's hard to say, it's it's it's difficult to put
us on our place and we already look bad because you lost.
So what makes you look a little bit less bad?
You know? Does it look bad to say you
surrendered after you got away, or does it look better to?
To say you were captured. Yeah, I'm not actually sure.
Nina isn't sure either. So yeah, it's a fair point to
put in dispute even now. They would have beaten cast of
The Rock eventually, I'm sure of it.
But it would have been a nasty business, long and ugly and slow
and yeah, and like you say, Sean.
They got better. They might have been worth it,
right? They might have been able to
capture Castley Rock at the expense of losing the crown ones
of the North, or never even starting on dorm like they might
have spent the time and it having all those Dragons They
could probably like contain Castley Rock.
They could just like burn flames in the entrances and keep food
from going in and out. But while they're doing that,
who's monitoring the Iron Islands, ships going over to the
Crown lands, or pirates attacking Dragonstone or
whatever else? They need the they need the
Dragons for other things. And never mind their armies that
they would then have to feed as they see Castly Rock and I I
think that they could have done it, but they might have said
never mind. We'll come back to this kind of
like dorm. We got it.
We need the Dragons for all these other missions, and it
might have dragged out and they might have they, you know, even
if they theoretically could have it at the in, the reality is
they might not have been able to, at least not for a long
time. Kind of like Dorn.
Another good angle Nina points out here is that they gonna
proved himself willing to give territory to to to take the top
spot away from someone and give it to someone else.
He gave the Tullys the Riverlands.
He gave Oris Baratheon the storm lands.
At this point, the Tyrells hadn't been given High Garden
yet. That was about to happen.
So Lauren may have realized that he may have like, oh, another
reason I should surrender is that if I don't, he might give
the cat give Cassie Rock to someone else.
He might give it to the reins or the the Mar Brands or he could
have flown to drag it back to Cassly Rock.
Yeah, which would have almost no forces now because they all just
left right and said all right, we just defeated your king and
your armies and here we are with three Dragons and just like the
Tyrells, whoever's there might have just meant the knee and
said all right. It's yours.
Yeah. And he would have raised them up
to say, yeah, totally. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
So to to make sure he got to keep Castilly rock, he might
have been like I better surrender because Aegon will he
does tend to. Lift up those for me for
surrendering like he has done with everyone else, and he will
punish me for not surrendering like he does it with everyone.
Else yeah, let me have set in as he's running away from the
battlefield in panic. Once he gets away and starts
thinking about it he's like yeah better bend the knee and like he
hates to admit it but he's the more the more he turns it over
in his head. You may have advisors telling
him the same thing or his advisors might be telling him to
just fight on or something or it's not don't give up hope or
but he's like, Nah, dog we got, we got to give up.
It's the best move at this point And and he was right.
He he he now bent the knee the the West bent the knee.
With him there is still his Liege Lord so they and there and
they don't have Castle Rock to retreat to.
It's not like they don't have castles inside mountains.
They don't have infinite wealth inside that mountain.
They can't hold out and it's dishonorable.
They're they're king bent the knee they're supposed to as
well. It's it's kind of how you're
supposed to. You followed your Lord when he
called you to battle, and when he bends the knee, you do too.
So yeah, there are a couple that could have hit.
Now there are some of them that have castles and mountains like
the rains, but Tywin was able to destroy.
What are you doing? What are you hiding out for?
What do you think's going to happen?
Like finally, after years of being siege, you'll come out and
be in charge. Yeah, things will have gone back
to before. Like the Dragons will have died
out. Yeah, good thing we waited out.
That Targaryen generation. That one, that one decade, You
fools that went along with it. Yeah, you should have hidden
wonder. Yeah, this was this was
extremely different from what happened to the Allies.
Every single male gardener wiped out.
We don't hear of any Lannister deaths.
Not not one. Because according to Tyrion Lord
Lauren or King Lauren Lord Lauren, shortly after it hadn't
had a son yet. There were no sons born to him.
They lost soldiers, but not any actual Lannisters, which is
interesting. Which more, even more implies
that the Lannisters never really got into the thick of the
fighting because of where they were on the battlefield, and
they were treated before they were caught in the full trap of
fire. Because there's so many
Lannisters, there's always a lot of Lannisters, right?
There's always, I mean, maybe this.
The ones that were killed just weren't weren't relevant, so
they didn't get mentioned. Like a couple cousins aren't
worth historical mention. You know, like someone that's 25
spots away from the succession doesn't bear mention unless he's
the only one left or unless all of them were wiped out.
So yeah, so there was no disruption at all in their
dynastic line that we hear of, which is obviously very
different than the elsewhere. It's kind of similar to what
happened in the Veil. The Veil also saw saw no
disruption at all. They're like before it got to
their army's dying, only their ships that died.
They're like, Yep, we've done the knee.
Our young king becomes a young Lord.
Everyone else stays exactly where they were in the line of
succession. The same people are in charge.
Their title just isn't quite as fancy.
And you get a new title. Though both the Vale and the
West got new titles. They got this Warden of the East
and West. Those were new dynamics.
So you go from king to warden, you still get to be a High Lord,
so that you know there's still these new titles that get
created. They still have some fanciness
to them. This would not be the case in
the Reach, however. So we went long on this.
So I think we'll, we'll call it here.
We'll we'll get back to High Garden and the examples of the
Field of Fire. The lessons will come to that
next time because a lot of these things are related to what we'll
talk about next time, which is the other kingdoms that handle
this a bit differently. There isn't a single more large
battle left in the Conquest. There's lots of small ones,
there's lots of burnings, there's lots of castles and
guerrilla warfare. But things are moving into a
different phase now, so we had a good point of flexibility here.
We could have either if we if we had gotten through this other
stuff a little faster, we could have pushed our way through all
of this. But we've got more than 5 pages
left here, like 6 pages left of of our notes here.
And if it took us two hours and 10 minutes to get through 14
pages, this probably another hour of this.
So we won't. We're not going to push a three
hour episode and we're not going to do part of this.
We'll save it off to bite off all at once.
So let's do a few other things before we end the episode.
One thing to look forward to here is all these great quotes.
We'll start next time with well, we'll go through the Field of
Fire as examples in Westeros and current times.
That includes quotes by more quotes by Tyrion, a quote by
Atlanta Tyrell, and a quote from Daenerys and Barriston.
Lots of good stuff. And of course, the Sworn sword
that comes up in the Sworn Sword a few times.
We also get a look at what it might look like, a microcosm
because of the burning that happened during the Sworn Sword.
So before any of these shakeups could begin in earnest, before
High Garden was settled, before Hightower bent the knee, before
the Iron Islands and all that, the North Dorn.
A lot of places still unsubdued. Even though we weren't aren't
gonna see another large battle. There's still a lot of work to
be done, a lot of coverage for us to get through, a lot of fun
stuff to talk about. Lesser problems, like the three
sisters who were still aiming for independence, who at this
point we're still holding on to that.
No one had confronted them directly yet, but that will
come. We actually won't have an
episode next week. We'll probably put up a rerun,
but we'll be back where we left off on the 22nd of October.
And let's discuss the trivia question.
I'll say why we're off. OK.
Yeah, go ahead. Every year I forget to plan for
Atlanta prides that we celebrate Pride in October, not June like
the rest of the country for the most part.
So we have the Pride Festival here and every year.
We stream on Sunday, so I can't go on Sunday.
I only go on Saturday. But I thought ahead and I asked
for it off this year so that I could actually experience all of
the Pride Festival, just a free festival here so that Atlanta
Pride goes hard. I mean Atlanta.
A hub, So. Yeah, yeah, there's all sorts of
musicians and a parade. And anyways, I'm quite excited
to experience both days of it this year, right?
I think I read somewhere. I don't know quite how they
measure this, but it's the third biggest Pride celebration.
I think New York and San Francisco or.
One and two in Atlanta. That checks out.
That makes sense to me personally.
It does. And yeah, it's great that we
have it in October cuz June in Atlanta miserable outside
October. The weather is beautiful.
So yeah, you were wondering why we were off.
I thought I'd let you know. It was for me, yeah, for a.
Only cuz you're the best. You can't not give the best a
weekend off when they ask for it.
I mean, he'll that's this unthinkable.
It's unthinkable. So, trivia question the
question. This is very funny because we
really reemphasize the answer when shots at the haze.
Accidentally featured Oak heart, Oak heart.
Was my guess how people, he said he wanted to have the trivia
question have the answer in the episode sometimes or going
forward or whatever. And people seem to like that.
Cool. All right.
Well, I'll keep that going then. I like that's a good.
I think it's a good way to do it.
Have the answer be in there, because you know it just feels.
There'll be some people who just know it, like when we first
asked because they'll just read it, which kind of fits in with.
I shared this tidbit because we did our trivia game.
You know, we we hosted trivia for patrons and if you wanted to
see how that went, you could watch on the Facebook page we we
streamed it. But anyways, when preparing the
trivia questions, I had to ask Aziz, he doesn't write the
answers to the questions in the documents, so the questions are
not that. The answers are not there.
So I had to ask Aziz, well, what's the answer to this?
And there were multiple questions.
He did not know. He did not.
He stumped him a good fourth or fifth of them.
Yeah, a good fourth or fifth of the questions.
You didn't know, so he read me like 20 or 25 and like if it was
20, I got 15. Yeah, yeah.
Every time Aziz didn't know one. I was like yes, so now I put the
answer in the documents. So because there's been times
where people where Shay is like looking to see who got the
answer right and she didn't know because she didn't know the
answer because I didn't put it in there.
Got the answer right on that one at all.
Sorry, yeah, whoops. OK, that's my bad but.
Incidentally, if we're ready to announce this, we're going to do
trivia again on the. 28th, right, Yes, we should say now,
yeah, we're going to do well. I'll, I'll make a post and I'll
attack Bull and Discord and whatnot.
But if you're listening now, you can plan.
Now we're going to do it Saturday, October 28th at 3:00
PM. This way hopefully some of you
who are. In Europe can make it work.
We're just trying a variety of days and times and we'll look
back at our logs over time and figure out what was most
popular. And if you want us to keep doing
things like this, you should show up because that, you know,
it's not for sure that we'll keep going it for longer than
six months or, you know, yeah, participation will absolutely
keep it going no matter what. All right.
So couple other odds and ends here.
If you are wanting to stay immersed, check out our episode
on the Age of Heroes or episode on High Garden.
Or perhaps our episode The Last Storm, which is for patrons and
members only. There's three main main ways to
get access to all of our bonus episodes this The Last Storm is
simply the most recent of our subscribers only episodes.
The three ways to get it are become a patron, become a
Spotify subscriber, which there should be a link if you listen
on Spotify. There should be a link in the
description of the episode or you can send us a one time
donation through PayPal. There's a link on our website
and if you send us a donation through that, I will send you a
link to all of our bonus episodes.
So. There is a fourth way.
Is there? You can have, you can have sex
and milisand okay, there is a fourth way.
I don't know how you would prove you did that.
Oh, you'll know, Okay. All right.
Well, okay, we'll, we'll take each one of those in a case by
case basis. Yes.
And we'll keep that in the shadows.
Keep that in the shadow, baby. Yeah.
So that's how you get the last Storm episode.
That's how you get all our other Patrons episodes.
It's a long list now. I couldn't possibly read them
all off. So you get a lot of bang for
your buck these days with a membership to History of
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We have a large back catalog as well, so plenty of ways to enjoy
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I can't support all the shows I want to support, so I will
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I can't afford to be a patron of every single thing I enjoy a lot
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But I think that, yeah, it's a pretty good way to do it, is to
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love, a little bit of. Backing that's the best way to
support other people, but for us.
It needs to be forever or else. I think it's such an option
Field of fire will come. I think it's a great option to
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People who like us can support us.
You don't need to do it through an advertiser.
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We can occasionally. Like, it's hard to because we're
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But yeah, it does give us a little more flexibility to
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Just like, well, if either I take this money or it's not
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Cool. Yeah.
So we definitely appreciate those of you who have taken that
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There is one of the best, probably the best non financial
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So thank you as well to the people who support us outside of
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To check out good queenalley.tumblr.com.
Joey, Jesse and Bran giving us great help with the intro outro
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His excellent help with the maps go to claredox.com or claredox
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You can buy the files and then go print the maps yourself.
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So until next time, everybody. This is a great episode.
Had a lot of fun discussing this huge episode of A Song of Ice
and Fire history. As we pointed out at the
beginning, it appears right at the start and tearing in the
second chapter, and we'll have more to say about it next time
you know what to do. In the meantime, Valar reread
us.