The deaths of Queen Rainis, and even more so Princess Miria, led
to the end of the First Dornish War, but ultimately the final
decision to end it was made by Aegon the Conqueror upon receipt
of the mysterious letter that he burned immediately after
reading. What was in that letter?
Was it sorcery? A threat?
A revelation? We have questions beyond this as
well. For example, it worked.
So why didn't Miria try it? What was her thinking on it?
What? What's the deal there?
And if Rainey's did say, survive her fall when Miraxis was shot
down, what exactly did they promise?
If, if that is the answer and if it's not, Well, we've got
further questions. That and the legacies of
Rainey's and Maria, what their deaths meant for their
respective countries other than the end of the war.
Well, we've got that and more on this episode of History of
Westeros podcast. Hello and welcome back
everybody. It's another excellent edition
of The Fire and Blood. Read through.
We hope. We hope you agree.
I'm gonna say that he burned that letter immediately and
conveniently or inconveniently. Now you look at.
It I know. Talk about burn.
After reading, you'd think it's not surprising that the
Targaryens are big on that one. We have live streams every 3:00
PM on Sundays for stuff like this.
Maybe occasionally we don't, but most Sundays, I should say.
Afterwards, every video is available on YouTube where it
was streamed, and an edited version will appear on Spotify.
The audio version will appear everywhere, you can get
podcasts, and there's an ad free version on Patreon.
If you join us there, you can listen.
Without any ad breaks, we are in the midst of our topics moot.
Now at the midpoint of this episode, I'll let you all know
what topics we've done so far, what are in progress, and a
sneak peek at this few that are coming.
That's pretty fun. We're picking 12 topics to get
made into episodes this year, Shauna, so you got a clutch
shirt on. That's awesome.
One of my favorite bands of all time, the band I've seen the
most live. Is that also the case for you?
I have lost track. I think you've seen them like
twice as much as me, but I've seen Clutch, Mastodon and the
Sword around a dozen times each. You know, one might be 10 or 14,
but yeah. I've seen, I've definitely seen
clutch 30 times or around and that's not an exaggeration.
We were, we've been counting since it was in the teens.
So I know it's a big number, but that's also because I'm an old
man and I've had lots of time to see that band they've been
around. And they've they've toured a lot
too. They've toured like constantly,
pretty much. Never.
No lineup change or anything like that, too.
So they've always, yeah, they've been together since high school.
It's pretty hard to do that. You're sure it looks like a Sun
Spear Martel type? Yeah, it is.
It's. I can't.
See the image inside the sun there.
It's a little red Viper ish, I think.
It's not like explicitly the red Viper, but I think that's who
it's supposed to inspire people to think of.
It's the spear. Man, the silhouette is the spear
is the of the red vibe. Yeah, I think it's like, not
everyone's going to immediately know that, but it's a safe first
guess and is indeed correct. So yeah, that's a cool shirt.
I don't have a lot of brown shirts and this is a fire and
bloodish. Or rather unbowed and bent,
unbroken Ish. The son of Dorn and the spear.
Yeah, very Martel. That's pretty sweet.
I like this shirt. All right, so shout out to our
good friend Nina. Didn't ask me about my shirt.
Oh, of course. Well, Shay has got a cool shirt
too. We don't always talk about your
shirt because it's not on camera.
I'm in a in a across the spider verse sweatshirt, in fact, which
is the, I guess my favorite movie of last year.
Nice. Yes, it was really fun.
Our experience at it was less fun than it could have been.
If any of y'all have ever gone to a 4D theater with the shaking
seats, oh man, 4D with the wind and the the mist.
I like that. But we went to the one where
your your seats were moving like a roller coaster, like you
literally couldn't take a sip from your drink.
One of our friends sat on the ground, almost sat on the ground
because he was getting nauseous. I was also like that.
I almost sat I. Really thought we needed
seatbelts. It was how bad it was actually.
But I love the movie. Love the movie.
Hated that experience. Yes.
So if you had a similar experience at that movie or
another one, let us know in the chat because I I think they
abandoned that. They cut back on that right
away. They're like nobody liked that.
So let's tone that down a bit. I can't not add a little bit to
this. I just want to point out Barbie
was my favorite movie of last year, which is nominated for
Best Picture and Across the Spider Verse, nominated for Best
Animated Movie, along with The Boy and the Heron, which I just
saw at the theatre, which is pretty good too.
I'm torn. I think I like Spider First
better, but they're good different ways.
Violet, I want to see Nimona still as well, also nominated
for Best Animated Film. I plan on seeing that next
month. Right on.
Well, let's shout out our good friend Nina.
Her blog is at good Queen Alley. That's ALYSAN.
Good Good Queen Alley. GODQUENALYI never bothered to
spell it all the way out. I just say 1L and Alley
butyeah.tumblr.com and Tumblr doesn't have an E Oh my gosh TU
MB LR there's how do they do that It's.
All this time I thought it was GUD.
Good, good. Queen Alley.
Yes? At her latest blog post is she
got a question about the unknown medals of the Citadel?
As in what chains represent what?
There's several medals that we know appear as associated with
certain studies that we don't actually know what those studies
are, like Brass, pewter, platinum, red, gold, and tin,
for example, and she fills in the blanks with some educated
guesses. I particularly like her guesses
for brass and platinum, so check that out if you're so inclined.
If you have questions of your own, send them to
westeroshistory@gmail.com or connect with us through Patreon
or any of the other social media sites.
But Westeros history@gmail.com is perhaps the most surefire
way. My hate Canon is that brass
means they learn how to play the trumpet.
Music Woodwind specifically, Yes.
Let's start with our trivia question.
Dornish blank became slang north of the Red Mountains for
cowardice. Fill in the blank.
Dornish blank became slang for cowardice.
What is the? Blank.
That's the answer. Blank.
Yes, Dorn, they say, you Dornish.
Blank. That's right, Blank Man.
Everywhere. This episode will be concerned
with the deaths of Princess Miria, Queen Rainies and Raxies
and what their deaths meant to the respective causes and
countries and family, and how ultimately these elements were
crucial to forging a peace after a long period in which there
seemed to be no end insight to a very brutal bloody war.
This is a big part of their respective legacies which we
will dig into deeper in the second-half.
The first part is of course the peace process and the letter.
Apart from those two meaning Maria and Renis, our cast of
characters today includes the other two heads of the Dragon of
course to send you an Aegon, Prince Nymore and his daughter
Air Princess Diria Oris Baratheon, the new hand of the
King, Lord Alton Saltagar, who actually doesn't do very much
but we he he should be mentioned because he was the hand of the
King in this era. Lord Oakhart makes a brief
appearance Grand Maester Gowen who is the third ever Grand
Maester. He's a big part of this young
Prince Ayes is around and even younger Prince Magor is on the
scene. Also a correction from last
episode. I goofed on Magor's birthday.
He was born in 12, not ten. I have have a mental block on
that. This is not the first time I've
made that mistake. So it happens.
That means Vicena was not pregnant when the Kingsguard was
formed, so take that with a grain of salt.
I don't think I made any other points based on that wrong date.
It's it's all A2 year doesn't make that much difference in
terms of guesstimating and other things like that.
The air and a spare did change the Targaryen picture, but since
both happened before the piece was consummated, it doesn't
really matter. So yeah, my my brain is stuck on
Megor being two years older than he really was, but we'll deal
with that. So the death of Miria.
Let's have a quote picking us up basically where we left off last
time. Age and ill health finally did
what Dragons and armies could not in 13 AC, Miria Martel, the
yellow toad of Dorne, died Abed whilst having intimate relations
with a stallion. Her enemies insisted.
Her son Nymore succeeded her as Lord of Sunspear and Prince of
Dorne, 60 years old, his health already failing, the new Dornish
Prince had no appetite for further slaughter.
He began his reign by sending a delegation to King's Landing to
return the skull of the dragon Maraxis and offer King Aegon
terms of peace. His own heir, his daughter
Daria, led the embassy. So Nina mentioned the parallel
to Catherine the Great last time, which is only slightly
less ridiculous. The woman you know, hooking up
with a horse. This is even what I by, I mean
less ridiculous for Catherine. The grade is that Catherine the
grade was at least like not a 90 something year old woman.
It just makes it a little more ridiculous.
Like, yeah, this 95 year old woman's looking up with a horse.
Yeah, it's not that much more realistic for a 35 year old
woman, but I would say it's even less likely for a 95 year old
anyway. It's clearly absurd in any case,
but I can imagine the coronation being an unusually UN fancy
affair. Like, big celebration for the
new Prince of Dorne. Yeah, after nine years of an
incredibly brutal war, I think this was probably a low, you
know, a low festivity affair. They're just like, Yep, all
right, time to move on. And what are we going to do now?
I have to make a Letterkenny reference here.
I know you haven't seen it, but anyone it has.
Know what I mean when I say it was a sick horse?
A sick horse. OK.
Yeah. When they've watched
Letterkenny, you know what I mean.
So the Targaryens didn't burn Sunspear though.
So at least it wasn't like they weren't having a coronation and
you know, burned out husk of a building, but they probably kept
it small, you know, I didn't need word getting out.
Last thing they needed was like assassins or or a dragon showing
up to just torch the affair entirely.
You need to point out that one interesting aspect to this war
is that we don't actually get a lot of internal politicking and
and court factionalism if there was any in Dorne, we we're it's
this is fire and blood. It's focused on the Targaryen
history, so we have less of the Dornish point of view.
In fact, we have very little of the Dornish point of view.
And you really wonder what was going on down there.
Were they arguing about whether to keep the war going?
What? Did Miriam know her son was
going to immediately flip the switch when she died?
Was she aware of that or should she suspect it?
What did? What did Diria think?
Diria is the neck now, the heir at this point after Myriad died.
So is she on her grandmother's side?
Is she on her father's side? Is she kind of neutral?
Does she play in both sides? It's really not very clear to
us, but it would. But it's an interesting thing to
consider. Were they debating it?
Were. Was there?
Did it get, like tense? Was there threats made, or were
they just kind of all on one mind about it, or just pretty
happy with Mary's leadership and ready to keep fighting?
Well, probably not, because Nine More stopped it immediately.
He sent this delegation like apparently within weeks of his
mother's death. And this would have been an
interesting state of affairs because they might have expected
this to happen much sooner, like this 95 ish year old woman.
Like they probably thought she would have died like 20 years
before, like before this war even started.
They would have expected her to pass.
So it was one of the things where it is any day now she
might pass and then we might everything will change
potentially. But but they couldn't know for
sure that the peace would be accepted.
They couldn't know for sure that their plan would work.
They may not have even had the plan at that point it.
Reminds me a little bit that thinking about House of the
Dragon when Viserys dies, this sort of domino effect that came
right like like Damon suspected that they killed him.
For now, it's a. Little more reasonable for her
to die when she's 95 years old or whatever, but also how much
milk of the puppy was she on leading up to that moment?
How much of A puppet was she to people who did want the war to
keep going? If at all.
Yeah, yeah, maybe not at all. But much like House of the
Dragon fleshed out a lot of stuff and raised new questions
or gave us new interpretations, there's so much for us to so
much drama and and detail and characterization that could be
played out if they made a show out of this scenario.
And even though we can't know, we have, like you said, it's got
similarities, it's got parallels.
We got to, we got at least have an idea of what questions to
ask, of what what we should be wondering about the types of
things that would be going on or probably would be going on.
We don't know. But it's not crazy to think that
there would be factions that wanted peace or wanted revenge,
right? You would have been in charge of
those factions. How strong would they have been?
How were they manipulating Maria leading up to her death?
How did they play out after she died, Etcetera.
I mean, heck, we make those assumptions about the children
of the Force, that maybe they had factions within them, maybe
even the others. That seems less likely because
there there might be a magical creation or a magical race or
something, but still, so they don't have to necessarily follow
human societal rules where you have all this diversity of
opinion necessarily, or at least two opinions you fight on or for
peace, you know? But like, even if you know,
maybe there's other elements to this question or line of thought
or whatever, but even like a pack of wolves or orangutans
have factions, right? It's not like only humans can
have. Factions and Dorn is known for
being a factionalist place. It's never been terribly united.
It's always been sort of the least united of the Seven
Kingdoms or the 8 Kingdoms or yeah, forget the number, you
know what I mean? Like when Balin Swan journeys to
Sunspear and has that feast with Doran.
There's blatantly many Dornish Lords do not drink to the toast
to the king. You know they're like at Obar,
like flat out turns or cup. You know like makes a big scene
out of it. So it's not, it's not even like,
I think I wonder what side they're on.
He didn't like, look, no, they're blatant about it.
So they know they. Seemed like that in a Dunkin Egg
too, wasn't there? Oh gosh.
Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, you're right in
the mystery. Fire pretender.
Yeah, you know, made a toast and some people drank and some
didn't, you know? Yeah and yeah, it was fireballs,
son. Quote UN quote Who who said who
poured his wine and and blood Raven in disguise was like it's
a waste of good wine, man. Yeah, yeah.
Did you put Fireball Sun quote, UN quote, in quotes like that?
Because really it should be trueborn.
I'm. Not sure but.
Quote. That's right.
So, so the parallels are strong
and we think about the type of place Dorne is and it would be
kind of wild to think that they were all just on the same page,
but they were maybe a lot of attitudes about they were
probably were fairly agreed that they didn't want to just give
up. However, giving up can mean a
lot of different things. There's peace, they're suing for
peace, there's asking for concessions and there's just,
hey, can we just stop now? You know, there's a lot of
different versions of that, whether you ask for something or
anything. Modern Dorn, we don't see it as
a monolith, and we see them in fighting and having slight
disagreements, but generally still being on the same page
over all of what they want. But they still have a variety of
opinions. Yeah, keep in mind, that's a
great point to say. Keep in mind that it's not like
Nymeria's unification of Dorne is in the ancient past.
It's pretty far in the past. But we're not talking Age of
Heroes. We're not talking, you know it's
not as recent as the Doom of of Valyria, but the, you know
because they fled before the Doom.
But you know we're talking like 5-6 hundred years maybe it's not
known we we were. It's a guesstimation.
But we're talking hundreds of years, not even 1000.
So yeah, so Dorne is still was still changing at this point
from their new scenario there you still have people like named
after her like blatantly Nymeria, Nymore, Myriadiria,
like that doesn't happen as much now.
You still have Nim and but Doran and these other names that
aren't really connected to that. Also, to Shay's point in the, I
don't know, current timeline where the Dornish aren't
directly at odds, they generally have the same big picture goals,
but they're still have different routes there and there's also a
lot of intrigue there. There's secrets being kept about
what different people's plans are, right?
So same could have happened in this scenario.
Yeah. So I wonder if Nymore had this
idea well ahead of him enacting himself.
I think. I think he probably did, because
the timing is otherwise very suspicious.
It's not like otherwise we're saying he had the idea the
minute his mom died, you know, or right before she died.
Like, you know what? This is a good idea.
He probably had it sooner, maybe a lot sooner and tried to
suggest it to her and she rejected it for some reason or
another. And we'll go through what those
possible reasons would be throughout this episode.
One of them would be maybe it was too soon, like he's like no,
there's no way they're going to agree to this so soon after
Rainey's death. Maybe after more time has passed
and maybe she thought it took more time.
Maybe she was just against it. But by the time she she died, it
was like, OK, it's been three years or 2 1/2 years since
Rainey's died. Maybe now we have a chance to to
finally end this. Nina also suggests perhaps Diria
was like. If Diria was like and was more
aggressive and energetic and when to keep the war going,
Nymore may have felt very pressured to do his best
thinking. He may have only had a short
time because it does say his health is already failing.
He's already in his 60s, He's maybe a Doran Martel figure,
like a ruler of Doran who is trying to do his best to keep
his nation from suffering. Of course, at this point they've
already suffered, so it's more like further suffering at this
point. And you know, he doesn't need to
see more Dornish people killed for a war that can't be won.
So he had to act when he could. I like that theory a lot.
Now, we don't necessarily know if that's true.
We don't know what kind of person theory it was.
But there is some evidence that we'll get into a bit later that
does kind of indicate theory. It may have been more of the
Marshall type, you know, the more of the stick it out type.
Now, I'm not this isn't a suggestion that Nine More was
cowardly or anything like that, because there's a lot of risk to
this strategy. There was a lot of ways this
could have gone wrong, as we'll see.
We can't just be hindsight about it and say, yeah, it worked.
So clearly it was. And they knew it would work.
No, they didn't. They couldn't have known.
In fact, it could have backfired very badly.
And we'll get into that. So if the Targaryen just kept
coming and and burning stuff, like why would they expect a
peace delegation to even stop? What leverage did they have,
right. Well, they had whatever leverage
is in this letter. Apparently there's something in
there that that worked. But yeah, we don't know what
that was. So let's get to that.
The year 12. So one year prior to this peace
process, the second ever Grand Maester broke his hip, slipping
in the mud. And he had been the Grand
Maester since basically the beginning because the first
Grand Grand Maester lasted less than a year.
So this was this guy had been around for about 8 years.
So the third ever Grand Maester was elevated.
His name was Gawin or Gawin GAWEN and he would take office
and hold it for 29 years. So into the reign of Megor.
So we won't mention a new Grand Maester for a while.
So a little stability in the office and that's kind of
interesting. The first died after less than a
year, the 2nd lasted 8 and this guy's like a Pycellian length of
time. Pycell actually lasted over 40
years, so quite a bit more, but still 29 is a long time.
They also have another thing in common, they were both killed
rather than dying of natural causes, and they both were
killed inside the Red Keep. So sorry Gowen, you're not going
to have the best ending, but we're nowhere near that yet.
We're still 29 years from that. So yes, we're not at nowhere
near Magor's reign. We haven't even gotten to Amy's
or the end of Aegon. Here is another quote.
This is the delivery of the peace proposal to the king.
Prince Nymore's peace proposals encountered strong opposition in
King's Landing. Queen Vicenia was hard set
against them. No peace without submission, she
declared, and her friends on the King's Council echoed her words.
Oris Baratheon, who had grown bent and bitter in his later
years, argued for sending Princess Deria back to her
father. Less a hand, Lord Oakhart sent a
Raven suggesting that the Dornish girl be sold into.
The meanest brothel in King's Landing, till every beggar in
the city has had his pleasure of her.
Aegon Targaryen dismissed all such proposals.
Princess Deria had come as an envoy under a banner of peace
and would suffer no harm under his roof, he vowed.
I hope I don't have to read any more Lord Oakhart quotes.
That is the only Lord Oakhart quote this episode, yes.
So it goes to show how much of Aegon's newly established
reputation was hanging in the balance, like he wasn't in
danger of losing the throne or anything.
Let me be clear. But his counsel is offering very
dishonorable, very grudge oriented, very revenge oriented
advice. Like everyone specifically
offering payback for what had happened to them.
Lord Oakhart that had happened to his son and and his bride to
be, and obviously Oris and a lot of his men lost their sword
arms. So they're like do it to her.
Yeah, Vicenya may have been this hardcore regardless.
She's always pretty hardcore. So this, I don't know if this is
like a change of tune for her. This is just how she would have
been anyway. And I kind of wonder, it says,
and her friends on the King's council.
It's not like the King's council is very large.
So who are these people? Is she talking?
Is Oris? One of them?
Is Oris on her side? I mean, they seem to have a
similar they seem to be on the same position here, like they're
both like no. But it sounds like almost
everyone was saying no and loudly no and not only no, only
yes if there's lots of violence or anyway.
So yeah, there's a new the new hand.
As I said in the intro that Alton Celtagar his hand, his
opinion's not noted, although maybe he's one of the seniors
friends on the council. That might be why he's not noted
specifically just because he's in that group.
Might be why he's on the council too, because he's her friend, so
yeah. Good point.
Yeah, and he's a Celtagar or Celtagar, meaning he is Valyrian
and more recently Valyrian. They probably haven't mingled
with the Seven Kingdoms, with the Andals and First Men nearly
as much yet. So Ori says yes.
Like I said, Ori's suggestion was very personal given his own
maiming. But consider that like a lot of
his court is the same like the he picked.
Remember that was an elite picked squad that he took so
it's the closest guys and and the highest ranking of them
would have lived minus their sword hands.
So his whole court right now is a bunch of one handed guys and
they're all like a lot of them are going to be bitter and angry
and it's not a probably not a very good place to be, probably
a lot of just probably a very gloomy place and I wonder if he
was even there. Like he he wasn't hand anymore
but he offered an opinion. So either he's still at court
after resigning his position or Nina suggests he heard the
delegation was coming and he showed up to be able to weigh
in. Which somewhat favor that idea
'cause it's kind of weird to resign your position, his hand,
but still hang out at court and just stay there like it sounds
like he wanted to go be by himself, so.
He is nearby too, right so. Storm's ends?
Not super far, yeah. Yeah, he would have definitely
been able to do that, yeah. Even if he didn't come
specifically for this reason, he he still might be going back and
forth, 'cause he, I imagine, has connections in King's Landing
anyway, so. Yeah, now this is this is not,
this is very hypocritical for these aggressors to be like oh,
they did all this to us like you started the war, you know, But
it just goes to show how long this had dragged on, how this is
not. And you can't really claim this
is atypical for people. You know, humans are hypocrites
all, especially when it comes to long drawn out wars and and
personal violence and cycles of revenge.
You kind of forget how it started, even though it wasn't
that long ago, nine years ago. Or even if you don't forget, you
might just not care. Like when you get your hand cut
off you. It might not matter to you that
someone else started the war that sent you down there.
You're just mad that your hand was cut off.
You're not even, you're not necessarily caring about the
war. You care about the people that
cut your hand off. Like, he's like, yeah, whatever
happens to the war, whatever. I want those wills to suffer,
you know. But this is just, Again, this
goes to show how bad it is. Like if in a regular time of
peace, like who's just openly preaching this sort of treatment
of envoys, like this isn't just like enemies, these are envoys.
That's I get like this goes back to the Argolac, the arrogant
thing. This is something that Aegon got
rightfully upset about. Of course it didn't happen and
Aegon was like, no, we're not doing that.
So you know, good, good on him for not allowing that.
But still, the fact that they're even suggesting, it really just
goes to show. And Nina says, yeah, there's a
there's A at this point, no one can really claim the moral high
ground anymore there. There's too many war crimes even
on the Dornish side at this point for them to say it's
purely a war of defense. Like they've invaded the Seven
Kingdoms and and done horrible things to people that really had
nothing to do with the war at all.
So like, they lost the moral high ground, especially people
like the Widow Lover and guys like that.
So just so that's part of what's going on here, like, well, we've
already given up all pretense of of ceremony and honor, so what's
a little more, you know? This is a little piece that I
think helps set the stage when we talk about the letter too,
because it's worth noting that it's not crazy that they would
have taken Daria hostage or tortured her or whatever else it
is. Maybe it was a gamble or or
maybe less of a gamble than we feel like because of what was in
that letter. Maybe they knew what was in
there would stop them. Not just stop the word, but stop
them from doing something. To Daria.
Maybe, but only if they show it to the king.
You know, like, maybe they're. Right.
They got to get to the king safely is a lot of.
Yeah, right. Like, could they have been,
could they have been worried that they just been attacked on
the way? Like they're flying a peace
banner For sure. But, like, are they gonna, are
they gonna listen? Are they gonna, like, obey that?
Are they gonna honor that? Yeah, maybe not.
So that would have been Yeah, there's risk.
There was serious risk. Just didn't go in.
There, like you would kind of think as a default.
Weddings have peace banners flying, you know.
Yeah, but. That didn't matter.
So it. Didn't matter in Fontaine.
Yeah, it didn't matter in Fontaine or or at the Red
Wedding. But you know, it's funny because
later in the in the main story, the Dornish did that.
The Martels did that in a way. And sending envoys and sending
people to dangerous like situations that could blow up in
their face, some of which haven't played out yet, because
we have like Nymeria and Tyene going to King's Landing one but
over and went to King's Landing, ended poorly, but not in a way
they could have predicted. And Quentin went to see Danny in
a really dangerous way, in a way that I've always judged Doran
for making that call. And it ended poorly, but again,
not because of any fault of Danny or anything.
But though she might get blamed for it, yeah, but yeah, you're
right. So yes, treatment of envoys is a
it can be a casas belli, right? It can be a reason to start a
war, or it can be a reason to claim the moral high ground or
or what have you. Yeah.
And it is a risk that Doran seems to or the Martells just
seem to take left and right. So yeah.
There's plenty of times in the real world where Envoy, the
treatment of envoys has been horrible.
Like they just like you go there and like, Nope, we chop your
heads off. Like that happened to some of
Genghis Khan's envoys. Much to the future regret of the
people who did that. He really made them regret that.
But like, that's that's there's plenty of examples.
In a song by some fire in our Mantaris episode, we talk about
how Danny sent envoys to Mantaris and they were returned
with their heads in a box. And well, I don't suppose
Danny's going to look on that kindly.
But Mantaris isn't really on her way.
Like, I don't know, she might have to let them get away with
that, you know, I don't know. But that's something we talked
about in that episode. So the voices in the Red Keep
weren't even trying. They weren't even trying to be
honorable. They weren't even trying for
some semblance of nobility or anything like that.
They're just letting themselves. They're just venting and and
running their mouths about more atrocities.
And here's what Aegon said quote.
The king was weary of war, all men agreed.
But granting the Dornish men peace without submission would
be tantamount to saying that his beloved sister Raines had died
in vain, that all the blood and death had been for naughty.
The Lords of his small Council further cautioned that any such
peace could be seen as a sign of weakness, and might encourage
fresh rebellions, which would then need to be put down.
Agon knew that the Reach, the Stormlands, and the Marches had
suffered grievously during the fighting, and would neither
forgive nor forget. Even in King's Landing, the King
dared not let the Dornish outside the Aegon Fort without a
strong escort, for fear that the small folk of the city would
tear them to pieces. For all these reasons, Grand
Maester Lucan wrote later, the King was on the point of
refusing the Dornish proposals and continuing the war.
Yeah, that goes to show with what we were talking about with
regards to the Peace delegation even being at risk on their
travels. Maybe they took ship because
they were like, yeah, we don't want to pass through the
countryside where just any random people could attack us.
They'd be stupid to do so. But that stupidity might come
after, like the the penalty for that stupidity might come after
they've already inflicted harm on the Peace Party.
It's like, well, that was stupid of them, but we're all going to
die. A couple of things that matter
here. The common folk clearly loved
the Targaryens for the reaction to be like this for them to be
so worked up about Dorne. Clearly the propaganda machine
was working well on on their side making an enemy of Dorne
even though they were the aggressor.
And later in the episode we'll get into part of that why that
is it's it's Rainy's in particular is the reason for a
lot of this. She manipulated public opinion a
bit and it's still it's very interesting the people of King's
Landing were like this and again I have to keep reminding us of
this. King's Landing is new.
It's this is now the 13th year the city has existed not very
long. It doesn't have, like a long
established identity. There isn't like a King's
Landing or like culture yet. It's a burgeoning thing.
There aren't, like people out there that were born and raised
in King's Landing and lived their whole life there.
Yeah, I mean, if you're 20, you were born, you know you were,
you were moved there when you were seven.
You know, you spent most of your life there.
That's still, that doesn't really count in the, in
Westeros, where places have existed for thousands of years.
Like 13 years is nothing, even though it's already like the
size of White Harbor or Gull Town that grew really fast.
But they're already developing like this.
This population is already growing like a personality, and
it's starting to have like its own kind of unique vibe to it.
I guess you could say, for lack of a better word, the
population, of course, is going to continue to grow at a really
rapid rate. But and in some ways that makes
it unmanageable because of this constant flux and new people
coming in all the time. We've we've talked about that a
few times and it bears repeating here.
So it's a difficult spot for Aegon in terms of what mattered
to him and in terms of what the realm wanted.
In some ways, he created a monster.
He started this war and got out of control, and now he got his
people whipped up into a frenzy. He got them so invested in the
war that it's a risk to stop it. They're all so ready to keep
going. And he wants he's kind of like
I'm kind of ready for peace but everybody else is still like
deep in it. They don't they don't want
peace. So yeah that's why I say created
a monster. But clearly it wasn't a deal
breaker for him right. Because he did accept the peace.
Just you know he may not have gone into it expecting to
because the reasons why are a huge point of mystery and this
mystery is a stand out in both the plot documents and you know
mystery category. Mystery is a large category,
plot documents Plotuments is a smaller subcategory.
I mean consider how many important documents there have
been like we did Rob's will as an episode a few months ago and
that was a a really fun 1A big one.
Robert's will is is also a big thing.
The pink letter is another one that's huge.
It's still in progress really. So yeah, the latter is a good
example, In particular the Pink Letter, because of all the
debate and theorizing that's that happens.
Unlike the pink letter, we may not get answers on this one,
whereas we probably will get some answers on the Pink Letter,
but maybe not. We'll have to wait and see.
Anyway, let's talk about the mystery letter starting with
quotes. It was then that Princess Daria
presented the king with a sealed letter from her father.
For your eyes only, Your Grace, King Aegon read Prince Nymore's
words in open court, stone faced and silent while seated on the
Iron Throne. When he rose afterward, men said
his hand was dripping blood. He burned the letter and never
spoke of it again. But that night he mounted
Valerian and flew off across the waters of Blackwater Bay to
Dragonstone upon its smoking mountain.
When he returned the next morning, Aegon Targaryen agreed
to the terms proposed by Nymore. Soon thereafter, he signed a
Treaty of eternal peace with Dorne.
To this day, no one can say with certainty what might have been
in Darya's letter. So the order of events here is
very worth taking into account. We're really trying to break
this down. We should.
We got a hyper fixate on the order of events and other things
like that. The way it's written, it sounds
as if the Dornish envoys first asked for peace and then, after
hearing the strong outcry against it, then gave the
message over. It wasn't like they just handed
all the stuff over at once. There was a little bit of a
timing plan here, like they maybe weren't full.
Maybe there was still a chance they weren't going to give this
letter over. Or maybe had a different letter
to give a. Set of letters and depending on
which the reaction give, Yeah, I hadn't considered that's a great
that's a great possibility And they may yeah.
So they may have been reluctant, as we'll show.
Also known that note that the private message was very
publicly delivered. Right.
He it says he read it in open court.
They gave him the option to say it out loud.
They gave him the option to, you know share it and they probably
suspected he wouldn't. But I don't know.
We don't know everyone, but everyone knows Aegon got a
private message and that it affected him emotionally that he
he had a strong extreme reaction to it, something that isn't
typical for him. He is stone faced, composed,
calm, Doesn't seem to be a guy that yells or just projects a
lot of emotion in general, Just a very controlled person.
Stoic. Stoic.
Yes. Perfect word for him.
Now we look this up to be sure, and it's not 100% clear.
Still, Sean, I know you still have some doubt here.
I think it's pretty clear that he was gripping the throne, but
I can see the interpretation that he gripped the letter so
tight. The problem with that is how can
he read it if he's gripping it so tight that it making him
bleed? Yeah, well, I I it could be that
after he read it, he just suddenly clenched his hands and
his nails dug and he just sat there for a moment, kind of
processing it. I don't know, maybe that's
stretched. But it's also weird to me that
he wouldn't need to grip the iron foam thrown.
Very hard to cut himself. People just accidentally cut
themselves on it all the time. They.
Would if he's wearing armor, which he would be because of all
the assassins. That's pretty well documented at
this point, so I think that that would explain he pierced through
his gauntlet or whatever. He gripped it so hard that his
hand with her. Maybe he's just wearing thick
leather gloves. Either way.
Also like how would it be noted that his hand was bleeding if he
had a armor? Not impossible, but he would
have to be bleeding a decent amount.
Which is also not very likely for your fingernails though like
if your own. Like, how is it gushing blood if
it's just your fingernails? So I.
Also, he might be wearing armor but not be wearing gauntlets.
He might have a breastplate and. Sure.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
Part of my, and again this is, you know, I mean that's what
we're doing. We're kind of nitpicking this
but just in the it's a slightly different quote in the world of
Ice and Fire, it says Princess. And just this phrasing is what
made me initially because I read this first too.
So it's what got the idea planted in my mind that he
gripped this artist, this Princess Deria placed in his
hands a private letter from her father, Prince Naimor Aegon read
it upon the throne and then say that when he rose, his hand was
bleeding so hard he had clinched it.
He burned the letter and departed immediately in
Valerian's back for Dragon Stone.
So like it like every sentence referenced to the letter.
And in one sentence it says He gripped it so hard.
Yeah, so. He read it upon the Iron Throne.
Iron Throne is the IT there, I think because that's.
Then he clarifies it. That's a letter.
He doesn't say he burned it afterwards, he doesn't continue
that with the same it. And then he re establishes what
the subject is anyway. You're right, let's not.
Let's not get hung up on that. It is symbolically.
Maybe better for him to cut it on that.
I think so too. I think that's another argument
for it. Yes, absolutely.
Because it is. He's the man that decided a king
should not rest his. He designed this throne.
So it is. It is does say a lot more.
If he was so emotionally overwrought that even the man
who knows this is a dangerous chair cut himself on it.
Yeah. You were you going to say
something A shame that that. OK, cool.
All right. That.
I think that you have to cut, you have to look through to the
significance of it, the symbolism, and yeah, like it
just is better for it to be the throne.
Yeah, I agree. Either way, though, we agree
that it's the strong emotional reaction that's like whether he
gripped the throne or the letter.
It was intense. Here is what the text suggests
as possibilities quote. Some claim it was a simple plea
from one father to another, heartfelt words that touched
King Aegon's heart. Others insist it was a list of
all those Lords and noble Knights who had lost their lives
during the war. Certain Septins even went so far
as to suggest that the missive was ensorcelled that it had been
written by the Yellow Toad before her death, using a vial
of Queen Rainey's own blood for ink, so that the king would be
helpless to resist its malign magic.
Grand Maester Clegg, who came to King's Landing many years later,
concluded that Dorne no longer had the strength to fight.
Driven by desperation, Clegg suggested Prince Nymore might
have threatened that should his peace be refused, he would
engage the Faceless Men of Bravos to kill King Aegon's son
and heir, Queen Renis's boy Aenis, then but six years old.
It may be so, but no man will ever truly know.
Thus ended the First Dornish War 4 to 13 AC.
Let the record show that Azisi and I grimaced at each of these
potential explanations. Yes, if you're not watching a
video, we were just like shaking our heads.
Some of these theories are terrible.
Really. They're just kind of like, and
these theories are old, like, not just the the ones suggested
here, but in the fandom. Because again, this started with
the world of Ice and Fire in 2014, not with fire and blood.
In 2018, Fire and Blood fired it back up again, and Fire and
Blood Was was more widely read. So in some ways this was a
bigger call to action to think about this.
Regardless, yeah, we can. We can clearly discard some of
these theories. And add a few that aren't
mentioned, perhaps. But yeah, the whole simple plea
from one father, like please. That is, there's no chance that
this is what caused Aegon to grip the It's like, Oh my God,
what have I done? Yeah, I don't think so.
I really a list of all the Lord and Lords and Knights who had
lost their lives. Also, I don't he's like really?
John of N died and all these other guys I can't believe.
It. Yeah, Like, no.
Like, this is the man who torched 4000 men on the field of
fire. He's pretty well aware.
He's like putting names to it. I really.
I don't think that changes a damn thing.
My question is, were Vasenia and Amy's do you think at
Dragonstone or at King's Landing?
Probably. Well, Vasenia would be at King's
Landing a lot because she, she weighed in on this and it's kind
of unlikely that Amy's would be separate from him.
So I think Amy's was there because it's, it's said that
Egon had him around a lot. And yeah, I think they want to
keep an eye on him, raising him to be at court and all that.
But it's a good question. And it is possible that he
showed up in a hurry, like if if he didn't know Mary was coming,
it was on Dragonstone. He might have come over quick in
armor, but without his son it might be a dangerous scenario to
bring his son into. That's true, he did say.
We do know that he spent roughly half his time on Dragonstone, so
it's very entirely possible that that's the case, but he would
have probably known. Time Quarter of time of
Dragonstone. Quarter time of King Landing,
half his time on the road. You're right.
I'm sorry, half of his time not on the road was on Dragonstone.
Yes, that is much more accurate so.
But he would have known that the delegation was on its way.
They didn't wouldn't have shown up nowhere out of nowhere.
I don't. Was that a reason why the Amy's
would be a Dragonstone? No King's Landing or anything.
No, but it's the reason Egon would be and and Amy's probably
would be too, but maybe not. I'm just saying that's probably
Egon would have already been there.
He would have known they were coming.
Yeah, I guess my question is just things that he would have
wanted to check on at Dragonstone or or people to
speak to at Dragonstone. Oh, after reading the letter.
After reading the letter that he would have gone home to to talk
to Virginia, who actually was there, not at King's Landing, or
to make sure that a nice is in fact safe.
But then you was definitely at court.
She weighed in on. Or he would have gone there
because he was worried about a stash of dragon eggs or
something that they told some some knowledge that Rainey's let
slip about something they had at Dragonstone that he wanted to go
check on. Some sort of, yeah, some sort of
that. That's that's one of the
possibility. Possible clues is that they said
something that Aegon would would want to go refer to.
Yeah, that that's that's possible.
Like a phrase or some sort of something they they knew about.
Yeah, that's definitely possible.
Either way. The idea that sending his own
daughter, and I'm more sending his own daughter as an envoy, he
may have thought that would carry more weight.
He's like, look I'm, I'm taking a risk.
I'm it's part of the peace process is we both make
compromises. And I'm my, my own daughter, my
own heir is here with you. You know you've got her.
You know you can treat her with honor or not but I'm taking the
risk and and staying sticking this out and yeah, getting to
the theory. I think it's crucial for any
theory to work. It has to explain Aegon's
extreme reaction and yeah, and Sean, maybe a few other things.
But to me that's the most important.
It has to explain the gripping the throne or the OR his own
hand to the point where he's openly bleeding.
Not if it doesn't explain that it's not a good theory.
That's the thing that matters most to me.
I agree with that, but I do think other things that matter
are it has to prompt him to not take Daria hostage and it has to
prompt him to go to Dragonstone. I think those are two other
things that happened that need explanation not as much as the
extreme reaction, especially because both those things could
have a lot of potential answers or less potential answers or why
he would have this emotional reaction.
Yeah, I mean, I'm saying like, we don't know Aegon's
personality enough that you could justify a lot of things.
There's certain personality types that doesn't take a lot
for them to go fly off and be alone.
And yeah, he just. Wants to go think.
Yeah, it might not be as drastic of an action for him as we think
he might. There might have been lots of
times where someone brought him something and he just like left
and went to think about it alone.
You know? It might not be that unusual for
Aegon. And to be clear, I don't like
this theory, but if it was some sort of magic that could explain
it, you know what I mean. It is a possible explanation for
a weird emotional reaction if there was some sort of magic
involved. But yeah, but it doesn't seem
like a strong theory. I agree.
But before we get into the magic theory, let me say I don't
really think it's a big deal that he didn't take her hostage.
I don't think anything needs that needs to be explained.
That's the standard treatment of envoys, which is do we really
need an explanation for that? Well, you normally no.
But in this case, when everyone at court thought it was the
right thing to do, maybe like, I feel like it's.
An. Unusual scenario.
Most people, all the senior people, all the people advising
them, everyone had the, I don't know, position to speak out,
right. The most senior, trusted,
experienced, whatever people, they all thought it.
Yeah, a lot of the senior people are like, look, honors out the
window. We're doing war crimes.
We're doing, we're doing, we need to do.
Well, well, that's that's, that's the thing that I want is,
was it something in this letter that made him be this way?
No, because he already said that before reading the letter.
He didn't read the letter first. He said that immediately before
reading the letter. Yeah.
So anyway, the Insorcel thing, yeah, I'm definitely down on
that. Like you said, it's not a great
explanation because that's one of those like, well, it could be
anything. Like, well, we can't trust
anything. It going to be magic.
The fact that George wrote it the way he did also really
throws cold water on it because it's certain Septums, these are
people who have no expertise in magic whatsoever.
These aren't the people. If this theory came from the
Citadel, I'd take it more seriously because that's coming
from a place that has knowledge of magic, but these are just
septons making crap up, you know, That's that's how it's
worded to me. So I'm like, Nah, like you say,
it's a fantasy setting, so we can't 100% dismiss it, but I
think it's written as A to be dismissed just as the fringe
opinions from the equivalent of the weekly World News.
Like, let's record that because why not, you know?
I'm I'm tempted to give it some small chance of potential
because it was a thing that was thought to be suggested at all
right. Just just that is something but
it. But like you said, I think that
it's George's including it as a thing to be dismissed.
I just. I think there's a nice
suggestion from Leah Rubenfeld in the in the chat right now
that makes this kind of magic adjacent.
If it was something about his prophecy, about Aegon's prophecy
for example, yeah, like that is magic adjacent in some ways, but
just the idea that they had Renice alive enough that she
told them sensitive information and that maybe even that relates
to him wanting to go to Dragonstone to check someone who
knows, But regardless that that would be enough to to bring him
back to Earth. I think that I had supposed that
before, that that might be one reason why Aegon kept pushing
this war is because he had seen something in a vision that made
him think he was supposed to do it like that.
All the kingdoms have to be united to do this.
So whatever the losses were, he just kept going anyway, 'cause
he thought he had to. And I wasn't thinking in these
terms yet, but maybe that was something in the letter, was
something to just prove that or look at it a different way.
Or Randy's had her own. Derry had her own vision.
Or some other person, you know, I don't know, but.
The idea that he signed an eternal peace with Doran is an
interesting thing to consider in light of that he maybe was
giving up forever on the idea not that that was upheld by
either side, but at the time he might have been conceding the
idea that Dorne needed to be controlled for that prophecy to
be fulfilled. Or that maybe he had conceded to
the idea that it would be hundreds of years still, so that
he he wasn't concerned. Or that it doesn't require
conquest for Dorne to join. We can have peace forever, and
you still might join us. Right.
OK. Yes.
As long as they're like allies, as long as they work together
can still that's a good point. Yeah, I like that.
Now let's move on to the Faceless Man suggestion which
comes from the Grand Maester Clegg, which it's also pointed
out the Grand Maester Clegg was not a part of this.
He he's writing after the fact. This is many years later.
He does no personal information here.
Maybe he saw some notes or got books from other sources that
were relevant. But this is just an A theory
that came along later, which already throws a little costs it
a few points. I think now it's not a terrible
idea. It's just like like it's better
than the magic idea 'cause unlike magical pages, we know
the Faceless Men exist. That's a real thing for sure.
That's a specific form of magic that's real, and we've seen them
kill and they're really good at it.
It's definitely a flawed idea though, 'cause like, why didn't
they do this before? Why wait for Myriad to die to
try this? And there had been so many
assassinations on both sides anyway, Just apparently not with
Faceless Men, is it? Possible that Myriad was just
like really vindictive and just was torturing Rainy's and was
like, no, I just want to torture this woman.
I don't want to. Yeah, I don't know, like.
It's possible. And the elders?
Like, we're not giving her up, we're.
Yeah, like if and Maria was agreed, they were all like, no,
we want to like, torture this woman, Yeah.
I don't know. And then, and they're not going
to tell anyone that they have her, Yeah.
Yeah, 'cause then that guy will just ruin, like then they'll
come attack them. You know, they have her.
I don't know. I mean, like it's messed up to
think about someone just wanting to do that, but that's
definitely possible for people to just be that cruel.
Yeah, maybe Maria didn't like the maybe she was opposed to the
idea for some reason, like she just thought killing maybe, like
she liked assassination. She's fine with that.
But she's like, well, Doran is not going to assassinate a baby,
you know, that's We're not going to be known for that.
That's too far even for war crimes, you know, to the
situation. She might also just be against
the idea of using a Fazelman for assassinations.
We'll do it ourselves. Yeah, that's possible.
Another although you know, another potential.
You know, Maybe it hadn't been considered yet by her or anyone,
but the worse it got, the less of a cost it is for Dorne to
employ the Faceless Men. So that might be one reason they
didn't do it sooner, because they're finally at the point
where, well, it doesn't matter anyway now.
They're relative. Giving up to 2/3 of everything
you own has become a very small amount.
If you have $3,000,000 and you have to give up to million, I
don't know about that, but if you have $30, you have to give
up 20, all right. 20 bucks to assassinate a Prince?
Yes, that's a great deal. Act now before while supplies
last yeah and but but think about how Aegon handles threats.
He's like, he downplays them. He's like, I'm I'm not worried
about that. Like Visenya had to cut his face
to get him to agree to make the Kingsguard.
Like after multiple times they've been attacked in the
streets and Lords been sat, he's still like, Nah, we're fine we
can tough it out. I don't want to be weak about
it, like let them come, you know, so, So to for him to grip
the throne or the message to make his hand bleed a threat
doesn't really add up for me. And I think just in.
General even the threat of the Faceless Man, which he might
take more serious than other threats, it still seems a little
much the one, the way he reacted and two, well, I guess maybe
there would still be a reason for him to fly to Dragonstone if
it was a Faceless Man threat. Like like if Amy's was still a
Dragonstone, he would go checker and the letters like, 'cause I
go crap, let me go make sure Amy's is safe, you know?
But he didn't say he brought him back with him either, right?
That wasn't. He didn't.
Yeah. I think he was probably just
there at court anyway. But yeah it's that does make
sense as an option. I certainly wouldn't be so sure
that I would say now that theory couldn't possibly be it.
But so the so the the suggestion that was made when she crashed
when were actually was shot down is that she was still alive,
that they kept her alive to torture her or to use her as
leverage. Now the weird thing would be,
well, why did they wait so long to use this as leverage?
But it's still, that's not like a deal breaker, not a theory
breaker idea. It's like, well, there's plenty
of reasons why they didn't want him to know or.
They might have wanted to break her for information, too.
They. Were trying to get something out
of her. Yeah.
They were trying to might have taken a.
While she's strong and they she didn't break for a long time.
And that is a fairly good explanation, I think that at
least could address this possible flaw in the idea.
And it could also just be the change in leadership like Maria
didn't want to do. Use this tactic at all.
She didn't want to use the rainy says alive tactic or whatever,
and Nymar was willing to for whatever differences of opinion
they might have had behind the scenes.
I don't know what it is, but I really like the idea of their
being like something on Dragonstone that Rainey's told
them about. You know?
Like, I mean my my weird little head cannon is because I I don't
know, I guess because of daemon having stuff to do with like
hatching Dragons. I just like the idea of there
being like dragon hatchery and like a store of dragon eggs or
something. And Rainey's told them where the
dragon eggs are and he goes and he's like OK, like I I need to
stop this for that reason. I don't know.
Yeah, it's possible. Sean, what do you think about
the how do you do you think it's plausible that they could have
kept it a secret that she was alive, that is that a flaw or
maybe flaw? I quote this all the time.
Benjamin Franklin said that three people can keep a secret
if two of them are dead. I mean, I guess it's plausible,
but I think it's highly unlikely because one, any random witness
to the dragon falling from the sky, any of the soldiers, anyone
that was present for that is likely to have also seen that
she was still alive or taken hostage or something.
I think that would have been a crowd gathering moment when the
dragon gets shot down and the likelihood of there being dozens
of witnesses to see that she was, she survived that somehow.
I was like, maybe not. Maybe only three people saw it
and none of them saw whether she lived.
Still someone had to go out there and get her body, bring it
in. Was it Lord Uller himself or
just don't bring to Lord Uller in secret and. 4 Lord Uller's 4
Lord Uller's were assassinated, which implies that there were
people that were maybe willing to talk around him.
Like if they're willing to kill him, then yeah, they could spill
the beans about Rainey's now one argument against what you're
saying. It's not a full argument against
her. It's like it's a counterpoint.
Semi counterpoint. Is that the hell Holt's pretty
isolated. It's in the middle of the
desert, so it's a little easier to control information in a
place. Like, and the Dornish population
is scattered about hiding from dragon flames.
Or, you know, again, I do think that there is some convoluted
way. It's possible, but but but it
does Marian know. Maybe that's why Mary didn't do
anything, 'cause she didn't know, 'cause if that would be
another person who has to know if they send a messenger, and a
messenger has to tell someone and Mary has to not tell Mary
and that messenger have to not tell anyone else.
Yeah. There's two things there.
One, yeah, some of that time could have just spent, like
she's imprisoned by the Ulers. Mario doesn't know for one year
of that. And then she finds out and then
there's a transfer that takes some time.
And then she then and then Rainy has held somewhere else for the
rest of that time. 12 The ullers could have never had control of
her and they immediately handed her over, which explains how 4
ullers could die. And Rainy and.
Secret be. Held be held is that they never
actually kept her. That whole time she was in a
dungeon he was held captive. Any other place like doesn't
have to be the hell hold. So I agree Sean, there's a
there's this a little bit of trouble in it, keeping it a
secret. Now they may have wanted to keep
it a secret because they would have been maybe afraid that
allowing Aegon to know that he was she was alive might have.
They might have been worried that he would go even harder
like he would burn Sunspear. He would actually use Valerian
to destroy castles like he had Harrenhal, instead of just
messing them up really badly, you know, like he could go
harder than he had. And they were like they maybe
have been wary of that. I think that's what he would
have done. Yeah, I think it's entirely
possible. And if we bring that forward to
now, to end the moment to at court, that explains potentially
why they didn't just lead with this.
Because they were worried that his reaction would be to kill
them, to just throw them in jail, to murder them in in
madness like in in despair or in in suffering.
You know, he's like, you did this to my my beloved, off with
their heads, or I'm going to do the same to you.
So yeah, that explains a lot of their hesitation, why they
didn't just give him the letter, why they maybe why Miria didn't
want to enact this plan at all, you know, because she predicted
that, Nah, he's just going to go harder.
He's going to just kill the envoys.
Like, what's the point? I'm not sending someone there to
die for a message that will be received like that.
Maybe she was, it turns out maybe that she was wrong.
Maybe. And sending the the heir
apparent to die also, right? Like, not just a messenger, but
like this key important person. So I think it's a pretty huge
point. Yeah, go ahead.
This is what I think. I think that Rainey's if she
survived, she didn't survive very long.
They may have captured her and or tortured her, but I don't
think they held her for years or transferred her to sunscreen
anything like that. But I think they might have
gotten information from her that only she could know, right?
Or pretty much only she could know that.
And that that information might have been slow moving.
It might have been kept under wraps or been hard to transfer
to Maria. Maria may have never found out,
but eventually someone does find out.
Nine more finds out and he realizes that this could be a
threat that they can make an imminent threat right Like not
will get you or will torture rainies.
The threat could be that based on information they got from
her, they found a secret passage into Dragonstone and put a
scorpion into annies bed or a secret patches into where the
Dragons eggs are kept and they know it's just some
demonstration that we can get you.
It's not the idea this information, it's not the
specific idea, right? We have someone there right now.
Right now someone is in Dragonstone with a poison dagger
and you might go catch him. He might not kill Amy's right
now 'cause he happened to be at court.
But we can do it again, and we know because Rainey's told us
how to get through this passage. Does that does this still cause
an extreme reaction? Is this this is still a threat
though that I don't think he would respond to a threat with
an with emotional being overcome?
I think that it's because what he'll go through in his head is
it? Only I can stop this, and I have
to right now. No one else can.
I can't sail a ship to. Dragons.
But would he react that strongly before confirming the threat is
real just at the letter? Like such?
Like this is a stoic man. This is a stoic man.
The only way to confirm it is to go there and see if the poison
dagger is in the crib or if this whatever you see what I'm saying
like. He's got to go.
You go to see that we left this item there to prove.
Well, how's that different than the Faceless Man threat, though?
Like the Faceless Men are going to be able to.
One term thing that might happen eventually.
But the Faceless Men are so certain.
Plan for or, defend against or. There's no defending.
Well is is there though? There's really no defense
against the Faceless Men. I I don't.
I I've I'm partly with you on this one.
I like the idea of a concealed like a a thing that's proves
they can get this level of access.
But I think that's already there.
I think that's already there with the face, and I think that
Aegon just doesn't respond to that, so.
We take it back to the prophecy angle on it, the idea that they
also kept ratings for a while, whatever got information from
her, but the information intersected with something to do
with prophecy and to do with how Doran would be brought into the
realm. So we talked about a bit before
the idea that like if there was something that was like you and
your vision, you saw Doran as being brought in the realm.
But actually ratings has had some dream.
She also dreams and she saw that Doran won't be in the realm for
100 years. What you know?
Yeah. Or or maybe they saw that it had
to do with a red comet and Agons like, oh, there's some comment
in the writings, the carvings on the wall at Dragonstone.
And then there's like a calendar.
And he's like, oh, it's not going to be for 200 years.
Well, there were, to be fair, there were lots of other
comments before that one that wasn't the first one.
Yeah. Like there was one in Rhaegar's
time, too. Yeah.
But anyway, although still way, way, way later, long enough.
Well, there would have been others, I think too.
I'm just saying that wasn't the only one.
The idea though being that there was some sort of prophecy
related information that would make Aegon realize he doesn't
need to press this right now, right here, and that there was
something to corroborate that and what he was, yeah.
Yeah, that's possible. I like.
That, but I still don't know if that gives the same clincher
fist to bleeding. That's why I think it all has to
come back to Rainey's being alive.
I think it's the only thing that works.
It's the only thing that would cause that kind of emotional
and. So OK, here's my thought.
Is that what would Rainey's? What would they have had to say
for if Rainey's is alive at the point of that letter?
I can't. I don't know what secret words.
What if it's her handwriting? Yeah, well, I guess what does
she have to say in that letter to convince that?
She's alive. Kill the.
Invoice right now. Well, that wouldn't save her
though. Like they he he has no way to
save her, that that's clear. Like if he's been, if he's
unaware she's even alive for this couple of years and he's
down in some dungeon and what way he has no means of saving
her. It's just not possible.
So then why? They would if you can't save her
anyway. Because they're offering to put
her out of her misery in exchange.
That's the deal they're saying we're stop torturing her.
We'll put her out of her misery. We won't let her live in pain
again. And if you end the war, that's
the deal. And I know it's just really hard
to find another another explanation that settles that
Settles checks off all the boxes.
That's better, I think, than pretty much all the others.
But I still have this big problem with I don't.
I don't think that's. I don't.
I think he would change his mind.
He's like, wait, what? Seize Daria, chop her hand to
chop everyone's hand off. Put her in jail.
Sin and Own voided Dorrance. Why would you be so sure?
Like, what evidence does? Do you have that egg on?
Would ever behave that way? He's never done anything like.
Well my is my question is like put her out of her misery is
it's put her out of her misery now Better than some slim but
unlikely chance that you actually managed to rescue I I
don't. Know.
No. Not if she's like, broken and
and horribly disfigured and just suffering anyway.
And there's there's she's going to suffer no matter what.
I know, but I just it's it can be hard to communicate the
severity of that to Aegon in a letter.
If she wrote the letter, that's why I'm saying, that's why.
I'm saying if she wrote it, it's her handwriting, then he would
believe whatever is written. And if it's guys, look, I'm in
mad, I'm suffering, I'm in horrible pain.
Please end this. I know.
And I'm also saying that it's also perfectly reasonable and
within the line of believability for someone to hear your partner
say that, know that your partner said that and still be like
she's being too noble. Like, I actually do think I can
save her. Like it's yeah, that's not how
it played out. But I'm just saying like, it is
impossible that he would see all of that, believe that it's her,
and still be like, no, I'm going to save her.
Which is why they. Which explains why they didn't
just go for this option right away.
Which explains why Maria wasn't for this idea.
Because you can. She could see it not working,
yeah. Also, Mary might not have known
this is an option. Now we want to keep that in mind
too. She might not have known that
Raining is even still alive, but some loose ends to this is it?
How can he be certain that they will comply A and if they don't?
Comply. He can just go right flat, jump
back on Valerian and attack them again.
There's nothing stopping him from doing.
That how does he know that they put her out of misery or not?
Yeah, he does that. He does.
Their invoice come later, say, hey, we did it.
Did they deliver the body 'cause we never get the body.
Back yeah. No.
And he goes on with the rest of his reign.
Like, maybe secretly it was delivered later.
We never found that out. You see what I'm saying, though?
That is like, I think that's a hole in this.
Sure it's true. I think it's better than the
others. Maybe the face name might be
better, but. I don't think that.
Things here, Fox and Grambles says.
Maybe the letter was in Valyrian, which is nice angle to
it as well. Like with plenty of people can
write Valyrian, but I like that too, Leah Rubenfeld says.
Perhaps she was alive for longer than he thought, which is what
we were talking about, but was dead by the time of the letter.
Basically, I'm not sure that would stop him.
I don't know how that would move him if he was dead, unless he
didn't know that if she if they lied.
Final wishes or something? And he respected her actual
final wishes, or something like that.
The other reason I really think it's the best idea is that it
gets into one of the central themes of A Song of Ice and
Fire, which none of the other theories do even remotely, which
is love versus duty. His duty is to this prophecy.
His duty is to fulfill the prophecy.
But he loves Raines more than that.
And he is not the one quote, UN quote one in 10,000 that Maester
Raymond said to John, You're like my father would always do.
It's honorable. Well then your father was one
man in 10,000. Most people will do will choose
love over duty. Most people will do this and
that and so Aegon is just like he's not the one in 10,000,
which is very George RR Martin, right?
He says yes, he chooses love over duty and doesn't tell
anyone. Then they don't know.
So there's no, there's no way for them to know that that he
did that made that choice because he hasn't even revealed
the prophecy to people. So they he why he couldn't
possibly reveal that thing. If he hasn't revealed the
prophecy, he can't reveal his logic behind fulfilling it or
not. I just thought of yet another
problem. What's that?
Say He's like OK fine, I'll stop the war as long as you stop
torturing her and and maybe they'd sent some evidence.
Also you got to consider why they would keep want all this to
be secret not a public announcement and and I can see
why that might be but and then so maybe that explains why later
secretly they deliver the remain somehow.
But my problem is after that, then he'd be like, all right,
let's go back to war. Send the dragon.
Why would he do that? Why would he do that, Sean?
He's honorable. At every turn.
He's proven. He keeps his word.
This is not his personality. This doesn't fit his his meth,
his modus operandi. Like, he's not that kind of guy.
He's not like, I will make a deal so that I can break it
later. He doesn't do that.
Like there's no, there's just nothing.
There's no precedent for that in his behavior.
OK, so but what? Yes, it does beg a question.
Was it a threat? Was it like, if you we'll put
her out of her misery if you agree, if you don't, we'll keep
torturing her. So it's not just a yes, it's
over or no it's not. It's a She's going to continue
to suffer horribly if you don't. So I think a threat is part of
it. It's not just we have her, it's
we're going to keep harming her. She's going to suffer for a long
more time. And yeah, you're right to show
the. Confident that that you could
never find her to stop it yourself, I guess.
Well, I mean look at what happened when they tried to send
an army like Valerian alone wouldn't do it.
Like you can't like you got to get down there in the dungeon
and this this takes this is a commando array to.
Say that it speaks a lot to Aegon's personality and to what
could be said there, because like a lot of people in that
situation would be headstrong about that and think that they
could stop it themselves. Whether it was wise or accurate,
they would still be determined to try some.
People, which might be why he went and thought about it for a
while. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And didn't react because he they have wanted to do that.
And you know he did have the extreme reaction.
But he's like, look, this is This is why he needs to go think
because Egg on the Conqueror doesn't get all emotional at
court. He's Egg on the Conqueror, he's
stoic and he's like in a not stoic moment there.
He needs to go behind closed doors and be emotional where
people can't see it. And you know another piece of
this too, 'cause I think you even bring up the idea later of
like, does he tell Lisania even? Lisania.
Yeah, I don't know. He might realize he can't 'cause
she will just fly her dragon down there and burn Castle,
right? Like, so she Yeah, that's part
of what he has to process is that he has to figure this out
on his own. He can't tell anyone.
It could be a real Ned Catlin thing where Ned never told
Catelyn the truth about he promised not to tell.
I mean, this isn't this. He didn't necessarily promise.
Egon didn't necessarily make a promise, and you don't have to
agree with Ned keeping that promise, but that does seem to
be the reason he didn't tell Catelyn is he made a promise and
whatever was thinks it's a risk to John or whatever.
In any case, it's a similar sort of thing.
Letter from Rainies written by Rainies and like in Valerian
even or whatever if she wrote it to him.
If she wrote it. Don't tell Visen.
Yeah, you know, she could have outright said those words.
She could have also been like, look, I, you know, don't do
anything that's going to get my son killed.
Like get, you know, it's fine. Yeah, There's a lot of things
she could have written that would have, that would have
convinced him or been like, this is my dying wish or I don't
know. Yeah, I like the idea of it just
being Rainy's expressing her like final wishes, because I do
think it parallels things in the main series of A Song of Ice and
Fire. Well, it's idiotic, as I think
people caring about dying wishes truly are when there's lots of
alive people to think. I think it worked out for the
best in this case and in the worst in some.
In Ned's case, perhaps, yeah. So when we talk about who's
being on Dragonstone, I I still think a nice was very likely at
King's Landing. But Megor might not have been
Megor. Baby Megor might have been on
Dragonstone. Probably not though he probably
was with his mother who was also probably at the Red Keep.
Anyway, I don't know that we have any more to add to the
letter. I think that's the the we've
talked about a lot of different theories a lot of the issues
with the theories and I think we mostly seem we seem to agree
that the some formulation of the Rainey's was alive thing is the
best idea. Not we don't necessarily agree
on all the particulars of of the of what would make that work.
But that seems to be we seem to agree that that's the best
theory categorically or any way. I'm going to throw out one other
part. This is new for me to be
considering this. This might be too Tim Foily, but
I wonder if there's a possibility that the deal was to
let her live. She's has just has a new
identity in Dorne, you know. She just.
I don't know if seems. Impossible.
She looks like a Targaryen. Like there's just she's just too
she's silver haired, purple eyed, it says.
I don't think that works too. Too few people look like that.
She's very distinct. Everybody knows what she looks
like Anyway, let's see. So yeah, but Zenya may not have
known, but Zenya may never have been told.
Was in the letter. Now, some people in Dorne knew
maybe only Nymore himself. At least Nymore knew, though
there's at least one other person who knew it was in the
letter, but probably more like Daria may not have known it was.
He may he may have sealed the letter and been like, give this
letter to the king, No one else is going to read it.
Maybe his maester knew. Maybe his maester wrote the
thing down. He dictated it.
But maybe he just personally wrote it himself, Who knows?
This is another problem with us not having the Dornish point of
view. This is fire and blood, not a
book called Unbowed, unbent and broken.
If it was, well, we would know a lot more about this, I think.
And yeah, there might be some people that pass down this
information just like, you know, the Targaryens pass down the
prophecy. You know, kind of secretly maybe
the the Dornish kept some of this song.
It wouldn't be as important. This isn't some important state
secret to keep later. Like, yeah, we had Rainey's back
in the day. It was it really that was true.
Like, what would that matter now, you know.
Yeah, especially the Targaryen. For a generation or two wouldn't
matter for 50 years. That's true, but not not when
the Targaryens have fallen many years later.
Yeah, there's also some machara Dane vibes here.
I mentioned Ned and Catelyn, but just to fulfill that a little
more, you have an important character whose death is fairly
certain. If the circumstances are very
mysterious, and you have a powerful man who loved that
person that won't talk about it. That keeps it all to themselves.
And yet, there are some people in Doran that probably have
answers, just like there's nine more.
And maybe some other people know what's in that letter.
There's a few people in Dorne that know about the Tower of
Joy, or at least have some additional information, whether
it's Willa or other members of House Dane.
There's a few people that know how.
And Reed. Yeah.
And in both cases, there's a child involved and death by
falling or maybe death by falling.
In both cases, we don't know if they died by falling or.
Yeah. Anyway, Yes.
And they both have purple eyes. There you go.
All right, I want to say there's
might be a little Lord of the Rings play here.
The IT may be so, but no man will truly ever know talking
about what's in the letter. Oh yeah, yeah.
No, man, But maybe some woman will know.
Maybe some woman, Yeah. In fact, yeah.
So Nina says we should not expect to ever get an answer for
this. And I agree.
It's not. It's not part of A Song of Ice
and Fire. So I I kind of doubt we'll ever
get a true answer. But that's fine.
We shouldn't have all the answers.
Sweet. You know, it's fun to have
things that we just get to debate and talk about.
Well, I guess if they did be right, if they did like the
season or about. Egg on the Conqueror.
Yeah. On TV, whether the argument
would be how accurate if they just came up with their own
solution, it would come down to whether George told the creator,
Yeah, that'll be a whole other topic.
They could have just come up just it plays out like that and
we never still we don't know in the letter.
Yeah, yeah, they could show it and keep it a mystery.
On screen, there's a lot of options.
But they wouldn't be able to keep rainies as being alive or
not a mystery. I don't.
Think no, I guess you're it. Would be too hard to like on TV.
That would be very unsatisfying to just like, keep us in the
dark about whether she was alive.
Or not, yeah. Yeah, and also I don't really
know where I think of the big on the Conqueror arc ending like TV
wise like. Yeah, maybe around this part.
Like if it's just peace from here on for next. 20 years
later, so yeah. Anyways, I I think if this is
revisited it'll be on screen and not in the text.
Yes, and in this context we can accept it as an interesting,
mysterious footnote. But if they made a show about
it, it would be like an unanswered, climactic moment.
You know, I think you're right. Or sure, they can't leave this
unaddressed in the show. I've been looking into some of
the ingredients in Magic Mine, because when you hear that
something's going to improve your brain functions, you know
you want to get some evidence for that.
It's a pretty big claim, and I'm going to highlight Bacopa
Monieri. It's a plant that grows pretty
much on every continent, not Antarctica.
I don't know if you really need to clarify that these days.
I think you should say yeah, even Antarctica when that
matters, but otherwise, no. And it has a background in
Ayurvedic traditional medicine with the claim that improves
memory and other assorted brain functions.
Which again, is a pretty big claim, and traditional medicine
isn't always accurate. But here's where it gets
interesting. Yeah, there's been, you know, so
many people in Indian Asia use it.
There's a big sample size and they've done some research and
there's something to it. It does seem to have some actual
effects and it's the type of thing.
Also, it might be hard to measure because apparently it
takes about two weeks for it to like, I don't know, kick in a
gear in your system. Yeah, and they are.
These are systematic reviews on Bacopa, Lani area that we're
talking about, which is the highest level of research.
If you're looking at something from a research perspective, you
have like a pyramid and the top of the pyramid is systematic
reviews. That's the highest level of
trust. So we're not talking about just
anecdotal evidence and traditional medicine.
We're talking about top of the line, science y'all.
So and you know, I mentioned kind of anecdotal, you know that
this is much less scientific, but I probably could make it
scientific. I'm drinking less sodas.
I've only noticed it because I just realized I'm just putting
less cans into the recycling. But I can maybe get more
scientific and figure out how many I was drinking before and
how many are drinking now. But I I will say I feel like I
have more, more focus in the gym, get less tired in the gym
and I am drinking less soda. So those are two pretty big
positives. Yeah, I've found it to be really
effective in my daily life. I really enjoy drinking it every
day. You can go to
magicmind.com/westeros and get up to 56% off your subscription
for the next 10 days with our code Westeros 20.
That's Westeros 20. OK, so let's talk about our
topics moot. That's underway on our Patreon
right now. We've had three polls so far.
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The next one was unfinished history of Westeros, where we
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were Nymeria's Landing, The Blood of Giants, The Wit and
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And this, this Friday, this past Friday, that would be Friday the
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Storm's End. So your fellow W Orians have
been voting on these topics all week.
You can join in the fun by signing up at
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You also get the audio only ad free versions of these episodes
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We released these to the public Sunday nights, but you get these
on Patreon just a few days earlier on average, so that's
relevant. Yeah, if I can sway the vote.
I'm rooting for the wisdom of Dolores.
Ed, I want to win. So right.
On No Nymeria wins. It's looking like Nymeria's to
win that one, but it's it could happen, you know, you never
know. Things change.
So another poll that we have coming next week to entice you
all further is a poll on influences on George R Martin
that includes topics. A large poll that has a lot of
choices includes such choices as HP Lovecraft, Jr.
Tolkien, Robert E Howard, Several others.
It's like 8 or ten choice. K Penman.
Chair and K Penman. Yeah, there's a lot.
I didn't actually put the list in front of me like these other
ones, but there's a lot of choices.
I didn't want to list them all anyway, but leaving a few
unknown is fun. So yeah, that'll be popping up
this week. Authors, by the way.
Yeah, these are all just authorial influences.
There's another influences poll that will be like historical
influences and stuff like that. So yeah, so this is just a.
Nom or. And each of these polls lasts
the week with past ones. So you could Join Now.
If you're listening to this, you can still join us.
And if you're listening to this, a year later, six months later,
if it's January, February, we're probably doing the topics again.
So this is an Evergreen plug. Yes, absolutely.
And yeah, we're we're going to do a variety of styles of polls,
different choices. We're going to do some brackets.
This current week we're going to have three polls where the top
the two two topics are going to win on Monday and Wednesday each
and then they're all going to or three rather three are going to
win Monday and Wednesday and then they're going to all meet
at the end. And for one bigger poll, yeah,
so we're we got all sorts of fun formats and and different twists
and fun ways to do polling and then we'll make episodes out of
these things. So yeah, that'll be good too.
We also had a little fun just looking at randomly.
This is super random. We're playing with acronyms.
So you all can decide which of these acronyms for Dragon is the
best. Let's let's read these out for
you. Deadly reptile, always guarding
our nobility. That's my favorite.
Or dangerous reptile always growing on nourishment.
Yes, that fits, cause Dragons keep growing as long as they
eat. I like devastatingly rare animal
gathering others nearby. Some people who are maybe the
Dornish would agree with this one.
They when they if they said deadly ruler, awful, great,
oppressive, nagging. Yeah, maybe not the great, but
all those other ones. Too much great, no oppressive
and nagging. The great doesn't really fit
with all the others. You.
Said. God awful.
There we go.
Awful and God, awful, awful God awful.
Deadly ruler, awful God awful. Oppressive, Nagging that would
be like deadly ruler. Awful.
God awful, oppressive. Not oppressive.
Yeah, and Dorn, if it was Dragons, plural, the S would be
shunned. That's.
Right, I love it if y'all would comment with your favorite
acronym for a dragon. A dragon.
So let's also take note that the delegation that that arrived in
King's Landing for the peace process brought back Meraxis's
skull, which means that it wasn't a small delegation.
It would have had a large cart with that.
Or if it was by ship, that might make even more sense.
We first see Meraxis's skull in Tyrion's memories in I think his
first chapter in A Song of Ice and Fire.
Maybe it's his second when he thinks of being down there in
its presence. And it's obviously smaller than
Valerians and and Miraxis is alone is enough to inspire awe
in him. Must have been quite a sight
though, seeing a delegation carting that thing up.
So when when Nina pointed out earlier that Lord Orius may have
discovered or found out that a delegation was coming this is
part of why they might have. He might have found out it's
very well, it's quite a spectacle with a skull and all
that. Yeah.
And compare John Aaron going to Sunspear early in Robert's reign
to with the bones of Luan Martel, Prince Luan Martel to
put things at ease cause the Red Viper was stirring some things
up with the Saris and maybe you know continuing the war.
So this was a way to tamp things back down.
And yeah I remember I mentioned that the eternal peace with
signed by Aegon was not particularly held up by either
side. We pointed out many of Aegon's
descendants would just pick a fight with Dorne, but Mauryon
Martel would as well pick a fight with 17.
Not really. Much of once it's Jahari's found
out about it and the ships were all burned.
So you know, that's why we call him Moron Martel.
But yeah, moving on to the legacy of Miria, we've got the
legacy of Miria and the legacy of Rainey's.
For the rest of this episode, let's have a quote Start it off.
The yellow toad of Doran had done what hair in the black, the
2 kings and Torren Stark could not.
She had defeated Aegon Targaryen and his Dragons, yet north of
the Red Mountains, her tactics earned her only scorn.
Dornish Courage became a mocking name for cowardice amongst the
Lords and Knights of Aegon's kingdoms.
The toad hops into her hole when threatened, wrote one scribe.
Another said Miria fought like a woman, with lies and treachery
and witchery. The Dornish victory, if victory
it was, was seen to be dishonorable, and the survivors
of the fight, and the sons and brothers of those who had
fallen, promised one another that another day would come, and
with it A reckoning. Their vengeance would need to
wait for a future generation and the accession of a younger, more
bloodthirsty king. So this is a good example of
copium, copious amounts of copium.
Another way to put it is excuses.
Excuses. They lost and they're salty
about it, so they denigrate the winners.
And yes, it was a victory, this victory in quotes.
And if a victory it was, the objective was to prevent the
Targaryen from conquering their country.
And they did it. Clear bias by the author Maester
here. They absolutely the darnish one.
That was totally a darnish victory.
It doesn't mean you benefited, it doesn't mean you like did
great, but it means you defeated the opponent, which they
absolutely did. They wouldn't have won it.
They didn't win. To repeat the example about
Vietnam, which we've brought up several times in throughout the
course of this, the US was also very salty about You find people
that today will say, no, we didn't lose in Vietnam.
No, we just it was it just ended.
You know, it's like, no, you didn't really accomplish your
objectives, so you you. Might be able to argue it was a
stalemate, but you could not argue that you won.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. So, not to simplify the
comparisons though, because the US wasn't trying to conquer
Vietnam either. It wasn't.
There's a lot of things that aren't very similar here, like,
you know, technology and circumstances.
But still, it it's a similar situation that a lot of people
could identify with because, well, most of our listeners are
from America and probably know people that have said similar
things about the Vietnam War. If we go back to ancient times
in in the real world, it's more like a Pyrrhic victory where,
you know, Puris was the aggressor in this case too.
So unlike the Dornish, but it's the same kind of thing.
Puris won victories but lost so many soldiers that it was like
well if I went have another victory or two like this I'll
I'm out of AI don't have anything you know it has
accidental word play too cause Puris literally means related to
or pertaining to fire his name and of course there's a lot of
that here and the fire is part of why it was such a devastating
victory. So Dornish courage is impressive
despite what this passage says. These these voices, these takes
about victory. It was these are from people who
bent the knee after losing to Aegon.
They're salty as well, because they lost and the Dornish
didn't. To admit Dornish courage is to
admit their own loss, You know, maybe not cowardice, but their
own, you know, failure. And the bloodthirsty king
mentioned in the final line of that quote is, of course, Daron
the First whose war ended not unlike this one did in failure,
with countless dead on both sides after thinking they had
won. They were like, oops, no, you
didn't. A lot less damage done to
Dornish lands under Daron. The first, though, of course,
because of the lack of Dragons. But yeah, it says they would
have to wait for a future generation.
They weren't waiting. They were long dead.
I mean, this is 144 years later that that happened.
So yeah, this is, I don't know if they have.
I don't know how much of A grudge they still held.
It's like, yeah, my grand, great, great, great, great,
great, great grandfather was killed indoor.
And I'm going to get you all for that.
It's like, what was his name again?
Oh, I don't, I don't know, Daron Pate.
I don't know. But you can say this is part of
Miria's legacy. She LED Dorn so stubbornly and
well, perhaps you could say effectively that no one tried
again as long as they had Dragons.
At least not affected. Like with any sort of real
effort, you know nothing that really rises to the level of
true conquest. Attempt and then post.
Intention. Is that the word you look?
Yeah, yeah. And then post Daron that the
attempts were really pathetic. You got Aegon the 4th, who just
wooden Dragons that caught fire and set the set the Kingswood on
fire. Like, that is just some weak
sauce right there. Like, talk about a failure.
Like if Aegon can't do it, you're going to do it with that
plan. I mean, please.
So yeah, you got lots of just failures and and but but most
people didn't even make the attempt.
They're like Aegon the Conqueror couldn't do it.
And Rainey's died down there. Yeah, I don't want any of that.
I'm not even going there. Let's not even try.
And all those Brad things got their hands chopped off, yeah.
Like, the Tyrell Army just disappeared.
There's a lot of deterrent, yeah.
Yeah. So it took a very special person
and special circumstances for them to fire that all up again.
And they still had the same result, basically.
Like, yeah. Special in quotes, by the way,
because I don't know that should have too much positive
connotation. Yeah.
So we. And we can't know what would
have happened down there. A lot of other things.
There's plenty of differences between the two scenarios.
But they, they did have similar endings.
And again, we don't have the darnest side of things.
How do they remember Princess Maria?
Did they look at her as the yellow toad, or do they think of
that as like a positive thing? Because it's the.
They called her that, but we'll own that nickname.
Yeah, she was the yellow toad, but that's a good thing.
They let him. You know what?
We'll own that nickname. Like Tyrion owns the insults
leveled on him. Like, yeah, just wear it like
armor, you know? Yeah.
She was the yellow toad. Fine.
You all lost to the yellow toad. What does that say about you?
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, right. So I like that.
I call it the Yellow Dragon Killer.
Yeah, the yellow of. Course we lost it.
The dragon killer. What we're gonna.
Do yellow toe defeats the meraxes?
I mean, yeah, right. So I I suspect they probably
think well of her, maybe not hero status but maybe a leader
who embodied unbowed, unbent and broken, you know, in a in ways
that few others could. I mean they'd really, truly
didn't give up. I mean that's that's living up
to those words you might connect that those two dots.
Like her leadership is the reason the Targaryen stayed out
for so long. And that's if they recognize
that, then yeah, she's got to be remembered.
Well, like, this is the person that fought the Dragons and won
and kept them out, and this is the reason we're we were
independent and free for so long.
This is the reason why we got to marry in later, because they
kept trying and kept failing and Mary is the one who really
showed us we could hold out and we did it again later and blah
blah blah, yeah. I got to say, though, if you're
born into Dorn and this is your legacy and your hero, sure, I
guess that's what you have to be proud of.
But if I was choosing, I don't want to serve under the unbowed,
unbroken. Let All your people die banner.
Like let me be in the Growing Stronger or the Preparing for
Winter Troops City. We're not trying to burn
ourselves to death just to be independent.
More stuff to me at least. Yeah, and Speaking of like
Nymore and later, Diria would have a huge burden to bear to
help rebuild their country, right?
And it was very devastating. And the other Lords adorned as
well wouldn't just be on them, but they would be, you know, the
tip of the spear, the leaders of that.
But each individual Lord and each of individual peasant would
have to rebuild as best as they could and a lot of that would
just take multiple generations, you know.
So I mean we jumping forward in time there, there's not a lot of
us to talk about with regards to Dorne in the short term, but
there will be here and there Dorne pop it up for different
reasons and that's something we'll have to continue or
continue to consider is signs of how Dorne is recovering.
Anytime we get Dorne ish events in the next generation or two,
we'll have to wrap that up into the knowledge that this is still
a country in recovery. Because I doubt even 2
generations would be enough for a full recovery that takes that
long for some of the trees to grow back.
You know, let alone the buildings which don't grow back.
They have to which. Require trees first.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
And there's not a lot of trees down there in the 1st place
anyway. That's that's important.
Mary's legacy benefited in a way from her dying.
When she did. She didn't have to be part of
the recovery. She was.
She died at a point that was pretty poetic, right?
Right at the end of the war. It's like her death is
inextricably and forever tied to the end of the war.
And so she never gave up and the war ended as soon as she gave
out, basically. And that's that's very symbolic
too. That's that makes for a good
story. I think a lot of songs, you know
when The Yellow Toad finally gave out the War end, you know,
it's just something cool. I'm not going to write the
lyrics right now, but I think you see you can see there's a
lot to work with there in terms of good songwriting material.
Aziz, I want you not only to write the lyrics right now, but
do it all with Dragon acronyms. Yes, right.
All the lyrics to Dragon acronyms.
Well, we need it to be. There's no, there's no yell.
There's a Why we can't do Yellow Toad and the Dragon.
There's no Maria, You can't. None of those fit in the
acronym. Dang it.
Yeah. I didn't say it.
Dragon. You didn't say it would be easy,
so certainly there's Dragon. Dragon.
Me and Dragons to get an S and AY.
Dragon yeet YT. So the style of warfare worked.
You're not going to argue, Doran into like, oh, you cowardice
style of warfare. You guys should stop doing it
that way because it's cowardly. Like yo, this worked.
We're not stopping that. We're not going to.
This is the only way you can beat Dragons.
We're definitely not giving this up.
Even when the Dragons are gone, we're going to keep doing this.
Yeah. So I doubt they were too
concerned about the negative opinions coming from north of
the Red Mountains. They're like, yeah, keep barking
losers, you know, keep whining. Hurts, doesn't it?
Well, we're hurting too, so we don't care.
All right. The legacy of Rainey's, let's
talk about that. And including the effects of her
absence. So this is a big deal.
Like Mary's absence was the beginning of the peace process.
I suppose you could say let Rainey's absence, well, it it,
it was the beginning of things getting worse for a while
because they wanted revenge. They felt so bad that you know
of her death. So despite the devastation she
and her brother and sister rot on Dorn, Her death was was still
a tragedy for the Seven Kingdoms from a human rights perspective,
which is kind of odd to say. It's like, well, not from the
Dornish perspective. Well, yeah, not from the Dornish
perspective, not arguing that they would spit at this take.
But compared to her brother and sister, it wasn't close.
She was by far the most concerned with making the Seven
Kingdoms a more peaceful and just place.
She had the most to do with creating more equity, the most
to do with lifting peasants out of their miserable lives that
have been given to them by the setting of this place in this
world. She had the most to do with just
making her family popular and liked and and propaganda.
Whether you call it propaganda or just being a decent person,
we'll both, yeah. Promoting art rather than.
Violence. Yeah.
Like, yeah, exactly. In fact, let's.
That's a good lead into this quote.
Queen Rainice was a great patron to the bards and singers of the
Seven Kingdoms, showering gold and gifts on those who pleased
her. Though Queen Vicenia thought her
sister frivolous, there was a wisdom in this that went beyond
a simple love of music for the singers of the realm in their
eagerness to win the favor of the Queen, composed many a song
in praise of House Targaryen and King Aegon, and then went forth
and sang those songs in every keep and castle and village
green from the Dornish marches to the wall.
Thus was the Conquest made glorious to the simple people,
whilst Aegon the Dragon himself became a hero king.
Oh, it only had the impact on the simple people, and I don't
think so. It seems like it had.
The masters and the nobility were pretty biased too,
especially given some of the other things we've gone over,
like the way this text is written, if Victory, it could be
called, you know, stuff like that.
So IA 100% side with Rainey's on this one.
Music is an extremely powerful tool in real life or in
Westeros, and the way it's being portrayed here is extremely
realistic. This sort of thing still happens
today, literally. There are cartels in Mexico that
Commission music like this to make them come off a little
better because you know, you're still trying to put lipstick on
a pig when you're talking about a drug cartel, right?
You know, they're like, yeah, we're we're the good guys.
No, but you can. There are good things the
cartels do that they try to amplify, to make it downplay all
the evil stuff they do, which is there's quite a lot more of
that. But governments are like that
too, in some ways, You know? And you know, if there's a lot
of politicians use songs for their political campaigns and
they use songs that are familiar ones that people already
identify with, like you don't usually hear songs that no ones
ever heard before. You hear classics you hear like,
yeah, can we. Hey famous artist, can we use
your song for our campaign? They're not like.
Sometimes they ask. Yes, sometimes they just do it
and then just yeah, then get told cease and desist.
But they've already done it so. And sometimes they use songs
that aren't really quite what they think they are also right,
like Born in the USA. It was really kind of talking
too bad about Vietnam is really what the point of that song is.
And but but most people got that point of that song wrong, so it
worked Chorus. Just rang the chorus out a few
times and yeah, like, I think. I've even mentioned this one
before. It's not political, but there's
a bank that or maybe life insurance campaign that used
Iggy Pop song Lust for Life, which is totally a heroin song,
like a song about heroin addiction.
And they were like Lust for Lives.
Like I don't know if you know what this.
Means y'all. And you know, I don't know,
commissioning or government influence aside, you know, the
Vietnam War is also like a generation of music was inspired
by that war. Very true.
By by trying to stop that war, yes.
The opposite, which George would know very well.
Having, you know, being a Grateful Dead fan and and being
very much on the hippie side of things rather than on the, you
know, pro war side or whatever the opposite side of that is.
And there's other examples in world, like I said 1000 Eyes of
One was a Blood Raven propaganda song, basically.
And of course the reigns of Castamere, right?
That's like, Tywin leaned into that one heavily.
Like, very heavily. Also worth saying, newer
listeners might not be aware the disease has recorded a cover of
the reins of Cast a Mirror. It is on our SoundCloud as which
I'm putting in the chat right here in the live stream chat.
The link also in our reigns of Castamere episode.
Aziz has also done Jenny's song, which is less propaganda and
less less relevant year, but also well done.
It's history of Westeros propaganda.
I'll put a link to that in the in the chat as well.
Yeah, check that out if you're so inclined.
Well, teaser. The other thing you have to do,
and I should put it on your list of things to do, is Aziz was
going to sing Nymeria's song, the song about Nymeria that was
on House of the House of the Dragon.
Because we were given some extra lyrics from the writer of that
song that are not published in fact and we were waiting to
publish them when as he sings them.
Yeah, we're one of the people who have those lyrics.
I don't know that. I don't think any other YouTube
or I don't. Think they're out like she sent
them to us directly. So we're special.
We have them. Anyways, but yeah, if you want
to hear the rest of Nymeria's song, let's all motivate Aziz to
record. It right on.
Thanks y'all. Yeah, I would some motivation
would help me. That's true.
But it may be before House the Dragon season 2.
And of course, so those songs are out there.
There's lots of them, and in fact, Thousand Eyes and One
rains a cast, and we might have been inspired by some of these
songs from the early Conquest era, which we don't have names
for, but there's of course there will be even older songs like
that, like songs about Florian and John Keel.
Baron. The maiden fair apparently is
super, super old. So yeah, so darn it proven that
Contest of Strength won't always work, especially certain types
of Contest of Strength. If your enemies refuse to meet
you on the ground of your choosing, then who knows, right?
And they'll play their own version of the Game of Thrones
instead. So this is a great example of
music, is a great example of soft power and something that
Hungarians needed to get better at.
Vicenya thinks this is frivolous, which kind of shows
maybe she's got a little blind spot to the value of things like
this. And maybe Aegon wasn't so great
at it either, although I suspect he was more in the middle.
Vicenya was one extreme, and maybe Ranius was the other.
So Aegon, you know, he'd mostly gone with the director out.
I'm stronger than you. I'm more powerful than you.
I'm, I'm, I'm on top. But you know, he seems to
lighten up a little bit and rule with a less heavy hand.
In the longer term, because it doesn't work to rule with a
heavy hand, It's better to have a soft touch with the silk glove
just knowing you have the Iron Gauntlet ready to go.
Especially when your Iron Gauntlet is Valerian.
So you don't really have to be overbearing when you have
Valerian, You can just, they know you know they've you've
already conquered the Seven Kingdoms.
They know what you're capable of.
It's not like Aegon was bad at soft power.
I think Betenia might have been. Rainey seems to have been very
understanding of it. Like I can see things going a
lot differently if she had lived, and future generations
would struggle to get it right. Like a nice would be too soft,
too soft and Megor would be too hard.
Kind of like his mother, like, just no balance there.
Harris and Alicean, though, They did a very good job of finding
out middle ground, and that's part of why it was probably the
best era of the Targaryen run to live under.
The best era of the Seven Kingdoms to live under, right?
Yeah, quite possibly. And it's not like it was so
amazing under Robert, I don't think, but.
Yeah, although it wasn't necessarily bad under Robert.
It got bad when it fell apart again.
But that interim was the. Fact that it fell apart, that's
kind of on Robert, right? And it was a pretty short period
of time compared to maybe. It's pretty long compared to
most reigns, but short compared to Jay Harris, Yeah.
That's a good way to put it, yeah.
Yeah, because 15 years is a above average, but it's not
crazy long. Now.
Aenes's softness, if we're talking about why Megger was
hard, it's easy to draw a straight line there because of
his mother, and he was more raised by his mother, whereas
Aenes was more raised at court by his mother for a little while
and then his father and that. But Reenes didn't coddle him.
How could she? She died when he was three,
right? That's too young for her to have
established a pattern or a lifelong habit of raising him.
That's the issue when your mom dies.
When you're 3, of course, that's going to be a gigantic factor
that will impact your entire life.
And you wonder whether Ranis was trying to have another kid with
Aegon. I mean, they were still sleeping
together, presumably, but that doesn't.
I don't know if she wanted one. Probably did, but who knows?
And she was nursing Amy's herself, which is interesting.
You like you very often in these scenarios you have wet nurses
and things like that. So shows she was a little more
hands on, which I respect that. But of course she couldn't.
She wasn't there later, not her fault, but she did put herself
in danger now as well. Nina says that there's a
historical parallel here, one that I wasn't particularly aware
of. Amy's softness is maybe supposed
to be like Edward the second of England.
We'll come back to that when we're talking about Amy's little
sneak preview there. Especially if, you know, if you
don't know who Edward the second of England was, then that won't
mean much to you. But if you do, then little
teaser for you. So yeah, most of whom Rainey's
champions in terms of trying to uplift in society were the
people, like you said Sean, people who weren't warriors.
And so he's trying to uplift that segment of society.
The nonviolent elements of society, give them a bigger
voice in the cultural conversation, make them a more a
part of society. Which is why I think it's a big
loss for her death, even though, again, the Dornish would be
like, what the hell are you talking about, man?
But artists, singers, musicians, creative types and women.
She also uplifted women. She tried to enhance women's
rights. Now, there's it's a long road to
to make men and women equal in Westeros, one that obviously
isn't there. But she really got that ball
rolling in ways that almost no one had before.
Like, Allison again is a great notable exception of someone who
did a lot for women in the Seven Kingdoms.
And Alexander was probably inspired by Randy's.
That's her grandmother, right? I mean, they didn't meet because
she died so young. But still, our Randy's is going
to be remembered, right? Like, obviously, of course
you're going to remember that. And so when we speak of Allison
later, we will have to recall this and be like, well, what?
Maybe Maybe even look for some specifics and think this seems
like maybe it came from Rainey's a bit or at least partially
inspired by Rainey's. We'll never give Rainey's full
credit for someone else's ideas. But yeah, that's it's important.
These influences are big. This is the first one of the
first Queens of Westeros. Amy's understandably took his
mother's death poorly. I mean, what 3 year old
wouldn't? But this is also a three-year
old with gigantic expectations placed on him.
He's no ordinary 3 year old. Let's hear about it.
Prince Ames was 3 when his mother, Queen Raines and her
dragon Raxies, were slain, and Dorne her death left the boy
Prince inconsolable. He stopped eating and even began
to crawl as he had when he was one, as if he had forgotten how
to walk. His father despaired of him, and
rumors flew about the court that King Aegon might take another
wife. As Raines was dead and Vicinia
childless and perhaps barren, the king kept his own counsel on
these matters, so no man could say what thoughts he might have
entertained. But many great Lords and noble
Knights appeared at court with their maiden daughters, each
more calmly than the can. I say, Sean, I gave you this
quote for a reason, 'cause I thought I'd cry if I read it.
You you hearing you read it? Look, it was so.
Sad. Yeah, it is very sad.
We're just so good at this, really.
Really sad. And yeah, so Aegon might have
considered that, but there's no indication he actually did.
It was more like, well, maybe we can tempt him into this.
Maybe he just, we'll decide he needs to 'cause, you know, he's
not going to want to. He doesn't want to have more
kids. He doesn't want to remarry, but
he might think it's necessary. He might be tempted into it.
If he finds one of these women very attractive, that might be.
I mean, that's the thinking of these Lords and ladies who are.
To be fair, this is an unprecedented opportunity for
ambitious types to be part of the first royal family ever
established in Westeros. After thousands of years, this
is a gigantic opportunity. It's turns out the opportunity
wasn't actually there because he didn't marry anybody else.
Didn't. Maybe didn't even consider it.
But clearly people were taking the chance, taking that 1% shot
like it's worth it to try because we'll be enshrined in as
legends and maybe the first family in Westeros behind the
Targaryens for who knows how long.
For hundreds of years, they might be looking at it as a
chance to become a dragon riding family.
In the long term, we'll be married to dragon riding.
We might get Dragons. It's so much opportunity.
Probably benefited Aegon ultimately, like him, not
marrying someone else and just having this is like a thing to
dangle. The carrot, The ultimate carrot.
The Valyrian carrot. You have to think there's some
chair, some hoe. Agreed.
Agreed it does, because it makes sense having one heir who's kind
of spindly and looks like he can't handle the weight of this
crown and this throne. Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a legit
possibility. And he.
Yeah. And and with Rainey's gone, the
the idea that there might not be another kid and Vicenia hadn't
had a kid. Yeah.
And This is why. By why?
The way that some people buy. Why the way This is why, by the
way, that people suspect Vicenia maybe of using some magic to get
pregnant. Which there's no evidence that's
even a thing. But I I give it more credibility
than in source old paper, because there's a little more to
it than that. But honestly, we don't know if
either of those things actually exist.
And I could see Vicenia pushing it too.
Some things that in this world might seem like sorcery.
There might be a legitimate modern chemical explanation of
some cushion to help to get pregnant.
You know, it could be a thing that's true.
That's true even if it wasn't quote UN quote.
Real magic, you know. Yeah, what people call magic,
what really is magic, isn't always the same.
That's true. And I can see Vasenia pushing
the issue a bit like I can see him considering to take another
wife. Let's not do that.
And the best way to make that happen is to have a child.
So I'm going to make him sleep with me as often as I can and
well, maybe that's maybe that is why Megor did finally have
sleep. The the additional quantity of
times they started sleeping together after Rainey's death
may have finally paid off. And I, and there's no way, like
Vicinia was like, shy about it, you know, she'd be like we need
to make another air, you know get undressed.
Now this is the woman who cut his face when she when he
wouldn't protect himself properly.
So I think she's going to come down heavily.
I was going to almost said come down hard, but that's too much
of. A.
OK, I said it anyway. I couldn't help.
I couldn't help it. Nina brings up the example of
Tywin with respect to getting remarried as a It was a great
example. Another famous person that was
like, no, there's no replacing Joanna, I will not remarry.
She was my childhood companion, you know, related to him, you
know. That part's also a comparison.
Mary, trust is this. No replacing that you cannot
replace. There's just no person will
ever. It's like what?
It's like what Laura said when when the sun is burned out, no
candle can replace it. Is that going to?
Is that going to elicit some tears too?
No Boo to that, no. I Boo to that, no.
I was getting ready for my quote.
I wasn't. Gotcha.
Yeah, So, but it is a good parallel.
Yeah. Jokes aside, that is a good
parallel. I think if the sun's burned out,
a candle can replace it because you need to see some light.
No, it actually can't. You will all die if the sun
burns out. Well, in Egon's case, he has,
you know, Visenia to replace it, and he doesn't actually have to
remarry. She's pretty.
She's a pretty bright light, especially if you count Veigar.
Anyway, so yeah, so there's they weren't going to, they were
they, They were fighting a losing battle.
No one was going to lick. Here's a replacement for
Rainey's like, Oh yeah, her. No, it just wasn't going to
happen, I think. I do think the Tywin example is
great, not because he's like Tywin, but because Rainey's was
irreplaceable to him like Joanna was to Tywin.
So that talk stopped, though once Vesenia announced she was
pregnant, the, like, remarriage talk stopped and she was very
bold about it. She's like, it's a son, you
know, Which we've seen that before.
In fact, from Megor. Megor is going to say, I made
House Targaryen a new son last night when he slept with his
wife for the first time. Of course, he did not even make
any child, let alone a son. Vesenia was at least pregnant
when making the announcements. Like Megor is just like, yeah, I
know my sperm's going to get there.
I'm late. You got a 5050 chance of being
right in the 1st place. Yeah, and even if you're wrong,
you got several months of it getting people on board with the
plan. And even if you're wrong, press
has been established for a queen already anyway, so.
It's funny too, because it maybe that slightly adds to her
sorceress reputation. They're like, oh, it really was
a sun. It's like she just won a coin
flip like she's. Really got the 5050?
That's right, right. She do that.
How did that? Yeah, only.
Sorcery could give you a 50% chance.
It's really just as simple as keeping your room incredibly
warm for you. What is it like four months?
She just, like, sits the squats on the volcano for a while.
Just like sits there keeping it warm.
Yeah, letting the volcanic ash just, you know, filter up in
there like you said, Sean. Non magical means encourage
pregnancy. Those are real scientific means.
I mean, you watch the office, they'll tell you it's a simple
matter of keeping the womb incredibly warm for the first
four months and then cold for one month.
And it'll be. Jan, that said that I'm trying.
No. Dwight tells Angela that when
she's going to get pregnant, he says it has to be a boy.
And she's like, I can't ensure that he's like, yeah, you can.
It's a simple matter. Even your room warm and doing a
There's a few other things. I'm misquoting it, but the
warmth is relevant for Targaryen.
So another like awkward and maybe not true, but I think
probably true or at least possibly true aspect Terranis's
legacy is that because she died, Vicenia had more pressure to
create another child for House Targaryen.
And because those two children, those two sons, came from
different women, it formed 2 branches of House Targaryen in
the long term of the Vicenia branch that was populated by
Megor, well, not really 'cause he didn't have kids, but it was
still continued that way for a little while.
And the Annies branch, which really was the one that
continued, they really did have a lot of children.
And those two branches going up against each other, kind of like
the Greens and Blacks or Targaryens and black fires
later, this is the first seed of the royal house going up against
itself. Later is the birth of Megor,
because now you have two half brothers that aren't very like.
And Visena should have tried for a girl.
She should have kept her womb cold for four.
Months. She doesn't have to keep her
womb cold, she just runs hot all the time.
There's no such thing, but here's a good long quote Moron
Rainey's and how she operated and how she uplifted the common
folk quote. Don't call Rainey's a moron,
though. No, no moron for.
Queen Rainey's also took a great interest in the small folk and
had a special love for women and children.
Once, when she was holding court in the Aegon Fort, a man was
brought before her for beating his wife to death.
The woman's brothers wanted him punished, but the husband argued
that he was within his lawful rights since he had found his
wife a bed with another man. The right of a husband to
chastise an erring wife was well established throughout the Seven
Kingdoms, save in Doran. The husband further pointed out
that the rod he had used to beat his wife was no thicker than his
thumb and even produced the rod in evidence.
When the Queen asked him how many times yet struck his wife,
however, the husband could not answer.
But the dead woman's brothers insisted there had been 100
blows. Queen Rainies consulted with her
maesters and septons, then rendered her decision.
An adulterous wife gave offence to the seven who had created
women to be faithful and obedient to their husbands, and
therefore must be chastised, as God has but seven faces.
However, the punishment should consist of only 6 blows, for the
7th blow would be for the stranger, and the stranger is
the face of death. Thus the first six blows the man
had struck had been lawful, but the remaining 94 had been an
offence against gods and men, and must be punished in kind.
From that day forth the rule of six became a part of the common
law along with the rule of thumb.
The husband was taken to the foot of the hill of Rainey's
where he was given 94 blows by the dead woman's brothers using
rods of lawful size. It's hard for me not to chuckle
throughout a lot of that, as awful as it is, because I do
have the sense of humor of a small child.
I mean the phrase rods of lawful size and 94 blows by the dead
woman's brothers. It's just too much.
It's too much. The word rod alone is, is, is
funny. I mean, I.
Think all of you listening have probably heard of that old wives
tale of of, of that. Rule of thumb, Yeah, of the rule
of thumb, which is not a real thing.
It's completely made-up. The rule of thumb never is just.
For George, still wanting to rip on real old wives tales, Rightly
like yeah. People believe it's true.
So that, yeah, I mean, it's you would you should have fit false
things in your world that people believe 'cause that's how things
work. The real world is like that too.
We don't know if George actually knows whether this is a real
thing or not. We don't know if he knows it's
not real. But it's not real.
Thumb was made-up by an 18th century judge.
Yeah. To be clear, George likes
reading popular histories. I think he knows when he reads
them that there is false falsehoods and things in them
and he can just appreciate a good story.
Yes, I just think so. Which George said.
I think he even said that in our interview with him.
He's like, yes, like a lot of times the the false history is
more interesting than the real history.
And when you're writing fiction, you're you're, you're allowed to
borrow from either 'cause it's fiction like this could happen,
this could have happened. This isn't, like super
implausible like this isn't like this could never have happened.
But it also means that we shouldn't take something that
George put in his in his world as him being like, Oh yeah, this
is how the real world works. And like this is so historically
accurate, which is some people look at I don't think he at all
would say, Oh my works are historically accurate.
No, he never would. And.
That's part of why we have what what we're here to do is to
clarify these things for y'all. There's a lot to unpack in this,
but man I the thing I got hung up with was hung up on is the
seven who had created women to be faithful and obedient to
their husbands like of. Course, we all know that, Sean,
your. Husbands created to be faithful
and obedient to their wives. Husbands are created to lead
their wives, of course, to be a leader.
And to beat their wives when they only six times, though if
they if they. Cheat.
Very progressive minded of A. I agree, Sean.
There's a lots of unpacking. And this goes to show like,
rainies can't just go ahead and just like flip the whole script
and be like, no, this is wrong. We're going to totally undo
everything. You got to bring them along
slowly. Like you got to change as much
as possible in a, you know in the time you can and then change
later more. You can't just all of a sudden
undo all sexism all at once. That's just never going to.
You can't just kill the patriarchy in one minute.
That's just not going to happen. But that that, that one
parenthetical reference is really big.
The the right of a husband to chastise an erring wife was well
established about the Seven Kingdoms, save in Dorne.
Huge reason for Dorne to be like, we're not taking your
laws. It's backsliding.
We have moved beyond some of your patriarchy.
We are still very matriarchal, patriarchal society, but at
least we have women, rulers and other things.
And you can't just beat your wife because you want to.
To be fair, this is cheating on your husband, which is a lot
more than doing nothing. But still, it seems like they
could have a lot of leeway to beat their wife for pretty much
anything, but not in Dorne. And so when Mary is holding out
to not have the Targaryen rule over them, she's holding out in
a sense, for all the women of Dorne to not be put under that
rule of thumb. And things like it, like, well,
it's this is when they talk about maintaining their freedom,
their independence to talk about being made slaves of the Iron
Throne, that's what it's talking about.
They're talking about having to take on laws that to them look
maybe not quite like slavery, but in that direction, like in
the wrong direction. For you want to be taking your
your people. I think that's an underrated
reason why the Dornish held out the way they did, 'cause they
look at laws like this and say, no, we don't want to have your
your laws applied to us. Not.
Not only do we not want your people and your Dragons down
here, but we don't want your laws down here either 'cause our
laws are better, our laws are more forward thinking and and
taking on your laws would be backsliding.
It would be it would it would be backwards.
I don't want to take away from your point, but I would be more
bought into it if someone had said that, if Miri had said,
yeah, join in your land with your beating of women or you
know, they they they didn't. However much it wasn't
motivation, they never named it as such.
Yeah. And there's obviously just, we
can't just say that Doran is like the biggest champion of
women. You know, they just are maybe
compared to the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, you know, like
that line from the TV show. Like, we don't harm little girls
in Dorne, Oberyn says. And so she's like, yeah, you do.
Everywhere in the world, they harm little girls.
And. And Oberyn didn't really have a
retort for this. Like, yeah, I guess you're
right. And Speaking of Oberyn, like,
Nina points out how he treated the wife of his first child,
which is pretty horrible. So.
But it's still an irony, right, that that Rainey's being the
primary enemy of Dorne, the one who might have actually
respected some of those laws that they already had.
She was the primary antagonist and the one who's deaf was
probably a set back to the rest of the Seven Kingdoms in that
regard. So it's just a bunch of brutal
ironies kind of wrapped in together and like things that
don't fully match up in terms of how these laws are aligned.
But not not in a way that doesn't make sense, but just
kind of the the peculiarities of of government and war and just
the things that the natural hypocrisies that come from such
things. So yeah, we can't claim right,
this would have been good for Dornish people because of what
she did but it was a set back for women and musicians and non
martial people and the rest of the seven Kingdoms.
So yeah, just a strange irony there.
The how that how those things all kind of clicked.
She was the only real advocate north of the Red Mountains for
that sort of thing. So yes, I don't know that a lot
of people realized that, especially people within the
setting. But that was a big tragic loss
and that's why her death was felt by so many people.
Why so many people were mad? Why so many people like wanted
to tear apart the the Dornish peace envoys.
Wyagon was worried about that. It was because of Rainey's, I
think. Not because they're losing the
war. Not because they had some
floored. Connington was assassinated
while hunting. I don't think they cared about
that all that much. I mean the the Connington lands,
they did like those those small folk did.
But it was about Rainey's. It was about the person that had
made them love them dying. Like she maybe sort of tricked
them into that, but you know, she also treated them well in
some parts. The music stuff is what I'm
talking about, but on these policies and the treating women
better, that she was beloved, you know, maybe she didn't
deserve it all. But the fact is that outcry I
think has more to do with with her than anything else.
I think she's the single biggest factor.
This is a nuance, but you know, tricked and early, I think you
said manipulated propaganda. Not that there isn't or can't be
that type of thing mixed up in song or public opinion or
whatever, but it still makes it. I don't think it's inherently as
negative of that. Because The thing is it a lot of
the public has no opinion. They have no knowledge, right?
A song or something like that. It's just presenting the story
to the world. And now maybe the story has some
propaganda mixed up in it, but just the average person on a
farm in the middle of the north somewhere, they don't know the
details of any of these battles going on in Dorne, right?
So when the song comes to them, whether it's manipulated or
completely honest, that is creating public opinion by even
making the public aware. Right.
Yeah, that's true. You're right that just just
being aware awareness of the song, whether they whether you
take the lyrics to heart or not, the fact that the song exists
itself, it just yeah. Whether they know the words to
Thousand Eyes and one, they know there's a song about Blood Raven
out there. Whether they know the lyrics to
Rains a Castamere, they they have, they get the gist of it,
you know, Yeah, that's a good point, a very good point.
It still has an effect, even if you don't know the song
entirely. Or however accurate or
propaganda it is still presenting as a way to present
information to the public. And in a setting like this, we
have to forget we live in a world of like giant music
conglomerates and where you can look up the lyrics to any song
with a Google search. Like, without spending any
money, there would be very large variations, not just in lyrics,
but in melody, into the things would just get changed.
People just change it to their own version.
Yeah, like there would be huge varieties.
Like, we've all heard covers of our favorite songs.
Everything would be, you wouldn't know what the original
sounded like. It's just everything is a cover
and the original is lost to history, 'cause there's no
recording of it. And even the original singer
would have expected, like there would be no expectation that it
would be the same. Even like they wouldn't think of
it that way. Be like all songs are meant to
to have a little growth and change and, you know, options.
There's another verse to that song.
I never heard that verse. Really.
What's where'd that one come from?
Yeah, I heard it from the singer in Old Town.
And yeah, does you can kind of the lyrics are a little
different on that verse. Maybe it was written by Someone
Like You might have maesters like study this sort of thing
and tracked down. It's kind of a different subject
altogether I'm getting into here, but it's kind.
Of neat. That's the brass.
Link Music Origins.
Yeah. What do they?
I don't think they have brass instruments in Westeros, do
they? They probably have woodwinds,
but I don't know. There's probably trumpets that
announce there. You might.
Yeah, you're right. There might be.
Are there trumpets? There are horns.
I don't know. There are horns.
I don't. Know if they have trumpets,
though they might. If they have anything, they have
trumpets. That's like that's like the
simplest one. There's definitely horns.
Yeah. So I would think.
Like, I think they, well, they use the word trumpet.
I think like it trumpets their arrival.
But whether that means a trumpet, I don't know.
But I think they use the. Word.
I think you're probably right. Yeah.
And there there there's other fairly advanced metal metal
things, so. Find it, Sean.
Woke in darkness to the blare of trumpets.
There it is. She was shaking her by the
shoulder. As Tyrion.
There's 76. That's a real trumpet.
Yes. OK, cool.
So that that settles it. Yeah.
All right. This is definitely trumpets and
that's there are also similar instruments there can't there
can't just be 1 brass, brass instrument.
It's not that's the only one. So the we don't know what kind
of physical legacy there is for myriad.
We don't even really know how the Martells bury their dead.
Honestly we don't know what the what kind of traditions they
have there. They probably just have a crypt
or something you know with some graveyard.
I don't know for Rais. We know that the Targaryens do
ashes. You know, they burn their
bodies, but they didn't have Rainey's body unless it was
delivered to them in secret. Aegon did build the Sept of
Remembrance on Rainey's Hill, AKA the Hill of Rainey's, as it
was described in the rod example there.
And we don't know exactly when it was started or finished, to
be honest. It's a significant building.
It's a Sept. So it would would have been a
long time to build that, but I would guess he started building
it like right after her death or maybe right after the war.
You know, maybe money might have been tight during the war.
But once it was over, yeah, like go ahead and allocate the funds
for that. If you don't remember the Sept
of Remembrance, that's because it's not there anymore.
It's it's been replaced. And then the new thing has since
been burned, and that new thing is the Dragon pit, which of
course is in ruins. So yeah, a lot has changed on
the Hill of Rainies afterwards, and that ties partly into the
whole interplay between the two cadet branches.
Nothing like getting rid of the Sept of Remembrance as a way to
prehensively wipe out memory of that side of the family.
Which, yes, indeed, Megor was responsible for that.
And we'll be talking about Megor.
Not next week. Well, we will be talking about
Megor next week, but not Megor's reign.
We will be talking more about the reign of Aegon the
Conqueror. The peace process.
The Dragon's peace, Yes. Not his piece of cake, though
perhaps in some ways it was a piece of cake compared to the
1st 13 years of his rule. Anyway, as part of our outro, a
few of you at least sent in. Well, two people sent in dragon
acronyms, at least for now. We may get more later as more
people hear this episode, but for now.
From fox and brambles, who did our logo, the history of
Westeros logo that y'all see all the time, she said.
Daring, regal aesthetic. Gorgeous, organic.
Noble according to Delirium. No, that's good.
That's good and wheezy, Squeeze Box says.
Dreadful, raging, awful, ghastly omnivore.
Nasty, ghastly and nasty. I like it nastily.
Ghastly. Nas, according to the Dornish,
yes. According to the Dornish, that's
right, yes, both sides weighing in with an acronym Dornish.
James says in The Feast for Crows, John sends Darian to Old
Town, with Sam and Maester aiming in the hope that he will
sing songs to encourage more men to join the Nights Watch.
That's right, great example, Darian.
Not a very good person, but honey poured over Thunder is the
description of his voice. So absolutely good at that part
of his job. And that's the smart use of his
abilities. Like John, maybe John could have
maybe figured out that he wouldn't actually do his job
given his personality, but that is a good use of a singer in the
Night's Watch is to recruit. If that one crappy recruit
recruits 3 decent recruits, well, that's a better job.
That's the best thing you're going to get out of him.
So pretty good, pretty good thinking John, even if you maybe
missed one little aspect of it, but Ari took care of that.
You might have just needed another able bodied.
Someone to stick with him. Yeah, like Sam and the Maester
are gonna struggle in his voyage.
You know who's carrying the luggage or whatever.
But. Good point.
Yeah. And of course, Aria put all that
to rest anyway. So sorry, Darian, you did.
And. But not Aria's first kill just
for first kill in Bravos, right? Yeah, that was her first Bravosi
kill. I think.
Not sanctioned by the Faceless Men.
They weren't happy about that, but they still gave her more
kills later 'cause she's talented at it and they don't
find many recruits. Speaking of, you don't find many
people with the voice with Honey Port over Thunder.
You also don't find many recruits for the House of Black
and White. So both are very rare skills,
rare skill sets, rather our trivia question.
The answer. The question was Dornish Blank
became slang north of the Red Mountains for cowardice.
Fill in the blank Courage. Dornish courage was a mocking,
like sarcastic term for cowardice.
Dornish courage means cowardice. Yes, that that doesn't seem to
have carried over into modern time.
So that was that was a maybe a shorter term phrase.
We mentioned a few episodes that you might want to check out if
you haven't already because they are related to this one of
course the Nymeria episodes. Daron the First came up hardcore
houses. We didn't mention it by name,
but we talked about that The Ullers, which is one of the
hardcore houses under the Dragons Hightower, Reigns of
Castamere. That's one that you might be
interested in. Mantaris.
We mentioned Valerian, the Doom, Dragonstone.
We got lots of episodes on Valyria.
We got an episode on how Celtic are They came up in this one,
and the Century Blood came up in this one too.
We also have the last Storm episode available for patrons
and members only. That's the most recent Patreon
episode, but we've got a lot of other ones, like say the Red
Kraken, like Gagasos. Yeah, lots of stuff like that.
In fact, that Mentarius episode I mentioned is technically a
Patrons only episode, and Sean is here to read a few fun
Patreon names. As always, I'll do a couple old.
A couple new. Got Robert, the Red Falcon of
Winterfell. Nice.
Lady Jane of House, Celtic car, wielder of Larren, steel axe
painkiller. I hope I say this one right.
I know how to say it properly. I'll correct you if you get it
wrong. Go ahead.
Lady Laxara Dazo. Lazara.
Almost. You almost.
Lazara. Okay, very close.
I knew with the HI knew to make it the show but yeah, Lady
Lazara Dajo the Iron Lily. Master Archer Castellan of the
summer island keep arboreal point Captain of the all female
wailing widows women and children first Yeah that was
like a two liner and that was like a Danny level.
Yeah, I. Love that one and.
Then we got Sir Devin Snow, the Wolf Hammer, Shadow of Wolfwood.
Yeah, Lydia, Mother of Frenchies, Breaker of Chairs and
Royce Aaron, the bronze Falcon of the Veil.
Nice. Like it?
Yeah. Royce.
Aaron. Mixing Royce and Aaron.
Bronze and Falcons. That's cool.
Got to like that, The two big houses there.
Thanks again to Nina for the great takes.
Lots of good ones this time. Nothing unusual about that,
though. That is a regular thing I say at
the end of these episodes because it's true so often.
Thanks as well to Joey, Jesse and Bran and Michael Klarfeld
for the various intros and outros we have in our show.
Whether it's this one or our House of the Dragon coverage, we
got a lot of different looks we bring you, and those are the
fellows that help with that. Michael Clarkfeld's maps are
always on display here behind me.
Sean's got his and. Of course, Michael Clarkfeld
also did our our intro and outro that y'all love so much.
That's. True.
Our most famous outro intro. Outro meaning because it's was
it was our first one. Yeah, we also have a House of
the Dragon one that is done by Bran, but yeah, Michael does the
one that is going to play in just a minute.
So my friends and fellow historians, if you want to hook
up with us on our social media sites, do so.
Face hook up with us. Yes, Yes, through virtually,
yes. Facebook, Twitter, our Patreon.
We've got lots of ways to interact with us, our discord,
of course. I believe all those links are in
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And if you don't find it, just go to historywesteros.com.
It's got links to everything, whether it's one of our sponsors
or just our different social media spots, as well as all our
episodes. Until next time, Valar, reread
us.