Though it's a time of peace, and we've covered the administrative
and legal developments, the priorities and advancements
under Aegon the Conqueror, not to mention his wars, you know,
the conquest. Arguably, this is the biggest
expansion of the story yet in Fire and Blood, because now we
focus on characters. We started to tease it more the
last few times as Amy's and Alyssa and their children and
Megor come up and grow up and Vicenia is no longer just her
brother's watchful eye and right hand woman.
She takes a far more active role in determining the future of
House Targaryen. Not just Westeros, but House
Targaryen. Of course the two are
overlapped, but this is more of a focus on their internal house
rather than the realm at large. In other words, we've seen how
they rule the realm. How do they rule their own
family, though? How does that manage?
How do they rule themselves? And that's a big part of what
makes this episode unique. We get to see the first royal
House of the Dragon come into being.
This is how it starts. Lots of matches, marriages,
children and grandchildren, and a few changes to their living
arrangements. The House of the Dragon becomes
the home of the dragon. And funny how when you talk
about family normally, or at least when you're discussing
family and other contexts, it's often you know something
Wholesome time with loved ones, people you can trust and count
on. I mean, that's not true for
every family, particularly not true for noble families.
And royal family is definitely not the very first House of the
Dragon. It's definitely not an
exception. In fact, it's a great example of
the opposite of a positive nurturing environment.
They might teach you how to lead, they might teach you how
to rule, but managing yourself, getting along with other people
adds not as much of A focus. So this episode features new
threats, new Targaryens, some who are both new Targaryens, and
new threats, not to mention more actual Dragons, and a few open
questions that might rise to the level of mystery.
All that and more on this episode of History of Westeros
podcast. Hello and welcome back,
everybody. My fellow W Orians, we are here
once again. This episode is being recorded
at 3:00 Eastern on YouTube, which is when we do most of our
live streams. The exception is when there's
ATV season on and the occasional other thing.
But yeah, Sundays at 3:00, that's our home or our house,
you know, since that's the theme today.
And we, well, we do record in our house and Sean records in
his. So hey, we got a whole house
home thing going on here. After the live stream, you can
eventually find the video on Spotify about a week later in
edited form, and the podcast version is anywhere.
You find podcasts in edited form as well.
And it's ad free if you listen on Patreon.
That's right, cut out several minutes of ads if you subscribe
voluntarily. And you also get bonus episodes.
So not only do you cut out the ads, but you add bonus episodes.
It's ads gone. Bonus episodes in their place.
That's a pretty good deal. Another thing we have going over
on our Patreon is the topics moot.
It's been running all month. It's getting closer to the end,
but as of this recording it's still going on and in the mid
roll we'll talk about some fun things going on with that
because there's been some fun developments and some topics
chosen. Sean, what are you, what are you
drinking today and what is that on your?
Shirt, you know, it's reminiscent of of Dunk at
Arlen's grave by the Oak tree I think, but that's not what it
is. This is from The Last Airbender,
Avatar The Last Airbender. There's a couple Uncle Iro goes
to visit his son's grave at a tree and and it reminds me a
little bit of just the nature of the father, Son Dynamics, did
that show included, and how maybe if the parents have been
better, the children would have been better.
Yeah, isn't that always the case?
What about your beverage? Well, this is a little different
than normal. I've been drinking the Naked
Green machine pretty consistently with the Magic Mine
mixed in it, and this time I have a there's a new sparkling
ice flavor. Just straight strawberry
Starburst strawberry. So I've got that in the mix too.
Right on. That's cool.
Shay, what shirt do you have on there?
I'm wearing one I wear a lot just because it's kind of comfy.
It's a long sleeve sweatshirt with a Sailor Moon on the Iron
Throne, but the Iron Throne is made all out of like magical
girl weaponry instead of just sword.
I've got a little Westeros shirt on from the TV era, TV show era,
original TV show era, and I thought it was appropriate
because we're discussing the ongoing formation of a new
Westeros. So I thought it was appropriate.
Also, you know, I just, I have a lot of Game of Thrones shirts,
but we've done a lot of episodes and I have to wear them twice
every well or three or four, you know, I can't just have one for
every episode. I.
Wanted to make a a quick note. Talking about house and home
earlier just reminded me of a a a thought, a quote that has
stuck with me, I think. I'm pretty sure it's from The
death of a salesman. Home is where when you have to
go, they have to take you. And they thought almost every
angle you come at that. I think it's pretty true, yeah.
Well, this is the kind of situation when you're talking
about royalty, where that's never the case.
They've got too much money to be forced to take you.
Let's just give you another castle like, well, no, if we
want to let you live, we can just stick you over here.
Well, that means that's not really your home.
I guess not. And that is a bit.
That is one of the problems we'll be discussing.
Is that a nice and Megor didn't really spend a lot of time
together. They didn't.
To them, it wasn't really a home.
It was a house and not a home for them.
Shout out to our good friend Nina AKA Good Queen Allie.
Good Queen allie.tumblr.com is where you can find her writings.
The latest blog post is regarding a question she got
about House Ironwood support for the black fires.
What might the black fires have offered House Ironwood to bring
them over? Or what did the Ironwood see as
a benefit to siding with the black fires?
And it's a very interesting answer.
It it involves some of what we're talking with today.
In fact some of the eventual unification of Dorne with
Westeros is included and how that might have been a wedge to
use in this scenario where some people like, hey, some people
didn't want to become a part of the Seven Kingdoms and that
might be who the Iron Woods court for their side.
And it's a pretty good take and a pretty good question.
I'm going to give a personal shout out to Nina.
Also, my sister has arranged a trip to Disney World for my
family for my niece's 4th birthday.
And I asked Nina I was like, hey, what can you tell me about
Disney World and that thing? She knows more about Disney
World than A Song of Ice and Fire.
She mean like. Which is really saying some.
Paragraphs of information, he said.
That was the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, she is very knowledgeable.
That is verb darn. Sure About both.
Yes, about both. And much more.
But those two things are near in
her top five probably. So I will mention some episodes
at the end that relate to this one.
Of course, we often talk about over things that relate to other
episodes we've done in the past, and that's always a fun way to
stay immersed if that's your flavor of the day or the week.
And if you have any questions for us, you can put them in the
chat if you're watching live or send them to
westeroshistory@gmail.com as a good default way to send
questions. We've been getting some some
from Y'all lately, enough so that we might have to do another
mail bag episode one of these days.
So if you want a mail bag episode to happen, by all means
send us more questions. It'll make it happen sooner.
And the trivia question? Let's get started with that.
And also the answer at the end, along with the episode
recommendations. Which one of Aegon's
grandchildren now? Grandchildren only?
Not great grandchildren, or great grandchildren, or great
great?
No, I'll stop there. Never rode a dragon.
Which one of Aegon's grandchildren never rode a
dragon? Only one of them.
But Yep, and again, as usual, the answer will be in this
episode. Also at the end, we'll name off
some patron names too. That's right.
We do like to do that good fun stuff.
That's true. Good shout outs there.
Last time we took a look at policy law and gradual changes
to the realm. On a macro level, we jumped
around in the timeline because much of what we had to discuss
played out up to several decades.
This time we have a better idea of the years and the order of
events, so we'll be letting several narratives play out at
once as we move through the founding of the House, the
dragon. We'll go year by year.
Their expansion, the proliferation of actual Dragons
and Targaryens came along with that, and the death of their
founding patriarch, the Conqueror.
That will happen at the end of this episode.
It's in this episode as well that people would start to look
at him and see Aegon the 1st, meaning that one after his name,
because, well, he had a grandson born during this part of the
timeline named Aegon, and this Prince was in the Direct Line of
succession, and many other grandchildren came before and
after. Well, one came before and
several more came after, but in total several came.
Little could Aegon the First know that Prince Aegon, his
grandchild, would never be crowned, and not because of some
tragedy that befell him. Although you could argue it was
a tragedy, but really it was Megor that befell him on his own
Dragon Valerian. I don't think Aegon would have
been pleased to find that out from beyond the grave, but he
was beyond the grave when that happened.
So yes, this will come many years later, but we can
absolutely trace the events of this era to the events of that
era. A lot of those dots.
Pretty easy to connect. A few others, Not so much
though. So we'll that'll be something
for us to delve into today. We'll be talking about Aegon and
Vicenya, Lord Ethan, Valarian, Sir Osmond Strong, The Hand of
the King, Princess Aenis and Megor.
Alyssa, Valarian the eventual Queen.
Princess Reina and Princess Al Sand.
Princess Aegon Viseris and Jaharis, Cerise, Hightower
Pirate King Sargasso San. Lots of names there.
That's a lot of Princess and princesses.
More than one king, thanks to Sargoso.
Only one current queen, but several future Queens?
Yeah, lots of future Queens. Cerise, Allison, Alyssa.
It's a lot of Queens and two hands as well.
But there's a lot of actual Dragons born this era, too.
And I mean actual Dragons, not these Targaryens.
And of course more as well, a great era of growth for both the
House of the Dragon and the Dragons in the House.
One of the reasons why this larger cast makes the story a
bit more fun is because there's so many more perspectives to
consider, so many interactions between so many important
people, and, well, we have the characters who forged this new
world and those who were born into it.
That's enough Queens, by the way.
For musical, that's. True, that's true.
You could go a bit higher, you know.
I feel like you get up to about six, you know, and that's that's
about where you want to stop. The Year 19 ACI believe, is
where we can start to go year by year for a while and be able to
stay on that chronology without having to jump around.
So a house for the House of the Dragon is our first section.
A royal city gave Aegon manpower and wealth to draw upon if his
Kingdom was ever threatened by one of the other great houses or
from outside the Kingdom. Of course, I'm Speaking of
King's Landing, and he could likely see how it would give
even more wealth and manpower to his descendants given how
rapidly it became a city in the 1st place and how that growth
just continued for decades and decades, which I think was
predictable quote. Unlike its rivals, however,
King's Landing had no walls. It needed none.
Some of its residents were known to say no enemy would ever dare
attack the city so long as it was defended by the Targaryens
and their Dragons. The king himself might have
shared these views originally, but the death of his sister
Raines and her dragon Miraxis in 10 AC and the attacks upon his
own person undoubtedly gave him cause.
And in the 19th year after the Conquest, word reached Westeros
of a daring raid in the Summer Isles, where a pirate fleet had
sacked Tall Trees Town and carried off 1000 women and
children as slaves, along with a fortune in plunder.
The accounts of the raid greatly troubled the king, who realized
that King's Landing would be similarly vulnerable to any
enemy shrewd enough to fall upon the city when he and Visenya
were elsewhere. So he really, really couldn't
have something like that. Tall Trees raid happening now.
Tall Trees Town is old. It's been around a long time.
It is what it is. It was obviously a massive
tragedy what happened to them, but it doesn't really change
what that city is. It doesn't change its history.
It doesn't establish it as something different.
This is a new city, King's Landing.
If word gets out that this new capital is vulnerable, then
there's going to be more attacks.
So it isn't just about saving his people from an attack, it's
saving them from a pattern. It's he doesn't want that to be
how his city is viewed as a target.
He doesn't want it to look like a place where people can come.
In fact, he wants it to be the opposite.
He would. He might like someone to come
lose and then that's the message that everybody gets, kind of
like what happened to them and Dorne.
It's also sort of symbolic. He doesn't want that to be its
legacy either. Right.
And it doesn't have a legacy because it's so new.
So that would be a new city is in search of a legacy when it's
it's establishing that and this would be part of that this this
weakness, this. Well, when it was new IT was
sacked and that's it's been that ever, ever since then blah blah,
blah. You know that could be how it's
described. Aegon doesn't want that.
And not just a new city, a new capital of a new realm.
Yeah. Right, the new caps.
And layers of symbolism here make it important for Aegon to
not let something negative happen.
Yeah, that would be really bad for his reputation as a king,
for his dynasty getting started, for his new realm.
Yeah, just a number of really bad things.
And he realized, but he kind of left himself open for it by not
setting up some defenses sooner. So he did make the effort to
address that shortcoming. And all this growth was was
surely something to be encouraged.
As as difficult as it was to manage and as hard as it
probably was to keep track of and growing out of control that
it was, this would have been a much bigger problem.
You know, that's a good problem to have as a ruler.
I've got too many people coming to join my new city.
Oh, what will I woe with me? But if they're all carried off
into slavery to another continent, yeah, that is a real
problem. I mean, that's not even talking
about the individual lives and the horrors they would have to
face. He's just, this is just egging
on thinking about his Kingdom. He's not thinking about
individuals and their suffering, though that is certainly
relevant. I'm just not.
I'm just a bit cynical in thinking that he probably
doesn't care about that too much there.
There had never been a large scale settlement at this spot
before. You know, King's Landing, the
area, there had never been a united Westeros, the Kingdom.
Of course, we've said that before but that's it's important
to point that out as a perspective to the rest of the
world. The rest of the world has never
seen Westeros united. The rest of the world has never
seen it. Under one rule, of course it's
not quite under one rule, There's beyond the Wall and
beyond the Red Mountains, but you know you get the point.
It's a very new situation. So the rumors would spread far
and wide. The the reputation of King's
Landing and say a shy is almost non existent at this point.
You know it's only been around for 20 years and it takes what
two years to do a voyage back and forth to a shy.
So yeah, there's not a lot of, there's not a lot to say yet
people, some people in Ash, I probably haven't even heard of
King's Landing by this point, which is really saying a lot.
But it's also goes to the point that 20 years for a city is is
nothing. That's the infancy of a city.
And there is a as well the possibility of, you know, like
it says in the book Aegon, the times that Aegon was attacked
where he was almost assassinated.
You know, if he had been killed at this point, what would
happen? I mean, his heir is too young.
The Senia is maybe bit a bit of a hardliner.
Having her in full charge might not work out great.
She's a little maybe too too tough and not good enough at
using soft power. So who knows?
Yeah, and lots of things could have gone wrong to have King's
Landing been sacked. I can imagine even even thinking
about some of the conflicts that had happened in his conquest,
like that wedding that got raided by the Dornish.
Yeah, yeah. Something like that happening in
King's Landing. It's not like an all out, you
know, assault or something like that.
Something like that would still be a bad mark.
And I'm sure in considering or realizing this, or maybe someone
else like a maester might have brought this to his attention,
right? And I can imagine there would
have been infinite examples they would have brought to him,
right? Of like what you need to be
afraid of. It might not have been hard to
convince him, but if he was reluctant at all, they could
have just one after another talked about different cities
being sacked and the impacts of it and so on.
He was like, OK, OK, OK, we'll build some walls.
You know, yeah. So walls, he did build.
And this is, of course, familiar to us because the King's Landing
that we have seen in The Song of Ice and Fire during the Dance of
the Dragons, the Duncan egg, all that.
It always has had walls from all the times we've seen it, so it
becomes the more familiar version of itself, the one that
we know, 7 gates, each with a named Rd.
Although those Rd. names probably didn't happen right
away, Those walls are really high.
As far as we know, they've never had to be added onto a rebuild,
so they did it right the first time, which is, you know, good
on them. And remember that Kings Rd. is
new. Jerry's did a big, big Rd.
building project. So these roads, when we say
there's roads out of the seven gates, these are still dirt
roads. Maybe they're they're might
well, they might be well worn paths to like, well traveled,
but they're definitely not made of stone.
They're still going to be susceptible to mud and things
like that. So that would be a later
development. Now remember, King's Landing is
on three hills. There's Aegon's High Hill, the
Hill of Rainy's Hill of Vicenia, and the walls as a whore as a
whole. I'm going to say walls as a
whore. I did say walls as a whore.
I didn't almost say it. I did say that by accident, and
it's almost a square, even though it's such a big thing and
so sprawling, the way the walls are built, it's it is basically
that one side faces the Blackwater Rush, which is the
river. Another side faces Blackwater
Bay, one side faces inland going southwest along the Blackwater
Rush, and the other side faces NW pointing towards the
Riverlands and the north and all that.
So we can imagine when the walls were built, there was a lot of
space, 'cause, like we said, we don't know of any rebuilding
project or the walls being expanded on or anything like
that. So they had to have left room
for King's Lane to grow into the size it is now 'cause it's
obviously if they'd built the walls just surrounding what it
was there at the time, they would have been, oops, we need
to expand and do that again. Here's a little map that Shea
put up there. You can see, you can see how
it's basically a square. It's got a bulge there on the on
the coast, but pretty much a square.
One day we'll do a full episode on King's Landing.
We we had all these notes on King's Landing last time.
In fact, a lot more than we're going through today.
And I realized, yeah, we'll just a King's Landing episode is is
more than appropriate. We've done episodes on
Highgarden and and Old Town, so of course King's Landing's
appropriate. Even though it's got a much
shorter history than those places, it's got a very rich,
full history. New York has a shorter history
than London or Paris, but it's not like there's not a lot to
talk about new. York, Great point.
Yeah. New York is relatively young
compared comparatively. That's a great point.
It's like 100 years younger than King's Landing even.
And the egg on forts is also going to be torn down a little
later. We'll talk about that.
But it's another part of expanding their house, making it
more of a home and making it more appropriate.
So a lot of King's Landing at this stuff was kind of mobile
and changeable because. It wasn't planned this way in
the 1st place, so people just put things in places.
And yeah, I think that's kind of a recurring theme though, with
the Targaryens. They make some Targaryens,
they're just bad rulers and they make all sorts of bad decisions.
But even the ones who make good decisions as rulers often make
bad decisions as parents, right? Viserys on House of the Dragon
is our primary example. He may not be the best example,
but he's so prominent because he's on T was on TV.
Robert Baratheon, similar example.
Tywin's not a good parent, you know, there's all these bad
parents now, those aren't Targaryens, but it's still a
recurring theme of people who rule effectively, not
necessarily well, but effectively are good.
You know, Tywin, it's debatable. There's a lot of things he
didn't do well, but he he he was still better than a lot of other
rulers. Cause the bar is low, but if
you're a bad parent of people who are going to be rulers
later, you undermine all that, right?
You Ray ruled Wells yourself, but you just foisted a bad ruler
on on the realm after your death for maybe a period that's longer
than your period of rule. So Tywin rules decently for 20
years and then foists his family on the realm and Cersei and
Jamie and Joffrey and they'll do all this stuff like doesn't that
take away from his credit even though he didn't do it because
he made those people, you know, he taught those people, he
educated them, he raised them or didn't raise them to right,
which is in itself a failure. So I think Aegon's more of that.
Aegon isn't a isn't a actively bad father.
He not even be a bad father. But I think he what we'll see
here going forward is he was more interested in things like
this about King's Landing than he was in managing the people
who were who will rule King's Landing after him.
You know, it's I don't know we could talk about this infinitely
and we're trying to, but just thinking about, you know, Aegon
I, I I want to try to justify some of his failures as a parent
'cause he's ruling this new Kingdom which has all sorts of
new challenges like even to whatever extent Taiwan was
ruling it. There was some established
precedent and infrastructure and who wants to contact and
everything else in place for him to work with, you know?
But Aegon had established all that in the 1st place.
So, you know, you know, I can maybe see Aegon being quote, UN
quote, justifiably busy with other things not being able to
manage his kids. But Tywin, I guess, was too busy
committing genocide. He.
Asked him. Here he was like, what's his?
Excuse, you know, as a reminder for me this is Reedus, not
Reedus. It's a lot that I'm taking in
and processing and trying to just trying to like remember all
the names and dates and stuff, much less drawing conclusions.
But it is something I've been the stewing over a lot.
Is that this point that you're making?
It's this sort of this recurring thing of decent, at least
ostensibly decent rulers failing with their kids, which then that
next generation rules badly. Yeah, but maybe if they had done
worse as rulers and go with their kids, then maybe we'd be
talking about how it's their current theme if they leave
their kids with all these problems.
Yeah, I'm not sure how much of it would have been different, or
how much is to blame them. But one or the other, I'm just
thinking so much about this consistent pattern.
I wonder what Martin's trying to reflect here, you know, or if
it's intentional, if it's just a Natural History, or what?
I agree with you in in theory that it's difficult maybe to do
both, but I think that's one thing that George is teaching us
is that there's very few people that are good at both of these
things. And so these are very different
skill sets. I think ruling A realm and
ruling a family or providing for a family or leading a family or
being a father are just extremely different things.
There's no reason why being good at one would make you good at
the other. They're just, it's like, why the
old Mitch Hedberg joke like, oh, you're a chef, so you're good at
farming. No, of course not.
Yes, they're food related, but they're completely different
skill sets. Raising eggs versus cooking
eggs. And I like eggs as an example
because there's egg ONS instead of eggs and dragon eggs.
It's all it all fits very well, yes.
One thing that they both take is time, and there's only so many
hours in a day. You know, even if you sacrifice
sleep or hobbies or whatever else, it's it's hard to just
have enough hours to raise kids and manage kingdoms.
Well, one thing that gets me, though, I agree with what you're
saying in theory. One thing that gets me though,
and we'll go through examples of this throughout the episode, is
that Aegon will go against his own teachings in accomplishing
these rather in making these failures.
For example, he made a big point, send your children to me
so that I can have them all get along together.
Yet he didn't do that with his own children.
His own children were not raised together.
And so he just putting the wedge he's trying to not have between
other houses. He's creating it in his own
house. So that's to me kind of blatant.
Now maybe some of these other ones.
There's nuance. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of
myself. This next section is called
Filling the House of the Dragon with Dragons.
Let's have a quote. Prince Amy's was the heir
apparent, and King Aegon kept him close by his side.
As the king moved about the realm from castle to castle, so
did the Prince. Prince Megor remained with his
mother, sitting by her side when she held court.
Queen Vicinia and King Aegon were off the part in those
years. When he was not on a royal
progress, Egon returned to King's Landing and the Egon Fort
boss Vicinia and her son remained on Dragon soon.
So Annies learned how to hold court from his father, where
Magor learned how to hold court from his mother.
And we know Vicenya is a lot more hardcore, a lot less
forgiving, more of a rule by fear type.
So no surprise, that's how Magor turned out.
We're in the year 20 now. We started on year 19, The Walls
project begins, and it's overseen by Hand of the King
Osmond Strong. It kept on going and going.
It took several years. The Realm would have a lot of
young men and women born after the conquest.
Of course, the initial effect of the conquest would be a lowering
of the population, because all the people killed in war.
But then you enter this and then more killed in Dorne.
But then you have this period where we have peace for quite a
while and peace between all the kingdoms, which means a boom of
babies being born. Now, of course, we're still too
early in the timeline for those people to be adults, but they're
still mouths to feed. There's just lots of children
being born, and that's going to matter.
And of course, when we're talking about noble children,
that's going to be true as well. You have, you're the men of the
householder, less are out less fighting in war.
They're at home with their wife, and that means babies are more
likely to be made, especially when you're talking about an
entire population and not just a couple of houses.
We're looking at macro numbers here, and that was true for the
Targaryens too. Instead of Aegon, you know,
Conquering and his his wives being out on their Dragons,
burning castles, they're at home.
Well, Rainey's isn't anymore, but still his kids will be as
well. So they're basically a
population boom all over the place.
And I'd have. I believe that the population
boom began, if not during the First Dornish War, because as
many people as were killed down there, we're still talking about
an entire nation and 40,000 warriors going into Dorne isn't
that big of a number when especially since not all of them
were killed, just just, you know, more than half when we're
talking about the entire continent, right, that it's a
lot of people, but it's not that big a number when we're talking
about the entirety of Westeros population.
So macro numbers are difficult to pin down here, but we can
still imagine certain trends. Amy's would have been flying by
now, which is neat to think about.
He'd be the first new dragon rider since well before the
conquest. Think about that it it might
have been over 3 decades before a new dragon had been claimed in
Westeros like from the time. I don't know who.
We don't know whether it was probably Raines was probably the
last person to claim a dragon before Raines claiming Meraxis,
but it could have been Visenya claiming Vega or Aegon claiming
Valerian. Those might have happened later.
We don't know who claimed the dragon first, but all three of
them happened well before the conquest and now here we are you
know in the in the year 20 and yeah, pretty neat.
Meanwhile, Magor does not have a dragon of course, but he does
have he's already squired age 8 as we said last time and his
master at arms, as we also said, one of the deadliest Knights in
the realm, Sir Gowan Corbray. So he's learning how to fight
from one of the best. Now we know he's eventually
going to claim Valerian, so I I want to start thinking about
that now because was he waiting for that?
Was that what he was that his intent all along?
But was it or was it his intent? Did he 678 year old Megor have
this plan or was it his mother's idea?
It seems more likely the adult having that idea is a little
more likely than the 8 year old, but it is possible.
Megor had it himself. I mean, the idea is pretty
straightforward. Don't claim a hatchling, Claim a
big one or the biggest one. Yeah 'cause it might have just
been, hey, wait for a bigger one, but it might have been wait
for that one, right? What do you what do you think
about that, Sean? I think it would have been the
mother's influence. I mean, not that he couldn't
have thought of it as an 8 year old, but things 8 year olds
think of aren't really well thought out.
Yeah, even a Squire. Still, yeah.
So I'd like, and it makes more sense to me at AJ.
He would have just wanted any dragon he could get.
I think it's more likely that his mom was like be patient,
wait for this certain dragon or probably that certain dragon.
It it does still seem. I will say it does still seem
like a bit of a risk for her to take, but maybe she knows she
has to be patient already since he's already just a second born
son. There's all these other factors
in place, that's. A good point.
A lot of great takes from Nina here on this subject.
Everything about Megor is about being a warrior.
He loved battle, He loved showing his strength, He loved
dominating people. He was good at it, right?
And so it does kind of make sense that he would want to
choose the biggest weapon of war.
He wants to choose something that's dominating and something
that enables him to express that part of himself this the
dominant side, the violent side, the the one that intimidates
people. And what's more intimidating
than Valerian? He saw his own father on that
dragon was like, yeah, that's for me.
So maybe his mom gave him the idea but I would imagine he
light. He seized on it.
Like yeah, that is a good idea. I want that now It might have
been the idea might have been yeah.
Wait for a bigger dragon. Not necessarily that one.
Because what if Vasenia died first.
Would he have still waited for blaring or would he have just
taken Veigar who's, you know, the second biggest?
I don't know. That's a tough call and we will
never know that one. But we're we're minded of Eamond
Eamon one eye who, you know, pink dread aside in the book he
says I don't want some puny hatchling or some stupid egg.
That's a direct quote from much later in Fire and Blood.
He wants the biggest. So maybe Aymond channeling Megor
a bit here. And Aymond does have some things
in common with Megor other than now let's not forget book Aymond
was small Show Aymond is actually a bit big.
Not like muscular, but tall and that's a difference.
And of course neither anywhere the size of Megor is huge.
I think Megor would have taken Veigar, by the way, especially
once Andy's already has a dragon.
I think he would have. He or Vasena would have been
happy for him to take Veigar. Yeah, it's possible for sure.
And Valerian was his father's dragon too.
So that's another thing. It's like, well, I'm the second
born. I've been left out.
And you know, Andy's gets all the attention.
Maybe that's a way to. He'd never admit to it being
such a macho warrior type, but that might be a way to, like,
emulate his father or be more like his dad.
And if we're imagining that it was Vasenia's idea, it it isn't
straightforward that oh, she wanted her son to be the biggest
and strongest. It could be that simple that,
but I think that's just part of it.
Now, did she perceive Anis as too weak and thought her son
should be the king? Or did she perceive Anis as too
weak and thought her son would be very helpful, was like, oh,
he's going to need Megor and this could change over time.
She might be like, OK, no, I want Megor to be king.
But at first I wouldn't quite go that far, though I'm open to it.
You know Visenya, I think she wanted her house to be strong.
I don't know that she had to have her son on the throne.
Maybe at some point her mind changed on that.
But I I kind of doubt it began that way.
But it might have. It might have, Definitely might
have. So yeah, I think it's a very
strong chance that she wanted Valerian for for for her son.
And it may have been because she expected him to be king in the
long run, or may have just been because she wanted him to be as
powerful as possible, which might have included being king.
There's another potential She might have seen some of the red
flags and wanted to put off him getting a dragon as long as
possible. Okay.
Maybe, yeah. Maybe you need to mature first.
Maybe make sure you can handle a dragon.
Maybe we need some other people with Dragons to keep you in
check, and maybe that's cynical of me or optimistic of me of
her, to have him be patient. But.
And she will later suggest betrothing Megor to Annies's
first child, which is like, that's not the mark of someone
who wants to overthrow annies. That's just someone who wants
her son to come next, which is, And you know, honestly, that
wasn't the worst idea ever. It wasn't accepted.
But anyway, it's it's about to happen now.
So Annies and Alyssa get married at in the year 22, Alyssa was
daughter to Lord Ethan Valarian and Lady Alara Massey.
Now remember Ethan was the son of Damon Valarian, the same
Damon that died trying to take Gull town during the conquest.
He'd been master of ships ever since.
Ethan has been so 20 plus years at this point.
So he's a big man around campus or big man around court.
Well accustomed to the Targaryens, been in their
service for a long time. Obviously has Valyrian heritage
shared with them his brother Lord Corleiss, not to be
confused with the Sea Snake, who won't be born for several
decades. Still, Corleiss was the first
ever Lord Commander, the Kingsguard, so he's uncle to the
future Queen. Although it's actually possible
Corleiss is dead by this time, we don't know when he died.
He might live for another 20 years.
He might already have been dead by this time.
Unfortunately we don't have any more info than that.
So this is not an incest marriage in the eyes of the
Faith, right? It's it's a Valerian and a
Targaryen. So they got around the problem
this time. But as we said last time, they
had to know it was going to be a problem eventually, you know,
'cause they would have married a daughter if they had had one.
And Aegon himself and Viceni and Rainey's were also the children
of a Valerian. So, right, their mother was
Valena Valerian and their dad was Lord Aryan.
So either way, Alyssa looked Valyrian.
Silvery blonde hair, purple eyes.
Now a Lara. Here's a little change.
Alyssa was said to be Targaryen on her mother's side in the
World of Ice and Fire, but then in Fire and Blood, it's changed
to a Lara Massey. So who is?
Not Targaryen, clearly, but she might have Targaryen in her
heritage, so it might have been less of a change than it sounds
like. Anyway, that's a small thing,
but fun little trivia there for you.
Hey, I could have made that the trivia today, but I didn't.
Either way, they were linked by blood because Amy's paternal
grandmother was villain of Valerian.
And that's they're all you know. All those Valorians will be
connected to her somehow. So this is the purpose may have
been the same as usual. Keep the blood of the dragon
pure. Now acknowledging we don't know
exactly what that means, we have our theories on what the blood
of the dragon pure means, but to the rest of the realm, it
probably just looked like they weren't willing to marry into
the realm they ruled over. They were keeping it close knit.
They were keeping it Valyrian, which that's not ideal,
especially because they're trying to adopt A lot of stuff
about the Seven Kingdoms. They're adopting the faith,
they're doing all these like house words and sigils and all
these other things. It's still an understandable
match from the Targaryen side of things because, well, it's not
an incestuous merit to them. It seems like a compromise
probably, you know, even though to some members of the faith of
like, no, we're not compromising over incest.
Like that's not something you compromise over.
It's like either you do it or you don't.
So was he trying to maybe gradually shift things, like
slowly break the realm into these issues that he knew would
be a problem? Or was he just kind of expecting
him to accept it because he's in charge and his family will be in
charge after him? Yeah, it's it's not clear.
And there's no evidence that they ever married into a non
Valyrian house prior to Egon either.
We don't know who his father's father and who Vasenia and
Rainey's grandparents married and all that.
We do hear that there was a marriage between Game and the
Glorious and a younger daughter, so there probably is actually
some evidence. I'm probably wrong about that.
There probably is at least a little evidence that there was
marriages to the Seven Kingdoms from the Targaryens, but but not
a lot of it. But even that one's not positive
because it might have been a Valarian or Celtigar or someone
else's Valyrian descent, but it's not sure.
Angies and Alyssa were born in the same year, so they were very
age appropriate. They had a lot in common.
This may have helped their marriage quite a bit that they
had so much in common, but maybe you know, sometimes people bring
out the worst in each other. You know, like you feed on each
other's worst qualities. You know some of these traits
they had were not helpful as rulers.
Like they both apparently liked to be loved and praised, which
is not a great trait for a ruler.
You need to be able to handle criticism and and being wrong
and things like that. However, there is some evidence
that this isn't that accurate when it comes to Alyssa.
Like Septon, Barth is the one that says she desired to be
loved, admired, and praised. There isn't really any evidence
for it. There is for Amy's We don't have
like like times when this happened And Septon Barth didn't
really know Alyssa that well. She know he knew her later in
life, but he didn't know her at this time.
So it might be a way to make Jaharis look a little better by
comparison. I'm not sure.
Either way, neither of them were big on making unpopular
decisions at first, though Alyssa's going to show that when
things get dangerous, she could totally handle herself and is
willing to do brave things and dangerous things where Amy's not
so much. I was going to make the point
that, you know, wanting praise, like almost any trait, it's not
automatically, completely, inherently bad.
It can be bad if you do it too much, right?
Yeah, it can be good because if you want praise, that means
you're going to do things that people like.
And that's a good thing for a leader, right?
But you can't only do things that people like.
Or sometimes some people like A and some people like B.
And you have to be able to decide between them.
And there's like a correct decision that you might avoid
because people will like 1. Yeah, there's the popular choice
and the right choice and they're not always the same annies.
What what I think is being suggested is Annies would rather
choose the popular shoot choice than the the one that maybe is
better for the realm. And it's maybe Bart is
suggesting that about Alyssa too.
But that's the thing. We're not so so.
Sure. And also, Barth is the one
deciding what's better for the realm.
So if he thinks it's better for the realm, for the maesters and
the church to get more money, but Amy thinks it's better for
the realm for the average person to get more money or be taxed
less or whatever, you know there's still going to be a
perspective of what's quote, UN quote better for the realm.
That that's true may or may not have been making bad decisions.
He might have been a better king at a different time.
He was not a king to follow his father, I don't think, at least
if we're being results oriented and well, we don't have much
else to go on other than the results here.
So in the year 23 AC moving forward, one more year Aegon and
Ainies fly to Sunspear to celebrate 10 years of peace with
Thorne. And let me tell you, I do not
suspect this was the most loose, fun event of all time you have.
You have Valerian and Quicksilver hanging out, so
there's always the thread of Dragons just right there.
And the Dornish were probably wondering what kind of guy this
Anis was. They probably heard a bit about
it when they met him. They're probably like, OK, well,
I'm not so worried about this guy.
This guy doesn't seem like he's going to come at us like his
father. So they probably felt some
measure of optimism. And this is the only son of the
queen who had been killed in Dorne.
I mean, this is the son of Raines.
They killed Raines in this country.
He would be about 16, Is that correct?
Yeah. Yeah, he was born in the year 7.
Right like this is like he's he's right in the throes of like
his majority becoming like he's about to be an adult properly.
Right, like. Rob Stark was already leading
armies this age. Yeah, like this is 16, is
considered a man by royal standards, by Westerosi
standards, and this is a Crown Prince.
So he he's been raised to be a leader.
You know, I have a thought here, kind of going back to something
from earlier too. The idea that Amy's was
travelling around with Aegon for all these royal progresses, one
that would have prepared him for this moment.
However awkward this moment is, he was better prepared.
He knew what to say. Negro would have been right.
Like if he had just been sitting around in Ivory tower somewhere,
he might not be as prepared for this sort of, like, interaction
with new people, diplomatic moment, etcetera, etcetera.
So however awkward it might have been, at least it wasn't quite
as bad as it of a set up as it could have been, right?
Yeah, observing the form, so to speak.
Yeah, all the court diplomacy and doing all the right things
and showing all the saying the right.
Smiling at the right time and complimenting people.
Yeah, all the stuff that we see. Yeah.
Picture Arya Hota observing the the court when there's the when
Doran gets the skull and some people are saying all the right
things, like, yes, we can finally put the enmity behind
us, even though everybody's like, no, we can't.
Some people are drinking, some people are not, are pouring
their drinks out. You know, that kind of stuff.
Another thought on this, and I haven't thought this out very
well, but I'm just thinking about the difference because a
lot of this is about the difference between Annies and
Megor. Did I wonder how different a
perspective and a personality and a leader they would have
developed into when Megor, not only, you know, being under
Vicinia, who would have had a different approach than Aegon,
but also the things he's observing are a little bit more
I I think people coming to the Targaryens where we need this
from you, right? You have all this power and we
need your assistance. Whereas Aegon is going out to
other people saying, hey, how can I assist you, right.
It's a it's a different interaction, it's a different
fundamental stand that they're taking when they interact with
the different people. And I wonder how much that leads
Magor to being a little bit more arrogant and maybe even
frustrated with people. Yeah, they're more of just like
a chore to him. Where is it?
I think you're right that Aegon and Amies would have much more
fun with with their experiences of dealing with petitioners and
and and a more positive spin on it.
Amy's especially. That's a great point.
He would love to be the guy that's giving people what they
want and giving them justice and being seen to be praised for
doing the right thing. And that's what a lot of you do
when you're holding court. You're like, hey, I have this
problem, King, can you settle this?
And he's like, yes, I can settle this.
And then he would probably take a lot of satisfaction that
whereas I agree with you, I think Megor and Vicini might
find that tedious. Yeah, and Amy's is part of
Aegon's intention is learning about these other people in
their cultures. Right.
So you have to. Listen to Megor's not learning
about the other people in the cultures.
He doesn't care and it feels. Like he has to deal with these
people where Annie's feels like he gets to go help them and I
could just see that that that start off in their careers
setting him in very different mindsets.
You know, it's a lot like Robert Baratheon that Robert Baratheon
isn't nearly as brutal as Megor, but he does like to fight that.
They have that in common. He liked to fight.
He wasn't mean or cruel about it or sadistic or psychopathic, but
he enjoyed fighting and he hated rule.
He thought it very tedious. He was boring to him.
He just was like, let me get out there and fight, and that's
Megor. Megor just wasn't.
Megor loves tournaments and all this other stuff.
But like, yeah, there's some real parallels there.
And so how much of that is Megor's DNA versus his
upbringing? Right.
Yeah, Yeah. The.
Thing he could do that was fun and to prove himself was go win
a tournament. The thing Amy's that could do
that was fun and to prove himself was go help out other
Lords. Yeah, So in a lot of ways, it
can. Happen when they're put in a
position of power. You might even see a why.
Aegon thought, hey, this is pretty good.
The one who's going to be in charge is the one that like can
has the patience for this. And the one that if anyone comes
at him, well, my second son will put them in their place.
He might have had a rose colored lens on like yeah, look how
perfect that is. You know I've got my warrior son
going to back up my ruling son. It's perfect.
Yeah. Well, not so much, but you can
see it that way. We might be looking at things in
a 2020 hindsight lens. True, right?
It didn't happen to work out. But is it definitely a mistake
that Aegon made? It's hard to say.
So if we're getting back to this peace conference or this peace
dinner, whatever we call it, Daria would have had some goals
or things to accomplish. One would you just make sure
this whole thing goes off without a hitch?
You know, make sure there's no violence.
You know, make sure it all goes fine.
Everybody sees that there's peace.
Everybody sees that they're not kowtowing to what the Targaryens
want. These are still independent
nations. But they'd also want to suss out
Amy's like, is this guy going to want revenge for his mother,
like his father did, You know, Like, how does he feel about it?
And I think they probably come away feeling pretty good about
it, because he's such a amiable, like nice person.
They'd probably be like, well, even this guy's really putting
on an act or he's not going to come at us.
And the latter was certainly true not to Aegon wouldn't have.
Ames wouldn't have time to come after him, or even if he had
wanted to His his reign's going to be beset by internal problems
like the idea of raising an army and going to Doran is would be
nuts given what's going to happen.
It's also worth noting that even if he is just putting on an act,
at least he understands he needs to put on the ACT.
That's also important. Yeah.
And so think about this from Egon's perspective.
He has to sit there and drink toasts and say nice things to
the people that he perceives as killing the person he loved most
in this world and may have tortured her afterwards and used
her life as a bargaining chip, potentially.
Oh yeah, talk about having to pretend it's a really.
Talk about having to put your diplomatic face first.
Because behind deep down he was probably feeling some things.
You know some anger, some sadness some a little of both.
Maybe a lot of both. Yeah, definitely.
He was having emotions though this couldn't have been just a
another trip S Nah, let me go get out of his dinner and then
we'll get this over with. No, I'm sure he had a lot like
another we we always have strong examples from A Song of Ice and
Fire for for these social situations.
I love it. Why?
I'm in manderly having to like, pretend to be happy with the
phrase the phrase who killed his son at the Red Wedding.
I mean, this man had to really pretend.
And he did a really good job. And he's continuing to keep that
up until he finally got the chance.
And then he let it out like, huh, You know, good.
Or he would have grown up to be a Fray, You know, he gets to
finally unleash his, what he's really been thinking all this
time murdering frays on the road and being like, I don't know
what happened to them, you know, So yeah.
And that's what they're the, the Dornish men are thinking.
They're like, well, he's saying these nice things, but is he
going to, like, have some of our people killed when we're not
looking like, what is this? You know, they they have to be
worried about revenge from someone so powerful.
I wonder if there's any part of this trip is to get vicinas or
to get renny's bodies back. I wonder if any of this is to as
part of the original letter that was sent.
Like if you keep the peace 10 years from now, you know.
Wouldn't be much body left to give.
There'd just be bones. But still, that's something.
Bones matter. But the Targaryen's burn their
body. Yeah, we never hear about her
body being returned, only the skull of Meraxis, which is,
Which is part of what makes the mystery a little deeper, 'cause
if we had the body that would, well, that would tell us a
little something that wouldn't tell us a whole lot.
But yeah, yeah, it's possible. But maybe that maybe he we
needed to keep that secret. Maybe the the reason we don't
know is because the people that do know needed to keep that
piece of its secret, to keep up the front of the piece or
whatever. I don't know.
It's just this is just another
piece to me. This is another piece of the
mystery. The fact that they go back ten
years later for this meeting and it goes well, that there's
another piece to consider to figure out what was in that
letter. Right on.
Yeah, I agree. I think it is worth considering.
By the way, a good point from Nina here is he still calls
himself King of the Roinar. He still declares himself their
king even though he had signed this Treaty of eternal peace.
He didn't stop calling himself their king, even though it
didn't have any, like, real authority behind it.
And of course they're going to keep saying that until it
actually does become true, you know, 160 years later, 170 ish.
Anyway, here's another point from Nina.
Maybe Aegon applied to Westerosi less than he might have learned
on his progresses and made a point of a public show of guest
right, asking for bread and salt for himself and his son.
Of course that would be important rather than just
showing up and being like, hey, this is a good like observing
the forms, diplomatic forms. This would be a quite positive
because that's an ultimate sign, using Westerosi culture of, you
know, I'm going to not murder you while you're here.
And if I do, then I deserve all the whatever, all the chagrin,
all the retribution shame. Yeah, like whatever Walter Frey
deserves. This is what they would deserve.
Because yes, he did give Rob bread and salt and then still
did all that. So it is a paper shield, but
it's a pretty big paper shield. And it's good on both sides,
too. Both.
It's assuring on both sides that this is going to go over well,
and it's they're both bought into Westerosi culture.
Yeah, and they showed up on their Dragons.
It's not like there isn't the unspoken threat there to back.
And was like, hey, if you murder us, who knows what those Dragons
will do, you know, you know. So yeah, and we know it was
Daria Martel ruling. We know Nymore died during that
10 years. He might have died right after
the peace. He might have died right before
this peace dinner. We don't really know, but either
way, seeing Diria again would be a pretty big deal.
I mean, she is the one who led that peace delegation, so
whether it was Nymore, you know, Nymore this Nymore that Diria is
the one who actually came to King's Landing and handed the
letter to Aegon and was like for your eyes only, Your Grace.
She's the one that took the risk to her person travelling with
Miraxis skull through dangerous territory.
She's the one that would have been seized and had awful things
happen to her if the suggestions at court had been accepted,
right? Like, make her, you know, put
her in a brothel, you know, cut her hand off all those things
like, so this is not in. This is a person who's been in
the Dragon's mouth and walked back out.
This is just a person that's gone through some things.
She's brave, or at least had done a very brave thing.
This is in some very fundamental ways different from the rest of
the progresses, but in some ways very similar to, like you said,
like bringing the Dragons with them is just this reminder, like
we're not at war right now, but don't forget we still have these
Dragons. You know, if if you prompted us
we would, it would just start burning you, burning your your
fields and your your cities and everything down again.
We we haven't, you know, lost what we had before.
Yeah. So it's interesting to trace
this meeting to what's going to happen when Aegon dies.
When Aegon dies, of course, lots of things are going to erupt.
Dorn is one of them. The Vulture King will emerge and
attack the Reach or the the the Marches which includes the
Reach. But mostly the storm lands.
Really Deary is going to claim I have nothing to do with this.
I got you know this isn't my you know this is Vulture King is is
a rebel. You know I have.
But is he it's it's certainly there's the idea that he might
be a a proxy or that she's helping him in secret, that she
really didn't get him started but she's happy to help him in
secret and to maybe do some things here and there.
Or just not going after him in and of itself.
Exactly. Just ignoring it.
Yeah. And saying, oh wait, this is out
of my hands. Yeah.
So if when she takes the measure of Prince Amy's here and sees
what kind of man he is, learns the kind of person he is, and
then gets to see the next 14 years, actually would be the
right number. And judging the kind of person
he is and and guesstimating that, hey, we could get away
with this under him, we might not be able to under Aegon, but
under this guy, yeah, absolutely.
So Yep, that's quite a thing. Let's turn our our eyes back to
the internal Targaryen scenario and talk about their marriages.
Quote. The tradition amongst the
Targaryens had always been to marry kin to kin.
Wedding brother to sister was thought to be ideal.
Failing that, a girl might wed an uncle, a cousin or a nephew,
a boy, a cousin, aunt or niece. This practice went back to old
Valyria, where it was common amongst many of the ancient
families, particularly those who bred and rode Dragons.
The blood of the dragon must remain pure, the wisdom went.
Some of the sorcerer Princess also took more than one wife
when it pleased them, though this was less common than
incestuous marriage. That last line is very peculiar
and and needs to be explored elsewhere.
It doesn't have much to do with what we're talking about today,
but the fact that it's Sorcerer Princess that did this and maybe
not some of the other ones makes me really curious.
Because when we asked George about blood magic and and incest
and old Valyria, he did say that the blood magicians also
practiced incest. So maybe then it sounds like
these things are related. If you have people who practice
blood magic and you have Valyrian Princess from the 40
families, some of them are both and maybe that's who these
sorcerer Princess are and maybe that's why they practice
polygamy and or incest because if they have permanently
affected their own genetics, they want to be able to spread
that by having children. Now it's still very interesting
as well that polygamy is less common than incestuous marriage
and Aegon's was both Aegon practiced a polygamous
incestuous marriage, so he just clearly thought he was above
both that I don't know. I don't know what he thought of
himself as compared to the others.
He probably just did what he thought he could get away with,
and that's fine. From where he's sitting, which
is the Iron Throne, that's where he's sitting.
This also clarifies for us that they don't seem to have any
qualms about any old pairing within the family aunt to
nephew, you know, little boy to because it doesn't matter.
Like any related if it's if it works, it works for them.
And apparently a lot of things work.
I guess all they really cared about was will this match
produce children A? Little rhyme for you where
they're. Like a rhyme?
Yeah, I love a good rhyme. Related consummate IT.
Nice. Those were the Targaryen's real
house words before they came to Westeros.
They were like. Related and consummated.
Incest is the best. Put your family to the test.
That's. Right, that's that.
They live there. That's the whole nation of
Valyria's motto. It's like, it's like in God we
trust for America or whatever. Let's have another quote
continuing on with the incest practice and Valyrian marriages,
etcetera. In Valyria, before the Doom,
wise men wrote 1000, Gods were honored, but none were feared,
so few dared to speak against these customs.
This was not true in Westeros, where the power of the faith
went unquestioned. Maybe that's why.
What would you say? I was like, I don't know, it was
completely unquestioned, like, OK, I think there's some
questioners. There is some people questioning
the power of the faith, definitely.
For example, the Targaryens like Megor absolutely questions their
power later and puts it to the test.
Or in the north of Dragon. Is technically part of Westeros
right now, at this very moment in bed at the right age.
And the Iron Islands questions it too.
Yeah, I think, yeah. The priests of relor.
Yeah, lots of people question it, but that might be part of
it. Maybe they were the the
Targaryens were just so used to doing whatever they wanted and
and it was just accepted that maybe they thought that the
faith would give them a little bit of a pass.
I don't know, really powerful people can sometimes just it.
It seems like a stretch to us. But when you have such power and
privilege, it's you might think that you can get away with
things that to us would be like unthinkable.
I guess also you could clarify, like maybe the Iron Islands
question, that the power of the faith is greater than their own
God's power, or question it whether it should be worshipped
or even whether it exists. But you can't question that the
faith has power, right? Maybe not ultimate power, or
maybe not the power we care about, but it clearly has
powers. Yeah.
So, yeah. And clearly has a lot of power
in, and that's part of why Aegon cozied up to it.
He's like, well, I'm going to, I'm not going to take on this
power structure. I'm going to sit at the, try to
sit at the top of it, or at least make it my friend.
And it starts to really matter because this is when the
Princess and princesses start to be born.
The big purpose of this episode is to show the the first birth
of the of the House of the Dragon in terms of family
members. And these are family members
that are going to be set to marry each other eventually, and
that's where the problems begin, or at least where the problems
are exacerbated. While Aenes was at this peace
dinner in Sunspear, it appears that his wife Alyssa was
pregnant because later in the year Reyna is born.
This is Aegon's first grandchild.
We're told he cried when he first held her, which is a
curious moment given all of the stoicism and lack of personality
assigned to him. But it might also be because of
Rainey's, like she's named for Rainey's.
This would have been her grandchild.
It's a girl. It might look like her probably
does in terms of hair and eyes. I mean they they have that sort
of. I wouldn't say it's all
homogeneous, but they it's it's a rare trait that only they have
for the most part in Westeros. Now, I'm not someone who thinks
crying is weakness, and many societies and throughout history
didn't either. Like if you ever read like
Homer, not Simpsons, but I do make that joke every single time
because it never gets old. But.
It makes me laugh every time. Yeah, so why would I stop?
Right. Achilles and the Greeks of the
Trojan War did not think it was unmanly.
For example, he cries a bunch of times, right?
He He cries when he's mad. He cries when he's Yeah, just
just what they did. It was a considered normal and
acceptable showing emotion. What's the big deal in world
with the same thing, the car theme.
They weep often and and freely, and it's not unmanly.
So George is certainly acknowledges that there's just
different societal views on men crying in Westeros.
It is unmanly. Let's be clear.
I'm not trying to make a point about what it should be like in
Westeros versus what it is. It is considered unmanly by a
lot of people in Westeros, especially the powerful people
in Westeros. So it is.
That's why it's a curious moment, The fact that they would
write this, the fact that it might be true, it definitely
humanizes Aegon a bit. Assuming it's true.
And Vesenia immediately proposes, proposes, not opposes,
the opposition will come from the other people, proposes
betrothing Reyna Tamegor. There's a big age gap.
But you know, obviously given what we just said with these
quotes, it's not that strange, especially given the the girl is
the younger one, which is the less unusual pairing, like when
you have a A1 year old boy married to a 12 year old girl.
That is a little unusual. Well, the marriage would be very
unusual. Their betrothal would be.
But even that even that happens, especially 'cause that is what's
going to happen to Megor. In fact, now you can see the
sense in this arrangement though, even with the despite
the the age gap, it unites the two lines it it removes
questions of succession. It is.
This is when I we talk about Vesenia and her aim with her son
earlier. This says unity between the
families, 2 branches of the family.
She's trying to create unity. Yes, it's also a power move for
her branch of the family, which is the lesser branch in terms of
prestige. But you can't just put it on all
onto that. You know what I mean?
Because it absolutely would have created stability in theory.
Of course, who knows how it would have really gone if they
had actually gotten married and all that, but and.
It doesn't take away power from the other branch either, right?
In fact, in almost any other marriage.
Takes more power away than this would, yeah.
It makes it 1 branch. It almost just create.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
So now it could have complicated.
Things could have been complicated by this arrangement
if a Nice and Alyssa followed up with a son.
So now you have Megor and Rayna married together and then they
have a son. So who gets precedence 'cause
you could say, well, Rayna, you say, well, they Zenya wasn't
Lady of Dragonstone, so the Targaryens clearly have this
male thing going on, so it should pass to the boy.
But if Megor is already married to Rain and they've already got
a paired Targaryen Princess Prince, why would they skip that
over? You know, so it might have.
It might have actually created some new complications rather
than just settling the other one.
So it's possible that could have been a problem.
Some other complications might have come from the 12 year old
aggressive, arrogant boy going through puberty, expected to
wait for the newborn baby to grow up and marry him like he's
going to sleep around, right? And probably have some.
Masters or not agree to the marriage or who knows, but
that's probably not going to go perfectly smooth away all the
adults once. Good point.
And either way it comes up, the rejections come immediately.
Apparently Aegon never weighs in, which is interesting.
The High Septon's like, no, and he says no, we didn't.
We can't accept that. And Amy's and Alyssa say no too.
So that's just it. And like, unless Aegon orders
them to accept it, that's the end of it.
So this could really matter later.
This rejection could matter. Keep this in your back pocket.
Don't forget about this rejection.
It might be. It might be taken personally by
Visenya, by Megor, or by both of them.
We know why The High Septon says.
No, that's very straightforward, but it's actually not quite so
straightforward. It's not just about the incest
marriage, because Amy's and Alyssa go ahead and marry their
children together anyway, so they weren't worried about that.
They weren't worried about the incest aspect to Megor and and
Rayna, they go ahead and marry their daughter and their son
together anyway, so that's not it.
But Megor is going to marry a Hightower, so his refusal to
accept Megor's marriage to Rayna does become his does become a
marriage to the family that's closest to the the I septic.
I wonder why did Amy's refuse it?
Why? I wonder what their angle was.
I don't know, it might have been more about Alyssa.
Alyssa didn't seem to like Megor, and oh gosh, I wonder
why. I mean, the dude was full of red
with a walking red flag, but it might have just been that just
that Megor was like, no, we don't want to want that.
Or they wanted to keep it within their own family.
They they they were set on having a son to marry their
daughter and that's what they wanted.
Yeah, we were like, let's marry her to our first born son, keep
it age appropriate. And again, I think it's very
likely they both, or won or whatever saw Magor's red flags.
Yeah, he's 12 at this time. Well, keep that in mind.
He had no friends. He'd already shown violence
towards animals and violence, maybe violence towards, like,
servants. So yeah, lots of red flags.
And they might have been worried about his ambition.
He might have shown red flags about ambition as well, which
would have been, Oh yeah, like, what's he going to do?
Like we don't want to marry our daughter to this man, just as
parents. We don't want this man to marry
our our daughter. Just that's that, that simple.
It could be that simple, but I imagine it isn't just one
reason. It's probably multiple reasons.
And I'm still just it's really interesting about Aegon not
weighing in at all that we know of.
Maybe he just agreed he's like yeah, let's let's not do that
And he but he didn't feel the need to say so because it would
rub it in Vicenia and and Meghor's faces but they still
might they might have been upset that he didn't force it or weigh
in. I mean like, why don't you have
something to say here, King? Yeah, I mean, I wonder if he was
like, it's the prerogative of the parents.
They are the parents. I'm not.
It's not my decision. He's the king someday.
I don't tell who. I'm not going to decide who
marries who unless I have to. And yeah.
Except he or his agents had been doing that for people left and
right across the realm here to suddenly now not do it.
But not not for his there and the future king and like who's
now has his first born child. I don't know.
I could see it as being this is your you know, testing ground,
as it were. And this is your one of your
first big things that you're doing on your own.
I don't know. I think him treating 80s
differently than everyone else in the realm makes sense.
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, he maybe he needed to give
his son his own agency. It's, it's it's one of those
interesting things, though. Like, if this were made into a
show, there would be a lot of drama around this.
I mean, just think about the scene when Olena and Marjorie go
to question songs about Joffrey, right?
Like there might be some parallel to that.
I I wonder how much Anis was blind to it, or very aware of
it, and how much anyone else would have had to be like.
No, look like Anis. Be real with yourself.
He's not all there or something like that.
Or if Amies knew it and like that's my question is whether
Amies kind of had rose colored glasses and wanted to look
because like, think about this, this is like his little brother,
right. And like, you might.
Yeah. Yeah.
But you might think that he would have some real, like
warmth in his heart for him and not one of, especially if he's
12 years old. Only he might be like, no, he's
still a boy. He's still you.
You might think that Amies wouldn't just think of him as a
lost cause. Yeah, and he's a 17 by remind
ourselves at this point. Alyssa, also 17.
We see Viserys let Damon get away with a lot, too.
Oh yeah, right. Very true.
But we also see, I think
Versaries is not unaware of his proclivities or issues as well,
right? Like he isn't completely just
like blinders on either. Yeah.
And Viserys did have, did show some spine occasionally.
Now Amis, Will as well Amis was going to like exiled Agor, which
is you obviously don't do that lightly.
And that showed some. He wasn't afraid of him, you
know. But he had to be pushed pretty
far. Kind of like Viserys had to be
pushed pretty far to like come down on Damon.
So yeah. So maybe just Aegon.
Another way to look is maybe Aegon just isn't that active of
a family patriarch. He's like you said, Shawnee is
more concerned with the realm he's on his progresses all the
time. And Amis was with him a lot of
progresses and Alyssa was as well, although this would be her
participation in the progresses would have to slow down I think
because she's about, she's going to have five children over the
next 10 years ish. So definitely pregnancies and
royal progresses aren't always able to happen at the same time.
I mean, you know, you're one or two months in, sure travel a
bit, but. Well, that's my other question
is. Six months pregnant?
No, you're not going on royal progress.
Well, how many times were they, like, out on royal progress?
And they're like, oh, I'm she's pregnant.
And then they like, stay somewhere longer or fly her back
on the dragon quickly? I don't know.
That's nice. You could just take her dragon
back home. Yeah, yeah.
That's why I don't know. I'm not sure if I think it's
more or less likely, but. Air Force One, Targaryen Force
One. Just fly that back.
I guess hers would be Force 4 Valerians #1.
So yeah. So yeah, it's it's really
interesting how Aegon just doesn't pop up.
All these family disputes, all these things have happened.
It's like why isn't Aegon? He just isn't present for any of
this. It's just really interesting how
often he's just like, well, yeah, figure it out yourselves.
Y'all, which I somewhat respect. Figure it out yourselves.
But you kind of she should weigh in sometimes.
You know, they they're they're 17.
Like I just said, like, like, yes, it's good to like let them
be adults, but they're not. I mean, by the standards of his
society, they are. But they're teenagers.
Come on, come on, man. Yeah.
And it's also not super clear to me where like the rest of the
family who spent their time because the the 20s were a
decade where the Targaryen family exploded in terms of
numbers as Amy's and Elicit, like I said, just kept having
kids and well, where where were they?
Where were they at the Aegon Fort where they Dragonstone.
Like which? Which was their place to be in
between. Because we hear about this
incident where Alyssa teases Megor about not having a dragon.
It's like, what are you afraid? You know?
And we'll come back to that later.
But that clearly means they were at the same location at that
time. And Reyna, the first born, is
going to take on like the real older sister mode.
She's going to mother her younger siblings.
And I wonder if that's partly because their parents were gone
a lot on their progresses or whatever.
She kind of had to be a second mother to her younger siblings
because her parents were king and queen and well, they're
rather busy and traveling a lot and didn't have time to be full
time parents. And a lot of they were probably
raised a lot by maesters and nursemaids and other servants
and men at arms and things like that.
So Reyna seems to have had that nurturing instinct and yeah, so
probably back and forth. I mean, there's probably no,
there isn't one answer to this. Sometimes they would be a
Dragonstone, sometimes they would be a King's Landing,
sometimes they would be at the Egg on Fort.
Later they'll be at the Red Keep.
But the Red Keep won't exist until after Aegon's reign is
over. It will be started during it,
but it won't be finished till later.
So there has to have been some movement here and there, and
that would create all sorts of interesting different scenarios
with different people and different flexible courts
scenarios of different people there.
And anyway, I'm rambling, let's move on.
You know, there's a lot of ways that you can describe something
you like to get people interested in it.
And if you're a a show like ours, if you describe a product
that you use or that you're pitching, of course one of the
reasons you're pitching it is 'cause you've got a company
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Sometimes it's good to have a little more real information,
like behind the scenes, like what's really going on here?
Are they just pitching this product to me because they're
being paid or do they really like it?
Well, one of the best ways I think we can prove that we are
really, really genuinely behind this magic mine beverage is that
they gave us a good amount of it to help you know it.
They gave us a box of it. We drank it.
They gave us another box of it. We dressed both locations, Sean
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for some of the effects to really take hold.
So it makes sense that we'd spread that out a bit.
Now it's been a few months, so we've mostly run through our
free product. Ashay and I bought it ourselves.
We're still pitching it, but we bought it with our own money.
I did too. I mean, I think that says a lot.
I mean, right, you we actually have invested in this ourselves.
So yeah, we're we're fully bought in, I guess you could say
and you can go to get some yourself.
You can get in it with us. Magicmind.com Westeros is where
you can go to get 56% off your subscription.
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Magic minds helped out with that.
So yeah, Westeros 20 Magic mind.com/westeros.
OK, let's move on. Let's talk a little bit update
on our topics. Moot going over going on over at
patreon.com/history of Westeros, we ran an authorial poll and
then a historical influence poll and then ran the winners of
those two polls against each other.
And the top vote getter was the Wars of the Roses.
So we'll be doing an episode on that.
It might actually take more than one.
We'll see. And an episode on Rome Rome's
parallels and influence on a song by some fire but in 3rd
place was a tie. So we're going to have to have a
run off. That's pretty exciting.
We have never had a pole run off before.
Figures. Where'd it run off to?
I don't. Know it ran.
It ran off to tie the knot. So we're gonna, yeah, we're
gonna, we're gonna have a run off for that.
Like I said, it's the first time it's ever happened.
Pretty exciting figures that it would happen during topics moot
something poll related. That's never happened to us
before. And the run off is between Jr.
Tokian and the black dinner. The black dinner was the
influence for the Red Wedding. And Jr.
Tokian is Jr. Tokian, the guy who wrote Lord
of the Rings. Of course you've heard of him.
He's the George RR Martin's favorite author, so that's
obviously a big influence on him.
He was also an inspiration for one of South Park's characters.
Yes, I suppose that's true. We also have a poll running
right now, young POV character versus young non POV characters.
We did one poll for each and the winners advance to compete
against each other at the end. The six winners which are
currently being voted on are Eamon, Melisandre, old man, So
young man for purposes of that episode, Jaime Lannister virus
and Barristan. One of those is not like the
others, and I mean you, Jaime Lannister, because all these
characters are pretty old, because it makes sense that
people would pick for looking at their young life.
People would pick characters that have a lot of relatively
younger life to talk about. You know, the older you are, the
more your young life can span I suppose.
And. Yeah, I found funny was that
Jamie got like a good 20 or 30 more votes than Cersei.
Even though and they both crush Tyrion too, like.
And even though it's a similar childhood, yeah.
Yeah. I I find it funny, the idea that
we could do an episode on the War of the Roses.
Yeah, it's going to take more. Rome for that matter.
Rome might actually be less because I think the influences
are not so huge. There's some big ones, and Rome
itself is just so influential. But you know, like about.
It every day. You think about the Roman Empire
every day, of course, like the meme says, you know, and yeah,
'cause it's like Westeros isn't particularly like Rome.
Slaver's Bay and old Valyria have some things in common.
But yeah, there's there's things to say, that's for sure.
And we'll be digging into that 'cause that was the second
highest vote getter. All right, let's let's get back
to our topic. Today.
We are in the year 25 AC. Now Megor has a big year.
There's a melee. He's 13 years old and he wins
it. Veteran Knights taken down by
Megor. Very proud moment for him, very
proud for his dad and his mom, most likely Vasenia, probably
nodding and like, that's right, that's my son right there.
And then she marry. Or then he marries Cerise
Hightower in Old Town. She was 23.
So instead of someone, instead of marrying someone 12 years
younger than him, he married someone 10 years older than him.
It was the melee at Old Town too.
Might have been, it might have been, I don't know.
We have no idea where the melee was, but he married her the same
year, so it makes sense. Old Town would be a likely
enough place for such an event, but really it could have been
anywhere. It could have been King's
Landing, probably not Dragonstone, a little bit
remote, but it's possible, and it's a political marriage that
has a lot of sense to it. For Aegon, it again connects him
to the Faith, who he's trying to cozy up to, and the High Towers
are about as close as you can get to the Faith.
And Cerise was the niece of the current High Septon as well as
the daughter of the Lord of the High Tower, So it really ties
them directly to both. So when we say it's a perfect
marriage, like Cerise was a really perfect candidate because
of her unique connection to both the High Septon and House heist
hat. I always struggle to say house
High Tower, which is part of why they were willing to be a little
loose with the ages. Here they're like, yeah, 13 year
old boy, 23 year old woman. That's not usually how they do
these marriages, but it's not exactly unprecedented either.
He was so sure. Now we go into some more detail
on this in our Under the Dragons House Hightower episodes.
There's two of them, but we're focusing on it from the
Targaryen angle this time. A son for House Targaryen is
what Megor declared he made very confidently that wedding night,
but of course he did not. Had he done so, it would have
been the first grandson for Aegon.
And that's an interesting race, you know, like where they was
Meghor wanting to have the first grandson for the house, You
know, he's like, well, he wasn't the first son, but he couldn't
make the first grandson. But you know, the other reason
for him to want that is that might be a son to marry Rayna.
If his son marries Rayna, who's that would be age appropriate
and it would be harder for Ames and Elisa to say no to that.
And they might not say no to it cause like just cause it's
Megor's son, doesn't mean it's going to be like Megor.
They might be worried about that and they might want to hold off
for a few years just to find out if he's got the Megor you know,
DNA too much of it. But it would be harder to say no
to not from the Hyseptan's perspective, although maybe it
would have, because that would have been a Hightower baby as
well. So what a what an interesting
child that would have been a boy if Megor had had a boy with
Cerise Hightower before Raina and Annies had their baby egg
on. Oh boy, would that have been
interesting. You know, another motivation for
Megor to have a son is Cerise Hightower might have just been
hot. That's.
True, that's good motivation right there.
Yeah, and so this is the Greens. Before the Greens, right?
This was, this was if they had had any kids, it would have
become like a scenario, a lot like the Greens.
But since they had no children, then that just was cut off
before it could become a thing, and it still was kind of a
thing. It just wasn't as much as a
thing as it could have been because there wasn't other
Princess and princelings involved.
And other like, alliances would have been made, other marriages
would have been made, and it would have just made the whole
thing a bigger mess. Yeah.
And because of the way Westeros is such a patriarchal society,
if Megor has a son, that just makes him more of a man.
That's just how Westeros works. It's kind of hard for us to
think that in on those terms or to put ourselves in those shoes.
But fathering sons is considered manly.
Fathering Daughters is considered Manly too, but he
couldn't do either. But especially Fathering Sons is
considering Manly and Westeros as much as, yeah, she was
supposed to father sons, be good at fighting and not cry.
That's Westeros Manhood in a in a nutshell, right there.
And Megor continues to refuse hatchlings all throughout this
time. He's still like, no, I don't
want any, I don't want any stupid hatchling, a half dozen
different hatchlings. He refuses.
So it's clearly not about the color or the the the horns or
how long the neck is or whatever other traits you look for in a
hatchling. And we don't know when this
happened. This probably wasn't just like
one day they brought him six hatchlings on a platter and he
refused them all. It was probably one in the first
year, then another one a few months later, and then here's
another one that just hatched. Maybe he likes green.
Here's a green dragon for you, Meg.
Or no, he doesn't like green. Well, here's a here's a pink
one. No, he definitely doesn't like
pink. So this might be when Alyssa
teased him about, not about being afraid of Dragons.
And there's a chance she knew she figured it out.
Alyssa is smart. She might understand what he's
doing by refusing these hatchlings.
She might get that she's waiting for the big one, because what
else would he be doing? She doesn't really think he's
scared. You know?
I don't. That doesn't make sense.
But if she does, the old Back to the Future, what are you,
chicken? Are you yellow All that sort of
that sort of thing? Then yeah, it might actually
work to make Megor lose his cool.
And no, I'm not chicken. I'll tame a dragon right now.
Didn't work. Didn't.
Work. But it was worth the try.
Yeah, because that's a very powerful spell, those 4 words.
It's the simplest cast spell in Westeros.
What are you scared? And like variations, like Ashaya
said, what are you chicken or why are you scared?
It's the most provocative question in Westeros.
It's also very provocative in 1985 and in the old.
West Yes, it's it's the most powerful spell on men it's ever
existed. The most powerful 4 words ever
existed for challenging, aggressive man.
Yeah, you have to use the right inflection and tone, right?
What are you scared like? It adds more juice to the It's
like more mana is put into the spell.
Especially coming from Alyssa, like herself a woman.
Exactly. Yes, that's right.
Right. So she may have figured it out
that he was trying to go for a bigger dragon.
It might have been like, well, I don't want him to do that.
Maybe I can talk him into through, through shame, into
taking a smaller dragon now. That's another scenario I'd want
to see the details play out on screen.
I bet he was motivated by that and did want to tame a dragon if
Vicinia had to stop him. He was like, no, yeah, I'm like,
no, wait, Patience, my son. I haven't counseled you patience
in many things, but patience in this one is a good thing.
I wonder which hatchlings those were.
I mean, dream Fire doesn't work. Dream Fire's the oldest one I
could think of. But Dream Fire is a hatchling a
few years from now, so it doesn't quite work.
I don't think they stay hatchlings for six years or
eight years, so I don't think that works.
My best guess is one of them was the cannibal.
And boy, if a dragon ever exudes Megor personality, it's that
one. The one that eats its own, you
know, and and it has no loyalty towards its own.
So much so. And it's even black with green
eyes just like shaggy dog, those colors.
Something about that coloration is very demonic or self fighting
if you think about the blacks versus the greens when the
cannibal was alive. So again, yeah, so again Eamon
comes back to us here, Eamon, we'll wait and then claim Vegar
as soon as Vegar comes available.
Similar, very similar and in fact who.
Not to confuse Y'all, but who was the rider of Veigar before
Amond is Lena from 1 faction to another is kind of the point.
The big Dragon shifts factions. So this is also the same year
that King's Landing moves into third place size wise bigger
than Gault Town and White Harbor.
Better access to foreign markets because of its proximity to the
Free Cities as compared to like Old Town and Landsport.
It's it's closer to them. Lots of merchants would see an
opportunity to get in on the ground floor in a burgeoning
market. Well, get in.
In King's Landing in the year 25, you're sitting pretty.
Another 10 years go by you've you're established you got 10
years in the city that's grown around you and your your
business will grow with. It might be easier to get
started at a new city than it is to break into the existing
markets of Lannisport and Old Town where they already are
probably well occupied by the existing rich powers, right?
Like the existing got to be in with the high towers, you got to
be in with the Lannisters, or at least the people that they're in
with to to get a good deal, get some brakes on customs or
whatever. And especially when you consider
like the scale of things and the age of these cities.
Like it's not necessarily even like these upper Lords you're
competing with just the the the random local farmers.
They already own their land and pass it on to their families for
generations. On all the area around Lannis
Port or Old Town or wherever else but King's Landing, there's
plenty of new farmland for anyone to make a stake on.
Right. Yeah, absolutely.
And a lot of the Lords of the Narrow Sea as well, their
fortunes rose significantly. Driftmark and Dragonstone
itself, and of course Matthew's Hook and Claw Isle.
These places have gained significant wealth and power
just partly just because of their connection to the
Targaryen royal House, but also just because this era of growth
has has enabled every the rising tide lifts all boats, so all the
Free Cities would trade with them more too.
They'd all have more money to spend and they'd all be
potential in routes to the Targaryen like make friends with
the Celtic cars. Maybe that gets me in with the
Targaryen later that might not. They might not have cared about
that as much 100 years ago and and they would have less reason
to. So it all, it all stands to
reason. So new connections for the Lords
of the Narrow Sea. All sorts of benefits in this
region and and growth. Consider the difference in
perspective that we turn it back to the human side of things.
Aegon and Vesenia and Oris and and Ethan Valarian and Osman
Strong and a lot of these other guys would remember what it was
like before King's Landing even existed.
And now you have these new Targaryens, these kids on my
lawn, on their lawn, who were born into a world where it's
already the third largest city in in in just like a generation
and 1/2. Or maybe you can call it two
generations. I don't know.
It's just a world of difference. Like the world one.
In my day, we didn't have this giant smelly city.
Like it literally wasn't here. And these aren't like old
people. These aren't like people in
their 80s. And this isn't like Walder Frey,
like I lived during the Blackfyre rebellions.
No, this is this wasn't that long ago.
This is like us thinking back on like 911 or something or
something, the turn of the century.
Like it's not that long ago historically speaking.
But from a perspective wise, like no city versus huge city,
that's just such a bigger difference.
And like Reyna and Alyssa and Aegon and young Aegon were born
into this world where King's Landing existed.
And Aegon and Viceni were like, yeah, these kids today don't
know what it was like before. The following year is the year
26. So the year 25 was one of the
most bustling years, 26, a little less so.
But Aegon was born the first grandson.
Pretty big deal. So all the Megor must have been
disappointed. Vicenia maybe as well.
Certainly Alyssa and Amyes were not disappointed.
They may have been relieved. Who knows?
Like, they were like, oh, we beat Megor, you know, didn't
want that to happen. And now it it just seals all up,
like, OK, we can keep it within the family.
So as there may be relaxing a bit and knowing that they can
create, keep it all on their side of the family.
That creates problems down the road for how the faith is going
to react to all this. And it will be a big problem.
Oren Baratheon is going to be born the same year as well.
He's going to have an entertaining life, a life that
will entertain us, us readers. He's not necessarily going to be
a happy person or have things go out or go well for him, but he
is going to provide us with some entertainment.
He's a younger brother of Rogar Baratheon, who of course will be
driving all the Baratheon activity moving forward,
starting right around the time Ain't E becomes King.
So we're still a decade away from that.
But I like to point out when these figures are born because
their early lives matter too. It's also the year the walls are
finished. So we talked about those walls.
That Walls project took six years.
And this will be a good example of like another mark in King's
Landings growth. That would be a a milestone in
its development that would parse its existence as a difference
between those who saw it when it was young or non existent versus
those who are like, wow, it got walls today.
You know, that's a change. Like, Yep, that's nothing
compared to when it wasn't here at all.
Not much to say about the year 27, so we'll skip to the year
28. There was a great tournament at
River Run in the year 28. This was possibly still Lord
Edmund Tully. We don't know how long he lived.
Remember, this is the guy that became Hand of the King in the
year 7 and then quit in the year 9 when his wife died in
childbirth. And he's also, of course, the
same guy that's Lord Paramount of the Trident, and that might
be, you know, he's doing his thing as Lord Paramount,
throwing a tournament. And this is a great tournament,
not just a small tournament, great tournament like one of the
like like Ashford Meadows or something like that.
So if he were not Lord Paramount of the Trident, he might not
have had this tournament, and honestly, honestly, probably
wasn't Lord Edmond by this time. But it it might have been.
I mean, Aegon's still alive, so why not Lord Edmond either way,
The more important thing that happened at this event, I think,
is that Megor increases his reputation.
You remember he won that melee before, which was pretty
impressive, but this time he beats three nights of the
Kingsguard in a row in the joust.
He does eventually lose to somebody, we don't know who, and
then goes on to win the Melee. So he's won another Melee, and
that's as impressive as it sounds like I we have no reason
to think people were losing to him on purpose.
Like we sort of suspect might have happened for Rhaegar at the
tournament at lands for not that Rhaegar wasn't a good word, he
was, but we still have evidence to suggest the possibility that
they lost him on purpose because of Tywin's plan to marry him to
Cersei. But regardless, there's none of
that here. Megar's already married.
You know, maybe they just want to make Megor look good, but it
doesn't seem very likely. Three different nights, the
Kingsguard agreeing to lose after he's already proven
himself a great warrior. This seems legit to me.
I have no reason to suspect it's not.
I think there's some reason to suspect it's not, but I I don't.
I think the default is to accept it, but I think there is some
reason because we've seen other examples of bouts being thrown
and there might even be some fear of retribution for Megor if
they beat him or something. Like that?
Yeah, that's possible. Now one of those three nights of
the Kingsguard might have been this very same Lord Commander
Coralis Valarium that we've mentioned a few times.
That would be brother to the master ships, Lord Ethan, and
would be thus A relation, probably the uncle of of Alyssa.
So if the division between the family started by this point, if
the the lines between the Ames branch and the Magor branch have
have developed, if they're a thing already, well that would
be a reason to not lose to him on purpose for sure like Lord if
if if the Lord Commander is taking the side of his kin, he's
definitely not tanking it for for Megor and he's also not
going to be afraid of him I don't think.
I mean this is the Lord Commander, the Kingsguard, he's
probably not afraid of anybody. Meanwhile Megor is rewarded for
this by being knighted becomes the youngest knight in the realm
and that's why I mentioned this whole.
Did anyone lose on purpose thing?
Because the youngest knight in the realm, and he happens to be
the A Prince. Yeah, it seems like he really
did earn it, though it doesn't. Again, doesn't, doesn't come up
as nepotism. Maybe a little bit, but but not
too much. Aegon knighted him personally,
too, so that had to be a good feeling for Megor, and Vicena
would have been happy with that. And it wasn't.
It was an impressive accomplishment, assuming it was
all as legit as it looked. I will say depends on what you
mean by earn it. Because you know, as you're
going to point out here in a second, I think that Gregor
might be a legitimate physical force on the battlefield, but I
don't think he earned being a knight.
There's more to being a knight than just being a great fighter.
They said yeah I agree and Westeros tends to forget that.
Westeros tends to forget about the the non fighting parts of
knighthood which is why people like Sandor are disgusted with
the the idea in the 1st place and you get it.
I understand why Sandor hates it cuz yeah that is pretty blatant
society wide hypocrisy. Very few people push true
knighthood in the way that, like a Sansa thinks about it, or even
someone that's not attaching naive views to it, which Sansa
doesn't anymore. But I meant younger Sansa, of
course. So yeah, you're right to bring
up Gregor Cuz Megor even the name sounds kind of similar.
I mean, this is a man who will be an awful lot like Gregor,
especially in that they are both awful a lot.
So yeah, a lot. Awful.
Let's move up to the year 29 AC. One more year Prince Viserys is
born. This is the first Viserys that
we know of. Not Viserys the first though.
He will eventually be Squire to Megor and would be very popular
in the realm. Though he will never ride a
dragon with those walls finished three years prior they had more
options now they could actually afford they were like OK, I'm
worried about what's going to happen to King's Landing when
I'm not here. Now they don't have to worry
about they're like well we got walls I can go elsewhere and and
we're not so worried about some invasion happening so they went
on the offensive and by they I mean the council.
Aegon was not part of this. Sir Osman Strong handed the king
went with Lord Ethan Valorian, master of ships, to the Step
Stones to fight Sargoso San, the pirate King and apparent
ancestor of Salador. Presumably this is something
along the lines of what we see in House of the Dragon, or
various times when the Step Stones have been a problem for
Westeros, which is some sort of pirate king or the equivalent.
It might be a nation like Mirror Lis or Volantis or a grouping of
them or Tyrosh holding it and then exacting finds as if there
were some sort of pirate king seizing vessels and taking
stuff. Little of 1 little of the other
they're they're end up being kind of similar.
So that's probably what the Salador or Sargoso san fellow
was doing. So they had to go after him.
They sent their fleet, went after him and Megor went with
them. Oh yeah, 17 year old Megor and I
got a picture of this guy like I I've my head cannon is like
Victorian, he's in his armor. He doesn't have an axe, but he's
got dark sister, right? And whoa, right, Dark sister in
hand. I think I forgot to mention that
he was given dark sister. Would Dark Sister look a little
puny in his hands though? I wondered about that.
Yeah, Like, was it Ben More? For Vasenia, it's definitely not
a big, big old blade and he's a big old guy.
Yeah, he is a big old guy now, aiming The dragon Knight was
also a large man and it didn't. Apparently no one ever said it
looks small in his hand and while you won't rework the
blade, you might rework the hilt.
You could be give it a bigger hilt and so that would might
make it more appropriate for Meghor's hand.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's a big guy, but if he's sold an M16,
your thought isn't What a puny gun?
Right like he. Could hold a bigger gun, but a
sword is a sword. You know it's still a long
sword. Even if it's a relatively small
long sword, it's still a long sword.
Good point. Yeah, so he must have killed
some pirates. I mean, I can't imagine he
wouldn't have been, but what a what a sight he was must have
made. You're like some pirate on a
ship and you come to the rails, crash together and men are
boarding and you're like, that guy hops over the rail.
You're like, whoa, I'd rather fight someone else.
The Ironborn would prove Victor Iron would be like.
Yeah, now that guy not afraid of drowning.
Yeah. Now, honestly, I have no eyes
fall overboard. I don't fall overboard.
Yeah. Now I have no idea if Megor
actually wore his armor. I just feel like he just seems
like he would. I'm just like guessing and feel
like it's a good guess. Now, he would have had some
people with him. He would have had some sworn
Shields, You know, his father and mother would have been like,
well, you're not going entirely by yourself here, you know?
You know you're with Lord Ethan Osmond Strong, but it might not
have included Kingsguard. They might have been.
It is more Princess and Prince lings for them to guard.
And and let's be honest Megor needs less guarding than just
about anyone else in the family. But he's they still would have
had some some guys with him probably.
And this is important because this is the first time that in
under Aegon's reign that they do a Marshall activity outside of
the Kingdom. Unless you count Dorn, you know
and this wasn't conquest either. So it was.
It was military action in a nearby territory designed to
presumably make things better for them, but would also
probably make things better for the Free Cities around as well.
It probably was, except for maybe lease cause.
Sargasso's son is lysine, so he might have been backed by
elements there, but maybe not, maybe not.
It may have also been Sargasso who attacked Tall Trees Town.
He might have been the one that that pulled off that daring
raid, though I imagine they would have said so if if that
was the case. Speaking of important navigators
and and seamen, AC Woman, an important sea woman, was born
this year. Alyssa Farman of Sun Chaser
fame. But of course her her campaign
wouldn't be for a couple of decades and the campaign against
Sargoso may not have succeeded. Well, it definitely didn't
succeed because they went back the following year and maybe I I
don't think the first time was a disaster given that it was the
exact same group of leaders in Meghor again.
Or maybe that's just the way it's written, makes it sound
like they went twice. Maybe it was just a two year
campaign, I'm not entirely sure either way.
Depends on how you define success, right?
Like because we went to a war in Iraq in the 90s and that was one
of the most successful military operations of all time, and we
went back again 10 years later. It doesn't mean we didn't
succeed the first time. That's true.
And the San family clearly
continued. So it didn't wipe them out like
they they clearly kept on going. Maybe they just maybe he just
sailed off into the sunset to enjoy his wealth somewhere else.
And again, the connections, at least here, are interesting.
Not just because they might have been backing him or not, but
because Aegon helped the Lysenti at the end of the Century of
blood. Pray recall how he burnt a
volunteer fleet that was preparing to invade lice.
So yeah, that's that's that's important to keep in mind
though. Rebellions were curbed by the
thought of Aegon and Valerian etcetera.
We didn't have any rebellions inside Westeros during Aegon's
reign. There were still, you know,
smaller scale problems. Bandit leaders, robber Knights,
pirate kings. Guys we just saw.
Although technically Sargoso wasn't operating in Westeros, he
was affecting Westeros. And still, this was another
reason to have walls, right? Like a powerful enough bandit
leader could have, you know, raided King's Landing.
It wouldn't be the same scale, they wouldn't be carrying off
slaves to other continents, but it could have done some damage.
One example is the so-called Giant of the Trident.
We don't know his real name. Must have been a very notable
Robert Knight given he was remembered by the histories.
Robber Knight is usually not going to be a problem for the
king or the hand or the royal family at all, really.
That's usually something for just some house to take care of,
you know, House tall, you take care of that house Harrenhal
take care of that. But clearly they didn't.
They couldn't. This guy was such a problem that
they needed to go up the chain for bigger help.
This is kind of like Dagon Greyjoy, who just busted out and
started attacking the West Coast of Westeros.
And Bloodraven's like Lannisters, Starks, you deal
with that. And they tried to and they
couldn't. So he had to send some help,
which was embarrassing for everyone involved.
Except. Except the Ironborn.
Yeah, who were like, yeah, until they lost.
And then they were like, oh, that wasn't worth it, was it?
But it was a great ride. Yeah.
So this guy was pretty clearly operating in the Riverlands,
given his name was the Giant of the Trident.
But, and it's hard not to think of Gregor Clegaine or the
smiling knight who Jamie remembers as the Gregor Clegaine
of his day, half as big but twice as mad.
So yeah, there's clearly men like this have exist from time
to time, people who are such a problem that the the royal house
has to get involved. So yeah, so clearly it's Hullys.
Or the Harrenhalls. The Harrenhalls.
The Co Harris's Kohairai. I don't even know what to call
these people could stop him. And the reason I mentioned the
Kohairai Gargon the guest, that awful man who was in charge,
He's a Tully grandson, so he's connected to the Lord's
Paramount of the Trident. But neither the Blackwoods or
the Strongs or the Brackens or whoever couldn't stop this guy.
So who kills him? Megor, like a lot of people,
wouldn't know the red flags about Magor.
They wouldn't know that he had harmed animals and that he's a
brute just from his reputation. Now this is a guy that takes
care of business. Winning tournaments, killing
bandits, like a lot of people probably liked him.
They would maybe change their opinion later.
But in the early going, before his reputation was fully known,
if all you hear about what is what a winner he is, you could
see why people would from a distance might like yeah okay,
Prince magor cool, cool wielding of Lurian steel blade with a
cool name. I mean, yeah, like that's, yeah,
reputation building. Whether Magor actually thought
he was keeping the Magor might has been like, yeah, I want to
fight this guy. I want to fight some dude that
thinks he's the giant of the Trident.
This is the kind of man I want to fight.
Again, think of Victorian and how Victorian is such a warrior
at heart that he's like, I give half my teeth to fight Jamie
Lannister. What kind of mindset is that?
Like he would give his teeth just to fight some guy just
because it would be a great fight.
Like, that's Megor. Like Megor is like, oh man, let
me add him, let me add him. I want to fight this guy because
he sees the reputation, he sees the prestige that he could earn
by beating this man. Also, he just likes fighting, as
we've seen. It's like he wants to fight
someone who's a worthy, worthy opponent, someone he doesn't
have to hold back against. It's not a tournament, like
actual blood will be drawn. Can you imagine?
It's like in the moment it's happening.
The giant that tried and probably easy to spot in a you
know in a battle he's probably got a big standard and he's a
large man if the unless it's one of those like sarcastic
nicknames like he's actually like 5 foot 2 and 100 lbs and
the giant of the Trident once your blood I'm coming for you
fear me I'm the giant of the Trident Meghor's like I wanted
to prove myself and this is well come on man.
No, but seriously. It's all it's everything he
wanted as a worthy opponent that he could be get more fame and
and defeat. Yeah, and it also does have to
be dealt with. Like as as we return to the
heart of feudalism the king is supposed to deal with things
like this and and sending his own son to deal with it is a
pretty good way of showing that he's taking a personal stake in
this this issue. So moving on to the year 32 AC,
here's a good time as any to note that Lord Ori's One Hand is
still alive. We haven't heard from him in a
while, but the small chance that he had to inherit the throne is
all but gone now, right? There was a time before any
Princess had been born and you know it.
Had Aegon died, he might have become king, but you know that's
long gone and he has his own large family developing down to
Storm's End. So we'll come back to them
later. Just wanted to check in real
quick there. This is the year 32 AC that
Reyna is presented with dream fire and bonded with her pretty
quickly. She is nine years old at this
time. Example of someone who starts
off a little shy, starts off a little weak, and then when they
bond with their dragon, their confidence shoots up.
In some cases, it's more than just their confidence, like
Amy's himself. It was like it almost seemed
like some of his physical strength was derived from his
bond with Quicksilver. So now we see the same thing
with Rayna and who's again, we have an amazing parallel from A
Song of Ice and Fire. Danny.
Remember I'm Bring me my egg, Bring me my egg.
You know I want a credit. And it brings her strength.
She feels stronger when she's holding the egg.
She feels the warmth within it when, which no one else feels.
So there's definitely some supernatural element potential
here, like, and if Reyna felt that, if she felt that bond grow
and she recognized it, that would explain her mothering
instinct. That would explain why she is
the first one to put eggs in the cradles of her younger siblings.
Because she's like, well, why? Why wait till they're older?
She had that instinct, kind of like Danny did, from beyond.
Something intuitive within her DNA told her to do that.
And if with Danny that is what it feels like, she's having
these dreams of just, you know, Mother of Dragons, you know, go
into the fire, you know, hatch the eggs, All this stuff.
It's just it's like voices from the ancient past or voices from
her own DNA, or both. Reyna seems to have had that
too. And I think that's really neat
and it deserves a further look at another time.
But we're trying to cover a lot in one episode today.
Can you take on that, Sean? Pretty cool, huh?
Yeah, it's the type of thing. I wonder if that was lost in the
Doom. Somehow that was something that
surely someone must have been aware of that, but in the the
turmoil and transition and everything, it was lost.
Some of it just comes off like regular confidence, like, oh,
I'm a kid, I'm a little shy, but oh.
But look what I can do. I'm proud of myself.
I've I've taken on this big challenge.
I'm a confident dragon rider now you know some of that's just
like human nature I think. But it doesn't like when you
throw Danny in there and the eggs and that's like it is more
to be like a mystical element and and I wonder too in this
sort of. Male dominated scenario.
If it might have been lost, something that the the mothers
realize, we need to put these eggs in the cradles.
So she was too old to have done that for her own.
Future husband Aegon. So she didn't start doing that
with him 'cause she was only three when he was born.
She didn't have the idea till later, and maybe it's the idea
that she gains here bonding with dream fire.
I I think the egg dropping starts right after this in fact,
and interestingly too, though Aegon doesn't have a dragon, he
also didn't take one. He will have one later.
But was he waiting? Kind of like Megor?
Was was he like? I'll also wait for a big one.
It's definitely an interesting concept here.
So we also have to ask the question, did they know they'd
be betrothed to each other? Did they wonder about it?
I think yes. Reyna would be 9 and Aegon would
be 6 at this time. And the Faith are going to hate
it. And a lot of people are going to
predictably guess that the Faith would hate it.
And once again, I wonder if Aegon had anything to weigh in
on here. Did King Aegon just expect this?
Did he expect they can deal with this problem themself?
Gildane will suggest in Fire and Blood much later that they knew
they were going to marry from very early on.
Now he wasn't there, but I have no reason to doubt him.
I don't assume. I don't assume he just made that
up. So it seems to be that was the
vibe at at court at the time that yeah, everybody expected
Rayna and Aegon to marry and and of course that makes sense given
Targaryen, Valyrian marriage practices.
But the question is, what did they expect in terms of
consequences, if any? They were, they just blind to
it, 'cause they might have been, they might have been that
arrogant, that detached, that they just thought the faith
would be fine with it or just accept it.
Even though they knew the faith wouldn't like it.
They'd be like, well, they can, they can handle it, you know,
they'll they'll have to learn to live with it.
The faith, it's like that's not a good attitude to take towards
something, an organization with that much military power and
that much influence. So Speaking of sowing Bad Seeds,
the problem continues between Anis and Megor.
It's not just the future problems between Anis and the
Faith and Megor in the face, by the way, who will have a much
bigger problem with them, if we're being honest, as concerned
as a gun with that piece. He didn't seem to perceive or
show this kind of concern in the differences with the Sons.
And as we pointed out earlier, they weren't raised together, so
they didn't really have a lot of time to bond.
And let's check in with that, because here at the year 32, Ace
is 25 and Megor is 20 a lot longer, a lot farther down the
line. Here quote The half brothers
were never close Prince Aenies. Was the heir apparent, and King
Aegon kept him close by his side.
As the king moved about the realm from castle to castle, so
did the Prince. Prince Megor remained with his
mother, sitting by her side when she held court.
Yup, there we go, sitting by her side when we held court.
Yes, that's. Familiar.
It's kind of restating what we already knew.
It's it's the same same deal. It's also, as we've said
throughout this episode, it's it's kind of human.
There's maybe some reasons that Aegon might have expected to go
better. But yeah, having rose colored
glasses on where your own children are concerned is super
normal. You know, let's be honest, lots
of people see their own children without the flaws or with the
flaws you know, made smaller. And that's part of parenting.
You're supposed to love your children despite their flaws.
So I don't like that's a bad thing, but it definitely can
cause problems in ruling families, which is why we
shouldn't have ruling families. You know, it's one of many
reasons why we shouldn't have that.
And Tywin had the blindness about his own children and their
incest, you know, and what problems that might cause And
whether it's even happening or not, at least they at least here
we they know it's happening. They just are blind to the
social problems that it's going to cause.
Later, Cersei and Robert were blind to Joffrey's problems.
Oh yeah, not. Completely blind to it.
Not addressing it, You know, not accounting for it.
Yeah. And Robert was blind to just a
lot of other things about his children.
Like them not being his. And again, we come back to TV
Viserys and book Viserys too. Look, we get more personal with
TV Viserys. So I think he makes a better
example for, especially 'cause it does reflect what we know
about the books with him. Just like just get along, just
stop fighting like, yo, that's not going to work.
Just telling them to stop fighting isn't.
You realize what's at stake here, The throne.
Just arguing with them and telling them to stop will not
work. And it's kind of crazy that you
think it will. But it's also very easy to start
though, right? 'Cause he was pretty much
ignoring it until. That point so, and we had a
moment of hope at that point too, that maybe it would maybe
that appeal, maybe that personal appeal from a it was just the
music that made us feel that, yeah.
Yeah. And again, I repeat that Aegon
made it such a point to have everybody together.
So they would grow up together and and learn together and and
grow together. But he didn't do that with his
sons. Yeah.
And and another difference here is that in Viserys case, these
are adult children. You know, with Aegon, they're
they're a step younger here because Aegon didn't have kids.
So he was later, like Viserys started having kids when he was
young. Aegon didn't.
And Viserys can't use the excuse of being on the road a lot and
having to rule the realm. He wasn't exactly doing that.
Instead he was doing neither. Whereas Aegon actually was at
least trying to rule and was had a difficult, more difficult time
of ruling, you know, His time was understandably split.
You know if if not. Maybe not excusably split, but
at least understandably split. So yeah, so honestly, it seems
like Aegon just didn't have a very active role in his family's
life at all. Except for his first born son,
who he took on progresses and taught him how to rule, and
although that didn't go very well, did it, he maybe didn't
teach him very well because Anis was not a good king.
And yeah, and maybe he should have been a bigger part of
Megor's life. Maybe Megor was harmed by that
by not having his dad around. Maybe he took it personally.
May have been the case of expedience.
The reason Megor was left aside may have been like it's the
equivalent of having a Stark in Winterfell.
There must always be a Stark in Winterfell.
There must always be a Targaryen, A Dragonstone.
We can't have both heirs on the road.
That would be an unnecessary risk.
What if the whole family is poisoned?
What if? Yeah, yeah, but them growing
apart is clearly a big risk too, one that Aegon has obviously
understood already. So it's like he either thought
this risk was bigger than the other or he just kind of we're
back to our rose colored glasses argument.
This is definitely not a case of opposites attract.
You know, it's not like I'm the protective bigger brother who
has to, you know, help. His younger brother doesn't
really seem like Megor looked at Amys that way, especially
because Vicenya didn't seem to look at Amys that way.
And he may have gotten that from his mom.
And maybe Aegon was just getting softer in his older age.
Not soft, but softer because he was pretty heavy, pretty hard.
When he was younger. He was extremely happy at being
a grandfather, might have been pretty happy with what he had
accomplished in his life and might have thought things were
going well. The Targaryen family was in kind
of a fragile state, right? Like it didn't have a lot of
air. There weren't heirs, there
weren't a lot of branches of the family, There weren't any other
branches of the family. Like I said, there hadn't been a
new dragon Rider in such a long time, and all of a sudden
there's Dragon riders happening like every other year.
So like, as far as the health of House Targaryen, it probably
looked really good given where it had been using that same
dichotomy of before King's Landing.
There was nothing here, you know, you all don't know what it
was like 25 years ago. Same thing applies here.
We're just pointing at a different target.
We're just highlighting a different thing that was much
changed over those years. The distinct change in House
Targaryen and its its outlook, its power.
It's just its quantity, the number of Dragon right now.
As we know, the quantity is going to become a problem later.
But it wasn't. There weren't too many of them
at this point. I think I maybe there were.
I don't know. I don't know how many Dragons is
too many Dragons, but one. OK, All right.
Well, in that case, there are anyway.
Yeah, that's a fairpoint. Yes.
And if we think about how old he is, you know, and you can see,
you know, you're he's in the year 32, he was 57 or 58 years
old. So he's getting up there.
You know, he had a hard life living on the road.
This is a man who lived a soldier's life, even though he
was the king and had it more comfortable than a lot of
soldiers would have been. Still hard living, you know.
Yes, feasting and and luxuries, but also lots of travel, you
know. And he wasn't always traveling
in comfort, you know. He was traveling with lots of
people. But it's still living on the
road isn't easy. Even when you're rich, even when
you you know, even when you get to sleep in whatever Lord's bed
you're staying in whenever you're there.
Still also lots of burden and responsibility and tragedy that
he's faced through stress. Too let me throw a little angle.
It's something I was considering.
This is very conspiratorial. We we always want to bring.
It back to the prophecy Aegon's The prophecy that Aegon had in
his dream, and that that's part of the stress that he would have
is making sure the realm doesn't get overwhelmed by Winter on his
watch or on his descendants watch.
I would think that would stress you out a bit.
Having dreams like that might make your silver hair turn Gray
a little sooner. How does it?
How do you even tell though? How do you tell?
How can you tell when Targaryens are getting older?
Consider the possibility this is very conspiratorial, but the
idea that the dreams were were sent to him.
You know, we we know that's a thing because of glass candles.
That someone, some power convinced him that this was
necessary to unite Westeros in order to take it from Targaryens
300 years later, which is, you know, that's why it's a crazy
conspiratorial idea. But if we look at the TV shows
ending with Bran on the Iron Throne, it's like, well, the old
Gods are the ones who can have the power to send dreams in
this. In this film, if the Old Gods,
this continuum of of tree Wizards, sent this dream to
Aegon just like they sent dreams to Bran, then this is their
their goal enacted, they they conned Aegon into conquering the
Seven Kingdoms and then stole it from his descendants 300 years
later. Again, pretty wild idea, but I I
think it's fun anyway. It's all stuff with Amy's
getting all the attention and all the the business of being
first born. All this stuff could cause the
jealousy and family friction to get worse and it would be
exacerbated by Megor's failure to have children and his
confidence that he was going to. He thought he was going to have
kids and then he didn't. So that made him feel bad,
probably. And then that would cause him to
drop in the line of succession as each successive child is
born, because we have baby Aegon born, then we have the Saris
born and we're about to have some more.
So he's falling farther and farther behind the line of
succession and not having children of his own.
So that's a lot of frustration. Maybe his pride, his manliness
is touched on because again, Westeros men having children is
a manly thing. He's not doing it now.
Again, we don't know if Rayna bumped him down in the line of
succession, but Aegon and Viserys and in a minute Jaris
definitely did. And of course, Jaris is the one
who's going to take the throne from him eventually anyway,
although with a lot of help. So not only were these Princess
jumping him in the line of succession, two of them had
Dragons. So they're they're also just
like in some ways they're just more Targaryen than him.
And yeah, I thought I had here that that you know kind of a
theme we've been running is if. If he had been prepared to be
hand, if that had been. Like a?
Mission on Aegon's Plate to prep Megor to be hand so instead of
him. Being so focused.
On being able to beat people up, he was focused on learning how
to rule right? If he had at least maybe split
time with annies on these royal progresses, if he had spent more
time with his dad, it might have kept him from getting so jealous
and bitter in the 1st place, so so militant and violent in the
first place. They would have given him a more
worldly perspective and a greater sense of responsibility.
There might have been a greater obligation on Aegon or the
advisors around to address the red flags that May Gore had, and
he wouldn't be slipping farther out of power too if he was
secure and a #2 or spot as Hand of the King, all these new
Princess being born wouldn't have felt like a threat to him.
So maybe that's a lot to expect him to have been prep for handed
the King, but I think, and maybe he's just going to be crazy
anyway. But I wonder if that had been,
if you've been cultivated for that position all along, if it
would have resolved a lot of the issues that came out of this
whole scenario. And you might.
And it's a good, very good question, because he is going to
be hand to the king. Amis will make him.
Hand to the King. But that doesn't mean he was
prepared for it wasn't right, Yeah, but doesn't mean he's
prepared to do anything more than just like.
Deal with the Crown's enemies, he seems.
Good at that. He's very good at that.
It's going to be kind of like I was saying before this annoying
thing. He's stuck doing back home while
his brother has all the fun with his dad, right?
But if instead, if he thought of it as this responsible way to
impress his father, to maintain peace in the realm, peace and
prosperity, right, instead of I'll impress my father by
beating people up, yeah, this is another big difference between.
Like if we're trying to compare Ames and Megor to Damon and
Viserys, this is something they don't have in common because
Damon and Viserys were close. That's part of where a lot of
the conflict between them comes is Damon feels slighted by some
of his brother's choices, whereas Ames and Megar just
weren't close. So, like, you're sliding me
because we're brothers, but not because we have a personal
relationship. And he didn't slide him, he
named him Hands. In the year 33, AC comes the
death of Vicon Greyjoy, Lord Vicon Greyjoy, and the ascent of
Lord Goran. Not a big change because Goran
learned the lessons of his father's father was there when
Valerian came and defeated them and put down the rebellion that
was happening between Lotos and all that other business.
And the Greyjoys were appointed to rule.
And he's like, yeah, we want to hold on to this, Don't go
against the Dragons, hey son, don't go against the Dragons.
And we know that the royal progresses took three trips to
the Iron Islands so they would have been reminded of what
they're up against with Valerian and Aegon coming there
personally. So Goran would have if Goran
wasn't there to witness Valerian in action during that short
period of time when the Iron Islands was was put to rights or
put to order, he would have seen Valerian at least just chilling
in one of the future visits and would have been wowed by the
sheer size of the animal. This is also the year of the
final progress Aegon takes, which was, as we talked about
last time, his first trip to Winterfell.
So it may have included other stops in the North, because he
had been to the North before and might have wanted to go other
places. But yeah, it's his first trip to
Winterfell. Now, we talked a bit about that
last time, about how it may have related to a change in
leadership and all this stuff. One thing that we didn't mention
also relates to the prophecy, which is it's another chance for
Aegon and whoever the Stark and Winterfell is at the time,
whether it's Tauren or Brandon the Boisterous or Rickard Stark.
One of those three, most likely. They could discuss the prophecy
in private, perhaps not even with maesters around, and but
that also isn't worth something. Bring is worth bringing up
Aegon. Did he ever discuss the
prophecies with his maesters? I'm guessing no, but maybe it's
a. It's a soft no because none of
them wrote about it, so that's a problem.
There would have had to be a campaign to, like, remove it
from the. Histories If.
If it existed, I don't. Think the Maesters would have
just chosen to not mention it once?
I don't. I think I think there's no way.
But he did make a big deal about having a lot of masters around
him. Like 6 maybe one?
Of the maesters I can. I can imagine him confiding in
one especially. Given that he had so many, that
might have been part of why he had.
They might have each had different sort of roles, like
someone who's more knowledgeable about the histories of each of
the kingdoms one is more knowledgeable about, you know,
medicine. One of the ones with the
Valerian Steel link would be, yeah, a candidate for magic
discussions. Yeah, he might have instructed
him not to repeat any or write down anything of what they
discussed that would that would remove the need for it to be
removed after the fact that it would never written down in the
1st place, which I think that's possible.
It is possible anyway. And I'll recall Cersei again.
We haven't a Song of Ice and Fire example asking Kyburn about
the supernatural, about prophecy specifically.
Like she's concerned about the prophecy of Maggie the Frog and
Eamon. Maester Eamon has thoughts on
the supernatural, and he probably corresponded with
Rhaegar. Marwin has thoughts on the
prophecy, which is, you know, prophecy is like a having your,
what is it like having your Dick bitten or whatever.
That's what he says. Melisandre says it's a sword
without a hilt. Yeah, there's lots of colorful
euphemisms for prophecy in this, in this series and elsewhere.
And again, I I've asked this question before, but I feel like
even Raines and Vesenya, did he not tell?
I think he might have had to tell them, but maybe not.
He had to tell Amy, so he had to pass it on.
That's one person that had to know.
And if he tells Amy's, who knows when, though when did he tell
him? On one of those royal
progresses? When he turned 16?
When he first rode a dragon? This would be decent guesses I
suppose, but I don't know. Any chance, he told Megor?
I would think no, because. The throne was wasn't going to
pass. To Megor, especially like after
and he starts having kids and all that.
It looks like Megor's even farther behind.
Yeah, it's possible. It is possible, but I'm guessing
no, because I wonder if it could explain why Megor was so
determined to be a good warrior. Maybe he.
Thought he had to Oh. Interesting maybe.
Part of why he was cruel. Like maybe he thought the world
doesn't matter anyway. Like the I haven't had a son so
the prophecy can't fulfill, so nothing matters anyway.
You know, dark but possible. And with.
The growing family and important Targaryens in multiple
locations. You would see more of the
Kingsguard being divided and and split in different areas, which
might be where you start to see a little more.
Little personal relationships, maybe bias within the
Kingsguard. Some Kingsguard might favor
certain Targaryens more than others because of who they spend
more time with. Things like that might start to
happen, and for example, again we come back to or Commander
Corley's. Did Viceni and Magor not trust
him as much, maybe because he's connected to Alyssa and the
others? Or was his loyalty well
established? Maybe he was not.
Again, I have to repeat that he may not be alive at this point.
We don't know when he died, but either way there would be what
house is this Kingsguard from and is that maybe an an issue or
not? The year 34, the year Jaharis
was born, this is when Reyna definitely did the egg cradle
thing, and probably the first time, and it did.
She did it for Jaris and that egg did indeed become Vermathore
the dragon he bonded with. And it was a big dragon.
The Bronze Fury I reticent to say this early bonding helped
the dragon grow larger, but given how little we know about
how Dragons work, and given their magical things, it's
possible it's very possible. It's worth adding on to the long
list of theories about Dragons and how they work and grow.
Meanwhile, Sir Osman Strong, Hand of the King Wall Builder
for King's Landing and Sargoso San Fighter, died and was
replaced by Lord Alan Stokeworth, a man who seems
brave and likely to be very competent.
Now Alan Stokeworth is going to hold the the job for a little
while, but if we refer back to this to the career of Sir
Osmond, there's gaps in the hands record like there's
sometimes there's some periods where we don't know who the hand
was. Not a lot though.
Most of the hands we know it's mostly during the reign of Aegon
the 3rd and Aegon the 5th where we have these large gaps.
But very few ever will hold the office longer than Sir Osmond
who held it for 17 years. So the third ever hand of the
King will be the longest running for quite a while until Barth
comes along actually not that far later and and and sets the
all time record Bloodraven 26 plus years, Tywin 19 and then
again for about two 'cause he had two separate terms and then
Prince Viserys again not to be confused with this current
Prince Viserys. This is the Prince Viserys who
became King Viserys the 2nd. He's going to rule as Hand of
the King for about 18 years, so a little longer than Osmond.
A strong hand can hold on for a long time.
Very good. The year 35 is when we get.
More home making, more making the house a home.
Aegon gives the order to destroy the Aegon Fort and build
something more fitting. Now again it was wooden.
He had a wooden castle for the king of the Iron Throne and the
guy with Dragons. It's just not fitting.
I mean, your dragon can destroy your castle with a sneeze.
I mean, yeah, it's time to rebuild, right?
Allen Stokeworth's first major task was to do this was to
rebuild what we came the Red Keep.
I don't even know if they had a name for it at first, but that
name seems to have come after they were building it and
realized, hey, this thing is red.
Look at that, Let's call it the Red Keep.
It really seems like qualification to be a Hand of
the King in this era was to have some some skill in overseeing
building projects because the last one did the wall building
project for six years. This Red Keep building projects
can take more than a decade. Oh yeah, but it wasn't just his
job. It was also Vicenias.
He sent Vicenia to King's Landing to help oversee the
castle. She wasn't needed for the wall
building project. But this is a little more about,
like, where they're going to be living.
And so it's a little more personal.
Like, it's like have your wife take charge of the interior
design kind of situation or something.
On the other hand, this also, he also swapped places with her
again. You know, he was living in
King's Landing. She was a Dragonstone.
He ordered her to come to build the Red Keep and he went to
Dragonstone. So it's like keeps avoiding her
or is not just more about having the rulers in different places,
but you can see why those rumors about him not wanting to be
around her, I think, yeah, I think so.
I really, really think he was not.
Fond of her? I don't think he hated her or
anything like that. Like anything so extreme, but I
don't think he was like raring to spend his time with her at
all, especially if he was getting softer and and and you
know, and she was still getting as hardcore as.
Ever. And she.
And she was getting harder. Yeah.
I mean if he was, if he was pressing him about this and that
or about these marriages or Mary Magor to hit to my to your
granddaughter and she's just like I'm so sick of this.
Or yeah. It could have might not have
been political at all. Might have been like, yeah, he
just, yeah. Could she just finds her
grading. Yeah.
Or it could have been what you said.
He just, like, thought it was best to not.
Keep all their eggs in in one nest or whatever, and just keep
Vicenya suffering from him. Yeah, he could have thought of
that. I don't know.
It's true. I mean, it could be both of
those things. I mean, he could say it was
that, but in his head, you know, he's like, oh, I'm so glad I
have an excuse to not see Vicenya.
And here we see another impact of their.
Parenting As brutal and psycho as Megor is, he had a lot of
energy for building projects. And maybe he got this from his
mother, watching her operate, watching her take over the
building of the Red Keep, which he would later take a big hand
in. After all, Megor's hold fast is
the final refuge within the Red Keep, and it's named after him
for a reason. He designed it.
He ordered it put in there. Of course, this is also the guy
that had all the builders killed, but that's Megor for
you. He's a brutal guy, but he's not
uninteresting. He definitely drives the story
in some some fun ways. And yeah, so I think that's an
interesting kind of dot connection there, His interest
in building projects and how his mother had a lot of
responsibility in terms of building the house for the
Targaryens would live in the Red Keep the one they'd live in
forever. And it also shows their the
paranoia, though, and the mistrust of their own people.
We talked about how, yeah, they built walls to keep out
outsiders. The Red Keep is just as much
keeping out their own people. It's it's it's defense against
the population rising up against them, which it will absolutely
prove valuable in that regard multiple times in its history.
It will keep out angry, rioting commoners and as well as some
legitimate like invading armies. And this is another thing I
wonder about as far as when Aegon went to Dragonstone and
sent Viceni to court, it says he took the small council with him.
So what about Magor? Did he also, I assume he went to
court to stay with his mom because especially because this
this dot connecting with the building projects and the Red
Keep and all that. But it's possible he stayed on
Dragonstone and was for a short time, had a little bit more of
an active role at court and council.
But I'm guessing he went to with his mom.
What do you think, Sean? Any guesses on that or takes on
that? Yeah, it's another scenario
where I wonder how much conflict there would have been between
him and the the. Hand, who was charged with
building this if they work together well, how involved was
the council or if they were at odds with each other?
I I wonder how much if Megor had been given more building
projects, if would have kept them busy enough for, and how to
do some of the other stuff he did.
You know that's something to put his energy.
Into that isn't violent you. Know well.
Should it be violent? But he still ended up.
He managed to find a way to make it.
Violent, Yeah. Do you think Megor also had a
had a bedroom filled? With models.
Yeah, that's a funny thing, actually.
Viserys, the dragon you had the most in common.
With was Mego or like what? Yeah, you guys both were really
into models. Yeah, this was Megor before it
was yours. Yeah, that's an interesting
thought, I wonder. Yeah, yeah.
Imagine, Basen, you giving Megor some.
Little model. Valyria, when he's a boy, and
then him growing into a bigger version of that later.
And then, yeah, it just gets sticking to a dusty closet later
until Viserys finds like, whoa, look at this.
It's like Legos, man. Yeah, I love it.
I'm imagining him having all sorts of like proposed Red Keep
designs. You know, yeah, yeah.
Different architectural little secret tunnels structures.
Trying to figure out which. One is going to.
Actually get built? Yeah.
Yeah, isn't that it's It's fascinating though, to think
about that, that the guy who had all.
Those secret tunnels made is Meghor, so the year 36, this is
basically the last year we'll cover.
We'll flirt with the following year briefly in in our outro,
but 36 AC Allison is born future wife to Jaharis.
Reyna places an egg in her cradle as well, 'cause she's
that mothering older sibling that she is, and that dragon egg
hatches and becomes Silverwing. So again, it's a success story.
I wonder if Vermathore had already hatched by this time.
Probably. It had only been a couple years,
but that's all it takes. I think so, yeah, probably so
this time. Reyna is now 13, Aegon's 10,
Aegis and Alyssa are 29, Meghor's 24, Aegon 62, Massenia
64. A lot of others are still out
there too. Darya Martel is still alive, as
far as we know. Gargon the Guest, Lord Ori's One
Hand, also still alive. Ethan Valarian still alive,
possibly Lord Commander Corliss Valarian, We don't know about
him. That's still again, that's
Athan's brother, and it's a pretty, pretty important year.
Although in terms of milestones, though, I don't know that we
have a ton to say about it. This is continuing forward,
barreling towards the problems of the beginning of Anis's reign
and setting up a lot of groundwork for the conflict
between Megor and Anis's descendants later, as well as
Megor and the Faith and the Dance of the Dragons.
You could absolutely trace some of the Dance of the Dragons
groundwork to this stuff here I forgot to mention in the year 35
was Reyna's first flight on Dream Fire.
She bonded with Dream Fire when she was 9, but she didn't fly on
until she was 12. So three more years, and part of
that is Dream Fire being too small to ride.
That's not just her, her development, it's the dragon as
well. Because Dream Fire was a
hatchling when she was presented with her the first time.
So yeah, you'd see, that's an interesting like brother, sister
Dynamic Ren is out there flying her dragon.
Meanwhile Aegon doesn't have one yet.
And again, that's why we asked the question of was he waiting?
Was it a similar thing? If Megor was waiting for a
dragon, you bet it you should wait for one too, for the same
reason. And he if he wants to claim
Valerian, maybe you should wait to claim Valerian because you
have arguably a better claim to Valerian.
That might have been a thing that came to head as it as it
turned out, Magor just got the initiative and claimed Valerian
and that was that, you know? But they've been.
They may have been thinking that Aegon would have that chance,
and I don't know who they is. Maybe Aegon himself, maybe
Aegis, maybe Alyssa, maybe all of them.
Maybe. Maybe Aegon the King.
Aegon himself as well, was expecting this Aegon to get
Valerian, but he obviously didn't like write that down or
decree it 'cause that certainly isn't given to us as in the
sources, and it seems like it would have been if that had
happened. So the next year is when Aegon
dies, and that's when things are going to really blow up and
we're going to leave the story here, But leaving it here gives
us quite a picture of how star game we've got a lot of kids
now, a lot of grandchildren. You got 5 grandchildren from the
Union of Alyssa and Anies, and you still have Megor and all the
others. The family is double digits now,
depending on who you count. But I think even a tight
counting is a large number of people.
And if you count the Dragons that have been born in this era
we have, we have unnamed Dragons in this era that we don't even
know about. We we tried to guess who those
six hatchlings were that were offered to Megor, and we only
had one idea, the cannibal. Which might mean the cannibal
ate the other five. That would that would explain it
somewhat. It would give it its name real
quick if like they had six Dragons and one dragon.
Ate the other five. They're like, you're the
cannibal. Yeah, like, Dang, that's a thing
that can happen. Yikes.
Like. That's like something out of, I
don't know, you hear that? And like some of the Star Wars
races have things like that. Some of these weird aliens that
exist in Star Wars, like the, Yeah, Trandoceans do that.
Yeah, they're they're brutal from the beginning.
Yeah. So the Dragons and trend oceans
have some things in in common that is a real thing and just
normal nature also. Yeah, you're right.
Yeah. And and Mamas do that too.
Like you'll see, like a mom bird or.
Squirrel, It's like I can't raise all five of you.
One of you has got to go. I can.
I can only race for you. It's brutal.
But yeah, nature is. Nature is metal, as they say.
What's that Futurama quote about nature for in the?
End Nature is horrific and teaches us nothing.
In the end, nature is horrific and teaches us nothing.
Yep, supernatural. Super nature, it's true that in
that case as well. So, yeah, all right.
So yeah, it will not be a transition, a peaceful
transition of power. It's almost like many people
were just waiting for Aegon to die, or for annies to take over
one or the other. It's the same pick take, you
know, chicken or the egg, Dragon or the egg.
You take your pick. The realm went from someone
everyone was afraid of because he had proved repeatedly that
you should be afraid of him to someone that almost no one was
afraid of, even though he had a dragon and a nasty, dangerous
brother. They apparently just kind of
ignored that part. But to be fair, Megor was not
the writer of Valerian just yet, so it was still a bad idea.
But you can see why it was a better idea to try it against
Anis than against Aegon. So we have a lot to say about
that, but we won't be coming back with that.
Next time. We're going to pivot away from
Fire and Blood briefly as we are establishing a pattern.
We'll do, you know, 5678 Fire and Blood episodes at a time,
pivot away, do other stuff and then come back to it.
And I imagine we'll be able to pivot back to it probably one
more time before House of the Dragon season.
But of course will return to it when the time is appropriate and
we will let you know. So next week I'm going to leave
it a little bit of a surprise for now.
So because we usually tell you, but it's fun to have the
occasional surprise, so this is a good time for that.
But I won't leave you in the dark on the trivia question,
because that would be very mean of me.
Which of Prince Aegon's grandson's grandchildren rather
did not ever ride a dragon? That would be Prince Viserys.
The middle child never rode a dragon that we know of.
He did become Meg or Squire, and that didn't go very well for
him. I will say we got a number of
people who said Viserys. And some people who questioned
whether Vala would count. That's a fairpoint.
Vala died in the cradle. I don't usually count.
She lived. Longer enough that, yeah.
Anyway, that was the debate going on.
It's a good. That's a good point.
I should, I could, if I were to ever ask that question again out
of all the. Building who lived to to be
dragon riding aid. Yeah, to to be old enough to
ride a dragon, because. Certainly Vayela was not old
enough to. Ride a dragon.
So yeah, there's there's an we'll have to word that
exception properly. But yes, that's a it's a
fairpoint. When we're doing trivia, trivial
answers definitely are fair game.
So good call on those of you who mentioned Vayela.
Wait, we have to wait. What would we have to say?
Vaya. Vaya.
Yes, Vaya. Chloe of Grossman, Canon and and
got us. Started on, she says.
Diet. Diet.
She's Dale as like Paella and I now whenever I see those names,
I'm like Vaya. Yeah, yeah, I just have to hear
it. It's the.
It's the Spanish. Or Portuguese Targaryen.
Yes, All right. So we mentioned some episodes
that relate to this one, of course, we mentioned Young
Tywin, so the reigns of Castamere would be a good one.
Obviously under the Dragon's High Tower, both the parts one
and two. We talked about the the changes
at the Iron Island, so our Patreon episode on the Red
Kraken would be fun. We talked about Dorne a bit, so
maybe Nymeria is your bag. And we talked a bit about Dark
Sister. So you you can check out our
episode on Dark Sister. Those are my suggestions for
this time, but there's so many others you can find by browsing
our back catalog. It is large if I do say so
myself. Yes, I do.
Sean, you have some shout outs you wish to give to some of our
patrons. Let's hear them.
As always, I include a few classic veterans.
And new recruits We've got Lady Aaron of House, Snow, Blood,
Mother of Maniacs. A couple straightforward names
here. Jake the 5th and the Paladin.
Oh, the Palladin. Nice.
And some newer ones, Sir. Dumpsteer of House.
Raccoon. Sigil is a fat black and silver
raccoon on grayfield words. Gimme that is the right way to
spell dumpster. It's spelled DUMPSTY.
R like the magnar steer, the magnar that is Dom O folk wise
over. On Twitch Hey yeah, Notable.
Yeah, notable raccoon. Lover.
Yes, absolutely. A couple more here.
Adler Snow Bastard of Bear Island, Known as.
The Northern Fury, as fierce as she is Loyal and wisdom.
Mendex. Bastard of Starfall.
Yeah, cool. Yes, that's appropriate.
Thanks as well to Nina. For all the great notes, lots of
great points today, lots of great discussion topics, lots of
good rabbit holes for us to dive into.
Again, her blog is good. Queen Alley with 1l.tumblr.com
You know, never point out that Tumblr is without an E but I
imagine you knew that If you know anything about Tumblr, it's
like, I don't know Grinder. That it's not like Grinder.
I mean, the spelling is like it. Yeah, it sounds like Tumblr just
like Grinder, but not. At all.
Just like, yeah, not just Google knows enough to help you.
Out if you're. If you didn't know, yes, Joey,
Jesse Bran and Michael Klorfeld. Thanks to you all.
For your excellent additions to our show in the form of maps,
intro, outro and music in all its forms.
Every time you say though that group of names, I think.
Of Daria. Daria is in the the cartoon.
Yeah, the cartoon Daria 'cause there's.
There's Joey. Jeffy and Jamie, the three boys
that like Quinn Morgendorfer like has always following her
around but like the three JS they're known by.
So I do hear go you go Joey, Jesse.
And I'm like Jeffy. Jeffy.
Yeah. Burning Dari.
I love her, Jeffy. Is definitely a little a a name
of someone. Very young, I think.
An adult named Jeffy. I've never heard of such a
thing. Yeah, it's AI mean.
It's a teen boy. They're all they're all teen
boys and they're all meant to. Be a little bit emasculated by,
I think, being Joey, Jesse and Jamie and Jeffy, whatever.
Yeah, well, on behalf of my fellow.
Co hosts and all of our many cats who I guess we didn't get
any appearances from them today, but next time, perhaps next
y'all got to come in and ask. Yeah, you got to ask for cat
appearances. We rarely.
Don't come through when you. Ask.
But y'all, don't always ask, but until next time, Valar Reedus
the.