Prophecy is the central feature of A Song of Ice and Fire.
Many of the major plot lines are steeped in it, and so are many
of the minor plot lines. But of all the POV characters,
there's really no contest when it comes to which character is
the most embroiled in prophecy, and that is Daenerys Targaryen.
You could argue that Melisandre is more involved since it's
basically her entire purpose. It's the only thing that really
matters to her, and Danny doesn't actually even really
know about the Others yet. She's only dimly aware of the
Long Night at most. But given that she is the person
referred to the prophecies center around her, a lot of them
do. It's pretty hard to argue from
someone. Even Melisandre would probably
agree that if she knew Daenerys that this was the case.
Now, lots of people have pieces of the prophecy puzzle, but no
one seems to have it all. In this episode, we focus on
someone who might have more pieces than anyone else, or at
least is well positioned for those pieces of knowledge to
matter a lot. And that's Quaithe of the
Shadow, someone who has a lot in common with the just mentioned
Melisandre, yet with not more certainty, but more accuracy,
right? And by that I mean very simply.
Stannis is the wrong guy. Daenerys is the right gal.
Yet by the same token, we have a lot more idea of what Melisandre
is up to. We've been in her head, we've
had apov chapter, she's appeared quite a lot.
Quaithe is a lot more mysterious.
How, for example, does she keep speaking to Danny from afar?
And why is she really just helping with no ulterior motive?
Really? Maybe it's possible, but it's
not easy to accept without strong evidence.
That's a tough sell. But we might have that evidence
here in this episode. We might have sufficient
evidence to overcome that difficulty.
Quaithe's prophecies are repeated to Danny.
She says the multiple times, which is something we've long
indicated means a lot. If George tells you something
multiple times, you really should pay attention to that.
Sometimes he only tells you something once and it still
still matters. But multiple times he's really
want, really want you to focus on that at least a little bit.
And Danny spends a lot of time pondering Quaithe's words.
It isn't just when Quaithe is there, it's when a lot of other
times happen. She's just like, hmm, what does
Quaithe mean by that? So she comes up a lot even when
she's not there. And this is in A Clash of King,
The Storm of Swords, and A Dance with Dragons.
Even Danny's final chapter in A Dance with Dragons Quaithe comes
up. So even though Danny's story is
largely separate from the other arcs in Westeros, she's
obviously headed there. Eventually those plot lines will
overlap and connect and collide at some point, and Quaithe's
role in part seems to be preparing her for that by
reminding her what she is, and by reminding her how the world
will perceive her and how much danger she's in from people who
might be her friends. And little by little, Koi seems
to be proving herself. And that's what happens when
your prophetic predictions come to pass repeatedly.
So we've got Ash Eye and the Shadow Lands, Karth and the
Dothraki sea. Dreams that are not dreams.
Some of the most famous prophecies in all of the Song of
Ice and Fire. A man who warns against
prophecies. Marwin the mage, we've got
Sorella, Faceless, Pate, Sam, and the delirious dreams of the
dying dragon, Eamon Targaryen. The glass candles are burning,
my friends. All that and more on this
episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Hello and welcome back everybody.
I'm Aziz. With me, as always, is a Shaya.
If you're catching this live on YouTube, it must be 3:00 Eastern
because that's when we stream on Sundays.
We do most Sundays. And if you can't catch the live
stream, you can still catch the video on YouTube after the fact
or watch the edited version or the audio only version.
Both available on Spotify and audio versions available
anywhere you find podcasts. And it's ad free if you listen
on Patreon. This is topics moot episode #13
patrons voted on 16 episodes of the beginning of the year,
February, March, time frame, and we're already at episode 13 of
that. So you know what we were, we
were thinking of doing a few more, a mini vote to add to the
end of that. Partly that's because the time
change of or the schedule change related to Knight of the Seven
Kingdoms. We had budgeted a lot of the end
of this year for that, but of course now it's been moved to
2026, so we'll make some adjustments and you'll hear
about it. A shout out to
goodqueenalley.tumblr.com. That's Nina Krusling, our great
friend, providing us with excellent takes and analysis as
usual. The latest post over on her blog
is about Doran Martel and the original plan with Viserys and
how Aryan would have handled that.
Right. Aryan didn't even know about the
Viserys plan until way later, until after she'd already made
her play with Marcella. So it's a interesting what if
question that still has relevance because Aryan may
still find herself in a position to be queen, just through a
different Targaryen than Viserys.
If you have questions for us, you can hit us up on any social
media platform. We exist on pretty much all of
them. But you can also hit us up at
our e-mail address, westeroshistory@gmail.com.
At the end of this episode, I'll mention some other episodes that
relate to this one, so you can stay immersed.
Keep on that prophecy track or that Daenerys track or whatever
it is you want to do, and we'll have a trivia question, the
answer of which is at the end as well.
The question is the Citadel has four glass candles.
What colors are they? Let me now tell you what the
section headers are, the different titles that we have,
the different sections we're going to talk about.
Today we have our first appearance of Quaithe
description and background. Karth Chicken defeats Egg, a
curious touch. Quaithe's quirky compass.
Dreams in the belly of Valerian. Glass Candles.
Prophecy roster. Why so cryptic?
Delirium on the Dothraki Sea and the woman behind the mask.
Let's also have a poll here for those of you watching live, and
we'll reveal the results of the episodes for those of you who
are not catching it live. Also, if you're on Spotify, you
will also see the poll. That's true.
The poll is also available on Spotify for a year.
Or some months. Or yeah, a really long time, you
know. Maybe if you're listening to
this five years from now and you can't vote, but you know.
Yeah, the three options are if Quaithe's mask was removed,
option #1 Danny would know her and so would we.
We would recognize this person. Option 2.
Danny wouldn't know who she is, but we would.
Us readers would. Option 3.
Danny wouldn't know her without her mask, and neither would we.
Those are the three possibilities there.
Tell me and Shaya what you think is the most likely.
And let's start with Quaithe's first appearance, which of
course begins with a quote. Blood of my blood.
Jogo called. I have been to the great city of
Karth and returned with three who would look on you with their
own eyes. Danny stared down at the
strangers. Here I stand.
Look, if that is your pleasure, but first tell me your names,
The pale man with the blue lips replied in guttural Dothraki.
I am Piatt pre the great warlock.
The bald man with the jewels in his nose answered.
In the Valyrian of the Free Cities.
I am Zarozoandoxos of the 13, a merchant Prince of Karth, the
woman in the lacquered wooden mask said in the common tongue
of the Seven Kingdoms. I am Quaithe of the Shadow.
We come seeking Dragons. I would really like to know how
Jogo came across these three in particular.
And of the three, Quaithe's presence is the most
interesting, the most intriguing.
The other two are connected. They're highly important people
in their city. I mean, even though the Warlocks
have declined in power, in relevance, they're still feared,
they're still important to a certain degree, just not as much
as before. And they have their eyes
everywhere. They're aware of what's going on
in the city. Same goes for Zara, perhaps on
an even higher level, 'cause he's so wealthy, he's so
connected, he's got eyes and ears probably everywhere.
Quaithe, how does she know? She doesn't seem to be highly
connected. She doesn't seem to be connected
at all. As far as we can tell, there is
nothing in Karth that she is associated with, at least that
we know of, right? She's not part of any group, any
Guild, any anything, any organization at all.
We all we know is that she came from the shadow.
So magic might be how she knew that Danny was coming.
It might even be the glass candle that she refers to later,
and that might be how she knew. But she may have other powers as
well. Obviously, that's something we
will discuss in this episode. Quaith is also by far the most
humble here. Zarro is dripping with wealth
and he calls himself a merchant Prince, which isn't inaccurate,
but it's lofty. It's grand, right?
Piatt Pre flat out calls himself the Great Warlock Piatt Pre.
So like, that's obviously not humble.
Quaithe just says I'm Quaithe of the shadow.
That's it. No pomp, no flair, nothing.
Not she's not even dressed like fancy.
She's saying it as if she were Dunk of Flea Bottom.
You know, it is very casual, even though the implications are
eldritch. And also Quaithe speaks common
as it's as it's said in the quote there to Danny.
That's notable. Danny can speak Dothraki and
Valyrian. Quaithe probably speaks those
too. Well, maybe not Dothraki, but
almost certainly Valyrian. So it's interesting that Quaithe
is set apart in that regard too. She speaks the tongue that Danny
is most likely to, well, feel soft about because it's where
she wants to go. She wants to go to the place
where they speak that language, where that language is normal.
That's where she thinks of his home, even though she's never
really been there other than the moment she was born.
Note the similarities here to an aspect of the story of Jesus's
birth. We, we talked about this in
Valerie read as how there's a lot of Danny going into the
desert. There's a lot of Jesus vibes
here. But this is perhaps the peak of
that. You've got three like the three
kings, the three magi, right? The three wise men, that there's
lots of different names for them.
Here we have basically the same thing.
There's just some inversions, a few things changed around two
men and a woman instead of three wise men or whatever.
That's not much of A change. And two of these magi in this
case on the ESO side are actually met practitioners of
magic, which you know, Quaithe and and Piatt.
Obviously now Magi in this context is heavily debated
amongst biblical scholars and just historians too.
We're the three wise men. Astronomers or astrologers.
It's a huge difference because the latter is forbidden by the
text that the Judea's text of the time, right?
There was no Christianity back then, so but it was banned under
in Israel and the surrounding areas, things like that.
And we talked about that in our necromancy episode, but the
distinction was a lot less meaningful to the average folk
like astrologer astronomy, because astronomy, the point of
astronomy. Yeah.
You're still scanning the heavenly bodies and looking for
movement, but the reason you did that in ancient times was to
divine meeting from it. So it's similar to astrology in
that you're looking, you're looking at the stars to figure
out what's going to happen on Earth.
So it's still kind of like a iffy from a scientific
perspective, even though astronomy grew into something
that was a lot more rigid and scientific.
Anyway, this is relevant to Quaithe because she's associated
with stars and Starlight and well, we'll have to go further
and you'll see. And of course it's the birth of
the Dragons. They're interested in, in this
case, in the biblical story, they're interested in the birth
of Jesus. Now, Karth is in the east,
relatively speaking, from our perspective of, of people
centered on Westeros. And the three kings of the Bible
come from the east also following a comet right now,
according to several Kartheen Piatt pre among them, Karth is
the center of the world. They see it that way.
This is the most important place.
It's the place with it's the oldest place.
It's the center of culture and wisdom and all this other stuff.
I mean, they're from Karth. So they've they're a little
biased, but they've, you know, there's some truth to some of
what they're saying. It is a really big important
city. Nina adds to this as saying from
the I book edition of A Clash of Kings, which has some pretty
interesting notes here and there, that it explicitly
references the Magi as a connection of the three wise men
as the inspiration here. But says that there is a quote
distinct fairy tale quality to this sending off of three
riders, the reports as one and then another returns and then
the final rider arriving with three travelers on camels.
Yeah. So there's there's a lot of
really straightforward connections and some subtle ones
too. And of course, George was raised
Catholic, so he would be very familiar with the story, and
even people who weren't raised Christian know at least the
basics of it, so it it fits pretty darn well.
In the Bible version. Of course, Mary is warned that
King Herod will kill baby Jesus, and warnings are a huge part of
this from Quaithe. Quaithe has issues, all sorts of
warnings. Warnings that people will lust
for her Dragons, warnings that people will want to use her.
This comes later, but it comes from Quaithe herself, so the
parallel is very strong. Now, not long after the Magi
leave Jesus after delivering their gifts of gold and friends
and frankincense and myrrh, an Angel appears to Joseph right
after they leave in a dream and commands him to take Jesus to
Egypt until he's told that it's safe to return.
Because they're, you know, they're worried about this King
Herod murdering thing. Now, this is obviously a
parallel as well. Quaeth repeatedly appears in
dreams to Danny. Now later we'll actually get
into the semantics of it. They're not dreams that Danny's
having. And that's very interesting, but
it's obviously close enough for this parallel.
Is Quaithe comparable to an Angel, though?
That's where it's not as clear. Because when you hear Angel in
the Bible, there's no question that it's a being of good.
You know it's not fallen Angel, right?
It's just Angel. So this, But with Quaithe, it's
not nearly so clear. Angels are rarely given names in
the Bible. Usually they're just described
by their purpose. Like, the angels have lots of
different jobs, you know? That's fitting as a parallel
here, too, because Quaithe is so nondescript, we don't know much
about her at all. Like, she's covered.
Her body is mostly covered in a robe.
She's wearing a mask. There's very she's not tall,
She's not short. There's just very little we can
go about to to dig into what she is or who she is.
Nina says she's like the living embodiment of prophecy, just not
tangible. Not quite tangible, but very
much real at the same time. You can't grasp it fully, you
don't know exactly what you're dealing with, but you also
cannot ignore it. That's Quaithe in a nutshell.
I think it's a really good take by Nina.
Very succinct and gets to the point.
But I also have reasons to think we will learn more about her,
even if we don't learn a lot more about the origins of some
of these prophecies. And it isn't just optimism or
hope on opium on my part. I'll explain later.
Now recall that Danny is given a parade when she arrives at
Carth. The doors open for her.
They're like celebrating. It's a big deal.
So Jogo did his job well and, you know, spreading the word
and, and getting the red carpet rolled out for her.
And, and why not? It's you're telling quite a
story. A Targaryen emerges from the
desert with living Dragons. That's hard to believe.
But if you're told it's like right over there across the, you
know, the city gates, go see it for yourself.
It's not so hard to believe then when you're witnessing it,
right? And then it's no longer
unbelievable. You saw it and a lot of people
saw it, right? It was a parade.
So you got to believe that when they go home after that, after
seeing this parade and seeing the actual Dragons and the
actual Targaryen, this was not an exaggeration.
Well, you're going to tell everybody, you know, it's going
to be the talk of dinner that night, you know, and then the
next day when you're having drinks or whatever at work or
whatever you're doing, you're going to all be talking about
the Mother of Dragons arriving in your city.
It's by far the biggest news you can imagine.
I mean, what bigger news could come?
Certainly nothing that would make this irrelevant, right?
Everybody's got to want to know. So even though we just said
there's very little to describe about Quaithe, let's give it a
shot anyway. She's a woman with a red lacquer
mask and a long hooded robe. In other words, she's completely
covered except her hands, her eyes, maybe her neck, which is
relevant because a lot of people from the shadow lands are
tattooed. No hint of tattoos, nothing on
her neck or hands which a lot of shadow people would have tattoos
there. Her skin color isn't mentioned
but she's always portrayed as light skinned and as far as we
know that's typical for the shadow lands, which that tracks.
It's a place with very with much lower levels of sunlight so you
would expect people not to be as dark skinned.
Obviously it's fantasy. George could do what he wants
there, but it tracks. Like I said, I guess she's of
middling height. There's no mention of her being
short or tall. Maybe it's a fairly safe
assumption. But yeah, the the most
descriptive feature is her eyes, which are described as wet and
shiny. Usually when George describes
wet eyes he means crying or tearing up.
There's a lot of examples of like Sansa or even the the
hounds eyes are wet at one point, lots of different cases
like that. But there's, there's only one
other case of wet and shiny and that's Lancel.
Lancel on A Dance with Dragons, or rather A Feast for crows.
Lancel on A feast for crows. Cersei thinks of him as having
wet eyes or shiny and wet a child's eyes and an old man's
face. Now of course Cersei is very
suspicious of Lancel and is very paranoid that he's for good
reason. So maybe it's not paranoia, but
she's worried that he's going to tell about their affair to the
High Septon now that he's become all pious.
So she's not not exactly looking at him without bias here.
Like Varus's eyes are described as dark and wet when he comes to
Ned in the dungeon now he's not crying, but his eyes are
described as sort of wet for some reason.
Maybe that's his part of his disguise, I'm not really sure.
Rattle Shirt's eyes are described as shiny behind the
giant skull. Oberon's are dark and shiny, so
are Tumko Lowe's, the Basilisk Knight.
Danzos's are shiny, but only when they're like climbing down
the Cliff. So I don't know that we can read
much into this at all. It's an interesting detail, and
it's interesting that nobody else seems to have that quite
that same description of wet and shiny.
So our eyes are a little unique, but in not in a way that leads
us anywhere. You know, like, I think I agree
with you that yeah, it seems like most often the connotation
is kind of their teary eyed or something.
But the other part of that to me is passion.
You know what I mean? Yeah, that's what I see in some
of those, is that they're, they're feeling fervent or
passionate and it's like a kind of thing, not the wet part, but
the shiny. Part Yeah, I think you're right.
That's what you would see like when someone's eyes, someone's
eyes are shining because they have like.
They're focused. They're yeah.
Like in. Them in that moment when Dontos
is climbing down the Cliff, that's really like they're doing
it like that's the the the plan is culminating and he's actually
a little bit scared about climbing down that Cliff as
well. Sansa was Sansa.
So yeah, that is interesting too.
And Nina says the well, by making her eyes a little bit
unique, this could be used later as an identifying feature.
Or if Quaithe does take her mask off or has her mask off, those
eyes might be recognizable without the mask on.
It'll be like, hey, that's Quaithe.
I recognize those eyes. So given the unique description,
that is a a way for George to use that unique identifier later
as a clue for us, for those of us who are paying attention and
and which is super important because George slash Quaithe
herself is pretty much going all out on the lack of identifying
features. It's it in itself is a feature
of her that she has a lack of identifying feature.
She might be the least describable named character of
any significance in the entire series.
Like it's hard to find someone that's less described.
Another great take from Nina here, I think, is that she's
like, Quaithe is like a personification of prophecy
itself. That's part of why the lack of
description, part of the lack of tangibility, fits with her being
the personification of prophecy. She's mysterious,
unidentifiable, vaguely important, but also pointedly
vague. Right.
She's specifically vague intentionally.
You can tell that she's being vague on purpose, though We
don't know why, though we will talk about that.
We have a whole section on that, which is the whole why so
cryptic section. Again, Quay speaking common when
she meets Danny is interesting. There's no suggestion of an
accent. This kind of detail gets people
thinking, theorizing that maybe she's from Westeros.
I think you need a lot more evidence than that.
Plenty of people speak common. Mary Mazdor speaks common.
She learned it from Marwin. You know, traders go to Ashai
all the time. Even though it's not a common
tourist destination, there's still plenty of people to go
there. So it's not something we can
really latch onto as a strong piece of evidence.
And if Quaith saw this coming, Quaith is a person of prophecy,
probably certainly seems that way.
If she knew Danny was coming or she knew Danny was the person
that she needed to be aware of, that she knew that she was the
savior and she saw that, well, she knows that person is
Westerosi. She wants to be able to
communicate with this savior who's going to come along
eventually. I better be able to talk to her.
I need to speak her language. So she may have learned comments
specifically to one day converse with Azora High, the new Azora
High, the new Prince that was promised.
Now she says she's Quaithe of the shadow.
Quaithe from the shadow of the her Dothraki or Danny's Dothraki
call her shadow spawn. All that the appendix in all the
books says that she's from Ash eye, which lies by the shadows.
Nearly the same thing, but like, I figured she wasn't actually
born in Ash Eye but in the Shadow Lands because there's no
supposedly no children in Ash Eye, even the locals.
So I don't know. Yeah, maybe the locals know
better than to raise children in Ash Eye where it's like toxic.
They take them somewhere else where it's less toxic.
The Shadow Lands are all bad. It's a it's, it's a place
steeped in sorcery, just as Quaithe herself is steeped in
prophecy and Danny is steeped in prophecy.
So I think she's probably born in the shadow, not literally in
Ash Eye, but the two are such a so closely related.
There's a there's a blurred line there, a shadowed line.
We don't have a lot of examples of shadow binders.
The most prominent, of course, is Melisandre.
She's going to pop up a lot in this episode.
She forms the basis for a lot of our comparisons and assertions
about Quaithe, but also Miriam Mazdor, Mary Mazdor, clearly a
shadow binder as well. There's some overlap or
possibilities there. That said, Quaithe hasn't really
done any shadow binding. She's done this prophecy stuff.
She may be speaking to Danny from afar.
Well, she's definitely speaking to Danny from afar, but that
doesn't seem to be a matter of shadow binding.
It seems to be something else, seems to be a different form of
magic. So we have heard that she's from
the shadow and that she is magical, but we haven't actually
really seen it. There's implications of magic
that she's done magic ahead of time, but we don't really get
specifics and it seems to be more in the realm of prophecy
then it seems to be in strict shadow binding.
You know, she's not like launching shadow babies or
anything like that. Something about Melissandre that
makes her unique is that she's a red priestess and a shadow
binder. There isn't anyone else we know
that's like that for sure. Maybe Macoro is.
It would make sense, but we don't know for sure.
Like Thoris definitely isn't a shadow binder and a lot of these
other red priests we can assume probably aren't unless we're
told they are. There's no reason to assume that
they know shadow binding. You don't assume somebody knows
magic, right? That's a big assumption, but
she's definitely not a priestess of her lore.
Quaithe on the other hand, So this is just a Shadowbinder,
which we only have a couple of. I think Miriam Mazdur is
literally the only named Shadowbinder and she's dead, so
that doesn't give us a lot of bases to very mysterious
discipline. Shadowbinding.
All we know is that a lot of people don't like it.
It seems pretty dark. It's associated with curses and
and unscrupulous beings. And yeah, the Dithraki shun it,
etcetera. Melisandre and Quaithe are both
focused on the end of the world and stopping it.
One is advising the actual Princess that was promised.
One is advising the person she thinks is the Prince that was
promised and returning to the idea of powers.
Melisandre, we see her do all sorts of things 'cause she's
there. Quaithe is speaking to Danny
from afar. How can her magic, other than
the magic using to speak to her from afar be applied?
She's she's got a shadow bind stuff from all the way back in
Karth that's going to affect Danny when she's in, I don't
know, Volantis on the Dithraki Sea?
Probably not. She's probably limited to
talking to her and giving her prophecies or telling her things
or egging her on or whatever she's doing.
But I think Quaithe's shadow binding qualities are not going
to come up. It's only a way to fill out her
background, make her more mysterious cause it's one of the
most mysterious things you can do is make her a shadow binder.
Let's talk about Karth now, just as a fun aside and a way to show
the lack of link between Karth and Quaith is the lack of AU in
the Q there. Karth, you know, George likes to
do this. It's something that we, we David
J Peterson, the language guys expressed it a mild annoyment at
with George, with the with the lack of you after the Q there.
But it seems to be like the way it's written that would indicate
that they are not the same culture, which we know that, but
it's good to maybe expand on that.
Quaeth is not from Karth. And the big question we have is
why is she even there? What brought her there in the
1st place? Again, she doesn't seem to have
any other associations with anything.
They're not part of any organizations that we know of.
So what's that about? As the three of them meaning the
the three seekers, Zaro, Piatt, and Quaithe enter the city with
Danny. Quaithe is quiet.
Zaro and Piatt argue with each other and put each other down.
They're both like competing for Danny's attention.
Meanwhile, Quaithe is just hum to dumb, walking along not
saying anything. Zaro warns her about Warlock
saying their gifts will turn to ashes, a warning she doesn't
actually need because she's already wary of magic because of
Mary Mazdur, which might be why Quaith doesn't try to do
anything overly magical. She's like, well this is going
to make Danny not trust me and I want her to trust me.
Meanwhile, Pie, it's all about the all the power and splendor
they have, which is a turn off for Danny.
He doesn't realize that, but it is.
So Quaithe plays the game properly.
She's not, they're not competing for her attention.
They're not acting like she's an object to win.
Quaithe treats her like, well, something entirely different.
Something like maybe a someone that she needs to advise rather
than someone she wants to win over to get things from.
That's huge. Jorah says the crow calls the
Raven black, referring to Xaro's gifts.
Because he's like that guy's he says.
Xaro says Piatt's gifts will turn to ashes, which they do by
the way. And Jorah's like, well, his
gifts will turn to ashes too, which they do by the way.
So not less literally, but they do.
And in in the case of the warlocks, they literally turn to
ash. But Xaros are more like
symbolically turned to ash. He withdraws his gifts, he
turns, takes his generosity away when he realizes he's he's not
going to get what he wants. And of course, the the warlocks
swear revenge against Danny, but Euron being Euron, stole their
revenge. He's a very thorough pirate,
Euron. He's like, I'm not just going to
steal your stuff. I'm going to steal your purpose.
I'm going to steal your mission, so in case you all don't know
what I'm talking about, you're on.
Apparently captured the warlocks, as they were pursuing
Danny, took all their stuff, brutally abused them, tortured
them. Yeah, not good for them, but I
don't feel too sorry for them. Now, in Xaro's case, he's
constantly trying to overaw Danny.
He's just like, look at all my wealth.
Look at all my splendor. We could go sailing around the,
you know, doing all these things.
You could have all the pleasures of the world, things you didn't
even know existed. And she's like, no, I don't.
I'm not really that interested in that.
And and Karth is written like the richest place on the planet.
It's written like a place that has been so rich for so long.
It's evolved in something unrecognizable in a lot of ways
because the people are the powerful people there have been
so powerful for so long, they've just lost all sense of do you
think powerful people in the real world have lost touch with
regular folk? This is that idea on steroids on
times 100. That's Karf.
It's it's the fantasy version of of the city of unchecked avarice
for eons. And Zarro is the product of
that. And Pietri kind of is as well,
though more of the declining phase of that.
And of course, what happens the Undying, We're trying to steal a
dragon, if not multiples or steal her, steal her life force.
Piet Pre, I mean Xaro's own Daxus was trying to steal a
dragon too. Using a traditional Kartheen
wedding practice where you get to ask one favor of your husband
or bride to be and they can't refuse.
He was going to ask for a dragon.
Jorah figured that out. Danny was like, Oh yeah, that
must be it. And that's that.
Quaithe is nothing like this. She acts more like a Jorah
without the creepiness than a pirate or a Zarro quote.
Last of the three seekers to depart was Quaithe, the shadow
binder from her Danny received only a warning.
Beware. The woman in the red lacquer
mask said. Of whom?
Of all they shall come day and night see the wonder that has
been born again into the world, And when they see, they shall
lust. For Dragons are fire made flesh
and fire is power. Of course, like I said, Danny
has this wariness like she did with Pyatt because of her
experience with Mary Mazdur. So she's like, eh, Quaithe isn't
trying to overaw me with magic, but she's still Speaking of
supernatural things. And she doesn't like not being
able to see her face. That's a that's like a a
negative. That's a bit of a turn off.
Few people like that. Yeah, fair, right.
Few people want. Everybody wants to know who
they're talking to. It's like, what are you hiding?
Now we know that it's a cultural thing in the Shadow Lands, but
it's a cultural thing that makes people not trust Shadowlander.
So it's it's both. It's both things.
Yeah. Now Pia and Zara want her to
stay in Karth. Pia wants to win her over.
Zara wants to win her over. But Quaithe wants her to flee
and doesn't want her. Warns her to flee.
Maybe both, but warns her to flee is what she actually says.
And it's because of what these men's intentions are.
She's like, worry about those guys.
Piatt and Zara, worry about their true intentions.
And other people who you haven't even met yet worry about them
too. Pretty much everyone is going to
want something from you. All these people who are going
to ask things from you, they have ulterior motives.
They want your power. They want your power to do
things for them or they want to steal from you or something.
You should always start whenever you meet anyone, Danny, start by
figuring out what those ulterior motives are 'cause they will
have them. If you find someone without an
ulterior motive, look harder 'cause it's probably there.
So that is sort of self fulfilling with Quaithe herself
is like, well, we'll have to apply that to you as well.
What's your ulterior motive, Quaithe?
What is your ulterior motive in telling me to beware of other
people's ulterior motives? Because if you're going to sit
here and tell me that everyone has an ulterior motive, then are
you really different? What is yours?
So that's the trick with Quaithe or one of the big tricks with
quaithe. Maybe that's the question of
quaithe, the most important question of quaithe here.
Your miles may vary, but it's certainly a contender.
Now there's more conversations off page as this next part
indicates. Quote.
When Quaithe too, was gone, Sergeora said.
She speaks truly my Queen, though I like her no more than
the others. I do not understand her.
Paya and Zarro had showered Danny with promises from the
moment they first glimpsed her Dragons, declaring themselves
her loyal servants in all things, but from Quaithe she had
gotten only the rare cryptic word.
Quaithe isn't exactly being specific or maybe saying
anything that isn't kind of well known.
Yeah, almost everybody wants something from Danny.
I think Danny kind of figures out on her own, she doesn't
necessarily need Quais to know that, but maybe she needs to
make that more important. Maybe this is a factor in her
life or in her quest that she needs to elevate, because it's
going to happen a lot. People are going to really try
to get things from her or try to kill her or both.
So it's basically a warning about everyone.
And I think this is a big fail on Jorah's part.
He's right to agree with her in saying, yeah, I don't he she's
right to not trust those other two.
But I don't like her either. But the other two just had way
more red flags. They're all these office offers
and promises to serve. And I'm so loyal to you the
second you meet. Come on, this is obviously
blowing smoke, but Quait doesn't do that.
So I think Jora should have I mean, and it's Jora's job to be
suspicious, right? He's their bodyguard.
You know, it's it's it's fine that he's doing that, but I
think it's a misread because the other two they're shamelessly
doing doing all these things that are very red flaggish where
quaits. Maybe they're red flags, but
they're they're not aimed at Danny, right.
They're not obvious that she the fact that she isn't trying to
get anything from Danny hasn't made any requests, hasn't asked
anything, hasn't even hinted at wanting something that should
put her on another level, a less threatening level.
But George, maybe from George's perspective, it's just, well,
she's the fact that I she's more mysterious is potentially worse.
Yes, these men shamelessly are wanting things from you.
They're saying all these things that aren't true, but in some
ways that makes them easier to predict.
I This is the enemy. You know, lots of people are
going to act like that. I can deal with that.
Quase. What the hell is she?
We don't even know who she is. Yeah, she's not asking for
anything, but maybe she's just bidding your time.
We don't know that. So I don't think Jorah's
suspicion is too misplaced. I ultimately do think he's
wrong, but that's because I have more information than Jorah
does. I have the benefit of hindsight,
though not entirely, when it comes to Quase, because what we
see to Quae so far does align with she's trying to stop the
end of the world. She's trying to maybe not help
Danny, but help Danny achieve that she doesn't make.
She doesn't necessarily care about Danny as a person.
She doesn't care about what happens to Danny as long as the
world is saved. That's an important point that
we should keep in mind all the way throughout this because just
because Quaeth wants to save the world doesn't mean she cares a
fig for Daenerys Targaryen as a person.
So that is a disconnect that is a reason to be wary of somebody.
He's like, yeah, she wants me to help save the world, but she
doesn't care about me. Now that's understandable too.
What is the life of one person against the entire freaking
world? So you can kind of get why
Quaith is like, well, I don't have room to also save you.
I got to save the whole world, you know, and you might have to
die to make that happen. Quaithe wouldn't want to tell
her that if that's the case. So that's that's an important
factor too. So I don't think we'll ever hear
again from Zaro. Zarro's done.
He's out of the story. I doubt he.
Maybe Danny thinks of him as an example of the greed of men.
But Piatt, and he's definitely, as we described, he's out of the
story. I mean, I don't think he's
getting out of the Silence's hold.
He's not dead. Or maybe he is and somebody.
Is that clear? Which warlocks have had fed on
the others because he made them eat themselves.
Terrible. Yeah.
Whether they're going to survive or not, which is almost
certainly no, they won't be a problem for Danny anymore.
Their revenge plot will, because Euron is absconded with it and
he's more dangerous anyway. But Euron's not really much of a
part of this. Interestingly, he isn't
something that Quaithe warns her about too, so that's nothing
else important to keep in mind. So just because Quaithe is
saying some of these good things, it doesn't mean it's
good for Danny. I'm sure her.
That's the closest thing I can get to so far in terms of an
ulterior motive, a a separation between what's good for Danny
and what's good for the world. Now Danny is going to ponder
whether Quaith is an enemy or a dangerous friend.
I think that's it, That's it, That's it in a nutshell.
A dangerous friend. She's dangerous because Danny's
life is not terribly important in the scheme of things, given
what is hanging in the balance. There's the danger, but the
friend in that she is trying to help Danny with something that
Danny wants to do. Now why was Quaithe and Karth,
we started this section with that and now we can come back to
it. She's not Kartheen as we said
before, no profession or association with others in the
city, just she's just there, which is yet another example of
how different she is from the other two seekers.
So it's probably because of prophecy, right?
Quaithe went to Karth knowing Azorihai would be there or would
show up there, and she went there to encourage Azorihai
Danny to go E more, maybe with her Quaith.
If Danny had gone to East, Quaith might have gone along,
they might have travelled together.
We should consider this from a meta level.
As we detailed in our Shadow by Asha episode, George at some
point changed his mind about Danny going to Asha, and if in
Book 1 he seemed to be set on that, but in A Clash of Kings
he'd already changed his mind, it wasn't after that, it was
during. The book indicates that like
she's already changes her mind. She doesn't go to Ash Eye and
there's no way she's going to she she gets the word from the
cinnamon wind, she gets those ships, she starts going West.
She's not going east and I don't think she's going to go back.
She is going to go back, but not to that bad.
She's not going to go to Ash eye.
So George had already made that decision.
So that's particularly interesting that instead of
going to Ash Eye, she's going to learn the things that she would
have learned in Ash Eye from people who have been to Ash Eye.
They are like the portable Ash Eye.
Mary Mazdor would have been, She's dead, but she did a little
bit. Marwin has been there.
He might matter. He's headed to Danny right at
the end of A Feast for Crows. That's what he says he's doing.
And Quaith herself, of course, fits into this very well.
So people who've been to Ash Eye can fill in those blanks for
Danny instead of going there. She can learn what she needed to
learn from them and Melisandre too.
Of course, Melisandre then it would have to be in the long
term. That's something we talked about
in her episode or Melisandre episode, is that once Melisandre
figures out that it's not Stannis, assuming that she ever
does before losing her life or something like that, she would
switch to Danny and maybe tell her things.
She's Melisandre might know things about dragon lore or just
other things about the prophecy. Just as the person who's been to
Asha, she's Melisandre of Asha, she could know some important
things that haven't come up yet. Also, how long has she been
there? Quaithe?
Like, that's the thing about prophecies, right?
You don't have a time stamp. You can see through scrying or
fire reading or whatever. You can see what's going to
happen. You can see what is happening,
but you don't know exactly when. It's like, is this an hour from
now? Is this happening right now or
is this like a few days from now?
Or did this happen a few weeks ago?
They don't yet. No time stamp.
It's it's the event can be seen, but there's no placing it
chronologically beyond certain reasonable barriers there.
So that's that's curious. So maybe Kwaitz had been waiting
for a while. She's like, well, according to
magical means, I know Azor High, the Princess that was promised
is going to show up in Karth. I don't know her name or their
name doesn't even know the gender necessarily.
Maybe she does because of the Mother of Dragons.
Maybe that's part of some vision that she had, but we can't
assume specifics. All we know is that Quais had a
reason to go to car. If it's probably this reason,
and it may be something that she's known for a while and has
been waiting for a while, but could it could also just be a
short time? We know that she's been at least
there for half a year, but that's it.
That which is not not a whole lot to work with.
So maybe it's been five years, but at least a half a year?
Chicken defeats egg. It's a question in the fandom
whether the Dragons spurred the return of magic or the other way
around. Quaith weighs in on this
directly after they all witness some St.
Fire magic. Quaith points out that it's not
a trick. Jogo calls it a trick, and
Quaith corrects him. Danny's a bit surprised to see
her. She's like, Quaith, where'd you
come from? Because they were just walking
around the city. And then Quaithe appears in the
crowd and like, oh, hello, Karth is huge.
So this is a problem almost certainly not an accident.
Quaith was following her or using the same sort of magic.
Quaith knew Danny would show up in the square that day.
And I was like, well, I'll wait here and she'll show up.
So you can't rule out magical means.
I mean, if she knew Danny would show up in Karth eventually,
then maybe she could know she would show up in this particular
Plaza. You know, it's similar enough
that you can't rule it out. Danny is curious what Quaith is
talking about. She's like, what do you mean?
And here's what she says. Half a year gone, that man could
scarcely wake fire from dragonglass.
He had some small skill with powders and wildfire, sufficient
to entrance a crowd while his cut purses did their work.
He could walk across hot coals and make burning roses bloom in
the air. But he could no more aspire to
climb the fiery ladder than a common fisherman could hope to
catch a Kraken in his Nets. Danny looked uneasily at where
the ladder had stood. Even the smoke was gone now and
the crowd was breaking up, each man going about his business in
a moment. More than a few would find their
purses flat and empty. And now?
And now his powers grow, Khaleesi, and you are the cause
of it. Me, She laughed.
How could that be? Quaithe responds simply because
you're the Mother of Dragons. And this is a curious moment.
Because it's, it's less cryptic, it's more indirect.
It's just straight up because you're the Mother of Dragons,
you know? But I've always been on the side
that the Dragons are one of the things that returned when magic
came back. Not that the Dragons caused the
other magical things to happen or return, but that is
absolutely what Quaithe is saying.
She is totally saying that the Dragons brought it back.
Now she knows better than me. She knows better than all of us.
Probably assuming she's telling the truth, which she probably
is. Old Dan, of all people, agrees.
She claims that she could smell the red comet and says it
represents Dragons. OSHA similarly says it blood and
fire, which of course to us is a draconic reference, and
Melisandre straight up calls it Dragon's breath.
So yeah, these are all lesser users of sorcery, and Old Dan's
not a user of sorcery, just a a fount of knowledge about the
supernatural. And they're all saying similar
things. They're all kind of talking
Dragons or things like Dragons or the product of Dragons, like
dragon breath. It's fun to think about this as
an aside of this fire magician who's making way more money now
because of the return of magic. And there was probably like
happening all over the world, like all sorts of magicians and
and St. performers are like, whoa, we got raises now.
One of the reasons I'm I don't really get on board with the
idea that the Dragons brought magic to the world is that the
others came back before the Dragons were born, for example,
like they obviously appear in the prologue and the Dragons
don't happen until the end of the book.
It's a whole, well, it's like months, if not a year.
The comet even appeared before the Dragons were born, just
barely. Like, it appeared like minutes
or hours before, but still before.
Now, of course, they see that as the heralding.
They're like, yeah, this is, this is the comets coming
because of all this, you know, because the Dragons are about to
be born. But she doesn't say but wait a
second, wait a second. She didn't say magic is more
potent because Dragons were born.
She said magic is more potent because you are the Mother of
Dragons. She didn't say it's because they
were born, because you are the Mother of Dragons.
That's not quite the same thing, is it?
If Quaithe sees Danny as Azora High, and I think she does, And
Benaro, the high priest of the Red Temple of Volantis, the
biggest one, also says so, then what she might be saying instead
of the birth of the Dragons brought magic to the world is
no, you, You are the omen, not the Dragons.
The Mother of Dragons is the one that matters.
That's the spike, that's the milestone.
That's the big thing here. Not the Dragons that you
brought, but you. You're the one that matters
here. You're the unique happening.
You're the symbol of end times of times of destruction and then
renewal. She's that her Dragons are the
tool for that. But without Danny, none of that
happens. That's an interesting way to
look at it and and in a lot of ways it fits better because
again, this conundrum with magic, the Dragons didn't it
just doesn't seem to fit, even though Quaithe and old Nan and
these other characters are seem to be pretty trustworthy know
what they're talking about, but they can easily be wrong.
I mean, this is this is deep stuff here, by the way, the, the
idea that this is destruction and renewal is what we're headed
for. It's super fitting for a dragon
to be that personification. And you need a brain, a human to
guide. The Dragons aren't just going to
scorch earth Westeros on their own just for the hell of it.
You need a, a, a, a leader. The Mother of Dragons has to
guide them towards that. The renewal part is what comes
after, right? You destroy, and then on the
ashes a new world comes, right? The Dragons aren't part of that
part. Dragons don't grow trees, right?
Dragons don't plant or plant trees.
Same difference. Well, you know, if we're really
getting into the weeds, I bet dragon fertilizer is pretty good
stuff. Pretty strong stuff anyway.
But that aside, what in this planet, what in planet Toast can
destroy like a dragon? The Doom.
Nothing. Nothing that.
Nothing that humans can control. And very few humans can even
control Dragons. And why are we talking about
destruction and renewal? Because Westeros is very stuck
in its system. It has existed in this very
similar state of affairs without technological advancement,
without cultural advancement for a long time.
And that might be why they need a little kick in the butt, you
know, get out of that cycle, break that wheel, burn that
wheel. And of course, there's the
others that are coming to potentially reset a lot of
things that would be destruction and renewal, and that may have
been what the Children of the Forest had in mind in the 1st
place. Freeze everybody else out, then
renew with just them. So a little fire.
Nice combo there. A curious touch.
Here's a moment with Quaithe and Danny that very much bears extra
attention. Sorcery may be afoot.
Actually, sorcery may be a hand quote.
The woman stepped closer and lay 2 fingers on Danny's wrist.
You are the Mother of Dragons, are you not?
She is, and no spawn of shadows may touch her.
Jogo brushed Quaithe's fingers away with the handle of his
whip. The woman took a step backward.
You must leave this city soon, Daenerys Targaryen, or you will
never be permitted to leave it at all.
Danny's wrist still tingled where Quaithe had touched her.
Where would you have me go? She asked.
There's zero chance this tingling means nothing, right?
It has to matter. It has to be an evidence of
something, some sort of magic happened there.
They're romance. Mr. Romance, Danny's like, oh,
your touch thrills me. Every time we touch I get this
feeling. So my favorite guess, and really
the only guess I have, is that it has to do with Quaithe
appearing in her dreams later. Like she radio tagged her, Geo
tagged her, and is like, now I can find you like a bug.
Now I can track you, your location anywhere I want.
I can. Without that physical contact,
she wouldn't be able to enter Danny's dreams later.
It's never referenced again. This tingling wrist.
Danny's wrist doesn't tingle later, but it's not nothing,
right? We don't have any even
comparable magic though, to base it on.
I can't think of anything in the books that's similar to that.
Like a like, yeah, geotag, for lack of a better word.
Like I will always be able to find you.
Now I have a tracking device on you.
But it's also a tracking device with a speaker and a projector,
right? Because of video projector.
Because Quaithe appears in her dreams.
Again, it's not quite dreaming, but waking dreams type
situation. And the warning is fairly
straightforward too, and probably accurate, right?
Yeah. These powerful people are going
to first try to coax her. Zara's trying to win her over
π's trying to win her over. But if that doesn't work, there
will use other means. They'd rather win you over, but
they will take you. They will use violence as the
next resort. It's not even the last resort,
it's the next resort. It's like, well, option one
coax, option two, option 2, take.
There isn't really a third, you know, that's it.
They start with one, move on to two.
If that doesn't work and it's very straightforward, it's human
nature. This is, again, not some deep
insight that Quaithe is is laying on Danny.
Jorah's saying the same things. It's it's good that someone
besides Jorah's saying them so that Danny gets multiple
opinions on that. That's useful.
But, and Danny's also young. So maybe some of these life
lessons that are kind of obvious need to be restated, need to be
made clear to Danny that, you know, this is really important,
not just kind of important. So there are those who theorize
that Quaithe was actually sending visions to Danny before
her first appearance, before Quaithe's first appearance.
All that mother Dragons talk inside her head in Game of
Thrones when she's having fever dreams, the visions of her
ancestors with gemstone eyes, all that, you know, mother
Dragons, you'd go, go move, do all this stuff like the things
that were pushing her to, well, do what she did that ended up in
hatching the eggs. Some people would guess that
that was Quaithe all the way back then.
I'm not really on that train because I think the wrist
touching is what enabled Quaithe to do start doing that and it
hadn't happened yet. But I don't have a huge amount
of confidence in that. But I would also think there'd
be something, some clue to connect Quaithe to those visions
if she was behind them. And there's nothing really, no
like 2 seconds of a red lacquer mask appearing, that would be
too obvious. But there's just nothing, you
know? And when Quaithe appears in
these visions later, it's Quaithe.
It's not someone else that she realizes, it's Quaithe.
It's just her. She just projects herself.
So none of these other examples that might be Quaithe have
Quaithe in them. And the ones that we know are
Quaithe, she's always in it. So that doesn't necessarily
align. So I kind of think that I would
guess no on that theory that Quaith was sending dreams to
Danny before they even encountered each other in Carth.
Can't eliminate it, though. Definitely can't eliminate it.
Quaithe's quirky compass. Probably the most famous thing
Quaithe says is this thing we're about to read, and she repeats
it a few times. You all will recognize it.
It's the first one. The first time she says it, it's
a bit more than halfway through a Clash of Kings quote.
To go north, you must journey South.
To reach the West you must go E. To go forward, you must go back,
and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.
Ashai Danny thought she would have me go to Ashai.
Will the Ashaii give me an army? She demanded.
Will there be gold for me and Ashai?
Will there be ships? What is there in Ashai that I
will not find in Karth? Truth.
Said the woman in the mask and bowing.
She faded back into the crowd. Danny was like channeling the
Tickler there. Will there be gold and ash eye?
Will there be ships? You're.
Right. So what truth might that be?
Quite says truth. But what?
What truth? Something about Danny's
ancestry, her purpose, Something uncomfortable that Quait doesn't
want to tell her straight up because it'll turn her off from
listening in the anymore. It's like, well, I'm going to
tell you that you're the Mother of Dragons, you know that?
I'm going to tell you that you're Azora High.
You're the prophesied savior of the world.
Do you believe me? You know, I think it's a rough
thing to just drop on somebody. Maybe, maybe you got to bring
her along slowly, or maybe you have to point her in the right
direction so she learns it for herself.
If he learns it for herself, she'll she's a lot more likely
to believe it and take it to heart than if just some random
stranger in a red lacquer mask is telling her.
And this also speaks to something we'll get into a
little deeper later in the episode about why Quaith is so
darn cryptic. That's part of why maybe maybe
is to get Danny to think rather than just to tell her things.
And if Danny, the more Danny thinks, the more it will
resonate within her, the more she'll, like I said, take it to
heart. And again, she doesn't say
prophecy. She says truth.
She also doesn't say answers. She says truth, which it's not
the same thing, right? Because these these truths might
refer to questions Danny isn't asking, questions she doesn't
know to ask. She hasn't learned that yet.
And she's not going to ask Shy. Whatever is being said here,
it's not going to happen. And George already knew that
when he wrote it. Be very clear on that.
He hadn't. He didn't make that decision
after this. He made it before.
He still wrote it as people like Quaithe and even Jora are trying
to get her to go there, but she decides not to.
So these truths again will have to be learned elsewhere since
she's not going to Ashai. And that's, that's speaks to my
earlier point about, well, Ashai can come to her through people
who have been there and have that knowledge, that truth,
whatever that truth is. That might make it harder to
accept again, because if it's coming from Melisandre or Quaif
or Macoro or Marwin or all of them, well, it would help if
it's all of them. If they are telling her
something, she's more likely to believe it.
But if it's something she learns from, like an old book or
something like that, that's she's going to, that's, that's
certainty that it's not an ulterior motive.
If she just reads in a text like, well, this old book isn't
trying to screw me over. It's not trying to steal from
me. It doesn't want something from
me. It's a book, you know, it's a
scroll. So that taking out the human
element might have been what George was originally thinking
about. Like, well, if Danny just reads
this in a scroll, then you know, that's, that's a lot more
believable. How does this relate though to
Danny's fight against the Long Night eventually?
On the surface, it's easy to see a connection in that well,
Aishai is where the ancient legends about Azorahai and the
last Long Night are kept there. That's the one place on
Planetos, or maybe the most likely place on Planetos where
there would be records of it, or written even.
Certainly there don't seem to be in Westeros.
Maybe they're maybe in the Citadel is a little bit, but
Aishai is the place where you would think the majority of the
best sources would be. So that you can just kind of see
just from a very high level is like, well, that would be a
reason for Danny to go there to learn about those things.
But take that back and say, well, she could learn those
things from individuals who have learned that that can be passed
on to her. She doesn't have to go learn it
directly, but it also would help learn what they're facing.
If you know what happened in the last long night, if you read
about it and get lots of detail that really helps you understand
what you're going to face this time.
It really helps you understand what the consequences would
would be if you aren't successful.
And that can be very motivating. And to repeat, Danny doesn't
even really know about that yet. It's just a long night to her.
Like it's just like a not, not something imminent.
She hardly knows about it. And that's really important.
Keep in mind when Danny ponders the cryptic meanings behind
these things, she can't consider that.
She can't consider the long night of the others.
That's not something that she will land on as a as a solution
or as an answer. She's not aware of it yet.
So that might be part of the truth that she still needs to
learn. And you can't just tell someone
all that. I was like, so Danny, 8000 years
ago, there were these icy beings that emerged.
We don't know exactly where they came from.
Let me we'll talk about that later, but they might be coming
back and like, how do you just tell her all that Danny's
doesn't have a basis you, it's too much to tell all at once.
You have to bring that along slowly.
You have to spoon feed this information.
She has to learn a little bit about it, learn to accept that,
get a little more, because what she may have to eventually
accept is that she has to face that.
She has to set aside the thing that she's entirely focused on.
Her entire arc has been focused on reclaiming the crown,
reclaiming the throne. Eventually, she's got to divert
from that plan to go north right during after, before.
We're not exactly sure how the timing will work out, but
someone's going to send her north, and this is set up for
that. Right before she even knows that
problem exists, Quaithe is leading her towards it, for lack
of a better term. This is kind of Quaithe's style.
A lot of prophet type characters describe images and interpret
them, and Quaith does that in in one point at least with the
whole this, you know, Kraken and dark flame, lion and Griffin,
sun, sun, all that stuff. Those are symbolic
interpretations of people. But mostly Quaithe gives
directions. She's not telling her of images
and imagery or things that she own she dreamt of.
She's saying you got to do this, you got to do that, you got to
be a dragon, you got to go E, go West.
That's cryptic, but it's not painting a picture, it's telling
her you know what to do. It's kind of like a map.
She's painting a map. It's a weird map, like I said,
with a strange compass, where north is South and E is West.
It's like an MC Escher map, really.
It just doesn't make sense. The Cthulhu map where you look
at it twice and it's different the second time.
Every time it's different because your mind can't process
it. So I think that's the big part
is Quaithe is bringing her along slowly because you can't just
fire hose all this cryptic end of the world apocalypse
information. You know, it's too much to tell
somebody all in just a minute or two or one session.
You got to bring them along slowly.
Danny has to learn. It's a curriculum, end of the
world curriculum. You can't do it all in one
class. You can't do it in one session.
The Crohn's eye says Lovecraft creeping in Viaquoith's name.
It's an anagram for Ethaq. Ethaq.
I don't know how to say that. ITHAQUE.
An alternate spelling of Issaquah the Windwalker.
One of the Great Old Ones in the Cthulhu mythos.
Probably an Easter egg, huh? That definitely went over my
head. And it's a very good chance
you're right about that. It could be.
Anyway, That's cool. Yeah.
And we obviously know already that George is big on Lovecraft
references because it was a big influence on him growing up,
especially the farther E you go, the more Lovecraft stuff there
is. And well, Quaithe is from the
Far East. So could indeed, could indeed be
an Easter egg. I like that.
This is a good example of a very spread out topic.
And something that I think is one of the things that I think
we bring to the table when we're making episodes is it's pretty
hard to keep track of Quaithe. She's, she's important, but not
important enough or prominent enough that you don't forget
about her temporarily. Then she's like, Oh yeah,
Quaithe, she comes back, you're reading a Danny chapter, and
there she is again. But her stuff is so spread out
among so many different books, unless you hone in on it like
we're doing now, it's really hard to glean much from it
because it can easily just kind of mix into the whole amalgam of
prophecy and stuff that isn't quite ascertained by Danny yet.
Stuff that maybe she will eventually understand but
doesn't yet. It all just kind of mixes into
that. And only getting into the weeds
like we're doing now is when you really start to see that it's
really well defined in some ways, and Quaith is very unique
in a lot of other ways, and that's great.
We love that. It's yet another example of
reading between the lines, digging deep and being rewarded.
We've covered A Clash of Kings, we've covered Quaith's debut,
and we've covered Karth. Let's go to A Storm of Swords
and dreams in the belly of Valerian.
The early portion of A Storm of Swords sees Danny aboard
Illyrio's ships, right? Karth is where those ships
arrive. She gets on them, renames them
after Aegon's Dragons, Aegon and the Sister's Dragons, and she
has a lot of time to think and dream.
Quote. That night she dreamt that she
was Rhaegar riding to the Trident, but she was mounted on
a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the usurpers rebel
host across the river, they were armored all in ice, but she
bathed them in dragon fire and they melted away like dew and
turned the Trident into a torrent.
Some small part of her knew that she was dreaming, but another
part exalted. This is how it was meant to be.
The other was a nightmare and I have only now awakened.
She's absolutely being a dragon in this dream right?
She is literally a dragon. She is bathing them in dragon
fire from her own dream mouth. How would the Trident gone if
they had a dragon there? May not have even happened in
the 1st place, but if she did or if they did, it would have been
the end of it. The Robert and the his buddies
would have been toasted, or in this case melted away as the
dream is showing, destroying her enemies.
And this is where it kind of overlaps.
Danny does have to face these enemies.
She has to face political enemies in Westeros and that's
what she's expecting to face. But in this dream, she's melting
her enemies, which kind of foreshadows who the real enemy
is. The ones who would melt, which
humans wouldn't. But the ultimate enemy the
Others, they would melt to her dragon fire and that is really
interesting as well because of the way this is framed she at
the end given that sentence there the last line she's
feeling like the dream is reality and reality is a dream
that she's awoken from. That's creepy and very
intriguing because at the same time, as it says, she also knows
she's dreaming. A part of her knows she's
dreaming, but it seems like the other factors are are more
prominent. The fact that she's exalting and
feeling strong and feeling like that's the real world.
This is important in Quaithes, again, in quotes dream
appearances, Danny is never fully asleep, but she's also
never fully awake. It's like to get into Danny's
dream to make Danny have these visions.
There she has to be in a certain state of mind.
She gets to do it at any time of day, any point she wants.
It has to be when Danny is like half asleep or feverish or
delirious or drowsy. That seems to be a pattern here,
as you'll see as we go through these examples, you'll notice
that it's that's always a thing that's prominent in these in
these scenes. So after that after she says the
other was a nightmare and I have only now awakened, she actually
does awaken here quote. She woke suddenly in the
darkness of her cabin, still flush with triumph.
Valerian seemed to wake with her, and she heard the faint
creak of wood, water lapping against the hull, a footfall on
the deck above her head, and something else.
Someone was in the cabin with her, eerie, geeky.
Where are you? Her handmaids did not respond.
It was too black to see, but she could hear them breathing.
Jorah, is that you? They sleep.
A woman said. They all sleep.
The voice was very close. Even Dragons must sleep.
I gotta admit, that line kind of throws me.
Even Dragons must sleep. I mean, her Dragons are asleep
in the scene. They're sleeping in the bedroom
with her. But this seems like that's a
very ordinary thing to say. Like, yeah, Dragons need to
sleep. Everything needs to sleep.
So yeah, I'm a little puzzled by that one.
I would love to hear interpretations from y'all on
this one, because I really have nothing on that.
It's also interesting that she senses Quaithe with sound, like
she's projecting herself there. She's not actually there, but
Danny can see her. But she heard her before she
spoke, like Danny sensed her somewhere, and I think it's an
audio thing. She's describing how she heard a
faint Crick of wood, water lapping against the hall, a
footfall, and something else. Someone was in the cabin with
her. So it's Quaithe's projection.
Does their footsteps or is it just she'd making a sound, she'd
like, breathe heavily or something like that?
So that's interesting. And I wonder what that's all
about. Like a sensory thing that is too
fleeting or unspecific for us to put our finger on.
Or Danny, too. So later, Quaithe will say that
only Danny can see her. So Danny's like, well, are you
here, you know, blah, blah, blah.
And she's like, Nope. And so Danny's like, trying to
figure out what the hell is going on.
And Quaithe will also tell her that these aren't dreams.
So it's sort of like Quath is priming her.
She's like, yeah, like, stop freaking out about the fact that
I'm here. So I'm trying to figure out what
this means. Like, yeah, I know this is weird
that I just appeared to you, but it's not a dream.
And don't worry about that. Listen to what I'm saying and
not don't worry about why I'm here.
That's hard to do, though. Like, how did you get in here?
How? If this is a dream, how is this
puzzle, You know, like, none of this makes sense.
It's hard for Danny to listen to what Quath is saying When none
of what's happening should be possible without supernatural
means. And if supernatural means are
occurring, well that's that. You got to put your guard up
there. You're like, wait, what is what
kind of spell is going on here? It gives Quaithe a little more
gravitas though. It's like, OK, you really should
pay attention to what I'm saying.
There's another aspect of my powers that you didn't know
existed until I appeared to you in a waking dream type scenario.
If this doesn't overaw you a little bit, well, I've got more
work to do, but it's part of like, you really should listen
to me. I'm powerful.
It's very similar to why Stannis gives way to Melisandre.
He's not like I don't believe in the red God.
I'm not religious, but she undeniably has power.
She can do things that regular folk can't.
Quaithe is kind of demonstrating a little of that for Danny.
She's not like, you know, doing tricks like the fire, the flame
things or using deception in the in the way Melisandre does.
But it's still proving herself right.
So did Quaithe send that dream about Rhaegar?
The one that kicked us off that had her dreaming about being a
dragon? The two reasons I suspect that
is one. Well, we had two reasons.
I suspect that one, which is that Danny has exactly 1 dream
about Rhaegar. This one.
That's it. She doesn't have any other
dreams about Rhaegar. The only other vision she has of
Rhaegar is that Song of Ice and Fire vision right where where
Rhaegar's naming his kid and he's talking to Elia.
That's a vision in the House of the Undying.
That's not a dream she had or a vision she had elsewhere.
And because it's in the House of the Undying, we can be pretty
confident that that one wasn't sent by Quaithe.
But this one might be because it's not only is it right before
Quaithe appears, like Danny has this dream, then Quaithe appears
like interrupting the dream or right when it gets to its
climax. But in the dream, she's a
dragon. And that's what Quaithe keeps
telling her to be. That's a recurring piece of
advice or imploring thing that Quaithe says is you got to be a
dragon. So see, since she is that in
this dragon, she's showing Danny what she can do and how powerful
it is like projecting her. Look, you need to do this to win
Exalt in it. Yes, that's the good feeling.
You should have this good feeling when you win, and that's
what you should be doing. So it really would fit if
Quaithe sent that dream, even though we're not sure that she
can. But I think we can be sure she
can. Because as we're going to talk
about here briefly, the most likely candidate in my mind and
in a lot of people's minds throughout this fandom is that
the the mechanism for Quaithe to appear like she does, to be
there but not really be there is glass candles.
Well, a glass candle. She probably doesn't have
multiples. You never know, I guess, but
probably just has one. We don't know exactly what a
glass candle can do, but it is absolutely described as being
able to do that, send visions to other people.
So if that fits right, and if you can do that, then maybe you
can send dreams because that's also sort of hinted at by Marwin
later, but we're not entirely sure about that.
So it's a strong possibility. Let's leave it at that for now.
The scene continues here though, with Danny asking questions and
getting a familiar response. She is standing over me.
Who's there? Danny peered into the darkness.
She thought she could see a shadow, the faintest outline of
a shape. What do you want of me?
Remember, to go north you must journey S.
To reach the West you must go E. To go forward you must go back,
and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.
Quaithe Danny sprung from the bed and threw open the door.
Pale yellow Lantern light flooded the cabin, and Eerie and
Jikki sat up sleepily. Khaleesi murmured, Jikki rubbing
her eyes. Vissarion woke and opened his
jaws, and a puff of flame brightened even the darkest
corners. There was no sign of a woman in
a red lacquer mask. Khaleesi, are you unwell?
Asked Jiki. A dream?
Danny shook her head. I dreamed a dream.
No more. Go back to sleep.
All of us go back to sleep. Yet try as she might, sleep
would not come again. Soquith doesn't have a lot of
time in this moment. She has only enough space to say
a couple of sentences and she repeats this cardinal direction
thing, this quirky compass bit with the touch, the light you
must pass me near the shadow. So that is clearly very
important to her. Of all the things she could have
said there. She repeats that if we're going
to take this is the going back part is going to vase dothrack
going returning to vase dothrack it.
It's fitting enough because it really does look like she's
going to go back to vase dothrack to go north.
You must journey. SI think that's not necessarily
too hard to understand. In other words, to go north in
Westeros, you must journey S Dragonstone is in the South the
way we reckon it. So she goes to Westeros, does
stuff in the South, goes N after that.
That could fit. It may not exactly being what's
said here, but it certainly fits.
And as far as you must reach to reach the West, you must go E
That's trickier because like where E she's already been as
Far East as she's going to go. Going back to Vase, Dothrak
seems to already be covered in this later this this next
sentence. And it's not east of Karth.
It's pretty much straight South or vase straight north of Karth.
Really. So, yeah, so that's I'm not so
sure about that. But maybe to go east to east she
must to learn those things about the east.
You just literally go there. It's still pretty tricky.
But also Danny is hardly even able to pay attention to all
this. She's just like too thrown by
Kuwait's presence to even listen.
She's like, what? How are you even here?
How are you talking to me? What the hell?
And she doesn't tell her handmaids the truth.
She's like, yeah, I was just dreaming.
She doesn't want to frighten them.
She's not sure what she saw. So she she wouldn't even know
how to describe what just happened.
She's like, well, actually remember that Lady with the mask
back in Carth? She was just here, you know, in
the room with us and then y'all woke up and she was gone.
Never mind, you know, What's she going to say there?
So I was talking about this section.
We we entitled dreams in the belly of Valerian.
But as we said, they weren't really dreams and Quaithe is
going to elaborate on that here in a moment.
Glass candles. Here's the second time Quaithe
seems to appear while not actually being there.
Quote. A bath will help soothe me.
She padded barefoot through the grass to her terrace pool.
The water felt cool on her skin, raising goosebumps.
Little fish nibbled at her arms and legs.
She closed her eyes and floated. A soft rustle made her open them
again. She sat up with a soft splash.
Misande. She called eerie.
Jeeky. They sleep.
Came the answer. A woman stood under the
Persimmon tree, clad in a hooded robe that brushed the grass
beneath the hood. Her face seemed hard and shiny.
She's wearing a mask, Danny knew.
A wooden mask finished in dark red lacquer.
Quaithe, am I dreaming? She pinched her ear and winced
at the pain. I dreamt of you on Valerian when
first we came to Astopor. You did not dream then or now,
so this is the straightforward reason why I keep saying she
wasn't asleep and the evidence is there besides Disquit's
statement. She was laying in the pool,
closed her eyes and floated. She wasn't actually asleep, she
was just drowsing, like resting with her eyes closed.
And once again, like the last time, a a sound alerted her to
quit's presence and not a speaking sound, a rustle.
This time it's more explicit. The other time it was just
something else. It was it's made to sound more
mysterious and creepy. In this case, the second example
for second instance, it's a little more clear what's
happening, but still not sure. She's still like a little
freaked out, not scared. Danny is very hard to scared but
she's like what the hell she's confused.
You know, it's funny because I mean, it's I don't think it is
at all the same mechanism at which Blood Raven and Bran used
the wherewitchree. But it's the same word, the same
rustling in the leaves. You know that that they here to
tell that. So it's interesting to be the
same, but it's not the same magic.
It definitely speaks to that magical overlap theory that
seems to be a guiding overall principle of how George's world
works, that if there's certain forms of magic that exist, other
cultures and disciplines can probably tap into that same
thing, doing it differently or putting a different name on it,
for example, lots of different prophecy magic, right?
There's tons of prophecy magic. In our necromancy episode, we
talked about how there's various forms all over the world of
animating the dead or resurrections or whatever.
So here we go. This is another example.
The rustling, as a Shaya said, is how the weirwood tree sounds
or when they're speaking. That's the verb George chooses.
It's rustling, or adverb. That adverb.
Yeah, anyway, it's the same word he uses, so that's very distinct
and notable. Good catch by Ashea there.
So we have a lot of evidence that these are not dreams.
Not just Quake saying it, but the description of what's
happening when each of these scenes plays out.
So what I can kind of glean from this is Quake, can't you?
Again, Quake can't just get in Danny's head in time.
She wants there has to be like an opening, and that opening is
when Danny's relaxing or half asleep, something like that.
That's her. That's when the windows open for
Quake to get in there and and say something.
And so she's kind of choosing her moments.
Maybe she's like trying all day. She's like, let me try again to
get in Danny's head. All right, it doesn't work.
Try again. All right.
It still doesn't work. All right.
Oh, now it's working, you know. So then she says what she needs
to say again. Danny is very hard to scare.
She's not not really afraid here, but confused for sure and
wondering what the hell is going on.
Waking up to someone using sorcery in your bedroom when you
were asleep is just not cool man, but Danny has to ask some
questions to make sure that it really is magic she's dealing
with here. She that takes a lot of
convincing right. You won't can't just go oh, that
must be magic. You got to that takes a little
more evidence right. So here come those questions,
quote. What are you doing here?
How did you get past my guards? I came another way.
Your guards never saw me. If I call out, they will kill
you. They will swear to you, but I am
not here. Are you here?
No, hear me, Daenerys Targaryen, the glass candles are burning.
Soon comes the pale mare, and after her the Others lowercase
Others. By the way, y'all oh, Kraken and
dark flame, lion and Griffin, the sun's sun and the mummer's
dragon. Trust none of them.
Remember the undying. Beware the perfumed seneschal.
We'll talk through The Who those individuals are later.
Let's just focus on the scene, what Quaithe is doing here and
what this points to which again glass candle.
It really points to glass candle.
We don't really have another option as far as I know some
other if it's something else, it's an an unknown sorcery that
hasn't been described, which is seems unlikely.
George doesn't really operate like he gives us a little bit
right. She actually says too at the
beginning of this, the second sentence or third sentence, she
says the glass candles are burning.
Straight up says it. That's a pretty strong clue.
And Zaro said the same thing. Zaro Zalandaxis says the glass
candles are burning in the House of Urethon Nightwalker that have
not burned in 100 years. This might be a connection that
that Quaithe has in Karth. Maybe she knows this Urethon
Nightwalker guy. Maybe she has access to that
glass candle. If she's using a glass candle,
which again, I'm like 99% sure that's the answer here.
Where is it? Is it in Karth?
Probably because that's where she is.
I doubt she fled back to Ashey after Danny got on those ships.
She probably just stayed where she was.
Maybe not that. Maybe she went back to Ashey
where she had as a glass access to a glass candle and is now
able to talk to Danny because she touched her on the wrist and
left the the tracking device, the magical tracking device.
Glass candles are a Valyrian artifact, but the technology
could have been created earlier than them.
Like Valyria could have recreated that technology like
the Great Empire. The Dawn or ET could have have
that technology as well. Just like we theorized that the
Great Empire had Dragons and knew all sorts of dragon lore
way before the Valyrians, and even possibly that's where the
Valyrians got some of it was from the Great Empire.
Now, in classic George R Martin fashion, the biggest lesson, the
most revealing notes we get on glass candles comes in the book
that Danny isn't in A Feast for Crows.
It begins in the prologue quote. Armen looked down his nose at
Lazy Leo. He had the perfect nose for it,
long and thin and pointed. Archmaester Marwin believes in
many curious things he said, but he has no more proof of Dragons
than Mollander, just more sailors stories.
You're wrong. Said Leo.
There is a glass candle burning in the mage's chambers.
A hush fell over the torch lit terrace.
Armin sighed and shook his head. Mollander began to laugh.
The Sphinx studied Leo with his big black eyes.
Rune looked lost. Pate knew about the glass
candles, though he had never seen one burn.
They were the worst kept secret of the Citadel.
It was said that they had been brought to Old Town from Valyria
1000 years before the Doom. He had heard there were four.
One was green and three were black, and all were tall and
twisted. 1000 years before the Doom is what?
That said, we could take that as an estimate.
It's probably not. Exactly.
Whenever someone says 1000 years it's always like a give or take
a century. But that puts it in the
neighborhood of 1500 years ago, long before, say, Valyrian steel
came to Westeros in any notable quantity.
Interesting to wonder why the glass candles were specifically
sent to Old Town. Certainly, of all the locations
in Westeros, it makes perhaps the most sense.
Given this is pre Targaryen of Westeros, someone in Valyria
must have thought it worth communicating with the Citadel
or vice versa, or both, right? It can be both and but they said
more than one. They brought four of them.
So there was more purpose than just having one way to talk.
They had. They wanted multiple ways.
Maybe they even, maybe they even intended on setting up a network
like that, putting one of them up in some other city, some
other place where you could use it to talk back and forth.
But that didn't happen. Maybe it did for a while, but
then they were put away because the glass candles stopped
working. So then they were just used
differently. They're used by the maesters in
that initiation ritual. They have to light it on their
last day. Of course they don't.
But Old Town is something of an opposite end of the world city
from Ash Eye, too. That's that's a notable
geographic feature, at least of the world.
We're shown farthest W Old Town city, farthest E Ash Eye.
You get it backwards with what's behind you.
Think about behind you. That's true.
Ash I Westeros, Old Town over here.
Yeah, there we go. Got it.
Right, that side. Now, here's an unusual mention
by Maester Eamonn about this relevant stuff.
He's also struggling with lucidity and consciousness at
the time. Quote.
When he woke, he'd call for Sam, insisting that he had to tell
him something, but OFT does not. He would have forgotten what he
meant to say by the time that Sam arrived.
Even when he did recall, his talk was all a jumble.
He spoke of dreams and never named the dreamer of a glass
candle that could not be lit and eggs that would not hatch.
He said the Sphinx was the Riddle, not the Riddler,
whatever that meant. Why is Eamonn at this point,
when he's really moved by what he's learned about the Princess
that was promised, how he wants to go to Danny?
It energizes him. Why is he thinking about the
glass candles that can't be lit? That's like an initiation ritual
for the maesters. He would have tried that like 80
some years ago and probably hasn't seen the glass candle
since because he's been at the Wall.
That's odd. Like almost everything that Sam
is relaying to us about Amon's mumblings in his state of mind
here, it has to do with the conversation and doings from the
prologue of A Feast for Crows. The dreams never named the
Dreamer. Well, well, let's come back to
that in a second. But the glass candle eggs
Sphinx. The Sphinx was the Riddle, not
the Riddler, the Sphinx. Alaris.
Right? Sorella.
That's, that's what they call her.
What does she have to do with this on a very basic level?
Well, if Sorella has a purpose by being there to gain a Maestro
chain, well, we don't know what that purpose is, but she's in
deeper than that. Not only is Eamon dreaming of
her for some reason, probably, which indicates a level of
importance for her that we just can't ascertain at this time.
She's connected to the Glass Candle directly because she is
an associate of Marwins. We'll see her in a moment here
talking about that. But spoke of dreams but never
named the dreamer. That's a very peculiar line.
So that means Eamon's not Speaking of his own dreams.
If he's not naming the dreamer, that implies it's not even
apply. It says straight out that it's
somebody else he's talking about.
So whose dreams could they be? Maybe Danny's the dreamer,
something like that, I don't know.
But this is it all seems to a lot of it at least seems to
relate to the prologue of A Feast for Crows, which is really
interesting. Why is Eamon, why so much of his
mind set on that? Is it possible that the glass
candle is being used to get in his head and it's just because
he's already delirious and and old it's coming out like this?
Probably not if our theory is that there needs to be physical
contact to set it up in the 1st place.
But again, I can't have a super amount of confidence in that
whole touch thing. He is a Targaryen.
So we actually get to see the glass candle in the it's it's
very fitting. We we hear about the glass
candle in the prologue and then in the last chapter we see it
quote. The candle was unpleasantly
bright. There was something queer about
it. The flame did not flicker, even
when Archmaester Marwin closed the door so hard that papers
blew off a nearby table. The light did something strange
to colors, too. Whites were bright as fresh
fallen snow. Yellow shone like gold.
Reds turned to flame, but the shadows were so black they
looked like holes in the world. Sam found himself staring.
The candle itself was 3 feet tall and slender as a sword,
ridged and twisted, glittering black.
Now keep in mind, this is a large room.
It's described as big, yet Sam realizes that besides a little
hearth fire with a kettle on top of it, it's the only source of
light in the whole room. So it's pretty darn bright.
Now, half of this is a description of people who just
aren't used to electric light. Like, well, this is like, of
course, like when I slam the door, the lights in here don't
flicker either. That's not magic.
But that's just something completely alien to these folk
who don't live in a, who live in a world without electricity.
And this thing about how huge that is, though, think about
someone you know, who's 6 feet tall and think of half of that.
That's how tall the scandal is. Really, really big.
And the way it changes the color of things, that is creepy.
Well done, George. The shadows were so black, they
looked like holes in the world. Whoa.
Great sentence. It's like an optical black hole.
It like it draws your gaze and you can't stop staring at it.
And that's kind of what we're seeing here.
Like everyone in the room except Marwyn, it can't seem to draw
their eyes away from it. And here, here's another take.
Marwyn describing its capabilities.
Quote. All Valyrian's sorcery was
rooted in blood or fire. The sorcerers of the Freehold
could see across mountains, seas, and deserts.
With one of these glass candles. They could enter a man's dreams
and give him visions and speak to one another half a world
apart, seated before their candles.
Do you think that might be useful Slayer?
He says yes, basically he's like, yeah, but we wouldn't need
Messenger Ravens anymore. And not long after, Alaris
reveals to Sam that, hey, you know how I came to find you in
the novices hall? That wasn't an accident.
Marwin saw you using the glass candle, and that's how I knew
you'd be there. So I went to pick you up.
So this again shows Alaris and Marwin are working together.
Obviously, Marwin's the the the one in charge here.
And remember, Alaris gives Leo a look when Leo point out the
glass candle is burning. Alaris knew that too, as we can
see here. And Leo is in the room for this,
is watching the candle as well. He's also just kind of staring
at it. So Alerus is like, why'd you
tell when he, when Leo tell Leo pointed that out because Alerus
didn't reveal it. She could have said so, but
didn't. So it was kind of like, yeah,
maybe you shouldn't have said that, you know, but I don't
know. But maybe not.
Maybe that's not what the look meant, but it's snow worthy.
But the implications of Marwin knowing how to use the glass
candle is very serious. You can't see future events,
though that's not listed as the power of the glass candle.
We just heard a list of what it can do and it doesn't say that.
So what did he see? Did he know what to look for?
Or was he just like looking into the glass candle saying hey,
what's going to be on like ATV? Like what am I going to see
today? And he saw a brother of the
Nights watch arriving at Old Town and was like, oh, let's
let's go talk to him. How did he know Sam was
important? How did he know Sam was someone
that he needed to go send Alaris to grab?
Was it because he saw him travelling with Maester Eamon?
Was it something else? What?
You know, that's really interesting.
Like he picked Sam out using the glass candle.
How? Yeah, just no idea.
That's as peculiar though, right?
This line, they could enter a man's dreams and give him
visions. Very plainly stated and very
plainly fits with what Quaithe has been doing.
Other than, you know, with a 2 finger touching thing that maybe
that's needed to set it up. But definitely, this is a
description of what they can do. And that's definitely what she's
doing. The whole the whole idea of
people having glass candles that can speak to each other a world
apart, like a telephone or a video call.
Will that come into play? If so, this particular glass
candle at the Citadel. And there's obviously three
more. There's three black ones, 1
green one. This one at least is accessible
to these people who are in this scene.
Maybe it will be used to talk to some other glass candle
somewhere, including maybe the one that Quaithe is using.
Right. So we've compared the glass
candle a little bit to Green Seer Powers and a little bit of
Quaithe. What Quaithe is doing is
comparable to Blood Raven and Brands relationship.
But again, it can't see the future.
That's a big difference. Green seers can see the future.
Quaithe maybe can see the future, but not with the glass
candle. She's got some other means to
see the future. Maybe.
Actually, if you put everything we've said about Quaithe,
everything she said, we should not assume or even conclude that
she can see the future. What we can extrapolate is that
she knows the prophecy, has confidence in it, and thus can
check off boxes. She can see what's happening and
say, oh, this is Danny is fulfilling the terms of the
prophecy. Here she is checking off the
boxes of Azor High, thus she must be Azor High.
That doesn't mean she can see the future.
That doesn't mean she can see Danny coming.
She doesn't know what Danny's going to do.
It certainly doesn't when she's giving warnings about the
faithlessness of men and how untrustworthy they are.
That's got nothing to do with prophecy.
That's just common sense. That's just learned wisdom about
the world. So.
And there's more evidence that Quaithe can't see the future
anyway. Like, for example, in the line
that she delivered to Danny about the glass, candles are
burning and she says that the sun's sun and the mummer's
dragon are coming. The lion and and Griffin are
coming. Well, Aegon is probably the
mummer's dragon in that, and the Griffin is definitely Jon
Connington. She tells Danny they're coming,
but they don't. They change their mind, they
turn, they changed their plans and head W instead of east.
That doesn't sound like someone who can see the future.
That sounds like someone who saw what was currently happening,
reported on it, and then it changed.
So that's a pretty big point that I cannot be sure.
And given the evidence, it's very supportive.
We cannot assume Quaith can see the future at all.
We can only assume that she understands the prophecies that
that refer to the future, but only that she's not actually
seeing it. She just knows what the prophecy
says is going to happen and she's just going from that.
So keep that in mind. Very important.
There very distinct thing about her that I think a lot of people
have maybe assumed too much about.
Now, let's talk about the other person in the room here.
And I don't mean Leo Tyrell, though he's a little bit
interesting too. It's Pate the replacement Pate
Jock and Hagar Pate. He's in the room for all of
this. That's huge.
OK, so many of us have theorized that the reason Jakin is in the
Citadel is and the reason he stole a key and the key is
important. He stole a key that would might
give him access to different rooms all around the Citadel.
And there's a book that we know is locked up the Tyrion thinks
about called The Death of Dragons, and supposedly it, it
talks about the vulnerabilities of Dragons, how Dragons can die,
which you can imagine why the Faceless Man might want that
book. However, we shouldn't assume
that because that book is a strong candidate that it's the
only candidate or that it or that we're even right about
that. Now, one of the reasons I think
we probably are right about that is because of the key.
If Pate's goal was something to do with his glass candle, he
didn't need the key. The key isn't needed here.
They're just Marwin's just like, yeah, come on in and hang out in
my room. Look at the glass candle if you
want. There's no one keeping it from
them. So I don't know if they need
that. So that's that's that's that's a
little interesting. Now, it's easy to miss.
When Sam arrives at the citadel, he tells his story to Alice.
He's like, I can't. He just all comes out.
He's like, yeah, the others, the dead horses, the the dragonglass
dagger. I killed another.
The ship down here with Amon, Amon talking about the Prince
that was promised. In the scene with Marwin when
he's in the room, it just says he repeats that story.
It's like 1 sentence. So it's very easy to miss that
he repeats that story with Pate in the room.
Pate hears the flat out declaration that Daenerys
Targaryen is Azora High. He flat out hears that the
Others exist. He flat out hears that Sam
killed one with dragonglass. He hears all this.
We cannot assume the Faceless Men knew any of this.
They might have known some of it.
Like there's a lot of stuff here and they've got to know some of
it. But all of it?
No way what an earful this guy just got.
And he's just and no one cares because it's like, well, that's
just Pate. He's sitting in the room.
No one. It's just this person that
everyone forgets about, including a lot of readers.
You don't even you God, it's easy to miss.
He's in that scene because he's just standing there staring at
the glass candle until the last few paragraphs where he offers
Sam a place to sleep or actually he he first.
The first thing he says is Sam goes is that?
And then Pate interrupts and says Obsidian.
And this is one of the big tells, by the way, that he's not
Pate anymore, that he's a faceless man.
Because in the prologue, when all the others are talking about
dragonglass, we're talking about the glass candle and what is
made of. He goes, he interjects, he says
dragonglass, The small folk call it dragonglass.
And he thinks that seemed important somehow.
You know, it's like, that's my contribution to the
conversation. But in this final chapter, when
Sam goes is that Pate interjects Obsidian, not dragonglass.
He says Obsidian. So it's he says an entirely
different thing. And then Marwin interjects Pate
and says call it dragonglass. So it's like the reverse of what
happened in the prologue. Instead of Pate saying call it
dragonglass, it's Marwin, which is a big tell.
These are not the same person anymore.
Bringing it back to Quaithe, this is something Danny might
need to be warned about. The fact that a Faceless man
just heard all this stuff about her and the Faceless Men don't
exactly like Dragons, or presumably the Mother of
Dragons, right? Especially if there's some
prophesied person that might do things that the Faceless Men
don't like. I mean, they're a whole
different religion, you know, they don't know, can't, can't
trust those guys when it comes to dragon Lords and dragon
Queens, etcetera. And Marwyn himself, right?
He says that you can't trust prophecy.
You know, he knows about the prophecy, but it is you can't
take it literally. If you do take it literally,
you're bound to doom yourself. So Quaithe can be wrong too.
If all this is based on prophecy that Quaithe is very confident
in, and Marwyn here is saying, well, don't be too confident in
prophecy, well then maybe Quaithe isn't quite on track
here. She could be a little wrong.
She could be off. And that in some ways would be
pretty fitting for George to give this like.
Spirit guide of sorts to Danny, who is not quite right.
Not misleading her necessarily, just wrong, right.
Prophecy roster or prophecy roll call, which speaks to, in this
case, the people named in Quais vision, The pale mare.
That's what she says, right? Listen, Daenerys Targaryen, the
blast candles are burning the net, the pale mare will come and
then blah, blah, blah. So credibility, she called it
the pale mare. The pale mare came.
The same word was used. It was a a man arriving on the a
pale mare and he was carrying the plague, carrying the bloody
flux or whatever it was, and then cracking in dark flame.
That's pretty straightforward. Kraken is Victorian.
He's literally on his way to Danny Macoro.
Dark flame. I mean, he's a super dark
skinned man and he's a relorist. Priest Flame dark and he's with
Victoria and they're named together.
Kraken and Dark flame, very straightforward.
Lion and Griffin, Tyrion and Jon Connington, also very
straightforward. And at the time she delivers
that line, they are both headed to her.
Obviously that changes. Jon Connington no longer on his
way to her, but Tyrion still is. The sun's sun and the mummer's
dragon. This is easy too.
The son's son is Quentin Martel. The son.
Son of Dorn. The son's son.
Yeah, he's easy. Aegon.
Young Griff, the mummer's dragon.
The cloth dragon on poles. That's Varus.
The mummer is Varus. This is his dragon.
He is the one propping up Young Griff.
Very straightforward. These are both Princess.
In this one, one turns into a frog and then gets roasted.
The other. We'll see.
We don't know what's going to happen to Young Griff.
He may also get roasted, though it may be a similar outcome, a
similar end game for him. The perfumed seneschal.
That's almost certainly Varus. Varus is the perfumed guy.
He is roughly A seneschal. Certainly that role.
It's an eastern term seneschal, but it applies to Virus's role.
It's close enough. Danny thinks it must be Resnick.
She's like Resnick and Quake can't say no.
Not him, because if she's seeing these things symbolically in
visions or imagery, she doesn't know the person's name.
She could see Varus, but she doesn't know what his name is.
She's like bald guy. That's who I'm talking about.
You know, like both of them wear perfume right now.
Some people think it's the ship, the Celisori Koran, cause Mokoro
tells Tyrion that the the translation of Celisori Koran is
Stinky Steward, which is very similar to perfume Seneschal.
But this is probably a red herring.
And we know George does red herrings.
There's red herrings about Jon Snow's birth, about Ned Stark's
pathway to home and other things too.
He doesn't do a lot of red herrings, but he definitely does
them. So in this case, it's so on the
nose smell stinky perfume on the nose.
But this would be repetitive, right?
It would be repetitive to have that stinky steward and she
already knows right? She already knows that Tyrion
and dark flame are coming to her and that's who's on the Celisori
Corin. It's Tyrion and Macoro Anjora,
but he he's not he's not named here.
So why would the prophecy repeat them?
It's like Kraken and dark flame. Also the ship carrying them.
Who cares about the ship? Also, it doesn't actually get
there. It sinks or it it gets be calmed
and then the slavers come. So it same thing.
It's it's just floating aimlessly out there.
And by then McCrory was already slept off the off the ship
during the storm. So he wasn't even on the ship
when that happened. So that doesn't even work right.
So that that's kind of a good reason to think call that a red
herring. She says at the end, trust none
of them. Remember the undying.
Now, what I think that means is, well, she the undying or
someone, she immediately said don't trust them.
I was right, wasn't I? You trusted the undying.
You went there and they tried to kill you.
They tried to steal your life force.
Think of that. Whenever you think of people
wanting things from you, they're all going to be something like
that. They won't all be supernatural
and they're not all going to try to drain your life force or
whatever that was. But don't trust anyone because
they all want things from you. And it's fair.
Like look at that list. Not all of the above are
malevolent. None of them are particularly
concerned with Danny's well-being either.
They all want things from her too, even the ones who are
decent folk, or at least not bad guys.
Quentin, he's dead, but he was seeking vengeance, justice, fire
and blood on behalf of his family.
As his father tells Aryan. Right, that was that's about
what they want. It's not about what Danny wants.
It's not about saving the world. Tyrion same thing, his one of
his prime motivations is getting back at all the people that
screwed him, especially his own family.
So it's also revenge and of a different sort.
He's not about saving the world either.
Fit to be fair he doesn't know that the world needs saving.
Maybe with evidence Tyrion will change his tune, but for now,
Nope. Makoro is the perhaps the most
interesting inclusion here because he believes Danny is
Azora Hai come again. So he's not an enemy to her, in
fact he's explicitly on her side.
She's the she's the prophet of his religion.
He you would think is a sincere ally, but Quaith included him
for some reason. So maybe it's again, this whole
point about Macoro, Banero, all these red priests, they see her
as a vehicle to saving the world, not as an individual, not
as someone they really care about.
So they, they are neutral to her as a human.
They just need her for what she is, for her qualities, for her
characteristics, not for her person.
Something I've pointed out many times is that it's peculiar as
well. Who's not on that list, right?
She Marwyn leaves for her, gets on a ship.
This moment he discovers what Sam is saying, so he goes to her
or is heading to her. Yet Quaithe doesn't name him.
That isn't so confusing though. It's not like Oh my God, Marwyn
wasn't mentioned because again, if you eliminate the possibility
that Quaith was seeing into the future, which I think we should
at least consider, then she couldn't have named Marwin.
When she told Danny that because he wasn't on his way yet, he was
still just chilling at the Citadel.
She could only see who was actively heading towards her,
and at the time, he wasn't all those people were.
When she named them, all of them were right.
They all were going for Danny, for Tyrion, absolutely going for
Danny. Quentin going for Danny.
Tyrion trying to get to Danny, thanks to, you know, Illyrio
Macor, obviously, same thing. Yeah.
So all of them just going for Danny.
So there's a lot of evidence there that shows that she can't
see what's coming, only what's happening in the at the current
moment. She also doesn't mention the
other maester because Marwin says the Citadel's going to send
a maester to Danny. I need to get there first.
So that one's not mentioned either.
Which again, she couldn't have seen that hadn't happened yet.
That's now. Interestingly, Macoro and
Victorian and Tyrion are now at Slaver's Bay, but Danny isn't,
so when she presumably returns, she will learn as well.
Presumably, that Quaithe was right.
She'll be like Macoro. Oh, is that dark flame Victorian
That's cracking, That's easy. Tyrion Lion, That's also easy.
And she's already gotten the proof of Sun Sun and pale Mare.
She doesn't know Quentin burned to death, but that's not
relevant to Quaithe being right that he was headed towards her.
She hasn't necessarily figured out what Son Son meant, but she
might, especially if she starts thinking along these lines with
these easier clues to bring her into it.
Tyrion Victarian. So Daddy has good reason to
believe Quaithe. She's proving herself.
And it's not like, listen to me now, trust me now.
I'm your servant now. It was gradual.
It's the way it's winning trust over time, which is kind of the
right way to do it. Like if you're trying to win
trust quickly, then you're not doing it right.
People shouldn't trust you quickly on matters of great
importance. You know, if someone's like, I'm
giving you $5 to hand me my food, well, I trust that.
I'm not worried about it. But you know, I'm not going to
hand someone $5 to invest who I don't know to expect.
I'm not expecting that $5 back if I don't know this person,
right? But if I get to know them and I
learn about them, I say, OK, I can trust you with my money.
Very similar thing here. Danny didn't trust Quaith at
first for good reason. But here, as time passes and
more of Quaithe predictions come true and Quaithe still seems to
have no ulterior motive, Danny's just going to have more and more
reason to believe and trust and be like, this person's been
consistent for quite a while. They have yet to ask me for
anything. It's getting harder and harder
to ignore what they're saying as especially with more and more of
their prediction coming true. And this is a great parallel
because Stannis says the same thing about Melisandre.
I think I said it earlier, Stannis doesn't necessarily
believe in relore, but Melisandre clearly has power.
Melisandre's exaggerating her powers, which that's a part of
Stannis's flaw here is that, yeah, she knows that about you.
She knows that you will respond to actual power, and so she will
exaggerate her powers. That said, she does have real
power and a lot of it. So that's just the interesting
thing about Melisandre is that she just exaggerates what she's
already capable of. Why so cryptic?
Let's talk about why. Why she's not direct.
Why not just say these things? Why not be more explicit?
Why? Why be so confusing?
Let's let's use an example here. When Quaithe says fear, the
perfumed seneschal Danny responds.
Resnac, why should I fear him? Danny Rose from the pool.
Water trickled down her legs and goose flesh covered her arms in
the cool night air. If you have some warning for me,
speak plainly. What do you want of me?
Quaithe moonlight shone in the woman's eyes.
To show you the way. I remember the way I go north to
go SE, to go West back, to go forward and to touch the light I
have to pass beneath the shadow. She squeezed the water from her
silvery hair. I am half sick of riddling
Inkarth. I was a beggar, but here I am a
queen. I command you.
And then she's interrupted him. If Kuwait's purpose is to save
the world, yeah, why be mysterious?
It's so important. If you're telling me we're all
going to die unless we act, then get on with it.
Now. She's not actually telling Danny
we're all going to die unless you act.
But she's still not being specific.
She's still not giving details. It feels counterproductive to
that end goal on some level. On one hand, it's certainly a
literary device. Having Danny puzzle over it and
be frustrated by it. It echoes our own concept of it,
our own maybe frustrations about it.
Nina says that. She says we're as curious as she
is. Her frustration echoes ours.
And you can see she is frustrated here.
Danny's like, I'm half sick of riddling.
Just come tell me, you know, give me, give me the straight
dope. But Danny is a wonderful mix of
relatable to extremely unrelatable.
This part's very relatable. Quaithe isn't being straight
with her. She's not coming out and giving
her regular answer. She's cryptic and we're like,
can you please be more specific? Can you please be more clear?
When Danny is, you know, a prophesied savior birthing
Dragons, That's not very relatable.
But I love that about her that she has, she's still very human.
She still has these relatable moments even though she's God
like. And the other thing, and I've
kind of alluded to this throughout, is it keeps her
thinking about it. Quaeth is on her mind a lot
because it's a curiosity, because it's a mystery.
If she just had these straightforward answers, she
wouldn't have to. He wouldn't necessarily think
about it. And she might just dismiss it
because it sounds so crazy and and over the top and
supernatural and might get her to think Quaeth is trying to
steer me to something that's not good for me or something that's
steering me towards something that's good for her, something
that she wants. But consistently Quaeth doesn't
do that. And if and if at the end of all
this, if at the end of all this, Quaithe knows Danny will die or
is likely to die, well, you know, that's a hard subject to
broach, isn't it? She's like, yeah, you got to do
all these things to save the world, which I haven't told you
about yet. But when I do or when you learn
that, I'm also going to have to tell you or you're also going to
learn that at the end of it, you're going to die.
So that is a good reason to like break it in slowly to not to
gradually like bring her up to this tragic conclusion.
If if that's where it's headed, I do think that's where the
story is headed. I don't know that that's what
Coit is going to say. But if coitus comes out and
says, well, the others are coming, the blah, blah, blah,
how's Danny going to believe that?
You know, it's just too much. So there's a lot, there are a
lot of reasons for Coit to be cryptic.
And if you answer directly about other things, like you can't be
obscure, like you can't do both, right?
Because she has to be consistent.
Also, if Quaithe is seeing visions herself, well, these
visions aren't going to be 100% accurate.
They're not going to be something she can completely
deconstruct. In fact, there's an argument
that she's not doing that at all.
That's why it's cryptic, because she's giving it to Danny raw.
She's saying, well this is what I saw, so I'm just telling you
exactly what I perceived in my visions.
More support for Quaithe, Daenerys Quaithe.
Daenerys raw quani? Is that the ship name for them?
I think it's quaetharis Quaetharis.
So if Quaeth is seeing visions or something like that, which,
you know, I'm a little down on that, but we got to be open to
the possibility, then she's not being able to.
She can't see precise things. She's just seeing visions.
Just like Melisandre. We see in Melisandre's point of
view, she sees blood Raven and and Bran.
She sees them as like a wolf face and a wooden demon or
whatever, a tree demon. She, that's the kind of things
that appear in these visions, like they're not literal.
So not only should I repeat the point that Quaith could just be
wrong, but she might be cryptic because she's reporting them as
they come to her in her mind. Like, well, this is what I saw.
I saw, you know, the Kraken in a dark flame, and I didn't know
what it means, but I know they're coming to you.
You might know who those people are.
I just know what I saw in my vision.
So I'm just telling you what I saw and hope hopefully it's
useful to you. And that's why, again, to
repeat, when Danny's like Resnick Quasis is like, I don't
know. I don't know what the person's
name is. I just know perfume Seneschal.
That's what my vision or the glass candle or both told me.
I don't have a name. I saw somebody you know, and she
does know. What a jerk would you like?
I know the names, but I'm not going to tell you.
I'm going to give you riddles instead.
That's unlikely. As much as she's being cryptic,
she's she's got to be cryptic for a reason.
And that reason isn't to make it harder on Danny.
Like it's not that. Now here's how the scene ends.
This is when remember Danny got interrupted here, and this is
the interruption quote. Daenerys, remember the Undying.
Remember who you are. The blood of the dragon.
But my Dragons are roaring in the darkness.
I remember the undying child of three.
They called me 3 mounts. They promised me 3 fires and
three treasons, one for blood and one for gold and one for
Your Grace. Nissande stood in the door of
the Queen's bedchamber, a Lantern in her hand.
Who are you talking to? Danny glanced back toward the
Persimmon tree. There was no woman there, no
hooded robe, no lacquer mask, no quake.
Where she is now, Well, this is obviously confusing to Danny,
and she wonders if Quaithe is referring to the prophecies of
the House of the Undying or just the lesson of what the Undying
were doing, which is tempting her with power.
And then actually it was all a trick to try and steal her
power. So she doesn't know what whether
that's what she's talking. Well, I have the Undying vision.
There's a lot of things in there.
All those threes, those were prophecies that I should pay
attention to that right? But isn't, isn't that what
Quaith is talking about? Or is it the the more mundane
lesson of you shouldn't be trusting any people of power who
want things from you? I guess it could be both, which
is could be a fitting way for a cryptic message to be delivered.
Danny could think about all that, but it also turns a little
dark when Danny starts to think, am I going mad?
Like why do I keep seeing Quaith like this runs in my family mad.
This runs in my family and now I'm like seeing somebody.
Is it really it's it's difficult introspection on her part, but
she does it still though, I mean, I think it's sorcery.
Y'all mostly think it's sorcery probably.
But it's very interesting to put ourselves in Danny's place and
think this is it's troubling for her for a lot of reasons,
because it isn't so simple. She doesn't understand what
she's talking, what Kwait is talking about.
She, again, doesn't know about the long night, so she doesn't
have context for a lot of what these things even mean. 3 fires,
3 treasons. Yeah.
Like, is that what you're talking about?
Is or is is that something I should be considering
separately? Yeah, it's, it's tricky.
Now, another idea I like is that Danny has repressed memories.
Remember, like the lemon tree, the house with the red door.
There's something going on there that's a little weird, a little
off. Danny has some false memories
there. Or maybe it's a bigger story
than that. There may be other things Danny
has forgotten, or maybe that is really relevant and Quaith may
be trying to jog Danny's memory to get her to remember these
things rather rather than just telling her.
The problem with that is, well, how would Quaithe know any of
these things? Where we've stripped down a lot
of what Quaithe's powers are to glass candle and shadow binding,
which is shadow binding probably isn't that relevant to talking
to Danny from afar. And if she's just operating on
what she already knows about the prophecy rather than seeing
current visions, then this wouldn't be feasible.
But if Danny lost things to trauma and youth and, and, or
just whatever other factors and Quaithe knows about that through
supernatural means or otherwise, well, that's really convincing.
If Danny remembers these things within herself, that's that's a
lot more certain to her than someone telling her right?
Delirium on the Dothraki Sea after she flies away with Drogon
from Daznac's pit, she spends some time living with Drogon on
his new dragonstone his his dragonstone of the Dathraki Sea.
But you know she can't stay just you know food is a problem and
you know she's not exactly going to accomplish her goal lost on
the steps. But she's getting weak and
hungry and getting lightheaded, which opens her mind up for
Quaeth to get in there. Right from what we said about
Sleepy Drowsy, this is the opening she lays down.
Quote. Off in the distance, a wolf
howled. The sound made her feel sad and
lonely, but no less hungry. As the moon rose above the
grasslands, Danny slipped at last into a restless sleep.
She dreamed all her cares fell away from her, and all her pains
as well, and she seemed to float upward into the sky.
She was flying once again, spinning, laughing, dancing, as
the stars wheeled around her and whispered secrets in her ear.
To go north, you must journey S. To reach the West, you must go
E. To go forward, you must go back.
To touch the light, you must pass beneath the shadow.
Quaithe. Danny called.
Where are you, Quaithe? Then she saw her mask is made of
Starlight. Remember who you are, Daenerys.
The stars whispered in a woman's voice.
The Dragons know. Do you?
Now, the trick with this one is whether it's another appearance
by Quaithe or part of her delirium because.
I debated whether to give you the line.
Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, 'cause if it's a.
Yeah, that's a good point because she also talks to
Viserys, the Grass and Sir Jora consecutively.
I don't know if it's in that order, but it doesn't matter.
So did she talk to a Quaithe apparition that Quaithe sent
from the glass candles? And then these were deliriums,
the other 3 of Viserys and the Grass and Sir Jora?
Probably not. So this might not be an
appearance by Quaithe, but it might be.
So she becomes extremely weak after all this.
Then Kyle, Jaco and 50 riders appear, which is the end of the
book. Not what happens next or not
sure what happens next, but it sure does seem like this is A to
go forward, to go back or you must go back type of moment
where she's going to go back to dealing with the Dasraki back to
the base Dothrak and then rapidly recruiting them as she
is the stallion who mounts the world.
She has the ultimate mount after all, And Drogon will probably be
very crucial to all this, just like he was crucial at the
house, the Undying. And at this moment her other two
Dragons are locked up. Well, actually they're not.
They get out, but she doesn't know that.
She thinks they're still locked up.
They are released in one of the Barristan chapters and she is
told here at the end, the Dragons know what you are.
Do you? The Dragons know they're
Dragons. That's simple.
They're beasts. Yes, they're supernatural, but
they're not like super intelligent.
They're not that all that conscious.
They're not, you know, they're not like smarter than dogs or
something like that. Or if they are, it's only by a
little. So this isn't some self identity
thing. It's like, no, they're Dragons,
they know they're Dragons, you need to do that too.
Be a dragon is again, this is this very consistent message
alongside the less understandable, but still
consistent. To go forward, you must go back.
All that business. She keeps saying that and Danny
keeps hearing it. Whether Quaithe is telling her
in this moment or whether she's just remembering it herself, it
clearly matters. And it keeps getting repeated by
George. So it we're not meant to forget
it. We're meant to keep thinking
about it, even if we don't get it, even if we can't answer it,
we're supposed to be thinking about it.
We're supposed to keep it in mind for whenever a resolution
does come up, we will say, ah, that's what he meant.
That's what the prophecy meant. That's what to go forward, all
that meant to touch the light, you must pass beneath the shot.
Eventually it might become just like an oh, that's what it was.
Right now, though, we definitely don't have that one line from
her slew of visions at the house.
The Undying is beneath the mother of mountains.
A line of naked crones crept from a great lake and knelt
shivering before her, their Gray heads bowed.
That to me is hardcore proof that Danny is going back there.
This already looked like this whole scene makes it look like
that, but this is shows that it was set up books before.
Back in book two, it was already set up for Danny to go back to
the Dothraki, the woman behind the mask.
So it isn't just her words that a cryptic gets her entire
identity now again. Yeah, masks are really common in
her culture. Shadow Landers wear masks, and
Melisandre is wearing a mask, too, a mask of light, so to
speak, a glamour. In some ways, her identity
doesn't much matter. Like we said, she is the
embodiment of prophecy. She's guiding Danny.
She's telling some important things.
She's encouraging her. She's reminding her.
But what really seem right? Would it be satisfying if such
an important being, such an important mentor or guiding
figure is never explained? We have to learn more about
Quaithe, or at least where she came from or why.
Because it would just be so unsatisfying if Danny had this
important guiding figure that just is never explained.
Or just big help Danny got from Quaithe.
But why she's there, Why she helped, how she knew to help,
none of that's explained. I really doubt that.
So I I've been very confident that even though Quaithe her
identity might not be that important, I don't think it can
be left just that simply we have to at least get a little more.
If it's not telling us who she is, it has to be telling us who
she's a part of or why. There has to be more of some
kind. Just like Bran isn't going to
learn all the secret to the Children of the Forest, but he
is face to face with what they are without any mask.
He's in The Cave with all the skulls and the trees growing out
of eyes and the growing into the everything.
All that creepiness, it's not hidden from him anymore.
And maybe that sort of thing is coming for Danny, where she has
to be confronted by these dark truths and what her purpose
really is and how it's not about the throne, it's about the
Others. It's about these other things,
right? So back to Melisandre being our
best parallel, because that's a little she's a little better of
a parallel than Bloodraven to Bran, because Melisandre.
Stannis is already an echo of Danny, and X&X in this case is
Quaithe. Melisandre thinks Stannis is a
Zora high. Her methods are different than
Quaithes, more hands on, more direct.
Quaithe is far away, sending Danny messages.
Melisandre's on the front lines, but she's got the wrong savior.
Whether Quaith is doing it right or not, she's at least got the
right person. She at least has the right
individual. There's some theories out there
about who Quaith is. If there is going to be a reveal
who that might be. One of them is that she is
related to Melisandre because there's they have so much in
common. Maybe they're connected some in
some other way. They both come from the East,
They're both associated with Asha, They're both associated
with a shadow binding. It's kind of a stretch though.
There's not a lot to go on there that those are things they have
in common, but it isn't a whole lot.
And none of that's very specific connective tissue.
It's just kind of there. The most popular theory, I think
is that she's Shierra sea star, the mask of Starlight.
In this last scene, this last vision or delirium that Danny's
having is is mentioned and she's oh, I see her mask is made of
Starlight as if that's an answer.
It's not but it but if we're to see it as an answer, that might
be the answer. But I don't agree.
I don't see how it could be Shierra Seastar.
I really don't because Bloodraven indicates she's dead.
He he speaks to Damon and bitter steel and Shierra in the past
tense. He a woman I loved.
She could be saying I don't love her anymore, but I doubt that he
was so besotted. And either way, it sounds like,
and that's not the only reason it sounds like he's referring to
her as as past tense. Also, it just there isn't much
to go on either. Like the eyes don't wouldn't we
notice wet and shiny? That one's green and one's blue?
Yeah, I don't think so. Shierra's eyes are extremely
distinct, and that's the only feature we get to this person,
and they don't match. Yeah, this doesn't work for me.
Another theory is Alyssa Farman with her sun chaser.
There is certainly evidence she made it as far as that shy,
which maybe makes her a candidate, but that's kind of
weak too, at least at least on the surface.
But Alt Shift X, our good friend did a video on it, so check that
out if you're interested in going deeper into that rabbit
hole. For some of the same reasons,
some of the same logic that I think we have to learn more
about Quaithe. We can't be done with her.
She's got to appear to Danny again, maybe multiple times.
I don't think that's the end yet.
She hasn't done the things she wants Danny to do.
She's got to keep encouraging that.
She got to keep pushing her towards that, whatever it is.
I don't think we'll necessarily see her in physical form again,
though. I think we might just only in
these visions, only through these glass candles, and maybe
some of that will be explained. Danny may learn.
It's like, oh, glass candle, I get it now.
You know, Speaking of the glass candles, a little more on that.
If Peyton knows how to use the glass candle, how creepy is
that? He can just tell the faceless
men back home with all these things he learned.
So that's a big part of this is Quaithe and her association with
glass candles. Those things are related plot
wise, the reveals on any of them may be connected to each other
as Quaithe pushes Danny to be more like a dragon.
That makes her more destructive, more of an an instrument of
destruction, more dangerous, less attractive to Westerosi who
are living now Because if she's an agent of change it'd destroy
everything so it can be reborn in a new world.
Well the current people living may not like that idea.
And how will Danny actually interpret that?
She keeps telling her to be a dragon.
What does that mean to Danny? Probably means devastate,
destroy and conquer. Use your use the means at your
disposal, which is blasts of fire and tooth and claw.
That's what you have at your disposal, be that it's in your
blood, literally. But if that's what Quaithe
means, it's kind of similar to the way Olenna Tyrell said it on
the TV show. Maybe similar vibes here.
It still comes down to how Danny interprets that.
What does she mean? What does she think that means?
Does it mean burn King's Landing?
Does it mean dominate your your, the other Lords take.
Don't take no from an answer. Make them all fall in line and
burn the ones that don't until they until they're all you know,
beholden to you, till they're all cede to your authority.
Maybe it's not so straightforward.
Maybe Quaith will become less cryptic as Danny's eyes are more
open to what's really happening. Again, for the 50th time, Danny
doesn't know about the long night.
Once she learns about that, when she learns about the others and
gets over the initial woe of that, then you can start telling
her more. Start.
Once she accepts that, you can give her more details and tell
her more about what's needed. Say, oh, look, yeah, they're
beings of ice. You got the fire.
You have the best solution to this.
You dreamt of it too, and maybe Quaithe sent her that dream, as
we talked about at the time. So as she learns these things,
as she becomes more aware of them, it might be appropriate to
give her more information. Quaithe Melisandre might get in
the mix by that point. But again, the dark side of all
this is Quaithe pushing Danny towards a goal that will see her
own life end. Quaithe, not Quaithe Danny's
life, right? I don't think Quaithe is at risk
here. That's where I land on all this.
I think that's like, if we're making a conclusion here, I
think that that's likely that. Yeah, that's part of the reason
quite this cryptic is because this isn't going to be this new
world that's going to that Danny's paving the way for.
Danny herself won't be a part of it.
She'll have died in the process of making it.
And that's a dark truth that if Danny learns that too soon, it
might steer her away from the goal and at all.
She's like, I'm not doing that. It's going to lead to my death,
you know, especially if she doesn't grasp how important her
death is. Like if if Danny can sincerely
take to heart that her death would save the world, all right,
then that might get her to do it.
But if the first thing she learns is death, I'm going to
die. And then she learns that her
death will have a good purpose. Well, she may have already set
herself against that notion that I'm not going to go down that
path. So she has to be given the
information in the right order or it could throw her off.
So that is another perhaps reason that Clayton is so
cryptic. And again, but I do again, think
we will learn more about her. And I think we have to learn
more about her for the story to fit, for it to be satisfying in
that regard. We have to know something about
this guiding light that's telling Danny so many important
things. It can't just be left untold,
unexplained. But that's my take.
How about you? Poll results.
If Quaithe's mask was removed, Danny wouldn't know her, but we
would. 60% of you think that's the case, that we would
recognize Kuwait without her mask on, but Danny wouldn't. 31%
of you think Danny wouldn't know her, nor would we, so none of us
would know her if she took her mask off. 31% and 7% was we
would both know her. Danny and us readers, we would
all recognize her, but only 7% of you think that.
So the most popular by far is Danny wouldn't know her, but we
would. And that is fitting with a lot
of the existing theories. Like, yeah, we would know Shira
Sea Star, We would know Alyssa Farman, but Danny wouldn't.
Trivia question. It was The Citadel has four
glass candles. What colors are they?
Black, black, black and green. John Merkel got it.
Good job. John Merkel.
Anyone else listening? If you got that, good job.
Pat on the back for you. And that's apparently also
George's colors for Obsidian. George's Obsidian is not the
same as real world Obsidian. Most of it's black, but
occasionally it's green. Or I think purple maybe can be a
color too. Right?
OK, so but but the Citadel doesn't have one of those cool
purple ones, only the Targaryen. Only the Valyrians got those.
Maybe there's one in carts? Has a purple one.
Maybe, yeah, if if Danny sees like purple light glowing on her
face and he's like, hey, purple light, where's that coming from?
So some episodes that are relevant to this one you might
want to check out to stay immersed of the Great Empire.
The dawn episode of the Ash Eye by the shadow episode, the
shadow by Ash eye episode, which is by far the most recent of the
three. The Melisandre episode, also
fairly recent. Our episode on the red comet
quite a while ago, but still very relevant.
And our episode on Sept and Barth, also quite a while ago,
but still very relevant. Thanks again to Nina for her
great notes on this episode and so many of our other episodes,
and nearly all of them in the many years since we've been
doing this. Thanks to Joey Townsend for the
theme music, and thanks to Michael Klarfeld for the video
intro and the maps you see behind me.
You can get his posters, his maps at his website which you
can find the link in the description.
We're going to go take one of his maps to Seattle to get
signed one of the big cloth maps.
We're going to bring our reach map that has George on it as
Garth Greenhand. It's fitting to have George's
Garth Greenhand, the progenitor of everything in Westeros, all
the people he did, he created them all.
It's it's it's fitting. So yeah, we're going to Seattle
World Con, and we'll hopefully have some stories to tell after
that. So stay tuned.
And either way, we'll have more content, whether that or other
stuff, certainly to come. You know what to do in the
meantime, Riridis.