We haven't had APOV in Tarth, but we do have APOV from Tarth,
and most of us can't help but have an extremely positive
association due to it being Brienne's home.
Mixed in with that lack of detail, it says at least a few
good things about Tarth. Giving it brought us a person
with her extraordinary character, and she's not a
random product of an environment that doesn't fit that.
No, Tarth very much supports the outcome of Brienne's
personality, even though she's an exception.
Deeper digging reveals more. Tarth is a bit of a world apart.
Not a part like say the Summer Islands is from Westeros or even
the Iron Isles where so many things are very different.
I mean a place that's clearly similar in some ways to main
mainland Westeros. It doesn't have a different
religion, it is quite steeped in the Seven.
Nevertheless, like so many islands, it is different.
It's not the biggest island in Westeros, but it's up there.
So it's sort of a self-contained world.
It doesn't rely as much on the outside world and doesn't
traffic as much with the outside world.
Using our prior examples, the Summer Isles and Ironborn are
fairly insular cultures, but they are world travelers.
They trade in Rome all over, one sort of out of necessity and the
other out of maybe curiosity and ambition.
Tarth is not like that. I wouldn't call it a bubble, but
people don't feel the need to leave, so it has more of that
feel to it. More of that vibe, I think.
Tarth produces neither explorers nor pirates, once again,
compared to the Summer and Iron Isles.
As to why, well, that's not something I can express quickly
here in the intro, so we'll discuss it throughout the
episode. It'll take more than a few
sentences, but it starts with Tarth's natural beauty.
It is called the Sapphire Isle after all, and it is perhaps
appropriate to call it a bit of an idyllic place by Westerassi
standards, of course, which means there's still plenty of
violence and conflict and sort of things of that matter.
But Tarth's natural geography and location in the Narrow Sea
make it a point of interest for traffic, trade and war with the
Free Cities, meaning long standing enemies like the Black
Fires in recent time and in ancient times.
The end alls when invaders come from the east, Tarth is liable
to be compromised. They're right there in the
front. It's closer to tyros than King's
Landing. Tarth is it?
It's as close to lease as it is to Harrenhal.
It's much closer to Volantis than it is to Casterly Rock or
Winterfell or Highgarden. Kind of interesting, huh?
It also has a connection to Sir Duncan the Tall that's as big as
he is also to House Targaryen and House Baratheon and House
Durnden. Tart has a good bit of Arthurian
influence and some Tolkien and is often the case with George.
The world building is logical and consistent and holds up to
real world comparisons, things that we know on a scientific
level. And we have all that and more on
this episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Hello and welcome everybody. It's another Sunday and it's
3:00 Eastern, which is when we are live, except during the TV
season, which is coming up soon. During the TV seasons, we are
live at Mondays at six, always Eastern Time.
So once again, offseason, 3:00 Sundays in Season 6, o'clock
Mondays. Every video is available on
YouTube and Spotify, and all of our podcasts are available in
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And if you listen to them on Patreon, well, they're ad free.
Big shout out to ninagoodqueenalley.tumblr.com
with one LS where you can find her takes.
But you can also find her takes in this episode and many other
episodes. Her current post over on
goodqueenalley.tumblr.com is related to a bit of a what if
question. What would have happened if
Tywin and Tywin's plan of marrying Sansa de Tyrion and
taking Winterfell through that marriage?
How would that have gone? What what are some possibilities
or, or things that would have gone come up with that.
If you have questions for us, hit us up in West Roast
history@gmail.com. And I'll hit you all with some
episodes at the end of this one that relate.
And we'll start with the trivia question also, which why we'll
answer reveal the answer at the end.
Which Targaryen Prince was killed on Tarth?
Like I said, answer at the end. Let's now read the section
headers for this episode set up. First mention ancient history
and geography, then founding, then the Sapphire Isle, then
Kings and even stars, then the Storm Kings, then the Andals,
then Sir Galadon and Mourn. Yes, he's Sir Galadon of Mourn,
but we're going to talk about both.
Then Sir Galahad, the biggest inspiration for Sir Galadon.
Then mourn itself under the Dragons, The Conquest, a Game of
the Narrow Sea, Sir Duncan and the Tarsigarians, A Song of Ice
and Fire and Tars, and then Brienne and then our outro.
Plenty to talk about today, but I'll also hit you guys with a
pole. For those of you watching live
or if you listen on Spotify, the pole will be available as well.
Will Brienne inherit even Fall Hall or will she join a
Kingsguard or the like or die something like that.
We have several answers. You can, say, inherit Kingsguard
die or other. So 4 choices.
Inherit Kingsguard die or other. Let's get to it with our first
mention. Yeah.
The first time we hear of Tars, that's pretty obscure.
It comes when Lord Commander Mormont is dealing with the
problem of Jon Snow having just attacked Sir Alistair Thorne.
But then Jon saves Mormont's life immediately after.
And that, you know, complicates things.
So we have this quote, Sir Andrew.
John did not know the name Sir Andrew Tarth.
A good man. He's on his way from the Shadow
Tower to assume the duties of Master at Arms.
Sir Alice or Thorne left Yestermorne for Eastwatch by the
sea. Oh, it's kind of funny how
sometimes Google doesn't recognize some of these words
from medieval times, like Yestermorne.
It's like, that's not a word. It's like, yes it is, yes it is.
Mormont sent Thorne to King's land in a tree with the
Lannisters about the whites. He took the hand right now.
Andrew Tarth became master at arms in his place.
As the quote said, probably a long overdue change Anyway,
Thorne was bad at his job, let's be honest about that.
I mean we saw it first hand, he wasn't good.
Now Davos also mentions the Tarths in the Clash of Kings
prologue as one of the houses he met with to try to win support
for Stannis. Here's the first time the house
itself is mentioned, however. Quote.
A roar went up from the crowd as a helmetless red bearded man
with a Griffin on his shield went down before a big knight in
blue armor. His steel was a deep cobalt,
even the blunt morning star he wielded with such deadly effect.
His mount barted in the quartered sun and moon heraldry
of House Tarth. Of course, that's Brienne, whom
Catlin and the reader, if it's your first time, does not yet
know as a woman. It even says his just kind of
pulls you in with that belief. And frankly, in this setting,
that is what you would expect. I mean, it's not not weird to
have guessed that's a man. But this is a knight of House
Tarth. And that's also very important
here. Smashing their way through the
melee, the blue knight from House Tarth.
That makes sense in retrospect. The sapphire aisle, it's all
very fitting. I'm wearing a Tarth shirt.
It's blue with the quartered sun and moons.
There you go. That's what she would have seen.
Now we find out, as I said, the same moment Catelyn does, though
I doubt and hope a few of us were horrified like she was.
Like, horrified like what? That's, that's what Catelyn.
That's her reaction. She's horrified.
It's like what now? Neither is Brienne just a random
rarity, though, as I suggested in the intro, her homeland
absolutely supports the person that she came out to be.
Not that it produces a lot of people like Brienne, of course
it does not. But I what I would say is that
if she was born in the Iron Isles, she'd probably be a
kinder, more ethical Ironborn. But she wouldn't be Brienne of
Tarts. She wouldn't be what she is now
that that support, that goodness wasn't present, wouldn't have
been present for her to to grow up under.
But let's go back way farther. Ancient history and geography,
though, it has a lot of unique features.
We don't know of any particularly unique flora or
fauna on Tarth. Perhaps there are and there just
haven't been mentioned. There'd be little reason to.
I mean, it's not that story relevant.
Brienne might have an idle thought about that here and
there, and maybe that's something coming.
But for right now, we don't know.
Now a lot of that, if we can get a bit nerdy with it, depends on
how long Tarth separated from the mainland.
If we can assume the land mass on Teros, Planetos, whatever you
want to call it, had a Pangaea of its own, like we had on Earth
many hundreds of millions of years ago, the Tarth would have
been attached to the mainland at some point.
It depends on how long ago it separated.
A place like Madagascar separated from Africa super long
ago, and it is thus very different.
Even though it's right next to Africa, it doesn't have
poisonous snakes. For example, Africa, the
mainland, has tons of poisonous snakes.
Madagascar also has 900 species of orchids, and most of those
aren't found on Africa. There's just two examples.
I could go on, but we don't need to.
The point is, if Tarth separated, you know, 100 million
years ago, then you would expect the fluorine fauna to be a lot
different. Whereas if it was, you know,
just a few million years ago or 10 million years ago, something
like that, well, it would still be different, but it would be a
lot less so. And one of the reasons we asked
this question isn't just for the nerdy real life geography
interest, but it's because we are curious about whether or not
the Children of the Forest were present and whether there's
weirwoods, let alone Hart trees. Hart trees, I would guess no.
There may have once been, but definitely now.
I don't think so because as we'll see later, Tarth was a
hotbed of Andahl migration and we know the Andahl's did not
like the weirwoods. So it's not a place that is
likely to have survived, but the weirwoods there, if there were
any, are not likely to have survived.
And there are mountains there, which implies caves.
So the Children could have lived in those caves.
But if those cave systems aren't connected to the ones on the
mainland, then I don't know that they ever would have occupied
them. There's not much evidence of
Children of the Forest activity on a lot of other islands that
we've seen, like Bear Island. I don't know about that.
The Sisters, the Iron Isles. Yeah.
It's just, it doesn't seem like there's much there to suggest
their activity. So I'm going to guess no.
And that's important too, because that really fits with
the vibe of the place. It is an and all place, but not
but the best of and all hood, the best of the and all culture
in a lot of ways, the the goodness of it, not the parts
that are all about invading and conquering and all that stuff.
We're talking about the the values that they purport to hold
that most people don't actually hold.
Nightly values, as we'll see. Tarth, as we'll gradually paint
the picture, filling in what you didn't know or don't recall, has
a lot more, like I said in the beginning, an idyllic or
romantic vibe to it. Arthurian.
It's very Arthurian. Even though we're lacking some
detail. What we do have very much seems
steeped in that the mysticism associated with Tarth is and all
mysticism, which is a shallower pool to be sure, but it's again,
we had nothing Children of the foresty old Godzi about Tars.
But we have lots of things from the seven questing nightly
values. Like I said, Arthurian stuff,
but let's not forget, I said idyllic, I said romantic.
This is Westeros and even in Arthurian stories, of course
there are bad things. There's horrible tragedies,
there's mistaken identities, there's curses, there's bloody
deaths, there's all kinds of violence and conflict and nights
of summer die. Even Brienne points that out in
one of the first scenes where she has dialogue.
So this may have never been a place of the old gods.
That's entirely possible. Which would kind of fit with the
the like I keep using the word vibe, for lack of a better word,
because so much of this is we're reading between the lines on we
don't have direct information. So I think vibe is an
appropriate term. It's a feeling we get about the
place because we don't have direct information.
It doesn't have stories of skin changers or green seers or
things like that. At least if it does, we don't
have them. But it does have magic swords in
The Perfect Knight and the Seven engaging directly in mortal
affairs. It's one of the largest islands
in the Seven Kingdoms. I didn't think it.
I think it's third biggest. It's hard to tell because all we
can do is really look at the maps and kind of, you know,
ballpark it spitball it. Skago's certainly the biggest,
right? That's that's pretty easy.
Then I think the Arbor is second largest and then I think it's
probably Tarth. The Great Wick might be the next
biggest, but whatever it's it's big.
Estremont is its closest neighbor island wise, other than
the very small island that's part of Tarth that's next to it
that we don't have the name of. Estremont is considerably
smaller than Tarth. The southernmost tip of the Isle
of Tarth aligns almost directly due E with Mirror.
And as I said in the intro, it's closer to Tyros than King's
Landing. A lot closer by ship, even in
terms of just straight as the Craven, I tried to say Crow and
Raven at the same time as the crow flies the it's close, but
to sail to King's Landing from Tarz, you have to go around
Massey's Hook where it's just a straight shot from Tarth to
Tyros pretty interesting, especially when you think about
things like the blackfires and how that was their base Tyros,
yes, important. And guess where the Golden
Company landed? Well, several places really, but
one of them is Tarth. It's very close to storms end,
closer than any other things we named very close to to storms
end. And it's about as close to
Volantis as it is to the Erie. It's farther than casually rock
to lease or to Volantis. So that's pretty interesting.
I think founding it's a bit overstated to say the First Men
were not a sailing culture, because the First Men, we
mustn't forget, are not one culture.
That's a catch all phrase for all the unknown variety of
cultures that migrated and sort of amalgamated into a new
culture when they reached Westeros, more or less.
It is fair enough to say mostly they weren't sailors.
They mostly migrated by foot through the land bridge that's
no longer there. But clearly the islands for the
most part around Westeros are populated.
And this wasn't a thing that only happened when the end alls
came. So yeah, there were people
exploring the nearby islands at least.
And then when you get to cultures like the Ironborn, they
go a bit farther. Well, a lot farther.
So why sail the seas when you have everything you need on
land? This is an important question.
That's why I think Tarth isn't a big exploring sailing culture.
Even though they're an island, they don't need to go elsewhere.
They have what they need right there.
The Ironborn kind of poor culture to begin with.
They're not a lot of natural resources there.
Over time it's gotten worse because for one thing, they
haven't invested in infrastructure very much. 2,
they cut all the trees down. They've had big problems with
that. That's going to cause all, all
kinds of climate change and messing up the soil, which and
hey, they don't sow, so they don't care about that.
No, they do. So their, their thralls do that
work. So yeah, that's the first men.
Maybe the islands were some of the last things that got taken
because of this lack of sailing, but it did happen.
And some of these islands you can see from like I, I wouldn't
be surprised if you could see Tarth from Storm's End because
it has mountains that they would.
So they would be visible from a distance.
If it was a flat island, maybe not.
So this is where the Iron Mark kind of come from right there.
They obviously took it further and developed all the way into a
maritime culture, but Tarth didn't.
So I, I think it's really interesting.
Now there's other reasons for that which we'll get to, but
most island people, most island cultures, they are sailing
people. Tarth is the exception, not the
rule. Iron Islands are kind of normal.
Not not the specifics about the Iron Islands, but the but the
fact they're sailors. That's the normal part of the
Arbor. Sailors House Valerian on drift
marks, sailors, the sister men, sailors, pirates, really.
But a Scagos is an exception, partly because it's hard to sail
to Scagos and to leave Scagos because it's so mountainous that
there aren't a lot of harbors. So it doesn't really lend itself
to that as much. But again, that's an exception.
Or a place like the Thousand Islands where there's like a a
cultural fear of what might emerge from the depths.
And that's a whole other story. They definitely don't have
worries about, you know, Deep Ones at Tarth, as far as we
know, even the Bear Island, they have long ships there.
The Shield Islands, they're all sailors.
This is so this is an exception rather than a norm.
And that makes Tarth, alongside a lot of other details, a bit
unique. The Sapphire Isle, for who knows
how long, it's had this nickname probably a very long time.
But why? Well, Brienne gives us the
answer very straightforwardly while she's a captive of the
Bloody Mummers quote. Why did you tell him Tarth was
the Sapphire Isle? Brienne whispered when Erswick
was out of earshot. He's like to think my father's
rich in gemstones. You best pray he.
Does it's every word you say a lie, King Slayer?
Tarth is called the Sapphire Isle for the blue of its waters.
Shout it a little louder, wench. I don't think Erswick heard you.
So yeah, there are no sapphires occurring on Tarth.
It's not just there aren't many. No, there aren't any other than
ones that were imported. So Jamie was telling one of
those lies that was quote, not without honor, as Ned told Arya
in the case of driving Nymeria away.
Ironically, this is a contrast to what actual sapphire seem to
represent frequently in the Song of Ice and Fire, which is whites
and the Song of Ice and and and the others.
Right. So again, yet more just
divergent from what we're used to with these symbols.
And that's partly because, well, Tarth is different.
It has its own views on things and blue there, the blue of the
of the waters is the implication, not the others.
Almost anywhere else. And we see sapphires and blue
stuff like that, we're going to think of the others.
But on Tarth, no, we think of something good, something that's
not, you know, the ultimate evil or what have you.
I mean, other examples of sat like amoned one eye had a
sapphire in his eye. That's not a positive
association, Simeon Star Eyes, That is a positive association.
He had two sapphires, so maybe that's the way 2 is better than
one, right? Aymond?
So that's pretty. I think that's pretty telling,
the way the symbolism is different in the eyes of people
from Tarth or when associated with Tarth.
Nina points out that Sapphire Isle is surely A homage to
Ireland, which is called the Emerald Isle, which ever since
Vista I did not know. Nina points out that there was a
poem. Called when Aaron first rose
from 1795 and that's where apparently it's first named the
emerald Isle and that stuck So also Ireland does not have
emeralds. None just like Tarth has no
sapphire. So it's the exact same metaphor
in in a sense there and Shea and I've been to Ireland.
It's beautiful. It is very great.
It is the I see why it's called the emerald Isle.
But of course, it's also got a lot of other types of terrain.
Not all of it is green, just has a lot of green.
It's got coasts. And you might, you might not
think that Ireland has mountains, but it does.
And they're not very tall, to be fair.
But it has 209 mountains. That's a lot of mountains for a
very small place, relatively speaking.
Ireland. If it was AUS state it would be
the 47th largest. So out of 50, that's that's
pretty small, but it probably has a wider variety of terrains
than most U.S. states too. Now, the Iron Isles actually do
have an abundance of iron, so that one actually is
straightforward. But they're also a Gray place.
It's not a colorful place, partly because of all the trees
getting cut down, but not just because of that.
It's just kind of naturally more Gray.
And there's reasons for that too.
And it's it's subtle and interesting and kind of
satisfying. But but building up to that, a
character who is satisfying isn't the right word.
Victorian, he has some thoughts. Got to use that word loosely
with him that are fitting here. Quote.
Victorian did not like this sea, nor these endless, cloudless
skies, nor the blazing sun that beat down on their heads and
baked the decks until the boards were hot enough to scorch bare
feet. He did not like these storms,
which seemed to come up out of nowhere.
The seas around Pike were often stormy, but there at least a man
could smell them coming. These southern storms were as
treacherous as women. Even the water was the wrong
color, a shimmering turquoise close to shore, and farther out
a blue so deep that it was almost black.
Victorian missed the Gray green waters of home with their white
caps and surges. That just makes me laugh.
Even the color of the water is wrong.
But it's telling because yes, different bodies of water around
the world, real life and in Planet Toast have different
colors. Let's talk a little bit about
why very nerdy stuff here. Now, that's not the Stormlands
that Victorian's talking about. He's at the Isle of Cedars way
the hell over in Slavers Bay or near Slavers Bay.
But the point is the same. The Stormlands is like that.
It has sudden storms that come out of nowhere that you don't
see coming. That's the kind of storm that
sank Robert Sandus and Renly's parents inside of Storms End.
It was sudden, didn't see it coming.
No one could smell it coming. And this blue that he's
describing is not the same as Tarth, right?
He said turquoise, not sapphire blue, so deep it's almost black.
That's probably similar. But the point here is that
Victorian doesn't like blue seas, and he's a sailor.
He doesn't see it very much. So why is the water around Tarth
so blue and so Gray green on his side?
Well, George is on top of the science.
Whether he did it on intentionally or not, he did it
right. Ocean waters on Earth go West to
east because the planet rotates one way.
It doesn't rotate both ways. So the waters go One Direction.
Generally speaking, that's not, you know, not all water flows
that direction, but oceans and generally currents move that
way. Now this can cause up swelling
along, sorry, upwelling along some coasts.
What is upwelling? That's when the surge of the
water is enough, that heavy enough, strong enough that the
water beneath pushes up from underneath and pushes the warmer
water back. And the water down deeper has
more sediment in it. Thus, it's grayer and it gets
rid of the blue just like anything else you look at.
Any color you see with your eyes is a reflection of what light
comes back to you because the other colors are not reflected
back. If you're looking at blue water,
it's blue because the light comes at it and the water
diffuses all the other colors except blue.
Blue is the only color that it leaves, so that's why you see
blue. It's, it's not that it's blue,
it's that it filters everything else out.
So you can take that logic and apply it to different colored
oceans. OK, so I just explained why West
to east. Well, that's why the West Coast
of Westeros is grayer and stormier and has bigger waves.
Because of this, because of this, this scientific principle,
this geological principle, this ocean, that's how the oceans
work. That's why the Caribbean has
blue waters or San Diego has big Gray waves all the time, right?
Like that's you can, there's a lot of real world examples where
you can just think about it and be like, Oh yeah, that's that's
true there. And here sapphire waters are
described in the real world. Not a lot of places, but plenty.
I mean, there's a huge number of bodies of water in the world.
One of them is Wakala Springs, Florida, which I've been to.
I mean, that's near where I spent a lot of my early years
growing up near. I lived in Tallahassee and
Wakala Springs, Florida is not that far.
Has been there too. Yeah, Shay has been there too.
So Wakala Springs. Yeah, it's got sapphire,
described waters. Another one is the Somana
Peninsula in the Dominican Republic.
And of course, the Dominican Republic is in the Caribbean.
So yeah, you go water moving. WE where the water West of the
Caribbean is land. So there's there.
It doesn't build up. It isn't moving all the way
across the Pacific Ocean to smack into the West Coast of
California, right? That's a big difference.
Now, where does the green come from?
We talked about blue and Gray. Why is it green?
Well, that's simple algae. Algae is green most of the time.
Now there's other colors of algae and when there's other
colors of algae, the water can look different.
It can be red algae, they can be yellow.
I mean, it can be pretty much any color.
That's pretty rare, but it does happen.
We've got red seas in in the in planet toast.
We've got red seas on Earth. So that basically explains it.
And that also tells you that the waters around Tarth are not
super stormy. The wind can because it's the
storm lands, but the waters, the tides aren't that bad on their
own. I'm sure the winds can mess with
the tides. Those two things, you know, do
impact each other. But for the most part, it's a
very different landscape for sailors.
And it's, it's neat that we have an experienced sailor, even
though Victorians, you know, kind of weird with it, it still
tells us a lot. As we pointed out earlier,
sailing culture's very common on islands.
And even though Tarth isn't as much of A sailing culture, they
still have some. They do sailing still.
It's not like they don't do it at all.
Brianne has skills at sailing. We saw that during her escape
with Jamie and Sir Cleos. She was the one piloting the
skiff. And Jamie takes note of the fact
that she knows what she's doing, and then she jumps off the skip
and swims. There's another skill that you
would see very common amongst Islanders, especially an island
that has lakes, lots of beautiful lakes.
So there's lots of beautiful places to swim.
And there's the beaches. It's an island, so there's
beaches all hunt, like all around it.
I mean, maybe not 100% of the way, but a lot.
So it makes sense, right? She does all those things and
then she climbed, she swam ashore, then climbed up the
mountain or the hill and pushed that boulder down.
That's another skill that you learn living on an island that
has mountains or anywhere that has mountains really.
That doesn't island part isn't so relevant there, but it's all
very attached. We see see her do three things,
use three different or demonstrate 3 different skills,
all of which you would expect a lot of people from Tarth to
have. So it's really solid there that
the the world building here really connects very well.
Brienne really is a person from Tarth.
I mean, it really clicks when you lay all this out.
And yeah, all the poorer people, the the common folk, they
wouldn't be sailors as much because, but some of them would,
they would be hired as sailors. And now I'm talking about
different types of sailing, right?
There's there's not all the same.
Brienne handled that skiff quite well, but I don't suspect she
knows how to sail warship or a large trading vessel.
Right. That's those are different
sailings. That's like saying I know how to
drive a car. So that means you can drive an
18 Wheeler. Does that mean you can drive a
an excavator? No, of course not.
The same thing goes for ships. Lots of rich people have boats,
but they're usually yachts or sailor boats.
You don't see rich people with great skills at sailing aircraft
carriers or whatever. Well, maybe a few of them, but
yeah, it's it's or or a commercial vessel, like some
huge trade cargo ship. You don't see rich people
learning how to pilot those. So this is the same kind of
concept goes here for a lower tech environment.
There's probably lots of smaller boats.
But since Tarth is more insular, there don't have a lot of people
building ships and traveling all over the world.
It has waterfalls, lakes and soaring mountains.
Quote again, the mountains are tall.
That's that's what soaring means, which means bigger than
Ireland. We made that comparison, the
Emerald Isle, and there are a lot of comparisons here, but
Tarth is much bigger than Ireland and its mountains are
much taller. I think that Tarth compares in a
lot of ways to Madagascar here. Madagascar is a similar distance
off the coast of Africa as Tarth is off the coast of Westeros.
They're both on the eastern side of the continent and they both
have mountains and they're similar size.
I think the waterfalls on Tarth mostly face E probably because
of the this, the way the mountains would have formed.
It's a geological thing that I can't explain very well.
But again, this is all these places that Brienne probably
would have climbed as a young person, especially as a noble
born person who would have been taught a broad skill set,
especially those that relate to her homeland, sailing, swimming,
climbing. Now, no sapphires, as we've
said, but they do have famously excellent marble, perhaps the
best marble in all oestros. Let's explain.
And that's certainly a luxury resource, even though it's not
as luxury as sapphires or emeralds or rubies.
And why do we say this? Because the king of the Veil,
long time ago, Roland the First Aaron, sent his builders all
over Westeros to find the best stone because he did not think
the marble that was in the Veil was good enough for the Irie.
And the consensus apparently was that the marble from Tarth was
the best. So that is what the area is
built from. Marble from Tarth.
I guess Tarth probably has some other useful exports, timber
maybe. They certainly haven't chopped
all their trees down. So they have at least a
intuitive understanding of sustainability.
Because as we start at the Iron Islands, they don't, they have
got all their trees down. So whatever the inspiration is,
Ireland, Madagascar, Georgia's own imagination, some other
things that I probably haven't named, Tarth is beautiful.
That's a very important bottom line, and that is a big impact
on the people who live there and the characters who come from
there. In the real world, people don't
actually move a lot, but when they do, well, they usually
don't move away from places like this to someplace that's not
beautiful. Like if you get used to that,
it's kind of hard to leave. I think a lot of y'all who live
in a really beautiful place will be like nodding your head like,
yeah, I can't imagine moving. Whereas you live in a kind of a
crappy place. It's a lot easier to imagine
moving if you can afford it or what have you.
So these are, this is yet another reason why the culture
would be more insular and people would be proud of their culture
because it's a great place to live.
It's beautiful. And they'd be proud of that.
You know, like we, we love to live here.
You know, it's a great place to be.
They'd be, it's a it's a good thing.
And yeah, why would you leave the, the land?
The Westeros is full of war and, and smelly cities and things
like that and politics and all that.
Why would you leave? I mean, well, you might leave
because you're a Brianna of tart.
Then you have you want to prove yourself as a knight and go do
nightly things and all that. That said, Brienne wants to go
home. It's not something she thinks
about a lot, but she does think that if I didn't have this oath,
I would go home. But she did take that oath and,
well, there may not be a living character in Westeros who takes
oaths more seriously than Brienne of Tarth.
Now, real quick, the Straits of Tarth, a little more about the
the sailing aspect of here. The Stormlands is not the most
inviting place to be a sailor. It is the Stormlands and
Shipbreaker Bay. It's it's right there.
Yeah. So that is also another reason
perhaps why there's a less of a sailing culture here because
it's more dangerous. But there is a haven, there's a
built in solution. The western side of Tarth,
because it's so close to the mainland, the storms don't have
time to build up. The waves don't have a lot of
momentum, which is why the waters are blue.
Well, that's a safe haven for ships.
If you park your ship on the western side of Tarth, it's
somewhat hidden from the storms because the storms are generally
going to emanate in the Narrow Sea.
And then Tarth's big mountains and forests are a bit of a block
to that and and storms don't generally pop up from the other
side. So it's a safe place to keep
ships, which is useful for House Tarth and for the other petty
kingdoms that existed in time in the times long gone, but also
for the Storm Kings. The Storm Kings would often park
their ships there, which meant they needed to have a trusting
relationship with House Tarth, because otherwise that's a good
way to have someone steal your ships.
Sam Jensen, 30, sends a super chat boss sticker.
Thanks for that, Sam. We appreciate it.
We're having fun talking about Tarth.
Let's keep it going. Kings and Even Stars, Even Fall
Hall and other seats on Tarth, which we don't really have the
names for other than Morn, which is a ruin, was built in the
earliest days. Even Fall Hall was.
We don't know when Morn was built, but definitely later
because it appears to be of and all origin.
More on that later though. Let's focus on the Even Stars
and Even Fall Hall. Evenfall is westward and central
in Tars, but inland, so it's not itself like a port or anything
like that. And there's one straightforward
aspect of this name. Evenstar.
An inspirational piece, not something from in world.
They even starred her act from Lord of the Rings.
Arwen, the Arwen. Her full name is Arwen Endomio,
which translates to Arwen Horseface.
No, sorry, Evenstar. In the Peter Jackson films, the
Even Star is a necklace worn by Arwen.
She gives it to Aragorn when she departs.
When he departs with the Fellowship in the book, she
gives him her elf stone, which serves a similar purpose.
It's a similar gesture, but that elf stone isn't called the Even
Star. She's the Even Star.
In either case. It's like an engagement ring
though, and it foretells that she's going to give up her
immortality by committing to him.
Arwen in Cinderan, which is, you know, one of the Elvish
languages, translates to noble Maiden.
That's appropriate. And in Welsh, which Tolkien
derived a lot of Elvish from, it means greatly blessed.
There you go, that's cool. Arwen.
So in Arwen herself, the character is certainly a noble
maiden, and her devotion to Aragorn is the stuff of legend.
She gave up her immortality to be with him, not unlike Luthien
did with Baron in the First Age. Arwen in Aragorn being the third
age of of Middle Earth and in Westeros, it's the same sort of
story as Ellen and I did for Duran.
Duran was a human, but he wasn't from Tarth.
This is a Durandan story in his case.
But that's the Storm Kings who the Tarths are very connected to
both by marriage and other things.
Obviously as a vassal of the Storm Kings.
But Ellen and I gave up her immortality for Duran.
So the place George used that or borrowed that concept from real
world mythology is placed right here in the storm lands right
next door to TARS. And it's worth considering these
details because we might find other inspirational details from
along these lines and we'd be ready for it.
Like, oh, hey, look, there's there's another little Arthurian
thing or hey, like there's another Tokian thing.
We were we're kind of ready for it because we already know it's
there. Like Lord Selwyn is it's pretty
Tokian ish, right. That name, not the spelling, I
mean. I mean, there's Wyn is not a
suffix you see in Tokian, but Selwyn sounds kind of like Arwin
or Luthien or Gilwyn or heroin or Hurwin or Turin or Erwin or
all these other Tokian names. A deeper cut, pun intended.
Aragorn wields Anduriel, a sword once called Narcile, which was
an ancient sword forged in the First age by Dwarven Smith's.
Apparently at the end of the second Age, the famous Ellen
Deal wielded it against Sauron. Now Sauron slayed Ellen Deal and
when Ellen Deal fell dying, he landed on his sword, Narsil, and
it snapped in half. Ellen Deal was a big man.
He was 7 foot 11. So yeah, that's big.
Now is Sildor picked up the blade, the hilt and used the
broken hilt, broken part. It was still sharp, as you know,
Sean Bean says in the movie. And he cuts the One Ring from
Sauron's hand with that broken sword.
Now Narsil is often referred to as the sword that was broken or
the sword refer forged because it's, you know, Aragorn uses
Andoril, which is the reforged version of it.
Narsil means red and white flame, which are the chief
heavenly lights as enemies of darkness.
That's straight from Tolkien, right?
It's the sun and the moon. That's the imagery.
That's the sigil of House Tarth, sun and moon.
It's almost red and white too. You got a white moon and a
orangey red sun. It's close the and there so
there you go. Now the even star also seems to
fit and it sounds positive, right.
This isn't like the the size of house Harlow or you know, the
the vultures of Blackmont, right?
This is this is a positive celestial.
You know, it gives you good, good vibes.
Not not dark, not evil, not questionable.
But where did this name come from?
Like this non sinister sounding name that even kind of sounds
like justice, right? Which is the most important
thing that a Lord can bring. Generally speaking, that's what
people expect. That's the most valuable service
an authority figure can really have.
Arguably, certainly one of the most important.
Maybe this is what helped the even SARS went out in the long
run. We know that there were multiple
kingdoms on Tarth. Now there's just the one minus
the Golden Company invaders, but they haven't formed their own
Kingdom. So I think that if if people
associate justice even handed rule with the even stars, it's
right there in the name. That's good marketing.
I guess. Then people would want to follow
them as compared to someone else who's ruling more like a typical
Westerosi Lord would. So this is a family tradition
that's very noble so that you want to uphold.
It's like a tradition like We Do Not Sew is very much like
they're taught to be violent and to look down on people who
aren't them. This isn't here.
Tarth doesn't have that. As far as we can tell.
They aren't taught that. It's not built into the culture.
It's not built into the house. Now if we look back on some
things, we've said that the First Men weren't big on
sailing, that storms are a problem for any invader.
Save perhaps those just across the Straits of Tarth, where the
storms are less likely to be a problem.
Well, the people of Tarth over time would have a sense of where
the harbors, where you can land, where on the island are the
landing spots for ships of any size.
And maybe if there aren't too many of them, will you guard
those particular spots and say, OK, well, we've got the the
harbors are locked down. Maybe not, though.
Maybe they can't do that. If so, that if they could do
that, they have a reasonable amount of security.
They could keep their tarp bubble insular the way they want
and not worry too much about foreign invaders.
That may have been a time like that, I think in the First Men
era. But once the end alls came,
which we're, you know, working our way towards, that would have
changed. So their ancient enemies would
have been other foes from within the Narrow Sea region.
You know, the people who lived on Massey's Hook and the people
who lived on Estremont, the people who lived around Storm's
End, including the the Durandans.
But not just them, you know, the people of the Griffin's Roost,
for example, things like that. Those would have been maybe
their ancient enemies and ancient allies, depending on
what century you're in and the other circumstances.
So all kings of Tarth were even stars, the ones that ruled from
even Fall Hall. That is because again, there
were some petty kings before that.
But of course, so they didn't start off ruling all tart.
That was a thing that happened. Over time.
These kingdoms, like they did everywhere else, kind of
gradually coalesced into smaller ones.
You had 100 kingdoms, then you had 50, then 40, then all the
way down. So there were lesser kings that
have been long forgotten in the sapphire aisle.
Now, Speaking of that nickname, star Sapphires are a thing,
right? And certainly a concept George
has used. The Star Sapphires are
specifically what Simeon star eyes used and the sapphire Isle
and the name Even star. That's what I'm keying in on
because again, the others we already talked about that.
That's a different connection to blue eyes here.
And the sapphire connection here is also different.
It doesn't imply the same thing. So maybe this is what they're
after. Maybe this is this connection is
to the term star, Even star, which is again celestial like
the sun and the moon. The Last King of Even Fall Hall
was Edwin Tarth and he married Duran the Fair, or sorry, he he
married, yes, King Edwin married Duran the Fair.
No, his daughter married Duran the Fair and that ended the
Kingdom of Tarth as an independent body for good and
all. They never became independent
again, minus perhaps a few times when they rebelled and were
temporarily independent, but it never held.
But even Star continued, and that's unusual.
Like where else in Westeros does the Lord of a particular house
that isn't a great house have recurrent title like this?
There's there's a few other examples.
You know, the Lord Reaper of of Pike is a thing, you know, but
Pike, but Pike is the great joys are a great house.
So you know, I don't know. It's a it's a fun and
interesting little unique quirk, semi unique.
Anyway, shout out to Carl Karsnark, regular listener and
fan. It's their name day.
All right, happy name. Day, Carl, the Storm Kings.
Yeah. Duran the Fair, the one who
married whose daughter married the daughter of Edwin Tarth,
that is. And now Duran the Fair implies a
good looking guy. But maybe it was an ironic
nickname, right? It could be a joke like Brienne
the beauty, right? Yeah, that could be like that.
Now, this Duran and his Tarth wife had a son, and that son
married an unknown wife. And so the issue of that
marriage was Eric the Sail maker, Durandan, Eric, probably
Eric the Third, but whatever. So this is probably a direct
connection to his Tarth ancestry.
You get a, a line of storm kings and then all of a sudden, within
a few generations of marrying into Tarth, they've got a guy
called the Sail Maker who did a lot of sailing and he got that
name for his island campaigns. He's the Storm King that really
made a point of bringing in, making sure the islands were
really a part of the Stormlands. He's the one that added
Estremont. He's the one that added a lot of
the lesser Isles that we don't have names to claim them.
There would have been people probably, otherwise they would
have been claimed before, maybe by the people on the other
islands. Either way, he got them all.
You know, it's kind of interesting that House Durandan,
even though they've been extinct for quite a while, we have like
33 Durandan names. There's that many figures that
have at least some detail on them.
Most of them are kings, of course, and most of them are
named Duran, but not all of them.
But most of them are relevant to Tarth in some way or other.
Because again, the connection between storms and in Tarth is
big and important because of the naval connection, because of the
just distance connection. They're close by and Tarth just
has such a positive association. You'd want the Storm Kings would
want that in their corner. The good people of Tarth, the
upstanding nobility of even Fall Hall and the other houses there,
that's just a good thing to have on your side.
Now we have Derwald the first, the fat.
Oh, here's an example of one of those Durandans who absolutely
is relevant to the history of House Tarth quote.
During the long years when Derwald, the first the Fat,
ruled in Storm's End, the Massey's broke away.
Tarth thrice revolted, and even upon Cape Wrath a challenge
arose from a woods which known only as the Green Queen, who
held the rainwood against Storm's End for the best part of
a generation. For a time, it was said,
Derwald's rule extended no farther than a man could urinate
off the walls of Storm's End. Can I just say it was hard not
to laugh at the Green Queen because of the show the Curse
with Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone in which she is the Green
Queen? In this case it's Emma Storm,
not Emma Stone. Oh yeah.
So it says TARS thrice revolted. It doesn't mean they were
revolted 3 times. Like yeah, that's gross for the
third time. No, they rebelled and it
normally you would think well if they rebelled 3 times things
were really bad and or the Storm King was really soft, which it
kind of sounds like this the case here because this it may be
the same guy rebelling 3 times. Normally you wouldn't get a
third chance, maybe not even a second.
You get executed or your power stripped away to the point where
you're unable to rebel again, at least not anytime soon.
So possibilities here are one that we got separate Tarths
rebelling or maybe one who rebelled 3 times.
Something in in between is possible.
And the fact that the Storm King can't just March his armies to
Tarth is a certainly an advantage for the Tarths.
And if they have the ability to keep the OR the Durandan ships
away, or maybe they captured some of them, well, that would
make their rebellion go a little smoother.
Now, of course, it didn't hold, but it sounds like Durwald just
wasn't a very good king and a lot of things broke down under
his reign. And he maybe just, you know,
we've seen it before where a king puts down a rebellion, but
he doesn't really have the authority to execute the
ringleaders because the Lord is too powerful.
It would cause bigger problems to execute them than to let them
live because their family members would immediately turn
around and be like, you killed my father and come for them
again. It would start the violence all
over again. Now that's an OK solution if you
are confident you can beat them. They won't come after you again
if their tooth weak. But clearly that's not the case
here. They kept rebelling.
So this guy kind of reminds me of a Tito's Lannister, a guy
that just had constant problems with his vassals because he was
just weak. Now king or three later saw a
bit of a change quote. The tide turned again when
Morton the Second named his baseboard half brother Ronard as
his castellan. A fearsome warrior, Ronard
became the ruler of the Stormlands in all but name and
took King Morden's sister to wife.
Within five years, he had claimed the kingship as well.
It was Morden's own queen who placed Morden's crown on
Ronard's head. If the songs be true, she shared
his bed as well. Morden, himself, deemed
harmless, was confined to a cell in the tower.
Given their recent three rebellions, Tarth might have
been in conflict with this King Ronard, but they might not have
tested him because it sounds like he was not a guy you wanted
to test. He was no Derwald.
So here's how events played out from there.
Quote again. His usurper ruled for nigh unto
30 years as Ronard the Bastard. Ronard the bastard, I want to
say Ronard the bastard, smashing rebel bannerman and petty kings
alike in battle after battle. Never a man to confine himself
to a single woman, he claimed a daughter from every foe who bent
the knee. By the time he died he had
supposedly fathered 9 and 90 sons.
Most were bastard born, though Ronald had three and 20 wives,
the songs say, and did not share in their father's inheritance,
but had to make their own way in the world.
For this reason, thousands of years later, many and more of
the small folk of the Stormlands, even the meanest and
humblest amongst them, still boast of royal blood.
It's a regular Garth Green hand. Yes, you're right.
I wrote that in the notes later. You may not have seen it, but
you we just had the same conclusion.
A little bit of Robert Baratheon there too, and Genghis Khan.
We're going real world because something like one out of every
500 people in Mongolia can trace their ancestry to him, which is
like, that's crazy, right? But there you go.
So this Ron, our guy was a real, a real influence on history.
He had a did a lot of things and yeah, it's entirely possible
that the tarps were one of these foes that bent the knee to him
and he took a daughter, but it's possible they didn't.
The tarps were were done rebelling, given they had done
so in prior generations and may not have had the strength to do
it again. So they may have been on
Ronald's side, in which case they wouldn't have had to do
this. Either way, it seems like a
little bit more separation for house tarp than the rest of the
Stormland. Most of this is probably
happening in the mainland. Most of these Lords, they were
giving up daughters to Ronard. We're mainlanders that mix with
each other a lot more. So this, this royal blood of
House Durandin that was spreading around through Ronald
Tarth might not have gotten some.
Not a big deal. And of course they married into
the Durandins already, as we saw.
But anyway, it's a more of a cultural separation than than
than some sort of actual difference created by
bloodlines. These aren't magical bloodlines,
so that shouldn't matter too much.
At least we don't think they're magical bloodlines, but we do
think magical bloodlines exist in this world.
So Ronald is unlikely to have spent long stretches of time on
the islands because, well, he's so busy putting down rebellions
and doing all this other stuff. There's just more to do on the
mainland, he. And if he's constantly at war,
well, it doesn't make a lot of sense for him to spend a lot of
time on the islands when his mainland foes could take
advantage of that while he's gone.
Well, let's take, let's, let's make a move.
The Andals. Here's how it began for the
Stormlands quote. Eric the 7th Durandin was king
in the Stormlands when the Andal Long ships first began to cross
the Narrow Sea. History remembers him as Eric
the Unready, for he took a little note of these invaders,
famously declaring that he had no interest in quote, the
quarrels of strangers in a land far away now.
This is sort of painting him as a bit of a failure.
Some of that should have done something, but what could he
have done? It wasn't like he could stop the
and dolls. I mean, right, that was no one
was going to stop them. No, even if they all the kings
of Westeros had united, they probably wouldn't have won.
So it could have just been excused.
He's like, yeah, this isn't my responsibility.
I'm pointing out how this isn't mine.
Like he's absalt washing his hands of it and wanted to make
sure everybody knew that he had problems of his own surely.
And he we even know some specifics.
He had a pirate king of Massey's Hook called Justin Milk eye that
he had to deal with. And he also had King Oliver
Ironwood to his S causing problems.
So even if he wanted to send help to the veil, which is
pretty far away and again, this is an era where the veil is an
independent Kingdom, they may not have any reason to help to
get help from the Stormlands or vice versa.
So that is where they first started, right?
The Andals first started coming to the veil.
So yeah, sending help wouldn't have been a typical thing.
Anyway, by the time this guy, Eric the 7th passed, they still
hadn't moved beyond the veil in any significant numbers.
And so that also goes to show that, yeah, like we can't.
This guy's getting some blame, probably for things that really
aren't his fault. Regardless, the name Eric the UN
Ready is almost certainly a nod to Ethelred the UN Ready who was
king of the Saxons until he lost it to Svain Forkbeard, who, yes,
that's a Viking king. Now Svain died very quickly
after winning, but, and so Ethelred got it back.
But then Svain's son Canute the Great took it back from him in
turn. So yeah, back and forth English
throne, blah, blah, blah. That Ethelred that Ethelred the
unrady also is a little unfair to call him the unrady.
So I think George was not only capturing the nickname, but the
actual same implication of the name that it's kind of an
overstatement. Next up we have Carlton the
second, the Conqueror Durandon. Now this guy definitely more
more of a Ronard than a Derwald the Fat or a Eric the Unretti.
He was on the throne when things progressed to a point that
started to matter for the Stormlands quote.
King Carlton the Second Durandon was the first to face the Andols
in battle. After four generations of war,
that monarch, who styled himself Carlton the Conqueror, finally
completed the reconquest of Massey's Hook, taking Stone
Dance after a year's siege and slaying the Last King of House
Massey Joshua called Soft Spear. I want Conqueror to be spelled
with AQ Carlton the Conqueror. Matthew Sook could have been
independent as we see there, or Pirate King ruled for at least
three generations. So this soft spear guy looks
like he was not up to the task of.
I mean, soft spear isn't exactly a name that implies Marshall
prowess, does it? Or bedroom prowess, Yeah.
He didn't father many heirs. It's.
A little bit of a floppy fish situation.
To me, you're right and this is a reminder that history doesn't
always move in One Direction. This is a 2 step, three steps
forward, 2 steps back kind of thing for the end Alls.
They had won, they moved in a lot, but then this Carlton the
Conqueror guy had a lot of success pushing them back.
But historically speaking that was only temporary.
Carlton the Third was next, and he wore his entire reign.
He wasn't necessarily as mighty as his father Carlton the
Second, but he didn't lose anything.
He kept it going. Then Manfred the fifth was
Carlton, the third son. He was on the throne when the
tide did start to turn. Since the and Dolls were mostly
coming by ship, mostly long ships, the aisles were
particularly vulnerable and made sense as first targets from
Assos quote. Though the Storm Kings won half
a dozen major battles, the greatest of these being the
Battle of Bronze Gate, where Manfred the 5th Durandin
defeated the Holy Brotherhood of the Andal's, an alliance of
seven petty kings and warlords, at the cost of his own life, the
longships kept coming. It was said that for every Andal
who fell in battle, five more came wading ashore.
Tarth was the first of the Stormlands to be overwhelmed.
Esthermont soon followed. This is notable, as we pointed
out before, for a lot of reasons.
One, it's just very, it speaks to why the place is so andalized
and why there's so little trace of or any trace of First Men
stuff or First Men worship or heart trees or anything like
that. Hotbed of Andal activity.
Not just Andal activity, but Andal migrations, people who
weren't used to Westeros yet, people who had their own beliefs
and were very devout in the Seven and kind of thought that
everything should fall under that purview.
So Tarth may have had less and less to do with these battles
and mainland problems because they were wholly analyzed by
early on and would not have been loyal to the other, to the Storm
King or these other things. These other Lords, because
they're now culturally separate, that's a big deal.
They were overwhelmed. First it says the 1st place to
fall and then Estremont. So, and that's how it is working
out with the Golden Company too, when they're moving, when
they're coming across from SOS. So after that, Tarth was
probably a big problem for the Stormlands because it's just
this hub of Andahl migration. They can come across, have a
safe landing, and then it's just a short boat ride to get the
rest of the way to the mainland. And what are they going to do?
Guard every inch of coast of the Stormlands?
No, of course not. That's impossible.
Like Tarth couldn't do that themselves when the Andals were
coming. And now that the Andals rule
Tarth, well, the mainland faces the same problem.
We've had a bunch of quotes about this era, and it's nice
that the world of Ice and Fire has so much to say.
Here's one final one about what happened in the long run.
Quote. In the end, the two sides simply
came together. King Malden the 4th took an
Andal maiden as his wife, as did his son.
During half blood Andal War, chiefs became Lords and petty
kings, wed the daughters of Storm Lords and gave them their
own daughters in return, did fealty for their lands and swore
their swords to the Storm Kings. Led by King Ormond the 3rd and
his Queen, the Stormlanders put aside their old gods and took up
the gods of the Andals, the Faith of the Seven.
As the centuries passed, the two races of men became as one, and
the Children of the Forest, all but forgotten, vanished entirely
from the Rainwood and the Stormlands.
Maybe not entirely we those caves have some interesting
things as them that we see in the area and Winds of Winter
chapter, but that's a bit of a digression because again, Tarth
very analyzed probably didn't follow the same pattern.
Look, we see gradually the Stormlanders put aside their old
gods and took up the gods of the angels.
That had already happened on Tarth by the time it was
happening elsewhere. So Tarth was the 1st place this
happened outside of the Veil, I suppose, and was the source of
so much more of that further development and migration.
And yeah, so if the Old Gods and everything had been wiped out
from their purview, from their island.
Well, yeah, it it continued here on the mainland, but it happened
first on Tarth. Let's take a little break.
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Log in, do your thing. We also have something very
exciting here. Night of the Seven Kingdom
season is of course the first of the two TV shows coming up, and
a Shaya has been busy making a cool tour shirt.
Here it is, Night of the Seven Kingdoms, thick as a castle wall
tour. It's got the great logo and it's
got all the different spots that are relevant to Duncan's journey
over the his life. We've got Flea Bottom, Ashford
Meadow, the Prince's Pass, Vape, Plankey Town, Old Town,
etcetera, etcetera, ending in Summer Hall.
So these are available at historyofwesteros.threadless.com.
Check it out. Get your own Sir Galadon and
Morn. Yeah, his name is Sir Galadon of
Morn, but I put it that way because we need to talk about
Morn as well as Sir Galadon, because what is Morn?
He's not Sir Galadon of Tarth, though of course he's from Tarth
because Morn is on the island of Tarth.
Now here's a primer from the World of Ice and Fire quote.
Many of the folk of Tarth, Highborn and Lo alike, claim
descent from a legendary hero, SER Galadon of Morn, who was
said to wield a sword called the Just, Made given to him by the
Seven themselves. Given the role that the Just
Made plays in SER Galadon's tale, Maester Hubert in his Kin
of the Stag has suggested that Galadon of Morn was no rude
warrior of the Age of Heroes turned into a night by singers
1000 years later, but an actual historic figure of more recent
times. Hubert also notes that Morn was
a royal seat of petty kings on the eastern coast of Tarth until
the Storm Kings made them submit, but that its ruins
indicate that the site was made by Andals, not First Men.
Yeah, it's possible. Morn was carved out as a petty
Kingdom during the Andahl migration, taking that portion
of the island away from even Fall Hall and eventually that
spread to the rest of the Kingdom.
And then in Time Morn ceased to be a power because the end alls
had seized even Fall Hall and there was no more reason for it
to be separate and the end all rulers of even Fall Hall would
recapture the whole of the island for themselves.
So yeah, this Galadon is not in the mold of servant of the
mirror shield and so many other heroes who are legendary figures
from pre end all times who have been retrofitted to the
histories to make them fit with the seven, to make them more
familiar to the 7 words. They want to hang on to those
ancient legends, the value of those old traditions, but they
want to andalize them. That didn't seem to happen here.
The Sir Galadon of Morn seems to be an actual and all legend, not
a modified First men story. And that's because, as it says
here in the quote, the details are all very and all in their
origin. Even the play, even the the site
of Morn itself is Andal architecture and the name
Galladon is very Andal. And the fact that the just maid
and the the maiden herself is in the store.
All the story elements come from Andal culture.
Serwin of the mirror shield, he just that just doesn't fit.
He he lived thousands and dolls weren't even.
Heck, some of the stories say Serwin of the mirror shield is
in the Kingsguard which is only a 300 year old institution and
Serwin is thousands of years old.
So some of the stuff is very blatant.
None of it is in the case of Sir Galan and Amor.
And everything aligns with the Andol culture.
Nothing seems to have been changed in retrospect.
So that's kind of neat. It's a different version of
that. The maiden, as we, as we've said
here twice already, is central to Sir Galadon's story.
She falls for him. And obviously that's one of the
seven, one of the seven falling for a human, for a mortal.
That's yeah, I had something out of Greek mythology or other
mythologies too, but Greece is the one we've been focused on
quite a bit lately. So the maiden, if the story was
stolen and just so well made into an end all story that we
don't notice, maybe the maiden was some other feminine guiding
figure that was taken over by the maiden when the story was
rewritten. So this isn't something
rewritten or invented by George, of course, it's been done many
times by political regimes, religious orders, or which have
you. Sticking with ancient Greece for
example, the Macedonians, they set out to establish themselves
as the rightful rulers of Egypt after they conquered it.
One of their moves was to add a God named Macedon to the ancient
pantheon while claiming he'd always been there.
Y'all didn't know that y'all ancient Egyptians?
You didn't know one of your gods was called Macedon?
Well good thing we're here to tell you otherwise.
You guys have been worshipping wrong all this time.
It's really quite a thing now. It's not as big of an invention
as it sounds like because Macedon was already an existing
legendary figure. He wasn't something they just
made-up, they just changed the details about this God or
figure. This is religious synchronism in
play, which meaning merging of of religious beliefs into one
kind of a combination. It also this.
In this case it was elements of Greek and Egyptian beliefs
merged. The fuller but still brief ish
version of this begins with the Greeks or whoever mashing Osiris
and Dionysus into one entity because obviously Dionysus is a
Greek God, Osiris is an Egyptian God.
So they did this by making Osiris had two warrior sons
known for their bravery and skill, Anubis who was a dog
headed God and Macedon who was a wolf headed God.
So this wasn't an insertion of a new God in a place of nothing.
This was just taking that this is taking a swapping gods out.
Take out a God, put another one in because in Macedon originally
had been Weptwa wet the wolf God of Lycopolis.
So they switched the wolf God to Macedon.
So still wolf headed. No, it's in in essence, they
kind of just changed the name. They could write it off as just
a name change. Yeah, we're it's the same God.
It's a wolf headed God. We just, you know, it's just a
different name. We should have been calling him
this all along. So this isn't the same as when
the priests of the Ironborn or the seven worshippers on the
Iron Isles tried to make the the drown God an eighth God of the
seven. It didn't work.
But that's a that's a ham fisted attempt where this is a little
smoother, little more subtle, little more nuanced.
And it's also kind of cool because there's this Wept Wawat,
who was the wolf God, a son of Anubis or son of Osiris, brother
of Anubis, was the wolf God of Lycopolis.
Lycopolis is a very straightforward meaning.
You can break down by the the roots there.
Lyco means wolf, Polis means city, city of wolves.
Is that what it means? Yes, it is the city of wolves in
Greek. Wolf mummies have been found
there. That's creepy.
And this is something that was thought to be made-up by the
historian Deodorus Siculus, Deodorus of Sicily.
But like a lot of things Deodoris wrote that people
thought, Nah, that can't be real.
It's actually was real. Like, oh, actually there are
wolf mummies. OK, He was right about that.
Give him some credit. Now, later traditions have
Macedon as the son of the werewolf, like Aeon instead of a
son of Osiris. Cause, yeah, they're these
things get changed for political reasons or just cultural reasons
or who knows why, but that's kind of neat.
This Macedon's the son of a werewolf.
Yeah, Now getting back to Westeros here, all or most
religious syncretism is a form of cultural syncretism because
religion and culture are inseparable.
So that's what we have. In the case of Sirwin, that's
cultural syncretism. They're trying to make Sirwin a
knight, to try to make him a Kingsguard knight, right.
So whatever stories were told about Sirwin 301 years ago, he
wasn't in the Kingsguard right now.
This Sir Gallaton of Mourn, another piece of influence he
has is people get named after him like Galadon's.
You know Brienne's brother who died young was named Galadon.
Now what about Morn? Where did this come from?
An end all warlord named Morn maybe or something like that.
He carved out a piece of Tarth whatever.
Maybe he was Sir Galadon or maybe Sir Galadon's brother.
Because it's not Lord Galadon, it's not King Galadon.
So yeah, so maybe that's the he's related to the founders of
mourn. That would explain why he's not
a king or doesn't have the doesn't have the name of a first
born Karl Karsnard adds. Behold, the just made was just
made. Nice.
You know, I love word play, y'all.
And here is a little section on the just made.
It was given, as the quote told us, a sword of powerful swords,
so mighty that no common sword could check her, no shield could
block her. And this sword was given to Sir
Galadon by the maiden who fell in love with him because of his
purity, his perfect knightness, which is what he's called the
perfect knight. It's not a it's not my version.
That's not my turn for him. No, that is the in world a thing
that Brienne says He was the perfect knight.
Now he only draws the just made three times in his whole life
because it's too fair. It's too it's too unfair.
It's it's not a contest. It's it's unchivalrous to fight
with a weapon that no one can possibly fight back against.
It's too powerful. It's it's dishonorable to fight
with that sword. There's other especially
Arthurian tropes about swords. You can only use it as certain
time, only certain conditions or that maybe it's cursed.
Like the sword of Balin, who wields that sword is going to
kill the person that they love the most.
That's an Arthurian legend. But that and this whole thing
sounds Arthurian, right? Like it's not chivalrous to
fight with a weapon that's just too powerful.
So Brienne, anybody? Brienne wielding Oath Keeper.
What did we say about when we're talking about the influence of
Narsil and Anduril, The Lord of the Rings sword, the Anduril
being the reforged version. Brienne is carrying around a
reforged magical sword too, right?
She's carrying around Oath Keeper, which is a reforged
version of Ice. Well, half of it or so.
So. So that's pretty cool.
Also like kind of like the just made Brienne doesn't just wield
Oath Keeper all the time. She kept it hidden until she
felt like it was time that they were about to have a fight.
Now, to be fair, partly she kept it hidden because anyone who
catches sees that sword is going to be like, whoa, look at that
thing. It's covered in rubies.
It's like that is a fancy ass sword.
You can't just it's going to catch attention.
Also the Lannister imagery and all that.
So that's a problem too. She doesn't want to get out.
She doesn't want to get noticed for that.
So there's there's more reasons to hide it, but ultimately it
still has a similar vibe to it. This is just made you don't use
it very. This is a sword for special
occasions. And she really did kick ass with
it. And then Randall Tarley was
like, it was a sword. That's why she was so effective
against those outlaws. Nah, it was both The sword
helped, but Brienne was amazing. So, and keep this in mind, like
if she had been attacked suddenly, if she'd been
ambushed, she wouldn't have had time to draw Oath Keeper.
It's packed up in her saddlebag. She had to tell Padre, hey, go
get it for me. Unroll it from the blanket.
And here, nimble Dick, you can have my sword, you know, in the
meantime, and you even have another parallel here.
The just made fell in love with her Galadon and gave him the
sword. Jamie gave Brienne the sword.
I don't know if I'd go so far to say Jamie's in love with
Brienne, but there's some love there.
There's definitely respect, right?
Jamie absolutely respects Brienne's devotion, even if he
mocks her for it. Deep down he it's what he always
wanted to be. It's what he thought he would be
when he was 1415. She is what he thought he'd be
and some of that is seeing that mirror of himself.
It's disappointing and that's why he mocks her, because she's
what he wanted to be and he's mad about that.
But over time he starts to realize that and he's starts
mocking her less and less and does things like this that show
respect, that show honor, giving her Oath Keeper.
Yes, it gets her in trouble, but that's not his fault.
He didn't see that coming, he and he's not the Maiden, but he
has only slept with Cersei. And the Maiden protects young
women. That's one of her roles as said
by the Seven. That's the doctrine of the faith
of the Seven. The Maiden protects young women.
Jamie is arming and empowering Brienne to be as safe as she can
on this dangerous quest. And what is her quest to save
two young women, Arya and Sansa? Too bad Brienne was caught by
the stranger Catelyn in the meantime.
Yeah, but maybe that'll have a happy ending.
Not too happy though. Sir Galahad.
There's a major influence you've probably heard of Sir Galahad of
the the Knight of the Round Table, but you may have
forgotten some of the specifics. Let's get to it.
Sir Galadon of Mormon was called the Perfect Knight.
Sir Galahad was called the Perfect Knight, and the names
are similar. Galahad Galadon.
Yeah, that's real similar. Much of what makes him perfect.
Galahad in this case isn't skill, though he is extremely
skillful. It's his purity.
It's his chastity. He never even holds a woman's
hand. But as well, he lives a life
free of other sins. Brienne also hasn't even really
hold a man's hand, right. So there's a little of that.
Now, this is more of a comparison to Sir Galadon, but
again, Sir Galadon has a huge influence on Brienne and we see
some of these same kind of rare, unusual personal qualities.
And Brienne would have been hearing these tales from a very
early age. Continuing with Galahad, he was
the bastard son of Lancelot and Elaine.
Elaine was the daughter of the Fisher King, and Elaine used
magic to make herself look like Guinevere.
That's why Lancelot slept with her.
When Lancelot found out about the deception, he got real mad
and went to go kill her, but he forgave her because she's like,
wait, we had a son together? And he's like, oh, we have a son
together. OK.
So OK, I won't kill you now. The Fisher King received a
prophecy that his son is designated by God to be the one
that finds the Holy Grail, not not his son, this son and this
son of Lancelot and Elaine. And that is what happens.
Galahad is the one who finds the Holy Grail, and it's because
he's pure enough. Only the purest knight will find
the Holy Grail. That's Galahad.
Lancelot is reunited with his bastard son Galahad.
When Galahad turns 15, Lancelot Knights him after they have a
practice duel and Galahad wins. Lancelot never ever lost a fair
fight before or after, so this is extremely noteworthy and it's
a reason to knight him so young like a Jamie.
Now Galahad passes 2 tests after being brought to Camelot to join
the round table. Let's not forget, by the way,
the Kingsguard, their table isn't round, but the room is, so
there's a little bit of that vibe there too.
Now, the first is a chair of these two trials, the two tests
that Galahad passes. The 1st is a chair at the round
table. No one ever sits at it because
it's enchanted and only can be sat upon by the person who will
succeed in the grill quest. Many nights have sat there and
it killed them because they're not the knight who's going to
find the Grail. Galahad just sat down.
No prob. He lived.
That must be it then. He pulls the sword of Balin, the
same sword I mentioned earlier, the knight with two swords.
Balin was one of the greatest, most powerful Knights of the
Round table or Knights of that era.
I don't remember if he was a round table or not.
He had a twin brother, Balin, and Balin, and Balin killed
Balin because his sword was cursed.
And so his sword was then put in a stone very similar to
Excalibur, right? It's obviously the same kind of
story. And Galahad pulled that sword
from the stone. So then he goes off searching
for the Grail. So he passes these two tests and
no one else did. Then he performs miracles.
He saves damsels in distress, teams up with Percival and Boers
to find the sword of King David because, yeah, he needed two
swords as well. He has the sword of Balin and he
has the sword of King David. The sword of King David was
originally the sword of Goliath. King David kills well before he
was king, but David kills Goliath, takes his sword and
that's the sword of King David. So that's quite a connection.
They got the Knights of the Round Table making this
connection of a blade that has existed since, you know, pre
Christian times. And since Galahad was a bastard,
maybe Sir Galadon was as well. Again, we were wondering why
he's of mourn and not, you know, a Lord or anything like that.
It could imply a his his birth status wasn't so grand, someone
who rose up, which that's a good story too, maybe arguably even
better story because of Morn isn't a house name.
It's not Sir Galadon Morn. It's like Brienne of Tarth,
although in her case she is of house Tarth.
So maybe that's it's confusing, but she's The only exception.
She's the only one called of Tarth, right?
Everybody else is it's Sir Andrew Tarth.
It's not Sir Andrew of Tarth. So it's a little confusing and
it's happens to be a little funny that the one exception is
Brienne of Tarth when and we're thinking of this Galadon of
Morn. So Galav had sacrifices a lot to
complete the quest and a lot of symbolism here in terms of yes,
this was a change from the Knights of the Round Table.
Their focus, once Galahad came around, their focus was the
Grail, and it became a focus of this is piety and purity,
heavenly devotion rather than earthly devotion.
You serve God on earth or you're serving God.
You know, later it's a different versions of that.
And Brienne herself is a fairly excellent example of all this.
Yes, Sir Galadon in turn represents Brienne.
Sir Galadon was a good example to follow.
They're both perfect. Brienne is, as we've said, the
closest thing we have to a perfect night in terms of how
she behaves and how she keeps her oaths and what she just
thinks and does. We, we're in her head.
We know it's it's sincere. And maybe Sir Galadon, it really
was like that too. We know Sir Galahad was from
Arthurian legends. And if Sir Galadon was really
like that, then this is a, you know, very legit source of, of
inspiration for her and other people from Tarth.
And it might not be exaggerated or not too much.
I mean the part about the just made probably is, but he may
have really been just pure kind of guy, even if it was probably
exaggerated a little more. About Morn, it's a defunct
Kingdom on the eastern side of Tarth, IE the coast facing the
Narrow sea and beyond. The more dangerous side, the
coast hit harder by storms, the the side more vulnerable to
invasions like this. In an earlier quote that Ishaya
Red, we're told that a certain Maester Hubert argued that Morn
was a minor and all Kingdom carved out of Tarth, taken from
the even Star and thus taken from the Storm Kings who Tarth
was a vassal to. And then over time they got to
hold that because so many more Andals came more may have even
been a success story that encourage further incursions,
further migrations more and more something accelerated the rate
of and all's coming partly because there's just more places
for them to come and get jobs and live in and all kingdoms,
but also because it was working. Hey, so many people of our who
came from here, from Andalos are moving there and having great
success. I want to join in.
In the early days of the migrations.
Well, they weren't sure if it was going to work.
Not everyone went, only the boldest and bravest and most
devout. But as success continued, more
and more people did it. So you might have noticed as
well here that we were talking about islands.
You can't exactly sail ships to the Irie, right?
The Andals came to the Vale, but they had to switch to, you know,
land campaigns. But you can sail to Tarth, you
can sail to Estremon, you can sail to Griffin's Roost because
it's right there on the shore. Those are all targets that the
Golden Company has recently seized at the end of or near the
end of A Dance with Dragons. Not to suggest the end.
All invaders were as competent or as disciplined or as united
as the Golden Company. No, certainly not.
But overall they were certainly more numerous.
There's more than 10,000 involve migrants than than you know, the
Golden Company has 10,000. But the point is that Tarth is a
Big Island with a small to modest sized population, so it's
hard for it to have the manpower to defend all its coasts, even
if they knew these guys were coming, which they probably
didn't. Now there's also the invasion of
Mir Men on the East Coast of Tars which resulted in the
Mirrors bloodbath, which we'll get to in chronological order.
I suspect this was near the region of Morn, though.
I suspect the the Mirrors pirates and exiles who seized
the eastern coast of Tars. I bet this was Mir Morn, if not
the exact area of Morn. They may have repurposed some of
those ruins for their base of operations even.
Point being, there are multiple examples of successful foreign
invasions on the East Coast of Tarth.
Not only is Sir Galadon's story very nightly all the way
through, as we said, his name of Morn.
Given all we just said is an and all name, right?
The ruins are and all architecture.
Morn is an and all name. Apparently all that points to
and all maybe the Mourns married into even Fall Hall as an end as
a appropriate ending of nonviolent ending to their
family kind of becoming subsumed into the what became a temporary
royal family or became a new vassal of Storm Kings, a new and
more powerful vassal. Now, even Storm's End has signs
of Vandal architecture, but not the original, not the original
foundation. So it's always got to remember
that these things get added to, changed, rebuilt, problems
happen, and you got to fix things.
Same thing is true at Winterfell.
Let's go to Under the Dragons. We're getting very close to our
current timeline and let's see what's going on here.
We'll start with a quote. The Kingdom of the Storm shrank,
king by king, battle by battle, year by year.
The fall was halted briefly when a fierce warrior, Prince Argalac
called the Arrogant, donned the Stags crown.
But even a man as mighty as he could only stay at the tide, not
turn it back. Last of the Storm Kings, last of
the Durandin. Argalac did just that for a
time. So this is a big leap forward in
time right before or during the conquest when Storms End was
very andalized too. So Tarth I suspect was right
there with Ardelecht. His Tarths Knights were probably
on the field. The Lord of the even Star
himself of the time might have been on the field too.
If so, they surely took heavy losses because it was a very
bloody battle and it's hard to imagine anyone not taking heavy
losses there. But they might have sat out
because a lot of houses didn't want to face the Dragons.
But most of the houses did face the Dragons at least once, so
they didn't look like cowards. I guess the North was an
exception. Very few houses stood up to the
Dragons twice. Whether Tarth learned the lesson
without having to learn the lesson or had to have some
Dragons go down to Moraxi's is currently an unknown, but I'm
guessing they fought and took heavy losses.
Because that's generally speaking.
I'm going to guess that the Tarths did the more noble,
honorable thing. Not always, of course, but
without without other information, that's when I'm
going to tend to. That's where my brains going to
go for the actual conquest after it.
Oris Baratheon, of course, subsumed the Durandans, made
them Baratheons his, their bloodlines all go through him as
an apex. And when Oris was captured in
four AC by Lord Will the Widow lover, that was not good.
These are the guys who were in prison for three years and then
had their sword hands cut off when a ransom was finally
arranged. Now most of them were killed
before that, but if there were high highborn Knights or the
Lord of Tarth himself might have been there, well, that would not
have been a pleasant experience. At some point, probably after
this, but maybe before, Queen Rainey's arranged a triple
marriage because Lord of Tarth and his lady wife had triplets.
And it gives us a bit of an indication of what level of
status House Tarth had after the conquest, and it gives us a bit
of an idea of what the status they have now in terms of
primacy amongst the other houses.
So these three marriages were to Corbrae, Harlaw and Hightower.
You know, I have a question. We don't really see a lot of
other triplets. Do you think there's an element
that they were even higher status for being triplets?
Like they were more, you know, appealing?
I was like stock, I don't know. It could be, it might be that
might sound fertile. It might in the in the medieval,
proto medieval mind that may imply fertility or or bode well
for more children. Yeah, I could see them making a
simple connection like that. Nice and spread out.
So you got Harlow on the Iron Islands, Hightower very far to
the southwest in the region, Corboret up in the Vale.
So interesting way to bring these houses together.
Generally pretty effective strategy by Rainis and Visenya
to create a lot of cross Kingdom marriages under Anis.
Obviously the second king, the even star had a second son who
married Larissa Valarian. That's a very high status
marriage too. And this is the second son, not
the first son. And they had a daughter who in
turn married Lord Estermont, who was an elderly man.
And this happened in 55 AC, So there was probably no issue from
that branch. So there's no cool Valerian
Tarth branch out there, but it kind of also sounds like this.
This second son of the even star kind of sold his daughter
because why else do you marry your daughter to a really
elderly man? That's just kind of weird unless
you do something in it for you. We see the Lord, the elderly
Lord Estermont marry. Is it Silva Spotted Silva?
Yeah. So it's kind of a, a history
repeating itself kind of thing. George playing around with that.
Of course, Spotted Silva was one of the people caught alongside
Arianne doing her, her, you know, play with Marcella.
So the old Esterma, old turtle. You know.
Kind of trope, but George himself is an old turtle right?
A game of the Narrow Sea. The Narrow Sea contains a lot of
different powers. Obviously, outside of Westeros
and in Westeros in ancient times, it would be both.
And those would be, you know, the Isles of Blackwater Bay, the
sisters, Estremont, and then the Free Cities, Bravos, Pentos, Mir
Lis, Tirosh mostly, and also Volantis, Lorath, Kohora,
Norvos, probably not so much, but maybe a little.
And there's often fighting over the step stones.
That's the thing that just happens from time to time,
right? They're not a big player in any
of this, but they're right there in it, like geographically
speaking. So they get caught up in it from
time to time. They're not necessarily a big
producer of ships or major Trade Center.
They still get caught up in these things.
You know, they do make some ships, they do do some trading
happens there. You know, a particularly notable
example is when we mentioned briefly earlier that we've now
arrived at in the chronology, King Jerry's the first, the old
king, the conciliator. There was later in his reign,
there was the mirrorish bloodbath.
It happened in the year 91 and by the year 92 it was a civil
war that led to 1 faction being expelled and exiled.
They still had a lot of strength though.
They fled Tairash with their army and ships and landed on
Tarth again, SE coast basically, and carved out a spot.
So this is, like I said, probably around Morn, and it's a
little bit like a microcosm of the Andols coming in.
They forced their way there. They were kind of fleeing the
Valyrians, the original Andols. This is well, they're not
fleeing the Valyrians, but they are flaring, fleeing a city
founded by Valyria that was once ruled by Valyria.
So this losing faction was doing their thing.
And Lord Cameron Tarth, the Evenstar couldn't deal with them
himself. He did.
He lacked the strength to do it alone.
So the throne, the Iron Throne took joined in.
They sent powerful people to help the Sea Snake, who was kind
of a younger man then, but was already very strong, very
notable. He was sent with this fleet.
The Valyrian fleet showed up and they transferred ships from the
mainland across the Straits of Tarth.
So the royal armies and and other levees were safely
transported from the mainland to Tarth with the protection of the
Sea Snake ships. But more importantly Master of
Laws and Prince of Dragonstone Eamon Targaryen, rider of
Caraxes went as well. Now, the reason he went was
because he learned his daughter Rainey's, the future Queen who
never was, was pregnant, as it turns out with Lena.
Of course, Rainey's married to the sea snakes.
There's a lot of connection here.
So he, you know, satisfied that he's got an heir on the way who
turned out to be passed over. As we know, Prince Eamon goes
with his dragon. He meets with the even star.
He flies to a war camp up in the mountains.
Cameron Tarth sets up his camp in the mountains sort of in
central Tarth there to as a staging area to launch their
invasion of the southeastern portion of the island to take it
back. Right.
And the mere men, though, were not just sitting there.
They sent out scouts to try to figure out what the even star
was doing. And they probably learned if the
Royals were involved. And so they were concerned and
wanted to see what they were up against.
Two of their scouts either got local help and or got lucky
because they found the camp and not only discovered the location
of the Royal Army and the Tarth Army, but they found the command
tent and a vantage point to look down on it. 2 scouts did this.
One of them pulls out a crossbow and decides, well he's going to
go for it because it's close enough.
They're close enough. That's why I said they got kind
of lucky here. They were able to find their way
to this close to the command tent and take a shot at Lord
Tarth. Prince Amon was standing right
there, and he's the one who got hit.
We're told that the scout was aiming for the even star, but he
struck the Prince in the throat, killing him.
Now Amon's next brother, Balon, Balon the Brave, responded
viciously. He brought Vergar and burned all
the mirrors ships at anchor. Now this tells you immediately
what what's going to happen next.
He he cut off their method of escape.
Now while he's doing that, because he doesn't want any of
them to escape and they didn't. It may have been an entire
massacre. Every mere man may have been
killed. Bailon didn't use Vergar for the
killing of the soldiers. He took a Dark Sister and went
on the ground with everybody else and killed a lot of people.
They didn't bury the bodies, they left them on the beaches.
All the Mirish dead were left there rotting, which almost
certainly means for years and years after they were finding
bones, you know, maybe even the occasional piece of loot.
A Lord Tarth was at the Great Council of One O 1, and it may
have been Brindamere Tarth, because this is the next Lord
Tarth we know of. This Lord Brindamere.
The Evenstar did side with the Greens, but Otto was worried
that they would side with Reynira, so that might tell us
something about how they voted in One O 1.
They may have sided with Reynira, or rather with Elenor,
but we don't know. And but Otto's worry does imply
something there. During the Dance, the Royal
fleet actually stopped over at Tarth on the way to the
Stepstones before all that business happened.
So it's just another example of Tarth being a a valuable
stopping point on the way to important campaign destinations.
And Lord Brindemere, when they did that later, Lord Brindemere
boosted the fleet. He added 12 long ships to the
royal fleet that was sent to deal with Riccalio Rendoon after
the dance. And it was Lord Brindemere who
reported to the other leaders at Tarth that Riccalio had allied
with Tairash and Bravo. So it was his whisperers or his
informants that brought that information, which tells us a
little bit about how maybe the even stars operate in the Free
Cities. They need to know what's going
on because of their proximity and because of history tells
them that things like this can happen now.
Two of the greatest storms in living memory were,
unsurprisingly, in the Storm Lands. 166 and 221 are two of
the biggest storms ever recorded according to the World of Ice
and Fire. Those very likely cause a lot of
harm to Tarth, even though Tarth is maybe a little bit more
protected because of its geography.
Still, these were such huge storms that it's unlikely they
escaped without some damage. As an aside that these two
storms were during the rains of Baylor the Blessed and Aries the
first, respectively. Baylor the blessed must have had
an opinion on a storm like this. It's something to do with, you
know, the gods. Whatever Aries is, the first
probably just went right back to his books.
He's like, it's raining. All right, I'm going to go read
again. Now working our way into the
hedge night Duncan Egg area. There was a Sir Quentin Tarth
present at Ashford Meadow in Two O 9.
My little prediction is that we're going to see that on TV.
Good way to little draw attention to this connection
that we're about to get to Sir Duncan and the Tarthgaryens.
Yes, I mashed Tarthgaryen and Targaryen together.
I'm allowed to do that. Here's a quote.
The Sapphire Aisle, as some call it, is ruled by House Tarth of
Even Fall Hall, an old family of Andal descent that boasts of
ties to the Durandins, the Baratheons, and more recently,
to House Targaryen. Once kings in their own right,
the Lords of Tarth still style themselves the Even Star, a
title that they claim goes back unto the dawn of days.
Notice how this says end all descent and it doesn't even
mention the first man descent. But then it turns around and
says that the even star title goes back to well beyond the end
all. So yeah, it it it kind of
implies here. The way I interpret that is that
the end all intermingling was really, really overwhelming on
Tarth. So Nina says, and I agree, this
is a theory. It's been around for a while.
Let's go through the particulars of Brienne and Duncan.
Duncan the Tall. So it starts with Brienne's
paternal great grandfather that would be the son of Daella and
Duncan. Now, Daella Targaryen did marry
into Tarth, and we know. You what?
Daella. You got to say it once.
Daella. Like Paella?
Yes, that is our running joke, isn't it?
Yes, she is a a a a mishmash of food types.
Proceed. Thank you.
So Dunks shield was at Tarth. We know that Brienne remembers
it, right? She remembers seeing it when she
was a kid. She doesn't necessarily.
She doesn't know exactly what the deal was, but we certainly
do now. They didn't hide it or destroy
it, so it wasn't shameful. They would have gotten rid of it
if it was some big scandal. They wouldn't have just left it
sitting there. So Dunks, whatever Dunks
involved in with House Tarth was, and there must have been
something. It doesn't seem to have been
overly scandalous. Or if it was scandalous, it was
not so scandalous that it caused a big problem, like, hey, it's
not a bad thing necessarily to have a connection to Sir Duncan
the Tall, even if he know, broke his oaths or something like that
to father a child. Yeah.
This is something that's not fully fleshed out, although
maybe it is in George's mind. So.
Hi. If the shield, if the story was
just well known, then what's the point of hiding the shield?
Like, everybody knows Duncan the Tall went there and everyone's
aware of the story. What's the point of the shield?
Yeah, everybody knows already. You're hiding something that's
already exposed. And Brienne finds the Lofton
shield at Harrenhal. Now that's a a shield that has
far more reason to have been disposed of than a Dunk's
shield, because Dunk's not a villain, whereas the Lofton's
were a fairly villainous sinister house that had a
sinister, villainous ending. So yeah.
But also, maybe the story just didn't get out.
Maybe the story is under wraps. Maybe.
Yeah, Duncan may have slept with the Lady of Tarth and that was
kept under wraps. I mean, Brienne doesn't know,
right? She's done, doesn't seem to be
aware of Sir Duncan Natal being her ancestor.
If she if she is, she hasn't thought about it yet.
And it seems odd because she would recognize the shield if
she knows the story of Sir Duncan Natal.
That shield wouldn't be just some childhood memory, it would
be something she has more information on, so that's
telling. I don't think she knows who's
her Duncan the Tall is other than, well, she knows who he is.
She doesn't know the connection to her own house.
We know that the Targaryens and Tarths intermarried relatively
recently. That's a fact.
And the only real unknowns in terms of Targaryen marriages on
the family tree are egg sisters. There's really no other fit
here. So one very easy explanation as
Nina puts it is Dunk would have gone to Tarth.
The same reason we see Aries Okar go to Dorn or Dunk
escorting Eamon to the to the docks, which is a shorter
distance you know. But but Duncan escorting someone
that's having a send off, it happens a few times.
So the famous Kingsguard knight escorting the Targaryen Princess
to marry into House Tarth, that is a thing that's very easy to
imagine. So after Egg's marriage to
Betha, what may have happened is Makar decided to separate Dunkin
Egg and sent Dunk to Tarth. To set up this new marriage in
place of what was probably originally going to be Egg
marrying Daya Dale himself. It was probably that was
probably going to be the deal. Egg was probably going to marry
his sister, but that got thrown the window when he fell for
Betha and Makar and others were like, ah, fine, he's not going
to inherit anyway. We'll let it go.
We'll let it slide. Oops.
So it's very plausible, all this, the separation of a dunk
being sent there. The separation is part of it.
And then so on the way, while he's escorting her, they get to
talking. Daia notices how big and
handsome and chivalrous he is, and Dunk notices how spicy and
tasty Daia is. And they, you know, they hook up
and she gets pregnant and they pass the child off as a tart.
No one ever reveals. And maybe Dunk doesn't even
know. Maybe it's just kind of an he's
like, I wonder, could that be my child?
I don't know. So yeah, they would do that.
They would pass the child off as a true born Tarth, especially if
the Lord Tarth at the time wasn't aware, which he probably
wasn't. So yeah, a Tarth being fit to
marry a Targaryen, it is kind of interesting and there's a few
reasons why it might have happened. 1 might be their
connection to House Baratheon. By itself, that's probably not
enough and maybe not even terribly relevant, but it
definitely, I think it matters. You know, if you're having a
marriage to the royal family and you have Baratheon ties or
Baratheon blood, well, that just puts you even closer to House
Targaryen because the Baratheons are related to the Targaryens,
especially in that that connection is closer the farther
back we go. Until it was kind of restored
here. Now, we don't know which
Baratheons married House Tarth. It is absolutely specified that
that happened. It may be multiple examples, but
we don't actually have the specifics.
We don't have to have an explanation here.
The Tarths could just be noble enough, highly ranked enough,
how well regarded enough for this to be sufficient?
Another reason is Makar very concerned with the black fires.
What do we say? The black fires are so close by
the black, the golden company lands in Tarth.
Well, if you're worried about Tarth, staying loyal is a great
way to keep them in the fold. Keep marry into House Targaryen.
So this is a there's a political reason here.
This is still when the black players were very active and and
bringing House Tarth into the fold or keeping House Tarth in
the fold makes a lot of sense as a strategy, as a marriage
strategy. And again, there's a lot of
other potential connections that are just missing from us here.
And Dunk really fits nicely with the heraldry, like he has his
shooting star and their heraldry is moon and star and an even
star, right? So there you go, our moon and
sun and the even star rather. And Brienne is she fits the
definition of a knight errant pretty well, which is kind of an
Arthurian thing. And the term knight errant came
along much later than Arthurian legends, like way later.
But it very much applies the concept.
A knight errant is someone who tends to go wandering and seeks
out quests. They often serve a a noble lady
and they often are trying to rescue women, which Brianna is
doing, but Duncan is did as well.
Now Brianna isn't wandering in search of a quest.
She's wandering as part of her quest because she doesn't know
where Santa and Ari are and she's kind of doesn't have a lot
of leads to follow or a dunk actually, along with Egg
actually wander. They're just like, well, we'll
go off and wonder and we'll just see what happens wherever we end
up. That's like the truest form of
knight errantry. I think their only purpose is to
stay alive and be good, which is, hey, you can't got to
respect that. Now, sticking with Arthurian
connections here briefly, Nina suggests the Dunk Dale romance
may be an homage or partly inspired or at least a parallel
to the story of Tristan and is sold.
Tristan was the nephew of King Mark of Cornwall and he
accompanied Slash escorted is sold the Princess of Ireland to
marry his uncle and on the journey under a love potion they
fall for each other. Now the love potion part is
funny and has a connection too because remember Egg talks about
how his sister Daella Daella cooked up a concoction, a spicy
concoction to make him fall in love with her.
Here we have a love potion story again.
So Tristan and is sold because of the potion hook up and they
get caught up in a tragic conflict.
Love duty, all that business is sold.
It goes through with the marriage to Mark.
But she loves Tristan. Tristan loves his soul, but she
honors but he honors his uncle. He doesn't hate them.
King Mark isn't some bad guy in the story and he loves them
both. So yeah, it's real, real
complicated, real real, real dangerous, real iffy, but you
could see the compare. If the theory about Da Ella and
Dunk is accurate, and I definitely think it is, then
this is absolutely a parallel A Song of Ice and Fire and Tarth.
Now we're in current timeline. It is mentioned House Tarth in
the prologue of Clash of Kings. As we said way back at the
beginning here or early in the episode, Crescent was asking
Gavos how did your mission go? You went to try to meet with
other storm Lords to win support for tennis.
How did it go? His report is grim.
Few people would even meet with him, most to say refuse to meet
with him at all. Lord Selwyn 1 is was the one of
the very few who actually deigned to meet with him at a
Grove at midnight to decline. So he went out of his way, took
a risk to say no. That is the behavior of a a
noble person. That's an honorable thing to do.
He didn't just ignore Davos. He didn't ignore his, his, you
know, duty to Stannis. But he also wasn't just going to
go against the entirety of the Stormlands who were following
Renly. He's like, yeah, sorry.
I want to give you the respect of meeting with you, even though
it's a Grove at midnight, because I don't want anyone to
find out about this, but I'm willing to do this.
I'm willing to take a little bit of a risk to tell you to your
face what's going on. So I I think that's a little,
that definitely implies a little bit of something positive about
Lord Selwyn. And if you read between the
lines throughout the novels, Lord Selwyn always seems to be
well regarded. There's no one speaking I'll of
him at any point, right? So that is telling as well.
And the ransom he offers for Brienne, we're told is fair,
right? Of course, Vargo expected
sapphire, but what he got was a fever, so yeah.
So Selwyn isn't actually, you know, being cheap when he offers
300 gold Dragons for a night. That's apparently a very
standard, even even if a little bit higher.
So everything we know of seems to point him as a good guy.
Now. Sir Andrew Tarth is the one who
we talked about way at the beginning.
He replaced Sir Alistair Thorne as the Master at Arms.
He's not the Master at Arms anymore because he was killed at
the Bridge of Skulls where the Free Folk were led by the Weeper
now with his side and his runny eyes.
So that's when John takes over as Master at Arms until he kind
of hands it off to Iron Emmett and then, well, everything's a
mess now. It's all chaos.
So who knows what Nights Watch officers have what jobs at the
moment. Also, Andrew Tarth faced Sean
many times at Ice and Firecon. You wrote here.
Yeah, there's a, a regular at Ice and Firecon, a friend of
ours, acquaintance who went by that name as well.
And they had turtle melees at Ice and Firecon where people
would fight with foam swords. And yes, Sean and Andrew
definitely crossed swords a few times.
Also in the faceless man game they were real real mortal
enemies because they fought each other in attorney and in the
faceless man game Andrew killed him.
I'd say Andrew got the best of Sean most times I think.
OK. Sorry, Sean.
Now Brienne, obviously this is not going to be a pretty
comprehensive breakdown of Brienne in her life.
That's at least a 2 episode thing.
We did 2 episodes on Baylor break Spear, 3 on Baylor the
Blessed. So Brienne, yeah, she's a,
there's a way more to say about her, in addition to her brother
Galadon, who died, you know, very young.
He drowned, which, by the way, that's an ending that is
unfortunately more likely in a culture that does a lot of
sailing and swimming than in, say, someone who lives in the
veil, you know? But he, she also had two
sisters, an Aryan and an Alison. They both died in the cradle as
well. The name Alison, of course, it's
another, like, note of goodness. You know, you're naming the
person who was perhaps the best queen of all time.
You invoke that name and it just makes you think positively.
I'd like to. So I'd like to explore Brienne
in terms of how she relates to Tarte, how she expresses the the
vibe of House Tarth, and how the island itself represents a lot
of what she's become or what she is.
Here is a quote. Sir Colin Catlin said to her
escort. Who is this man and why do they
mislike him so? Sir Colin frowned.
Because he is no man, my lady. That's Brienne of Tarth,
daughter to Lord Selwyn the even *.
Daughter Catlin was horrified. Horrified.
I brought this up earlier, but what the heck, Cat?
It's not that telling about her, though.
It's really just about the way she was raised.
Like the idea is so foreign to her.
She's like, what? It goes against everything she
was raised, everything she was taught.
Like, it's a very patriarchal culture.
Also, obviously, that does not permit women to fight for the
most part. And not only is she doing it,
she's doing it really, really well.
So she's not the only one, Catelyn who's like, I can't
believe what I'm seeing. This is something I've been told
all my life isn't even possible, yet here it is happening before
my very eyes. So it is just a function of what
they've been taught and taught over and over and ingrained, and
it's been that way for centuries.
So the other side of that is the influence of Tarth.
Tarth as a island culture a little separate from everything
else, a little more insular, a little more closed off.
There'd be less corruption of the value systems, more
idealism, more the nightly virtues seen as they were
intended, rather than a corrupted version that's been
played out on the mainland for so long, compromised by politics
and intrigue and other considerations.
There's just less of that in the closed off world of Tarth.
So that really supports Brienne being someone who is so into
these values, but also a little naive to the way the rest of the
world works 'cause she is. While she sticks to these
values, even as she discovers the rest of the world isn't like
that. She didn't know the world was
like that. She arrives in Westeros mainland
not having learned these things. Even though she knows that women
aren't Knights that she knows well, she knows that she's an
exception, a major exception. her Master at arms have trained
her, pointed this out. He taught her to fight in ways
that are geared to who she is. He taught her to fight with
discipline and to play the long game, she said.
He said, look, men are going to want to beat you quickly because
otherwise they will feel that their pride is been touched in a
negative way because you're not supposed to be sorely tested by
a woman in combat. Oh, that's unthinkable.
If you don't beat that woman quickly, then it's says
something bad about you. Well, we know that's not true
because Brienne's an amazing swords person.
So that's a incorrect line of thinking, but it's a very
ingrained line of thinking. So Brienne has that advantage,
and we see her do that to Jamie just straight up.
That's the strategy she uses against him, and it works
perfectly. So Tarth sets a lot of us up
like she is raised in a place where their most important
legend is the perfect knight. She becomes that without the
awareness of how that's not really a thing anywhere else.
She might have believed that there's other people in the
world that are just as dedicated to these ideals as she is.
She probably doesn't. She probably didn't realize how
unique she was in that regard. The only thing she thought she
was unique in it was being a woman with these abilities.
It wasn't her values that she expected to have these
differences with people. That was as much as a surprise
as anything, if not the bigger surprise.
She was expecting more noble behavior.
She was caught off guard by the cruel prank.
She didn't see it coming. She was too naive to even
suspect it. But woman who lived amongst
those people all her life would have seen it coming.
They would. She'd be wary, they would have.
She would have experienced with these kinds of things.
She would have seen them done to other people, if not herself.
So this is something that someone in the mainland would
have learned at a younger age, even though Brianna isn't
exactly old. These aren't things that you
learn later in life. These are things you learn as a
kid. That's when picking on and
teasing. That stuff happens early.
And Brienne certainly had some of that, but not this kind,
right? We know she got teased and poked
fun at and all that, but it sounds like it was not as bad on
Tarth. Like they didn't do that as much
partly out of respect for her house in part, but also because
they probably just aren't like that as much.
They aren't as vicious, they aren't as cruel in their mockery
of of these things. Because it's important to be a
true night, a perfect night. And since Brienne has a lot of
his qualities, well, that's not something to mock, despite so
many trope inversions. Yeah, like Brienne is of perhaps
the best example of trope inversions in the single
character in a world that's full of trope inversions.
But the trope inversions are not about the perfect knighthood.
The inversion is that she is the perfect knight without being a
knight. It's not that her beliefs are
inverted or anything like that. Especially the Arthurian
influence. These things are very much in
line with that and things that are inverted are parts about
her, like specifically what she her skill set, how people react
to her, their expectations, being both reader and in world,
people being inverted and and having a having a lot of
surprises there. So Jamie coming back to him,
he's the only the only person he ever told about Aries is
Brienne. He didn't tell Cersei.
He didn't tell Tyrion, and that's because of this purity,
because he actually wants to be respected by her because, again,
she's what he wanted to be. He won't admit it to himself,
but it's it's there. He wanted to be Arthur Dayne,
and she is upholding that standard, if not more so.
So, yeah. So that's why he told her.
Of all the people he, he, he, he revealed this to, it was her
because he cares. He cares that she looks down on
him. Her opinion matters because
she's the ideal. She's what he wanted to be, so
her opinion matters. He can't get around that as much
as he wants to. Not because when she wants to
mock it, he can't get around it. It's what he always wanted to
be. She is that.
He can't. He can't.
He has to face that. And he slowly does over the
course of his arc, even while she's gone.
A a phrase that is applied to Jon Snow would really fit to
Brienne in a lot of things. Like you could say you know
nothing. Brienne of Tarth, because she is
naive and she's had to learn a lot of these things and she's
less naive than she was and she knows a lot of things that other
people don't. She's smarter in other ways too,
but she's pretty naive about how bad and cruel and evil men could
be until till she learned that first hand.
It would be having Jamie. If Jamie had said that to her,
it would have been fitting. And you know nothing.
Reggie says similar things, like are you thick as a castle wall?
Which of course, is a nod to her ancestry with Duncan.
That was Sir Duncan. But a Grit was a much more
worldly person than John. That's why she could say that to
him, because she's got a lot better idea how the world works,
even though she's on the wrong side of the wall.
From where John learned everything.
Because John was raised in a castle.
He was raised in a bit of a bubble.
Even though he's a bastard, even though there's all these other
things. Yeah, He doesn't know how common
folk live. He doesn't know all these other
things, especially doesn't know common free folk live.
So. And Brienne is the same.
She's learning these things as her arc goes through.
You may have noticed, partly because I pointed it out a few
different times, that there's just no bad stories about Tarth.
Where's the villainy? Where's the dishonor?
We don't have those tales. There surely got to be some,
because George just doesn't write things in fat black and
white. But he definitely made this as
light Gray as he could. This is maybe like House
Blackwood without the counterpart house.
That's, you know, the Brackens who were written often as
villains. There's no, you know, anti tar
fear. There's no Darth Tarth.
Darth Tarth Yeah. So they're just things that make
them look good and things that are neutral and no things that
make them look bad. And the beyond Brienne and the
other quality humans of Tarth there, it has these, it has
enough unique qualities to be rich for storytelling.
It's things that haven't happened yet.
Certainly George seems to have planned for a Dunkin Egg story
to take place there, you know, in the long run, which means he
already may have some ideas for, you know, what Tarth is going to
be like or some of the characters that would be in that
story. What's the maybe some Tarth
commoners or maybe some other Tarth lordlings, See what that's
like. Maybe just to show the
difference between the mainlanders and them.
Fun stuff like that. Local history, things we
wouldn't get anywhere else. Now if this further examples
from existing influences, some some of it would be probably
Arthurian and Tolkeanesque. But the best way we might learn
more is through Brienne's memories.
She's experienced Tarth for what, 18 years as her only place
That she's, you know, the one place she lived.
She hasn't thought about it a whole lot, but she has thought
about it going back and how she would, you know, if she wasn't
in this oath, she would go home. And, well, what happens when she
learns that the Golden Company has taken Tarth?
Her family is held hostage. That was, does that change her
mind about anything? It's kind of ironic that the
person she's serving is Catelyn, whose house is family, duty,
honor, family first. I don't know if Brianna will see
it that way, but that's something to consider.
Brienne may say her oath comes first, but she has an oath to
her family too, doesn't she? Maybe not something she just
stated outwardly like that, but it's certainly implied.
I mean that's it's Westeros and I don't think Brienne needs to
be told that. I don't know that her ark is
going to take her to the Tars to fight the Golden Company, but I
do think it will cause some conflict and make her think
about it. And she's like, well, am I
really going to find Sansa Oraria?
Should I really keep doing this when my family's threatened?
Like, I know that's happening. I may not be able to ever find
Sansa Oraria. They might not even be alive.
So shouldn't I maybe go do this? And that would be a reason for
her to think about Tart. The things that she would go
there, the things that she would be saving, the things she would
be preserving, the people she would be protecting, more about
her father at the very least, so that it would be a good way to.
Add even more conflict to her story.
Not that she doesn't have enough, not that she's not in a
really bad spot right now. I think the Sapphire Isle will
play a more prominent role in her thoughts going forward, if
not only because she just hasn't thought about it very much yet,
but because there's a good reasons to.
Because it's threatened right now.
There's things happening there that she would want to think
about. It makes sense.
And of course with her, if she ever learns anything about
Duncan Egg or if Duncan Egg the story or even the TV shows have
reasons to bring up Tarth to, to maybe highlight or give nods to
the ancestral connection or just, and through that we may
get more about the island, the people, the noble house, past
president. Future trivia answer.
Which Targaryen Prince was killed on Tarth?
Prince Amon. The Prince Amon who was heir to
the throne, Princess Daia certainly died there as well.
Most likely, but probably natural causes.
I said killed very specifically because yeah, she probably lived
her whole life there and died, but she probably wasn't killed
and she also wasn't a Prince, she's a Princess.
But still worth mentioning. Poll results.
Y'all had a pretty strong opinion here.
Will Brianne inherit even fall hall?
Will she join the Kingsguard or join a Kingsguard?
Not the Kingsguard, but you know the OR a Kingsguard.
Will she die or will it be some other only 7% said other, 13%
said die, 17% said inherit and 63% say Kingsguard or something
like a Kingsguard or a some sort of order that you don't inherit
things when you're in it. If she doesn't inherit, by the
way, that would mean some cousin or uncle would inherit.
That seems like there's probably someone like that out there.
I mean, it's probably not a tiny family.
If it was, that would be something else for her to think
about like, well, I need to go home because I'm the only
there's no one else to inherit the house like others.
Very I'm I'm the one I'm the one left that probably would have
come up by now. But hey, you know, George could,
could pivot that direction and hear, Hey, my uncle and my
cousins were killed by the golden Company.
I'd like who else would inherit Now, you know, something like
that. I mentioned quite a few episodes
in this one, or at least hinted at them.
My didn't necessarily call them by name, but let's do so now.
We have a, a, a series called Under the Dragons and where
there's a variety of houses we look at and what there were,
what their life was like, what their history was like after the
House Targaryen took over. We have a full set of episodes
on the Hedge Night, the Sworn Sword and the Mystery Night, and
which of course has some talk of Brienne here and there and
certainly obviously is very focused on on Sir Duncan.
We have an episode on the Golden Company as part of our Black
Fire series. And we certainly talked about
the Golden Company a bit today. And we certainly are curious how
that's going to play out because the Golden Company, well,
they're on Tarth right now and that that whole, they're all
wrapped up in the whole Young Griff, Aegon, the 6th plot line.
Who knows how that'll go. At least Jon Connington is not
there. So they probably won't get have
a grayscale epidemic on Tarth. That that may be one thing that
they don't have to worry about as much.
That's another nice thing about island life is the diseases
don't necessarily spread. It's easier to maybe cut
yourself off from the rest of the world and and avoid such
things. Also, we have our episodes on
Bay Lord the Blessed and we have an episode of The Death of
Makar. That's an important one.
Forgiven Things we talked about in terms of the timeline of Dunk
and House Tarth that would have happened during Makar's reign.
And then we have Fire and Blood, our series on Fire and Blood,
which has a lot about Jaharis the first, who we talked about a
bit in this episode, and about the conquest where there were
those marriages and things like that, and the invasion of Dorn
by the Stormlands. Lots of options for you folks.
This is our first episode recorded in 2026.
We are very excited for the year and very excited for you all to
go through it with us. It should be a noteworthy year,
more so than most others. Maybe we'll get lucky and
they'll be an even better reason to celebrate 2026 in terms of A
Song of Ice and Fire, but I'm not going to jinx it by saying
what I mean. You know what I mean.
Thanks to Nina for her great takes, and make sure to check
out good queenalley.tumblr.com. Thanks to Joey Townsend for our
music. Thanks to Michael Klarfeld for
our video intro. And for the maps you see behind
me, Get them at KLARADO x.de. That's claredox.de.
On behalf of Ashea, I'm Aziz. We'll see you next time you know
what to do. In the meantime, Valar reread
us.