Lesser events had occurred, some skirmishes and several burnings.
Smaller castles had fallen, and though some major locations like
Dunscandale were among those and at least two of her and sons,
nothing historical had occurred just yet, though it was clearly
building towards that today. We reached the first major
battle of the conquest, the first time a dragon was truly
unleashed upon Westeros that we know of, and even if there were
others, it would have been eons prior.
In many ways, it was less of a battle and more of an
opportunity when opportunity for Agon to set an example, one so
powerful that others would not dare to test him.
In that sense, much was riding on this, because if done right,
other kings might see the wisdom in bending the knee rather than
fighting it out. Though he was more than willing
to bring blood and fire to the battlefield, Aegon preferred
willing surrender. He saw them as his future
subjects, after all, so why kill them?
They're going to be his future soldiers and tax providers and
all that, and there's no need to sow bad blood towards him and
his family amongst those he had conquered.
So the smoother the process the better.
So if it went wrong, if it was done incorrectly, well there's a
lot more work that could be created.
A lot more blood and fire would be needed to fully subjugate the
seven Kingdoms or 8 kingdoms, or however many kingdoms there
were. It was going to be 7 pretty soon
by his count, but there's exceptions to what I described
in terms of how to do a conquest properly.
Sometimes you do have to sow some bad blood.
Of course, you're overthrowing people and killing people.
You can't avoid that entirely, so, and if you do have to make
someone angry, you still have to be thorough.
If you're going to cause bad blood between families, best
make sure that the enemy bloodline is removed from the
Game of Thrones forever. It may.
It's one thing to make sure they don't affect you, but what about
your children? What about your children's
children? So better just get rid of them
all together. The lessons of Heron the Black
and Heron Hall as laid out by Aegon the Conqueror then, and a
bit of A Song of Ice and Fire to look at it now.
Well, we've got all that and more on today's History of
Westeros podcast. Hello and welcome everybody.
Live streams every 3:00 PM Eastern on YouTube, every video
on YouTube and Spotify afterwards.
Audio only available everywhere. And if you listen to the audio
only version on Patreon, well, it's ad free, so you save a
little time and get things through a little faster.
Yeah, it's a little smoother. Bit of a ride there, Sean, how
you doing today? I see you've got some drums on
your shirt, but there's no drummer.
What's that all about? Are you the drummer?
It's a it's a clutch shirt from a concert I went to a few weeks
ago. Well, I went to a clutch show 2
weeks ago, so it's the same tour that we both attended shows on.
This is the just the stage. Those are amps, you know, It's
just a stage waiting for the band.
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool. That is the band.
I've seen the most of any band by far, so you would think I
might recognize the shirt. Clutch could say that they both
attended a meeting with history of Westerns.
That's true. Good point.
I think it's a band I've seen. I think it's a band I've seen
the most too, but not by far. I think that I've lost count,
but it's around 15. But I think I've also seen the
sword in Mastodon about 15 times, give or take a couples.
Hell yeah. I do have a.
A drink that I was trying to make the color of the orange
candle glow of molten rock of Heron Hall.
Well, it kind of matches the Kraken on my shirt.
I've got a Sanrixian shirt on today.
It's a grayjoy shirt and the Kraken is in is done in gold,
but golden orange can kind of look a little similar,
especially on camera. It also matches the text of of
your Amelie poster behind you there.
Yeah, always coordinated. Sean and Sean and I are
coordinated too. We're both wearing black.
Shay has got dark Gray, so it's pretty close.
You know, we're coordinated. We do that.
Shout out to our good friend Nina, whose blog is good.
Queenalley.tumblr.com That's 1L in alley.
Also 1L in Tumblr, but you know, you probably knew that already.
Her latest? Ease in Tumblr.
There's no ease in Tumblr that you might not have known because
you would think there would be any in Tumblr the the website,
they just dispense with that. What is that?
What is with that trend? Getting rid of the E like
Grinder, Grinder and Tumblr. The Grinder and Tumblr don't
really have that much in common. Flicker.
That's another one that did it. Yeah.
What's up with that? Is it?
I think it's just an extension of people running out of names.
I. Think just running out of things
the word. Flicker you're going to come out
with, you know, Yeah, more things than if you brand
yourself to be flicker without the E And that's true, because
the word flicker has been used a million times.
But the flicker is is an entirely new word that no one's
every. As no no I that's a recurring
joke I like to hear like what are what are our grandchildren's
grandchildren gonna do for screen names like on you know
like everything's taken. People are already using like X
uppercase, X lowercase, X dot under score you know just it's
just crazy. So yeah, they're gonna just be
running. They have some great purge where
all old nicknames will be a raise and they can start over.
And it's it's gonna be like a nickname, screen name.
Jihad. It's coming, I'm telling you.
Your online names are just going to be like the second in junior
hospital. That's going to go back.
No, it's not going to get to the modern.
It's going to go back to ancient times.
Yeah, we're going to go redo things.
That's hilarious. The latest blog post on Nina's
blog is on the Accursed Kings. Shocking.
She loves the Accursed Kings. So do I.
It's a fantastic series. One day we're going to cover it
in more in depth because it is a huge influence on George.
And Y'all would notice a lot of those influences just by reading
through it, even without deep analysis.
But we will do deep analysis on it one day.
And Nia's wondering specifically on some of these influences,
because the 7th book of a Cursed Kings is very different than the
first six, because it's a historical fiction series and
you know it's bound by things that really happened, which
doesn't always make a perfectly fluid narrative.
That doesn't mean it's not amazing, but the 7th book was
very unpopular and it was never published in English when George
first read it. So Nina's wondering if since it
was eventually published in English, did he read it and is
it going to influence his characterizations of people Like
Egg on the 4th, for example? Because Egg on the 4th is is
represented by a few of the characters who are real people
in the Cursive King. So you don't want to check that
out, especially if you've read The Cursive Kings, but you will
probably find it very interesting regardless because,
well, any kind of George influence stuff is often very
interesting. Halfway through the episode
today, we're going to take about 10 minutes to chat about Dragon
Con 2023. Ashay and I attended, and we got
some good cosplay photos we want to share with y'all.
Several of them are a Song of Ice and Fire related.
Not all of them, but a lot of them are.
I think you guys will appreciate that.
And throughout the episode, we'll encounter topics that
we've done full episodes on, and we'll point those out to you at
the ends and during so you can check those out if you haven't,
or if you want to recheck them out so you can stay immersed in
Westeros. That's our goal here, to make
you feel immersed in this world. And if you want to stay
immersed, well, the next thing to do or the next best thing to
do is move on to another episode.
Our next hangout is going to be Trivia instead of Quiplash.
It's usually going to be Quiplash, occasionally a
different Jackbox game or something else, but this time
it's going to be trivia. And yes, it will be a song,
license fire Game of Thrones trivia.
It will be Tuesday the 26th at 9:00 Eastern.
If you'd like to join, send us an e-mail at
westeroshistory@gmail.com or contact us through the Facebook
group or your Patreon. If you're on Patreon, send us an
e-mail there. Any of the various ways will
work. We'll get the e-mail and respond
accordingly. Also at the end of the episode
will be our the answer to this trivia question which is Heron
the Black's grandfather Harwin Hardhand is inspired by what
real life Viking king is a pretty famous person.
And see, it's a little bit of a different question because it
requires a little bit of real world knowledge.
On the other hand, I've mentioned this at least twice in
prior podcast, so you might remember it from that and so you
don't have to have known known, known this from real life
trivia. You could have just listened to
the podcast, Heard me say it last time Heron called his
banners, only for them to join Agon the Conqueror instead.
Oops. Still, he believed he could win,
given his confidence in the great castle he ruled and had
just completed. We'll pick it up right here with
the next bit in this saga, which is one of the more directly
recorded moments of the entire episode, meaning the episode of
Heron versus Agon. Not this episode, but it also
serves for that. So one of the few times we hear
Agon's actual words quote. Once he had joined his power
with that of Edmond Tully and the other river Lords to ring
the castle, he sent a maister to the gates under a peace banner
to parley. Heron emerged to meet him, an
old man and Gray, yet still fierce in his black armor.
Each king had his banner bearer and his maister in attendance,
so the words that they exchanged are still remembered.
Yield now, Agon began, and you may remain as Lord of the Iron
Islands. Yield now, and your sons will
live to rule after you. I have 8000 men outside your
walls. What is outside my walls is of
no concern to me, said Heron. Those walls are strong and
thick. But not so high as to keep out
Dragons. Dragons fly.
I built in stone, said Heron. Stone does not burn.
To which Agon said. When the sunsets, your line
shall end. It is said that Heron spat at
that and returned to his castle. You should have saved that spit
to put out the fire that was coming.
Yes, it wouldn't have worked, but still.
I imagine that Jason Schwartzman playing Heron Stone doesn't
burn, eh? Well, he doesn't even know about
wildfire, does he? He doesn't even man doesn't even
know about wildfire. Stone totally burns and Valerian
is his flames are hotter than wildfire.
This guy is really not coming up Coming at this with a lot of
knowledge is he? And I also think Aegon's kind of
baiting him here. He's like, I got 8000 men
outside your walls like he knows Heron won't be intimidated by
8000 men outside these walls. These walls are gigantic.
Heron Hall is huge. 8000 men isn't enough to take most of the
great castles that we've seen in Westeros, let alone this one.
So like it wouldn't be enough to take storms and it wouldn't be
enough to take, certainly not enough to Castle Rock.
I don't think it's enough to take Winterfell.
I mean no, it's just so I think Aegon knows this, that he's not
going to intimidate Heron was just that because I think he
wants the fight. I think, yeah, in most of these
cases, as I said in the intro, he wants Heron.
He wants his these people to bend the knee to him.
But he needs to make an example out of someone.
We've been we've been saying that a lot and we've also been
saying that this is the the perfect guy to make an example
of. So I think he knew Heron's pride
wouldn't would be enough to keep him from fighting or from
bending the knee. But he wanted to make sure.
So he worded things, you know, the right way to not be
intimidated. Not that he would be intimidated
anyway. This guy seems just kind of
toughminded. But what do you think about
that, Sean? Is that kind of how you read it
or is this something you could just say?
Oh, George got the numbers wrong.
He does that occasionally. He doesn't, but I don't know
he's he's this isn't a mistake I've seen him make before.
Like he seems to do pretty well with battle numbers.
Like, it's things like distance and money that sometimes he kind
of fudges. But soldiers, I don't know that
he's. I haven't seen him make that
mistake before. Maybe.
Maybe populations, maybe. So sometimes some of the size of
some armies might be bigger than they should be, quote UN quote.
But one or the other, I think in this scenario, maybe, I don't
know how to say. It's like the idea that, like
Heron is playing in the Aegon's hands or the Aegon is trying to
get him to, you know? Setting up a scenario that he
couldn't, that he shouldn't be afraid of, But what?
What if Aegon actually had 18,000?
Then a Heron would have been the knee.
Probably not 80. 1000 Maybe I. Still think maybe that's the
point where Heron's like rethinking things or maybe
internally is worried, but I don't think he behaves any
differently. Yeah.
So yeah, which again is why I think.
A gun is choosing his battle. He knows it's going to go the
way he was. You know he's he's calculated
this moment and his battle perfectly.
Yeah, it's fully in the driver seat.
Nina puts another point to it which is maybe he's taunting
Heron in that those are his. Those were his 8000 men just a
few weeks ago. And it's like, yeah, I have 8000
men that used to be yours. That's the the part in
parentheses. So that adds to the taunt.
If it's if it's meant that way, or even if it's not, it might be
interpreted that way. And it's just when you have a
very proud man backed into a corner, there is not much they
can do but kind of go down with the ship again.
We'll see. R Galac, the arrogant kind of do
a similar thing. And to be fair, it's not just
pride. He really does have the biggest
castle in all the land. That's true.
I mean, he has legitimate reason to believe that he can withstand
this. That's a good point.
Yeah, Even with the dragon, he's even saying, like, what are you
going to do? Like, because there are a lot of
Dragons. I think they could have not done
what Blairian did. It's not crazy for him to scoff
at the dragon even. Yeah, I agree.
I agree. It's not.
It's not crazy. It might be foolish, but it's
not completely crazy. And also, yeah, there's the the
point about more men not making much difference, but there's
also the point of of what does Heron stand to gain, what does
he stand to lose? This kind of things like the
risk reward and all that. Like with Argalac.
Argalac knew he was going to lose.
Like he had was like okay, I'm just going to die with a sword
in hand and he could like he's doesn't have his helmet on
anymore. He's just like, yeah, I just
want one last fight. You know, he he knew he was
going to lose. Even if he won that duel, his
army was defeated and that was it.
That that's not necessarily the case for Heron, as you're saying
here. We don't know if Heron was just
like, I'm going down with the ship, a KA my castle.
Kind of appropriate for an Ironborn, though, to go down
with the ship. But yeah, we don't actually know
that's what he's saying. He may have until those flames
started pouring down and he may not.
He may have still thought he was going to win.
Obviously he was wrong. I wonder what his sons thought.
Two of them had already been killed.
So what about the others? We also don't know if one of
them had just been promoted to air after those other two had
been killed. If there had been like a shake
up there or maybe it was one of the younger ones that was
killed. I tend to believe that it was
the one of the oldest was one of the ones killed.
Because it's usually like the the the most.
The one that's sent out to do things is the eldest to some
amongst the Ironborn. Especially when they're not
worried about protecting the air, they're like, no, you got
to get out there and and lead by example and lead from the front
and prove yourself as a warrior and all that stuff.
And as we theorized, even they may have been the ones to
suggest that they be like, hey, let us, let's take a shot at
them, let's let's ambush them at night.
Kind of like how Brandon Snow wanted to do that to the
Dragons. So this sort of attitude is
going to be pervasive. They're going to be like, yeah,
well, let's, we want to fight. We want to do something about
it. We don't want to just bend the
knee with so many characters, so many people.
Maybe one of her and sons was like, I kind of want to
surrender, but he's not going to.
He's not going to say that, but you might hope.
Maybe if I survive all this and I'll bend the knee when my
father's dead. And that wouldn't work out
either of course, But. And a gun.
Nina points out a gun may have wanted to demonstrate that he
could and would observe the standard forms of diplomacy and
chivalry, even if he didn't actually believe a gun would.
Or Heron would surrender, which that is kind of where I'm at
with it. I don't think Agon believed
Heron would surrender, but he still has to go through the
motions and still behave like a Westerosi king should.
Talk, talk it out, engage in diplomacy, do the things that 7
kingdoms, culture expects, even if it's not necessarily smart or
in his best interests in terms of risk and reward.
It is in terms of presenting himself as a as the right king
for Westeros. Things he does later, like
adopting the religion of the Kingdom and letting the king the
various kingdoms continue to rule the way they had before for
the most part. So he was definitely as dominant
and confident as he was he. He also aimed to not make big
changes, at least not at first, so that kind of fits in there.
I wonder if Heron had. Better insight about Valerian.
If Aegon had announced his intention sooner, or if the
threat of Dragons have been around for longer, he might have
built that castle differently. There might have been more
underground tunnels, less. The towers didn't necessarily
need to be quite as tall, but the underground portion could
have been stronger to maybe withstand the fire or the heat,
or have past secret passages out to come up from behind.
I don't know exactly, but I I again, I feel like Aegon.
Just had this perfect moment, yeah, to take out this castle
that wasn't prepared for Balerian, that, that that.
Understandably, Heron was too arrogant about.
Yeah. And I like this part about
tunnels. I wrote something in the notes
about that too, because we the point made in Fire and Blood
here here is that there's meisters observing this
conversation. That's why it's supposedly word
for word what was actually said between these two kings.
So, you know, they're both in Black armor, 2 Kings and Black
Armor. Just chatting away the day, you
know, having a good old time, you know.
And does that mean Heron's Maester burned with the rest
inside the castle? Because Heron stayed, you know,
to lead. He didn't flee.
He didn't run down into the underground tunnels.
There are tunnels. I don't know if there's a tunnel
that leads out, you know, from under the walls and at let's
sort of escape tunnel. I don't think there's anything
like that. I've never heard of that in
Heron Hall, but there's definitely underground vaults
and all this fresh water and food storage down there.
There's definitely stuff underground.
So I don't assume every single person in the castle died.
I mean, it's so big. He didn't burn every inch of it.
There had to be places where people could flee to.
He didn't burn the Gods Wood. People could have fled to the
Gods wood perhaps. So I'm not sure Heron's all that
concerned with where the Maester is during the battle once it
kicks off once Belarion is. Doing dive bombs, especially at
night. You know, I don't.
He's like, where's the Meister? You know, bring the Meister to
me. I need him with me right now.
I'm thinking the Meister might be like, I've got some things to
do below the earth, you know, and just try to that that would
explain how we have some of these words, like the parting
words, because there's words that he says that come later.
Nina's like, I'm not sure how we know those words.
Like did Aegons Meister Wouldn't have heard that.
So where how was how was this dialogue observed?
This is my best theory for that and it's pretty rational.
Like it's pretty reasonable. Like the maester wouldn't just
stand there in the tower with Maher and going, yeah, I'm, I'm
here with you to the end. You know like yeah.
Maester's serve the castle, you know.
So he's like, well I'm serving the castle by.
I don't know just think about he's a human.
He's not a warrior. Probably this Maester guy,
whoever he. Is there's some maesters you
might imagine it from, it may be where they are.
More militant or when it I don't know someone like Heron might
have picked out but but it seems to me Heron and Ironborn in
general be like whatever. I guess I'll get a mater like
they would have reluctant about having it in the 1st place much
less like really relying on them or anything.
But yeah, it does make sense that there might have been some
survivors and or some tunnel or but but again, even if there was
some way that maybe someone could have hidden out and
survived in some underground you know, storage spot or whatever.
They so couldn't have heard it. You know how many people think
we're in that castle? Like, that's a good question.
I have no idea. Certainly hundreds, maybe
thousands. I think thousands.
And and so some random escape tunnel that, like a key
messenger, could flee from. You couldn't suddenly herd out
thousands of people, right? You know what I mean?
Not that The Inheron probably wouldn't give that order anyway.
He's not like, yeah, he's like stay.
He doesn't care about their lives.
That. That's an open big open question
is sure the the river Landers, the river Lords turned on him as
soon as they could when Agon proved to be a worthy person to
switch to, and someone that they wouldn't back something that
wouldn't backfire because they were obviously worried about,
well, what if Agon loses? We switched to him.
What is herring going to do to us?
You know if we if we aren't on his side Now whoever amongst the
Ironborn were around the Riverlands, this is a big open
question. Like, how much did he bring some
of the ironborn Lords into the river lands?
Like, how many marriages did he oversee between river Lords and
Ironborn? How many did his father and
grandfather oversee of that nature?
So there would have been some family connections that were
kind of uncomfortable, like families that didn't want to
have these marriages, and now they had a way out.
But some of their children were already born or some of them
were already adults. And this isn't spoken of it all.
It's just kind of glossed over that, you know, eventually the
ironborn were kicked out or the ironborn were gone.
But the process is we don't hear it.
So there's a lot of room for us to theorize and imagine, but
we're not quite here there yet. Actually, we we've described the
burning, but we haven't actually gone through it.
So let's do that. Let's talk about the largest
candles ever. Westeros, the big 5 candles made
of stone glass candles are more mysterious, but let's not forget
about these kinds. Here's a great passage quote.
When no dragon appeared, some may have thought that Aegon's
threats had been hollow, but Aegon Targaryen took Valerian up
high through the clouds, up and up until the dragon was no
bigger than a fly upon the moon. Only then did he descend well
inside the castle, walls on wings as black as pitch,
Valerian plunged through the night.
And when the great towers of Heron Hall appeared beneath him,
the dragon roared his fury and bathed them in black fire, shot
through with swirls of red stone.
Does not burn, Heron had boasted.
But his castle was not made of stone alone.
Wood and wool, hemp and straw, bread and salted beef and grain,
all took fire. Nor were Heron's iron men made
of stone. Smoking, screaming, shrouded in
flames, they ran across the yards and tumbled from the wall.
Walks to die upon the ground below, and even stone will crack
and melt if a fire is hot enough.
The river Lords outside the castle walls said later that the
towers of Heron Hall glowed red against the night like 5 great
candles. And like candles, they began to
twist and melt. As runnels of molten stone ran
down their sides, these river Lords that observed it and the
rest of those 8000 men, how many years, probably all of their
years, were they telling this story to their descendants and
other people? Like, let me tell you about the
day Balerian burned hair and all and overthrew the king, the hair
in the black and his line that had held sway over our lands for
100 years. And in that moment we were free.
You know, we became vassals of the Dragon King instead of of
the Iron King and before that the Storm Kings.
So this this was a huge moment. Not only because it led to not
independence, but a much better situation for them in terms of
once again not being a truly independent Kingdom, but not
being ruled by a tyrant. Being ruled, you know, until
like Meg or comes along, but you know, still someone a lot better
than Heron. Someone that wasn't enslaving
them and forcing him. Forcing to build his great
castle and causing their deaths and all that.
A much better situation. Something they could be a lot
more proud of. They hadn't been conquered.
They bent the knee willingly in this case, which is a lot more
honorable and it's so it's a big moment just probably for the
next several generations and maybe it's part of why the
Tully's as we'll speak on a little later or stay loyal for a
really really long time. This moment was so demonstrative
and and memorable and just historical right and and I think
George of course knew that when he was writing it and he
understood what he was doing. He always does, pretty much, and
I think he took a little extra care writing it.
Like the the way this is written on wings as black as pitch
Balerian plunge through the night.
That's a little less like a historical text and a little
more like prose and poetry. Right now I'm obviously not
complaining, but like I noticed the he see, he sometimes jumps
out of Gildain to become George R Martin again when he's
writing. These really important parts is
a little bit of a little meta there, I think.
I like that. I like noticing that because
remember what we said right at the beginning of this reread?
Like, yeah, some historians, they're really good historians,
but they don't write. They write so dryly that if if
someone else were writing the facts they had uncovered, it
would be so interesting and readable.
But because it was written by someone with not a lot of
imagination or just not a lot of not greater writing, it's not as
interesting. And that's just a common thread
amongst historical texts, but not with George.
Obviously George is really good at making it interesting.
And it's in terms of a lesson though that's the in the candles
and all that business. It's certainly the biggest
demonstration of what a dragon can do to a castle, or at least
that particular dragon, as we continuously need to clarify.
And who would want to test the lessons?
OK, so maybe the smaller ones can't quite do that, but would
you really want to test it? Would you really want to find
out? You're like, let's just just not
go there, you know? And they're.
Two smaller ones also, right? And they're not small.
They're just smaller, right? They're not, They're not
hatchlings. Right.
And if I say, who would want to test the lesser ones?
Well, actually several people did want to test them.
Several people did fight them. So there are some, but fewer
than there would have been. I think like maybe, like Torren
Stark maybe is an example of someone who was totally ready to
fight. And then when he shows up and
sees he's like, I mean, never mind.
Some people fought them and some people won.
That's true. There were some victories.
Like Moraxis was killed, that's true.
I'm just saying like they weren't crazy.
But that that's still 10 years away.
So until that happened, they. They they innovated.
They weren't wrong to think like we could take a dress like
someone someone did take a dragon down.
They maybe looked into history. Then they looked to figure out
what types of things had killed Dragons in the past.
They may have gone to the library better.
The door should just different. I don't know about these river
Landers or anyone else taking their dragon, but the Dornish
could do it. Easy.
It's clear they didn't have that technology because when when
Heron is describing, like when we get the passage describing
the weaponry, there's no large bolt throwers or anything like
that. I'm neither on their ships as we
pointed out in that prior battle or on the wall walks here where
they could actually do it when we talk about the ships, like
you can't just add a big old bolt thrower to a long ship and
expect it to be able to sail the same way.
But a castle wall, especially besides the Heron Hall, it's a
different matter. They could throw quite a lot of
weight up there and it would be just fine.
I mean these are walls taller than any quote UN quote, any
ladder and thicker than any ram could knock down.
So yeah, no question they could do that.
But they were not prepared for. And this is what Sean was
speaking to. Hagon's perfect moment in a lot
of ways. So many of the one of the many
things that makes it a perfect moment is that yeah, they just,
they didn't have the right strategy.
They didn't have the right thought process for this, let
alone all they had was the bravery.
But nothing, nothing to back it up.
So let's imagine what it was like for both Agon and the iron
and we talked about what the stories were like for the River
Lords after it, but they were just observers.
They were like, wow, this is incredible.
But some of it would have been hard to see right because they
the quote begins when no dragon appeared.
Some may have thought agon threats have been hollow, but
what did he say? He said when the sunsets your
line shall end and then he flew really, really high up there,
really high up there. And at that part I don't quite
understand like why did he fly so so high just to make a point,
just cuz he liked it. I mean we hear later that he
only flies when he when he needs to, so he's not someone that
apparently enjoyed flying. So I'm real curious about that
and just speaks to the the many questions about Aegon's
personality like. I think he's just trying to get
out of sight. I think he's trying to get high
enough that he could be identified in the night sky
anymore. That's possible, but it was so
dark already, you know, Like, I wonder, could they have seen him
anyway? I don't know.
Maybe. Especially because depending on
where he starts flying up right, they can see him and he gets
harder and harder. It's harder quite identify where
he is in the night sky and then he moves over.
When people can't tell that he's moved over and starts coming
down straight from above. So imagine people are like
looking out toward the West, waiting for him to come back.
He's he's behind him, but they don't know that because he went
up so high, they can't see him. That's what I'm assuming.
I don't know. But that's what I'm assuming
they could have expected him from the West and then he struck
from the east and the castle so big left a lot of Archers and
spearmen and crossbowmen facing one way and then they don't even
know because it's this big black shadow at night.
Like the how. Yeah, they're not going to see
that coming. And even if they're looking in
different ways, like if he takes off even slightly to the West
and they're looking off that way, and then he's just kind of
disappeared in the night and they can't see him anymore, they
might even think he might come from any direction.
So everyone is looking outward around the castle walls, but
he's coming down right in the middle where no one is looking.
Yeah, he doesn't want to take any chances.
Maybe like, it's one thing for us to sit there and say, how
could they see him? He doesn't need to go that high,
but he doesn't know that for sure.
I suppose maybe he just wants to be absolutely certain they can't
see him and get really high up there.
Either way, it's a neat detail. I'm like, Oh yeah, he's like,
it's there's probably some symbolism here that I'm missing.
Like he just gets really high above them and then just dive
bombs. And I don't know.
Everything we've said, we've said about him and talked about
him expresses confidence. So he knew he would win and he
may have even known how, but he had never done this before.
He had assaulted small castles and not didn't have to really go
all out before they surrendered. So I mean, he got up against
ships before, but those were probably easier, you know, in a
lot of ways. Like those are moving, like on
one hand they burn more easily, but they're a moving target,
whereas a castle obviously is not.
Unless it's. Unless it's Gray water.
Watch right. Okay.
I stand corrected. All right, very good.
So and his strategy he's also a little bit of a little bit of
turnabout is fair play because what did what did Heron's sons
do to him when he was on the March they attacked at night
right that the battle of Wailing willows.
I almost said widows again and he's like 2 can play at that
game and well 2 meaning a dragon and a dragon rider and the both
of us kings can play at that game and he says it says Heron
encouraged his men. He's like, all right, y'all you
know, anyone who brings down the dragon or the dragon Rider can
can have this daughters of Strong or Blackwood or Tully.
He's or all of them if you want. So he's really just you want
five daughters to wife, you can have that.
Now these are Ironborn, so that's kind of already normalish
for them. Rock wives, salt wives, they
already kind of do that. And just because he was brutal
to his subjects doesn't mean he wasn't an effective leader in
combat. Like these two things can
coexist. He he projected confidence.
It may have been foolish confidence, it may have been
more in the bravado category than confidence, but either way
his men would have a lot of them would have followed along.
It's pretty weak though, obviously.
Come to me. This is like building a bomb
shelter like you said, Sean. There's probably these tunnels
underground. If not tunnels chambers that
they could that wouldn't burn. You know this is like standing
on the roof of your bomb shelter.
Like you've got a good shelter to hang out in but you stand on
the roof of it while the bombs are dropping instead.
No, you need to get inside. And he was inside sort of inside
the towers but does obviously were insufficient.
So he. Yeah.
So like you said Sean he he seemed to really truly believe
they could bring the dragon down.
Like it only takes 1 error one crossbow bolt in the right spot.
So I can kind of see, yeah, like one like you're not bringing
that dragon down. If he saw Bellerian from the
parlay look down over his walls and saw that dragon, he's like,
OK, we might not be able to bring that down with Spears and
arrows, but that rider, come on, it's just one guy, right?
We can surely shoot him down. He's proud.
Like you said, he probably has thousands of men.
They're all up on the walls with their weapons.
It only takes 1 lucky shot which he gone knew that too.
Which is why he attacked at night when their aim would be
off. And all they're doing is aiming
at this giant black. It's just a BLOB of shadow
they're aiming at. They can't distinguish the where
he is on its back, it's he's there somewhere.
But they can't. They're not.
They're not even aiming at him, they're just aiming in his
general direction, like where the shadow is.
They fired a shadow because they're not actually seeing
anything. They're just seeing nothing.
Like there were there should be stars there, but there's not.
So the dragon must be there. Oh, there's some flames shooting
out there he is for a few seconds.
But like Sean picture when he's attacking the towers.
So there's five of these giant towers.
The towers don't have guards standing on them shooting back.
Those towers weren't designed for defense.
They're designed for observation, for gazing out
across his lands. They don't have like, no one
expects men to be up there to fight against.
They're like hundreds and hundreds of like the the top of
the high tower doesn't have, like have arrow slit to shoot
down like it's hundreds of feet. No one would be up there.
So they're just didn't prepare for this.
So yeah, so he's up there breathing fire on the towers and
they can't even launch an arrow at him because there's no one up
there. Like they're all down on the
walls. Like, this was very poorly
thought through, but what? Could they have done even if
there were, even if there were people up there with arrows?
There again that the windows are looking out and down, not up.
They can't see up at this dragon coming down at them and might be
blinded by the fire at the moment.
Then they got into range and I I wonder too if Heron even was an
angle in his head he was considering.
Especially if you didn't think the dragon could actually burn
the towers, burn the stone that it might strafe by, It might
kill some people. It might get hot.
Let's hide below. He'll burn our grain up, but he
still might not have anticipated that it would actually melt
through the stone. And what he might have
anticipated was the dragon would just get tired.
Yeah, right. Just run out of flame.
It's tired of flying. It needs the land.
The dragon riders thirsty. It's higher than the stone.
No, he might not have thought. He might have thought kind of
like an army siegeing that this is going to be a.
That takes weeks, maybe, and it's slowly the people start to
run out of food and run out of morale.
Slowly the dragon starts to run out of Ng and his flames just
aren't working. And then Aegon would give up.
You just didn't anticipate No. One night he'll just burn it
down. Yeah, I totally agree with that.
That's a great estimation there, Sean, Because, yeah, like I
wrote that in our notes, like, how long can Blair do this?
He burned all five of those massive towers, plus other
spots. Like, how much flame can this
dragon do? Generate apparently huge
amounts? Yeah, it would have been more
than we would have guessed. I think.
Like, is there something, some sort of food that stimulates
this? Is he?
Did he pause and flat back down to the ground, eat a quick or
ox, and then fly back up? Yeah.
For all we know, Heron was planning a counterattack.
He's like, once that Dragon's tired, once it lands, we rush
out of our many gates because they have many gates, and attack
them from a bunch of directions and they're unprepared.
Maybe it's a morning assault. Maybe as soon as dawn breaks,
they're not ready for that. Maybe they're overconfident, I
don't know. But yeah, they could have
prepared for something like that, a counterattack.
I agree. I mean, Heron clearly expected
some things to work out, and he's not a dummy.
As, as brutal and tyrannical as he was, he wouldn't have gotten
this far by being stupid, At least by being stupid about
everything. He may be stupid when it comes
to Dragons, but yeah, and we wonder if he had other.
And to be fair, it's not like he's stupid and everyone else is
smart. Yeah, no one really quite knew.
We don't even know how well Aegon knew that.
What? Yeah, this may have worked out
better than you guys. Like, yeah, this is going great.
I didn't realize I could just take these whole entire he's
like, wow, look at that. The stones cracking.
Awesome. But he may have done his
research. He may have looked up past.
You know how do how did Valeria in its many many wars in the the
prior eons, How did it? They probably have treatises on
military strategy and how to use Dragons effectively and taking
castles. What type of castle is it?
How large is it? Is it like Giscari castles,
Giscari fortresses? They had 5-6 wars against the
Giscari. I think 5 wars against the
Giscari. The Giscari had castles and
fortresses and the Valerians had Dragons so they would have.
This would have been a kind of a standard thing, both how the
Giscari defend against Dragons and how the Valyrians react to
those defenses. And and yeah, they would have
been written about and military history textbooks and military
strategy books and. Some of that writing might have
been lost, though. Some of it, yeah.
You're right. I think I might have had to
relearn some of this on his own. That's true.
Some of there may not be like a vast library of these things.
I believe we see some of that in real briefly in in Pentos and
House of the Dragon. Damon is reading some books of
that of that nature kind of got me thinking about that.
Some of y'all as well, I'm sure. I love that idea.
It's like, you know, it's just a random scene from the TV show,
but surely there are libraries like that in the in the in the
world, you know? I I say it later in the
document, but it seems relevant enough here that I think he
probably did test blurion out in a few ways.
Like I I bet he. Breathe on that stone there.
Let's see what happens. Yeah, yeah, just some rock
quarry, some, some seaside Cliff face.
You just, like flew up told Blair and Jakarus.
How hot can it get? Will it melt this rock?
You know, maybe even. Where did they get the rock to
build Heron Hall? Go to that quarry with Blair and
see how hot it can get, you know?
I like that idea kind of like it's it's almost like a trope.
It's I don't, I don't even mean to be comedic about this, but
like, you know, someone gets the new car, Tom Cruise is in his
new fighter jet or what? Let's see what this baby can.
Do you know like push the speed that you can hit and like test
the heat of the flame? How much?
How hot, How long can Blarion go?
It makes a lot of sense to me. The Aegon would have no one is
dragging well enough. Tested this out, he's everything
else seems very well calculated and planned and under control.
Why would this thing not also have been something he was very?
Familiar point? Yeah.
Why not test it? Yeah.
What's his capacity? What's what?
What? What can Valerian's flame do?
Who tested to its to its extremes?
So he had his family there. Heron, not Aegon now.
Meaning his remaining sons. We don't know about the rest of
his family, whether he had Queens there or a queen, or if
she was on the Iron Islands, or if she had already died or if
there were multiples. And this is a big open question.
He didn't have any daughters of his own, as we said, because he
was offering, you know, other daughters.
And he said if I had any of my own, you could marry them.
He did have at least one great aunt, because we know they
married into the House of Old Mark.
This is an argument used on behalf of.
Young young Marin Valmark after Baylon's death, so many hundreds
of years later, meaning Baylon Greyjoy.
So this is obviously centuries later, but that apparently is
remembered and cited. So it's it's relevant now.
Yeah, if Heron's sons probably were old enough to fight, which
is why they died in those towers.
But maybe because otherwise maybe they would have been sent
to safety, not necessarily away from the castle safety, but down
in. The vaults or what have you.
Now Iron men are are typically more comfortable fighting the
deck of a ship. This is what we're told than
elsewhere. But recall these are kind of a
new breed of Ironman now. After this they go back to the
old breed because they're kicked back to the Iron Islands.
But this is 100 years of land based iron born ruling the river
lands. So sure, there's still lots of
sailors and Raiders and pirates back on the Iron Islands proper.
But in Heron's inner circle and in Heron Hall and in the
Riverlands, there would have been land lubber types that
maybe wouldn't have done a lot of sailing in their lifetime.
So yes, they're Ironborn, but yeah, these are it's relates to
that trivia question I gave when the Vikings started conquering
and had they see the kind of cease to be Vikings at that
point Because that's not really, you know, that's a that's sort
of a description of what they're doing and not really.
It's not like a. Title and so when you're ruling
over people you you're you're handling things differently.
You're not out there raiding and reeving.
You're you're garrisoning and and defending borders and things
like that and and expanding borders maybe.
But raids don't. That might be a part of your
playbook to weaken and and spread your enemies thin but
it's it's not what your entire people do from now.
It's not your main thing anymore.
So it's been it's been 100 years of this, so.
It's a different group of people.
They might be more accustomed to fighting in castles, maybe not
defending them though. Attacking them.
Yeah, like Heron would have. It's a lot of taking over the
hair of the Riverlands, even though that was done by his
ancestors, not by him. So this is, again, there's a lot
of things about the scenario that says these are a different
group of Ironborn than what we might be used to.
That said, Heron did still rule the iron, the Iron Isles.
They were still part of his Kingdom.
He would have drawn soldiers and sailors from there, and some of
them would have probably been at Aaron Hall and died alongside
him. He might have been able to trust
them more than a lot of the Riverland, especially after he
called his banners and very few of them showed up.
But we're told the Riverlands turned to Agon that there's
nothing about the Ironborn going over to Agon.
In fact, we see that they resist him when he does come to the
Iron Isles later. That's obviously in the future
of our coverage here. But I got to think some Ironborn
showed up for him even though the River Lords didn't.
It isn't mentioned, but I kind of assume it's true.
Maybe some of Y'all have different takes.
Maybe they also took this opportunity to abandon him
because he was a land guy and they're like, no, we don't like
his Dimes. I mean, he was, he probably
wasn't very nice to them either, you know, I mean they might have
just not had enough time to get there.
On the point that he calls them, they decide to go pack up their
stuff, get on a ship take the ship across the what, is there a
river that leads there? Like, I don't, I don't like, I
don't think they can get there in three days.
Yeah. You know, I think it's going to
be, I don't know how long they had, but I think even if they
had enough time, they also have to like get through enemy forces
that are sort of 8000 troops that are surrounding air.
And that might be why there's so few.
Maybe that's part of like a something in between the lines
here that we can we can extrapolate is that maybe.
Yeah. Like the Malisters who their
whole purpose for existing is to fight Ironborn every they're
like, yay, there might have been one of the first to flip the
agon. They immediately said we're
going to not send a lot of troops over here.
We're going to defend the coasts against the inevitable ironborn
reckoning that comes from this. And they Once they're unleashed,
we better be ready for it. And that would be that would be
a compelling argument and a lot of people would be up for that.
And so it wouldn't be like Agon couldn't say no.
They'd tell him that's what they've done once they show up.
Like, hey, we left men back there to fight against the iron
bore and he would probably say okay.
Good choice, I guess. You know and and it probably is
a good choice. Didn't need your men anyway.
Yeah, I didn't need your men. It's true.
I totally did this myself and. So it totally shows how helpless
conventional weapons are. There's a lot of lessons here,
not just the lesson of what a dragon can do, what this dragon
can do, what loyalty can mean, like what happens when you roll
people wrong and they get a chance to switch sides.
So many lessons, lessons that are play out in the short term.
Lessons that play out in the long term, like, obviously
Harren Hall. We'll talk about this in a
little bit later in the second-half of the episode.
How much of A testament Harren Hall still is to this day?
How quotes about it still refer to Heron's folly and heron's
ghost and his sons. And it's still a lesson to this
day that the the context of the lesson has changed over time.
Maybe it's less more symbol of less lesson, but it's still 300
years later has that impact. Which is why I think it's just
so clever of George to write it this way and of Agon to think
about it this way and be like, you know what?
If I do this right, this is something.
That will last for a long time. As a symbol of draconic power,
as a symbol of my house, as a symbol of a lot of things.
And that's just really neat, the way George mashed so many things
into this, this one episode. You know, I wish I had done
maybe a little bit more tooling around with this, but I I, you
know, just prepping for this, trying to do some research.
I use a search environment, a search of Ice and Fire search
for Heron Hall. There's a lot of but I don't
even yeah, I don't even think I I think I only searched certain
books. You know, I don't even think I
did like a full search and it was, I don't know, 400 plus
results like this is a lot. I think has to narrow my search
down. It's a lot to go through.
But point is that that's how much it comes up through the
course of the story. Yeah, it's it's the in the top
four most popular locations for chapters to take place in.
There's King's Landing, which really is the Red Keep because
it's very little happens outside of the Red Keep in terms of.
POV chapters. They're definitely some, but
most of them are inside the walls of the Red Keep,
Winterfell, Castle Black, and Heron Hall.
Those are the ones I don't. I'm not saying that's the order,
but those are the top 4. I'm not even sure what 5th would
be. Yeah, I really don't know.
I'd have to think about that to be clear, though.
Like a lot of the results for Heron Hall, you know when I I
before I wised up to how long it was going to take me to go
through 400 of them, it wasn't all inside of Heron Halls.
People outside Heron Hall talk just sometimes.
They talk about going to it or coming from it or whatever, but.
Yeah. As a strategy point, you know,
when they're discussing like the war and all that, yeah.
Comes up a lot. They're very true.
And yeah, and so that's part. And again, why I think George
took extra care here because he knows this is everything that's
happens in during Edgan's conquest visa vie Heron Hall.
It's going to ring forward and and be relevant to the story in
ways that sure, some of the other parts of Agon's conquest
are as well, but maybe maybe a little less so now.
Also, the darkness that they're finding themselves in is going
to work better for Agon, and certainly the guys who are
trying to take aim and fire at some large black shape that's
heavily, heavily armored. The scales of blaring are so
thick that even if you get a good shot off.
It's probably just going to bounce off of him and he's not
even going to feel it. And if you happen to get a lucky
shot, I mean it feel, what does a crossbow bolt feel like to a
dragon that size like a splinter to us?
I mean, it would bother you, but it is absolutely not taking you
out of the fight. It might make you madder, it
might make you go harder, but it is definitely not disabling at
any in any by any means. And and the fire itself, it's
described as black fire. With shots of red through it,
which is how we know Balerian has some red on him because the
Dragons have that coloration. And yeah that's really that's
that's just extra level of terror.
Like what is this fire? This isn't even real.
This isn't even natural looking fire.
What's going on here? Now once it catches flame like
once the grain and wood catches fire, that's going to look like
normal flame because that's the fuel is the wood and the not the
Dragons gullet or whatever. But which would increase both
their night blindness Cuz there's burning fire near them
and give Agon in a easier time of picking his targets going
forward. Cuz it's like he's looking down
on a bunch of fires and they're close to those fires.
Like being blinded by it and not able to see very well even
before Balerian start setting things on fire.
That's already a dynamic, right? They're already they're going to
be torches and candles in the castle, which means from way far
away, Balerian and Agon can see right where the castle is and
the people with the torches and candles near them.
Their eyes aren't adjusted to the darkness far away, so.
Imagine the temptation to just run away like you're on the
walls with your crossbow or your Longbow or some Spears or
whatever, and it's dark. And everyone's screaming and
you're like it's dark. I could maybe just get out of
here, you know I could fall down like would you like break your
arm on purpose to be like yes. See I couldn't do it.
I just I was out of it. You know like that way you can't
get no one can call you a coward because yeah I fell off the wall
and you know it would have been really like they'd be like what
the seven Hell's is going on here How is how are we doing
nothing to this dragon like he told us we could and it's just
going downhill. Darkness Fire.
It really would be like hell because like, you're thinking of
seven hell. Is it really like it's darkness
fire? A demonic being swooping in
above them over and over and no means to stop it.
Some of them would probably would maybe finally go this dumb
king. What'd he do getting us mixed up
in this? Why didn't he just bend the
knee? But many of them would be too
busy screaming and running to be having thoughts like that.
What about Aegon? What about?
What's he thinking? Again, this, our lack of
understanding of his personality makes this difficult.
He didn't love to fly. He didn't do it as a leisure
activity. That doesn't mean this wasn't
exhilarating, though. You know, just so being so
dominant, being so powerful, being able to kill all these
people, being able to destroy this castle that took 40 years
to make it. Thousands and thousands and
thousands of people built it and he's just taking it down.
By himself, with his. With his dragon that's bonded to
him. No one else could do this.
He's the only person in the world perhaps that could do this
because I don't think. I don't think Veigar and
Moracki's his flames were hot enough to do this as we've
guessed at before. What like how does it like?
He may have already had a lot of power gone to his head but maybe
even more right at this moment when he's just he was already
confident. But now he's in the moment he's
seeing it all play out. It's going perfectly, you know,
and. It just proves everything he
expected and it's all going the way that he wanted to.
And it's the lessons he's wanting to teach, the examples
he's wanting to set. Everything's playing out pretty
much exactly the way he wanted to.
So I wonder what's going through his head.
He's like, all right, the plan, everything is falling into place
like Hannibal, you know, Hannibal from the A-Team.
Like, I never love it when a plan falls together.
Or is he just like, burn you stupid ironborn?
Or is he just like all right? This is proceeding is according
to plan. OK, let's see.
Checks his watch. Like now I move on to the next
tower. You know this is this is hot
enough. You know like what's going
through his head? I.
Think he feels the tragedy and all the lives that didn't need
to be lost over that? Yeah, he disappointed.
Yeah, is what I would like to think that he mostly just felt
sad about it. Yeah, it's possible.
Is this, this is disappointing. You know, like if they had just
bent the knee, then there's none of this would be necessary.
On the other hand, did he want, we talked so much about wanting
to set an example. Did he?
And maybe goading them a bit. Like I have 8000 men.
Did he want this? And yeah, so maybe maybe he
didn't want to kill all those people.
Maybe that's why he focused on the towers.
He's like, well, they'll get out of the towers.
They'll leave the towers, you know, I'll burn the the wall
walks and I'll burn the the wooden parts.
But mostly people are going to run away from that, you know?
He's not targeting individuals. Well, he couldn't anyway.
Like he can't see them and and that doesn't seem like the best
strategy anyway, but obviously that I'm not trying to downplay.
There was certainly hundreds if not thousands people that died,
but he was aiming for the structures.
You know, the towers also make a good visual symbol down the
road. Yeah, that you're probably less
likely to have as many casualties.
You preserve the the structure enough that it can still have
utilitarian purpose, which is still does like hundreds of
years later, it's still like, I don't know, a housing or a place
of storage and defense and whatever else.
So, you know, I have a one thing that was running through my head
thinking about this was the way you were bringing up just now.
Let's think about Oppenheimer. There's a moment in the movie
Oppenheimer after the nuclear bombs been used, and he's kind
of reflecting on what that meant.
Like he had this sort of certain pride in his scientific
correctness. But then it's realization of the
meaning that it has and it was kind of very powerful moment in
the film. Yeah, what is egg on?
Think afterwards when he's looking upon what he's done to
that castle and he's like, oh right, yeah.
Or even as he's doing it. It's like this plan.
Balerian has the capability. Heron's not going to concede all
Bernie's towers down. Okay, I did it.
Ooh, I did it, you know, and and it's worth noting, down the road
it doesn't seem like the power really went to his head.
Maybe a little farther down the road.
The idea of still trying to conquer Dorm might not have been
wise, but it doesn't seem like this was a turning point where
he suddenly became tyrannical. That doesn't seem to be the case
at all. So he might have steeled himself
ahead realizing what this meant and and and maybe felt better
tempering him by only attacking the towers.
I hadn't thought in those terms. I'm also reminded of the movie
Clerks when they're talking about Return of the Jedi versus
how they how the first Death Star they blew up, but it was
already complete. And so ostensibly, it's all just
Imperial soldiers and bad guys there, right?
But in Return of the Jedi, they're building a new one and
it's not complete. So there's got to be like, you
know, aluminum ciders and plumbers, just like construction
workers. It's not like all evil people
that are like hammering on the panels.
Or maybe, maybe they are evil to work for the Empire.
But maybe they have a It's like we know from all the context of
Star Wars. Some of them would stripped it
into it. They.
Were prison labor, Yeah, yeah, Which is certainly the case.
Yeah, this was absolutely prison labor, yes.
Or just in slave labor, not necessarily in prison labor.
You know, there's got to be just cooks and servants and people in
there that didn't really have a choice about it.
And you know I wonder if or how much hearing or a gone thought
about that. Yeah, cuz the towers are maximum
visibility. Yeah, in front of this.
And and as you talk about it more and more, I like the idea
of like, yeah, he just burned the towers because he was trying
to minimize the casualties of Innocent.
Maximum symbolism. Fewest casualties.
So you're right and and that and it and it enabled it fits into
the other thing we're saying about showing off the Dragons
capacity. Not just his destructive
capacity, but it's stamina. Proves like, no, you're not
going to outlast this dragon. It's not going to run out of
energy. He burned five of these gigantic
largest towers ever built in Westeros in one night.
That's just yeah, that's beyond what we would have get like if
we were reading the story for the first time.
And he's like, well, he's going to try to burn down the towers
and like, is that going to work? You know, like I we wouldn't
have known if that was possible. Now we do.
Now everyone knows it's possible because it was done so loudly,
so demonstrably, and in such a central location to such a
famous person. The towers are also less likely
to be the place where the the cook and the.
Yeah. What's the cook doing up there?
Yeah, the, the floor cleaner they're, you know they're
probably in lower chambers and maybe even underground.
The higher spots are probably where the nobles rooms are with
the great views and etcetera so. Yeah, I agree.
I feel better about Aegons, and on a lot of levels I think I
feel even better about this whole process.
Yeah, it's a little about, yeah. It's not quite as as as brutal
as we were. Yeah.
And I love how he builds it up, too.
He's like, it's like, stone does not burn.
It's like, yeah, but, but other stuff does in there that you
have like the wood and the straw.
Oh, and actually stone does burn.
Yeah. It's like, yeah, yeah, You know,
that's another thought I've had a lot of times too, about, you
know, the atomic bombs that we dropped.
If we just said, hey, at 3:00 there, we're going to drop these
bombs, Just go. Look, just look on this
mountainside, rather than, like, murdering all the people in the
city. Who knows?
Maybe it wouldn't have been enough.
We wanted the symbolism for the Russians to know how many people
we could really kill. Or that Japan wasn't going to
surrender no matter what. But I wonder if he had told
Heron, Hey, at the quarry where you got the rock for Heron Hall.
I'm going to fly Balerian in and and burn the stone and show you
go watch Thursday at 4:00 PM. Or just haul some outside your
walls, like I'm setting up some stone here and I watch what my
dragon does to it. Are you sure you don't?
That would also dishearten his men, Like that would be a clever
way to just take the morale out of his soldiers.
Like like you really want us to stand up to that.
We were already pretty intimidated, but now?
Yikes. Now I'm still going to burn the
castle, but you have the chance to evacuate first, yeah?
So, House of the Dragon Season 2?
We'll see what happens. With that we might get some
visual. Examples that maybe give us a
little bit of what this might have looked like.
Honestly, the closest thing I can think of right now is just
from Game of Thrones season seven, when the undead dragon
did its thing to the wall. That's the closest thing I can
think of. Or taking down a huge edifice
with dragonflame. That's a little easier to
envision because yeah, ice fire, of course that's going to melt,
even though it's such a huge thing.
And it's it's pretty spectacular.
But. Yeah, that's the closest thing I
can think of to compare to, especially with the like on the
the weird colored flame which looks so ghostly and cuz
Valerians is black. That would look pretty wild and
creepy and and supernatural and yeah, Heron's obviously horrible
arrogant and etcetera. It's it's wild that like you
said Sean, he was not stupid to not think that stone would melt
here. Still like what about like he's
cooked inside the tower, like just from the heat building up,
like being inside an oven. Almost like you almost wonder if
if if Valerian started lower and started cooking the lower part
of the tower then worked his way up because otherwise they could
just go down the stairs and get away before the heat gets too
unbearable. So they were.
Either they their escape was cut off, which which makes sense,
like a gun could see that as a strategy, like burn the lower
part and then work my way up to make sure they can't escape.
But maybe he wanted to give them a chance to escape and they were
still just that stubborn and Heron just just stayed there.
Maybe that's why he burned all five towers, to make, you know,
to make sure. But I wonder if he expected
Heron would live through all that.
He's like, really? He died in that.
Like what? What a dummy?
Like couldn't he have just gone? Like he should have just taken
shelter? Like I didn't burn the entire
castle, I burned the top parts and some other things, but.
Who knows, with the chaos in, there are two people might have
started fleeing from the top and just stumbled down the stairs
and been stampeded, and the oxygen in the air is probably
being burnt up and heated up. And you know, even as you try to
run, you still suffocate and might be like napalm or
something, yeah? I can also imagine.
Heron suddenly realizes how much danger his life is in.
His inner cowardice comes out, he's running down the stairs,
knocking down his only family members to get free, and comes
up to a group of his soldiers that are upset that their
brothers and sons were all just killed because of him and just
killing himself. And you know, like I can imagine
them, they find a charred corpse later and they don't know what
what happened. Like the towers all melted and
they may not even know when which body was his.
Like maybe they did cuz he had this crown or something or his
yeah his distinct armor. Armor, but maybe not.
It might have been melted completely in the mesh of metal.
Of all the swords in armor, they might not have noticed.
Someone in stone, it might not have noticed.
Someone stealing his throat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, in midst of
all that. Same with his sons, you know.
If he had survived, I wonder a couple things.
If he had survived, I wonder if he would have knelt, if Acon
would have accepted it, or if he might have still executed him.
Or maybe he even did survive and escaped but didn't dare let
anyone know because he knew he would have killed still.
I wonder if that's a potential. I don't think so.
I don't think that at all, but I I I wonder if it's a potential
that some. Some family member might have
made it out of there but knew their life was in mortal danger
if they revealed who they were. Yeah, now is there time to run
away? Like, yo, the king that was keep
keeping us under his thumb is dying or losing badly.
Everyone's turned on and this is our chance to get away.
It would be a time to be like, he's going back to Star Wars,
right? You know, we were using Star
Wars like, this is time to get off the Death Star before it
blows up. Like, there were a lot of in the
original Star Wars, a lot of Stormtroopers were killing each
other. To get on the the few remaining
shuttles to escape is like, I could see something like that
happening. You got panic, you got violence.
You've got people who have little regard for each other and
for human life in general. They're just thinking about
themselves and trying to escape. And yeah, I could see it
turning. And that may have been what
Aegon expected. Like they're going to turn on
each other once they realize that it's hopeless once he
realized their king is can no longer lead them.
Or if they realize he's dead. Which I don't suspect Word
spread of Heron's death during the battle because it would have
just been so chaotic, like who's talking to who?
What line of communication is is happening?
Word might have spread to a bunch of people who then got
burned to death. Yeah yeah, and they just they
they ran away before telling any anyone or went and hidden the
gods would. And that's another important
point. Yeah, as much fire as there were
as and as much a gun burn things he didn't burn the gods wood.
That's really important. And that he had to have been
relatively aware of where it was.
Which brings us back to an interesting point.
He did go inside here and haul to Parley.
Maybe that's part of why he went inside to get a look from the
inside. Now he could have just looked up
down on it from Valerian. But maybe you get a closer look
when you're there in person you know?
And that would have been and it also speaks to Heron's maybe
gives him a little bit of honor or maybe he just didn't think of
it. His chance to win was during the
parlay. That's his one chance to kill
the dragon rider. He could have used treachery,
use some sort of ambush. Been like okay, it's not coming
to this. I'm just going to murder you
now. It's not like Heron had a
reputation to protect. You know he was already hated.
But you know for whatever reason he just it would maybe he would
have thought it was cowardly. Maybe he really, Maybe he wanted
to prove himself to be like, maybe he wanted the the notch in
his belt of defeating this Dragon King like he was over.
That's the level of his overconfidence.
He's like, I want to show everybody just how Aegon wanted
to show what Balerian could do. He wanted to show what his
castle could do, and it just blackfired.
Backfired. Yeah.
If he had won that somehow, it would have been a different
story after the fact. He he might have, quote, UN
quote, united the Seven Kingdoms, conquered like
everyone might have. They were already afraid of.
Him to kneel to him or flock to him even, you know, Yeah.
Another element to consider, though, a reason he might not
have done something treacherous to Agon was because he does have
two sisters with Dragons still out there.
Yeah, that's true. Might not have ended it exactly,
so that's a good point. So either way, like sometimes
when we're thinking about, like imagining what these powerful
men were thinking, you have to aim high.
You have to think of the confidence of a king.
Like, he doesn't really consider losing, you know?
Like, though that's not really a thing, you know, like I'm, I'm
so confident that I don't imagine what losing is like
because even that is a weakness. So it's like this like cultured
bravado, you know? Or they they can't even imagine
what it's like to lose. It's part of the part of being
courageous. I don't know.
I I have an instinct to bring up a counterpoint to that because I
think sometimes. I don't know.
Rich, powerful, whatever people, they still have the same traits
and flaws as average normal people too.
They can still be selfish or stubborn or get angry.
And I don't know, some naive 16 year old high school kid in a
swim meet might also not consider that they could lose.
You know, you could still, even if you're naive and not super
powerful, still have the. Mindset of not considering a
loss or what might happen, whether it's from confidence or
naivete or whatever else. Right on.
Well said. All right, let's take our I'll
take a break here and come back with the aftermath.
The lesson, what that lesson meant?
What happened next, All that. But first, this episode is
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All right, a couple of y'all sent in some questions.
Calista Cross says the Super Chats is just dropping in to say
hi. Can't stay at the moment, but
I'm sad I missed y'all at Dragon Con.
I hope it was fun. Dragon Con was a blast and we
are moments away from showing you all a few photos of it.
But first, Marley also sends a super chat, says just a show of
love and support for all the content and for the Dragons And
hey, and for Dragon Con here. Like I said, Shay is going to
put some photos up on screen here real quick.
I'll say if you guys aren't watching this, if you're This is
an opportunity maybe for y'all to check out the episodes on
Spotify. Because if you're listening on
Spotify and something visual comes up, you can just click a
button and the video turns on and you can just watch that
short portion of the video. You're seeing more and more of
that in the podcast world, where things are visual, but only for
part of the show we're on the whole time.
You can be watching us, watching my face, watching my hand
gestures, watching a Shay and Shawn occasionally.
But at times like this it really pays to have your visuals turned
on. And that's why Spotify is pretty
useful for that, because you can just flip it on and watch what's
there to be seen and then when it's over, just turn it back to
audio only. And that way you're not using up
a lot of bandwidth or or maybe you just like seeing us through
the whole time. So just another this is a good
time to remind you that that is a feature that you can take
advantage of. Also worth saying that if you
want to see the full album of the World of Ice and Fire photos
if you go to the History of Westeros Facebook page.
If you go to our TikTok, you can see photos and videos.
Yeah, there's a lot more photos than what we're about to show
here. Dragon Con is here in Atlanta,
so we always go. It's real easy for us to attend.
It's not something we don't have to pay for a hotel or anything
like that. So it's a real easy time for us.
And we've been going for a long time.
I've been to more than twenty of these, but this is one of the
first times I did more. This is the first time I did
more than one costume, and there I am in the middle as a crab
feeder. You might not have known that
was me cuz of the mask, but that is me right in the middle there,
yeah. You probably took like at least
six or seven pictures. Huh.
Yeah, no, I must have left 2000 pictures.
Yeah, I was gonna say I had 100. Multiply that by 100, then
multiply it by four or five. Yeah, I don't have.
A lot of pictures. Yeah, so this one's from the
World of Ice in a Fire shoot, which had lots of House to the
Dragon and other history stuff, which again, if you want to see
more photos from that, I believe the album is the best thing.
Yeah, there's famous characters like a lot of Damon's and
Rainier's and Allison's, but also some of the more obscure
ones like Elena or like me, the Crab feeder.
Thanks. You some excited here.
Yeah, there's a Luke some. Amens and a Luke.
Here's. Damon's dragging Crab Feeder 2.
Damon's dragging me through the surf, yes.
Yeah edit I did. They're totally not being
careful to keep their hands away from my sores, so they're
definitely catching, racing. Look at their Harwin's being
Harwin. Yeah, he's in.
Our friend Tom is Harwin, which is cool.
Yeah, That's Tom Snow. He does a really good John Snow
cosplay, too, as you can tell by his face.
You could. Yeah, yeah, of course.
He's a good. John selection of pics from that
I was not in house Dragon cosplay.
This was my Expanse jumpsuit day.
As you can see in this picture from us, I did a bunch of other
cross. Which?
Let's go over those, yeah, Yeah. I'll see a few not.
Yeah, a few. Not as long as.
Fire ones. From here I did a Poison Ivy for
Bunny Hutch Heff and I ran into a Pepe Sylvia board.
A Charlie Kelly cosplayer from Always Sunny.
Bunny Hutch is a recurring party at Dragon Con the first night
every year. It's been a tradition for at
least five years now, I think. That.
As you sided my expense jumpsuit, I did.
This is a Fire Emblem Emo night. I designed these shirts.
I'm gonna make some like this, but for House of the Dragon.
For like the Dance of the Dragons battle.
He's like tour dates on the poster now.
That's Dom to her left or her right rather on the screen left.
And Dom was one of the Damon's dragging me a man oh.
Yeah, yeah. Right here, also there.
Very different. Shout out to Folk Wise channel.
He is a member of that show. And then I did another Fire
Emblem cosplay. I did Yunaka from Fire Emblem
Engage and this is me. They had like a Nintendo theme
at the Hilton. So I took a picture with all
this Nintendo setup which I thought was super cute.
But you can also see here I am Yaz, Yunaka and Aziz as his
better called Rogo mashup. He does.
And there's another mashup. Our friend Ali did Jorah the
Explorer. As with the backpack, that's
awesome. Yeah, it was just cute.
It was clever. And our friend Meg as Danny and
our friend Amber as Asha Greyjoy, That was the Game of
Thrones shoot. Whereas these also saw another
crab feeder. Our friend, someone I know, Jack
Durnan. He also does Expanse Cosh play,
so I see him every year at the Expanse photo shoot.
And here he was, his crab feeder with the green screen.
He's really smart. Yeah.
He did the green screen for his lower body.
He's all in green so that when people take photos, they can
edit his legs out. So it can be just like the
scenes Massive Dragon where Damon's dragging him without his
legs. That was really clever.
Yeah, I love that. This is from the Game of Thrones
shoot, which had look at this great egg on the Conqueror and
his sisters and Rainy's and Husenia which seemed extra fit
and the Iron Throne, yeah all seemed extra fitting given our
episode today. I like I had to include them.
The woman dressed up as the Iron Throne.
Her name is like Mikhail I believe, and she the way they do
these photo shoots is they're like, OK, all the Targaryen's
get up there OK, all the Lannisters get up there OK, all
the and it's always like and anyone associated.
So Iron Throne is just like part of every shoot.
So she was pretty clever and she's like in every shot because
the Iron Throne's part of associated with everything
there. Yeah, so that was the I was one
of my favorite of the Song of Ice and Fire cosplay I saw was
actually these these The Conquerors and Iron Throne were
shot. But my other favorite cosplay I
saw was in line for Spectrum. I saw Uncle Baby Billy from.
The righteous gemstones and and when he was doing his song and
dance as you can see there and he like that he had an accent he
did. He was really a character.
There will be a payday or a payday be a payday.
That song that he's singing, if y'all haven't seen righteous
gemstones, he's really. It's really funny.
Then there was a I did a rainbow spider Quinn, as you can see
here, a friend of the show, Chuck Lazaro of He has a a
website fan of maniacs. Yep, he printed it and sewed it
and all that for me. And we worked on it together.
And he helped me with a lot of my other cosplay, too.
He's a very and we also went to his birthday, as it happens
Sunday. Yeah, a little Sunday Dragon
Con. Chuck's birthday?
Well, anyway, so there's my spider.
Gwen Aziz did an Allen cosplay from Barbie.
And this is Tell us about Thalsa Doom.
OK, so if any of y'all have seen the original Conan the Barbarian
movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger, this was the
character played by James Earl Jones, Thalsa Doom, who is the
main villain. He's a snake cult leader and has
some magical powers and I've never seen a Thalsa Doom
cosplay. Was an iconic fantasy character
and over Tranny Dragon Cons, I've never seen this done and I
was so excited to see it. Look at all that detail, Look at
the snakehead helmet, the snake medallions and the man had a bit
of a James Earl, James Earl Jones vibe on his own without
the costume, so it looked great. Yeah, I was super happy to see
that one and that was, yeah, that was at the spider verse
shoot. So it was kind of a fun place to
run into that. Yeah, which was.
Here's just a picture of the madness at the spider verse
shoot, which was a very busy and hectic There's me.
And a whole lot of other spider people.
This is like a small cross section of yeah, like it was
huge. It was huge.
It wasn't as huge as the as the Barbie Shoot, which was
unsurprisingly the largest. We attend the Barbie Shoot, but
we did do lots of Barbie cosplay.
As you see, there's a Alan and me as a Rainbow Barbie with the
pink cowgirl Barbie. You can still see my black fire
temporary tattoo on my right arm there, which I wore as a black
fire day. I did Barbie twice that weekend.
Because I also did it for Barbenheimer, as you can see
here for Spectrum, we did a rainbow Barbenheimer.
I did the Pink Floyd edit for it.
And yeah, that was my cosplay for the weekend.
I did a whole lot of rainbows and colors and and it's got Aziz
to do. What'd you do, 434?
Yeah, I did. Fancy crab feeder.
Regular grayscale crab feeder. Better call Drogo and Allen.
Yeah. Yeah, tons and tons of cosplay
for us this time, and I will be endeavoring to get all of my
photos up on Facebook and whatnot.
So yeah, once again, check our social media for the best place
being Facebook for that. I'm almost I'm pretty deep into
the Game of Thrones shoot and I'll get those up next.
But if you find any of our social media you can find your
way to the others. One last thing about my better
Call Drogo costume. Yes, that is a Better Call Saul
but a Drogo mashup. And what I did you can't see it.
You couldn't see it in the photo very well.
But I have a bunch of ties strapped around my waist like as
it when I defeat another lawyer. I cut off their tie and it's
like the and I did have a braid with bells.
You can see it at the bottom so like right there at the.
So I did. I did tinkle when I walked like
like the. Bells from the book version of
of the Dithraki. So yeah, so that was a TV show
mash up with the book version of the character, but also the show
version of the character. Cuz those blue stripes are
obviously from the books, from the show, not the books, but the
braid and the bells are from the books.
So yeah, so yeah, great times. Y'all, if you're ever thinking
of coming to a convention, well, don't think of them as similar.
Don't think of them as all the same.
We've talked about Ice and Fire Con a lot.
That's only about 300 people, which is not a bad thing.
That's really fun. You have a small group of people
you can get to know really well. Dragon Con had over 70,000, so
it's they're both conventions, but you can see why that would
be substantially different. Massive Fire con and smaller
cons, it's it's one interesting about them is it?
Everyone's kind of there for the same thing.
You everyone has the same passion and the same knowledge
base and everything. Where Dragon Con is specifically
trying to peel to every different fandom.
There's like maybe a focus on fantasy and scifi, but there's
like professional wrestling and predator and.
Elijah Wood and Shawn. You know, like.
Yeah, it's like a broad spectrum of anything that has a phantom
that you can think of video games, board.
Games. Everything is featured at Dragon
Con, so you get a huge variety of cosplays and communities, and
it's just a massive spectacle of an event that I didn't go this
year. But I don't know, I've been at
least a dozen or I don't know if I've been 20, but a bunch of
times. And it's every time it's a
completely different experience because there's so much
different stuff going on. There was a Speaking of Elijah
Wood. Yeah, so Elijah Wood was there,
one of the more famous stars there and Sean asked into And so
they were, you know, Salmon Frodo reunited.
A lot of people took photos with them, but my favorite photo of I
saw. I didn't get in that line or
take photos with them or anything, but there's a photo of
making the rounds of someone who had done the cosplay of Gand
Alf. This was Gand Alf.
But Alf. Yeah, Alf, like the TV.
Like, yeah. So it was Alf's face, But
Gandalf's wig and robes and staff, Yeah.
And Elijah Wood just his face when seeing that was just like
he had seen the coolest thing he's ever seen in his life and
and and it lingered and so he took the photo because his face
is like he's pointing at Gandalf with his like like his big grin
on his face. Sean Ashton's more just like
this is cool you know he's got more of a like, I've been doing
this all day man. I'm a little tired now kind of
look on his face. But Electra wood is was like,
yeah, Gandalf that was great letter from someone named
Whitney D sending in a little bit of a chemistry biology
lesson about why maybe dragonflame having color isn't
so supernatural. Well the point is I wanted to
give a Z some sound logic for this detail that might alleviate
his problems with it. I have a ceramics degree which I
never use and serves little purpose.
Hey that makes two of us. I have a not a ceramics degree,
but a music degree that I don't make much use of other than
occasionally playing a Game of Thrones song.
That's about what so most of what I've done with it.
However, in the process of getting that degree, I took my
one and only chemistry class ever glaze chemistry.
And let me tell you how glazes get their color.
It's from raw chemicals or whatever you call them.
If you want a red glaze, you need copper oxide or copper
copper carbonate and it needs to fire at a specific temperature.
For green, you need chromium oxide or cobalts or cobalts to
make teals. So different chemical or
different metals used at different temperatures cause
different color fire. So different color fire is
certainly a real thing. That's not, that's not, that's
not a supernatural I was at least aware of that much.
But that doesn't make sense. Maybe there's different metal
bits of metal, or oxides within their body, or within their
internal functional, internal systems, whatever.
And it it, it creates an ignition or creates a similar
effect of the heat of the flame combined with some certain
chemistry within their body creates that coloring.
It's. It's not.
It's an easy thing for me to process the fantasy of just
like, I don't know, we have humans have different color
hair, eyes, skin, stuff like that.
Some subtle difference in how the DNA processes the food they
eat can just make the flambied. I mean, yeah, I don't like
fireworks have all kinds of different colors.
And not to be too gross, but things that come out of us have
a variety of colors too. Whether or not you have the flu
or. You know, Okay, that was too.
Yeah, right. Dysentery.
Oh, God, yeah, Grayscale, you know, okay.
So, yeah, let's move on to the lesson.
It lingers for so long. And let's start it with a quote.
Every child of the Trident knew the tales told of Heron Hall,
the vast fortress that King Heron the Black had raised
beside the waters of God's Eye 300 years past, when the Seven
Kingdoms had been 7 kingdoms and the river lands were ruled by
the Iron men from the islands. In his pride, Heron had desired
the highest hall and tallest towers in all Westeros.
Catlin could remember hearing Old Nan tell the story to her
own children back at Winterfell, and King Heron learned that
thick walls and hightowers are small use against Dragons.
The tale always ended for Dragons Fly, Yeah, you can see
the writing, the, the, the. You can draw a line from the
quote laid down by those maesters to old Nan's quote.
Quote right there where it says you know, not high enough to
keep out Dragons, you know, for Dragons fly.
And then here we have like that same line that Dragons fly, you
know. So it's almost distinctly the
same. It's not quite the same, the
wording slightly different, but it's soon need to see how that
has been carried down. The lessons of Heron Hall,
perhaps exactly what Agon wanted to intimate, wanted people to
remember. Well, it seems to have happened
and it is still happening 300 years later.
Yeah, leaving it was part of the point.
I don't think he wanted to completely remove the castle
entirely. Nina's going to give us an
example of Blood Raven later, and how it completely tore down
white walls and removed any trace that it ever existed.
It's a different school of thought here.
One is removing a place where people will go to pay homage to
their fallen hero or whatever, Where no one saw Heron as a
hero. No one was going to do that
here. No one's be like, oh man,
remember when the Ironborn ruled here?
Things were so much better. No one's going to say anything
like that. They're not like, oh, what could
have been if only Heron's line had continued.
Oh, the great things they would have done.
Yeah, no one's thinking that like they were about the black
fires, so it's not really a thing.
Even other Iron Islanders might not think that, like I, we
should have never gone on land anyway, you know, So it's better
than removing it entirely from memory so people won't, like,
yearn for that. It's better to leave it as this
testament to what happens when you challenge the Dragons, what
happens when you go against Agon, what happens when you're
too proud. So it's a it's a number of, it
teaches, a number of lessons, depending on what what chapter
were in. This is one of the great things
about a song, fire and having heroin all come up so often is
that different people interpret it different ways.
Like, Jamie is like, Oh my God, I passed 12 murder holes just
walking through the open the first gate to get in here.
This place is absurd. Or Aria thinking about, you
know, ghosts. And, like, I don't believe in
ghosts, you know. And so she to her, it's like
another way to show us her bravery, another way for her to
be her, you know. Aria is almost at home there,
you know, in some ways, and it's so it's great.
And all this is because of what Agon did and because of what the
building was before that. Like, we didn't need this
description of Agon versus Heron.
We'd like it, but the way it was placed within the story was
sufficient to serve the story in its own way.
But, you know, we're junkies and obsessed, and we want more, and
George gave it to us. So we're going to run with that.
It's interesting to think you know, he would never.
He clearly didn't envision Heron Hall as something he wanted to
take for himself, cuz if he did he would have not devastated it
so much. So it's a question of had he
decided where his capital was gonna be?
Had he already decided on King's Landing at this point?
Cuz if so, well, Heronel's only like 2 weeks right away, so it's
kind of cleverly placed close to this example, this lesson.
On the other hand, he just may not have decided that yeah, he
may still have been entertaining possibilities.
Like maybe he was, maybe he was still thinking about Old Town.
Or maybe he'd never considered Old Town and he's like, no, I
like the center. Maybe the Aegon Fort was he'd
already planned on it, establishing it greater,
building it more. It's unclear.
There's still a lot of unknowns about what Aegon's plans were.
He did start thinking about the Iron Throne, though.
We'll get to that in a minute, but it's interesting to know at
least. There's at least one thing he
thought about in advance and had decided on, apparently.
If he hadn't thought about King's Landing or decided on it,
I'm sure he had candidates I'm sure he had like these are my
potentials and that was one of them.
And I I think that he had, I think that I think at the point
that he was negotiating with or attempting to negotiating with
Argalac. By reason why he was having that
negotiation, I can see that, yeah.
I think if he hadn't had it yet, that it was congealing in his
mind At that point. Nina also points out something
that's useful to remember in terms of the order things
happened. The Senya hadn't yet taken the
Erie yet. She'd gone to the Veil and had a
battle, a naval battle, but the Erie itself hadn't surrendered.
And apparently they yeah, they had a different attitude.
If they wanted to just torch the Erie and forced to surrender,
they could have just done the same thing.
But they didn't. O that really speaks to a plan,
not just doing what comes. They had an idea about how they
would want to aroach this and and who they wanted to subjugate
and who they wanted to destroy. It.
I mean it's fits it perfectly in line with everything we've been
seeing so far. They didn't need to set an
example of them. They weren't bad rulers.
A/B who's even going to see it? It's so far removed from
everywhere, no one's passing by. It's not central.
Like it doesn't serve to to to demonstrate the example.
You know. It's a great point.
Yeah. The Erie is is way the heck up
there. Yeah.
People don't see it very often. It's beautiful.
Most people will never see it in their lives.
But passing by Heron Hall. Yeah, like almost anyone.
Like if you live in the River Lands, it's something you'll do
in your lifetime. Maybe, you know, unless you're
just like super, super, super poor, maybe you can't travel
beyond your village. But even some, like, really poor
people will have managed to see Heron Hall if they live in the
River Lands. But yeah, the Vale, most people
that live in the Vale will never see the Erie.
You know, it's just too remote and too up there.
Yeah. And so you're right, it doesn't
serve the example. Plus it's just a Heron Hall is
like this kind of brutal and gross symbol of of pride and
it's it's a poorly designed thing in the 1st place.
It's too big. Whereas The Erie is beautiful
and elegant and like, it would be a shame to destroy that.
It wasn't a shame to destroy her.
I mean, it kind of was, but not in the same way.
It wasn't a work of art, you know?
Yeah, and it probably isn't a good place anyway.
Besides that, as far as like just the the the demands of the
place to supply it and and keep it running is just yeah.
That'd be fair. The Erie has some of those
troubles, too. You're right.
They have to bring food off. They can't live there in the
winter at all. Like that's.
Yeah, that's kind of a silly but.
But they're not trying to rely on it in the same way.
Yeah. So you're right.
Yeah. There's still a little what's it
called arrogance in the worked into the blueprints there some
hoity toity. All right.
So continuing on in terms of how the lesson stands, like, think
about how it comes up in The Dance of the Dragons.
Right there's it's the place where they meet for the Great
Council. It still has this great
prestige, and it it's big enough to house all those Lords and
ladies in a centrally reachable location.
Well, not all of. Them and everyone gets to see.
Yeah, everyone's reminding. This is what the Dragons can do.
Everyone come to Heron Hall for this meeting and take note.
Take note, burnt down towers. We're only voting for Targaryens
here. And when you vote for Targaryen,
maybe keep in mind which dragon they happen to ride, because oh,
the guy who rides Balerian is the one we voted for.
Is it? Yes, cuz Becerra's won the Great
Council, Becerra's Rider of Blair.
Now Blair was dead by then, but still it may have had a little
bit of it may have helped a little bit cuz he was worthy of
Balerian in the 1st place. Maybe even though he just wanted
to do his books and models. Not everyone knew that.
I'm sure they propped him up a bit like writer of Balerian
y'all 10 years ago. But even aside from whatever
angle who you vote for might be, there's still just the reminder
that the Targaryens have the power.
Yeah, your castles are not safe, that castle.
You better stay with it. That castle still melted.
Still nobody fixed that, you know.
Still no one repaired that, you know.
Yeah. Did they what?
You wonder if that's part of why like did.
I don't want to take their symbol away like the Targaryens
keep pointing at this as like it's their example.
I don't want to, like, undo their example like I'm the Lord
of Heron Hall. Do I want to rebuild these?
First of all, it would be too expensive, probably, but maybe
even just one of them rebuild one of the towers so that it's
nice and whole and not all melty and weird.
But they didn't. No one's even done that.
So I wonder if that's part of, like, no, we don't.
We don't touch the Targaryen lesson.
It's still there. But even when like, Robert's
there, well, the ruler of Heron Hall at that point is dirt poor
because because Heron Hall is well, it's it's a white
elephant. You know it.
It's its expenses are more than its profits.
So of course you're not building new towers on it at that point.
But maybe earlier when it was first given away, that wasn't
the problem right. Which, and we'll come back to
that a little later. We're not quite ready to talk
about the the Remade River lands, although that is
imminent. Here's another quote about what
it looks like 300 years later Quote.
Herrin Paul's Gate house, itself as large as Winterfell's great
keep, was as scarred as it was massive.
Its stones fissured and discolored from outside.
Only the tops of five immense towers could be seen beyond the
walls. The shortest of them was half
again as tall as the highest tower in Winterfell, but they
did not soar the way a proper tower did.
Arya thought they looked like some old man's gnarled knuckly
fingers groping after a passing cloud.
She remembered Nan telling how the stone had melted and flowed
like candle wax down the steps and in the windows, glowing A
sullen, searing red as it sought out Heron where he hid.
Arya could believe every word. Each tower was more grotesque
and misshapen than the last Lumpy and Ronald and Cracked.
I don't want to go there, Hop High squeaked as Heron Hall
opened its gates to them. There's ghosts in there.
Jinkies. This is like a scooby-doo.
It's that's really an amazing description of Heron Hall and
it's it's almost kind of like where George kind of jumps out
of his historian boots to be his true author self to write.
It's like is Aria really having these really descriptive
thoughts or is that just that's George's prose, Like Aria the
the 10 year old isn't thinking and words this large.
Yeah, yeah. She's not thinking, it's
poetically. She might.
She's inspired by old man. Yeah, yeah, she's yeah, she's
just repeating what she heard from old man.
Which I wonder, by the way, how does Old Man have this?
Such a it was all, yeah, it was all that she.
Go there. Did she get told the story by
other people that went there? I wonder too.
It sounds like it's a common enough story, but her version of
it's fairly accurate. It's not like it's not as crazy
as some of her other stories you know, that don't that aren't as
believable, even if even if some of those might have a grain of
truth to them, This one is. It doesn't require a lot of
embellishment. That's what thing that makes it
so interesting. It's so great this one.
Might have a grain of exaggeration, yeah, But yeah,
but it's mostly true. Yeah.
And it's such a great description.
I love the line, Aria, that they looked like some old man's
gnarled knuckly fingers groping after a passing cloud.
Which is like, that's basically Heron's strategy against blurry
and like, oh, get him, We'll just knock him down somehow,
somehow. It'll work out.
We'll take him out of the sky. Yeah, You may as well have been
trying to grab a passing cloud with your old gnarled knuckly
fingers. Heron.
So yeah, that's pretty cool. And just how far they've melted.
I mean, these towers really just like they really they're they're
still really tall. But the glowing, A sullen,
searing red as it sought out hair and where he hid, There's
like onomatopoeia in there. Like, are we?
Ari is the God. She's a she's a poet in the
making. She doesn't know it.
She's a poet and doesn't know it.
Yeah. So is hot pie.
Yeah. Aegon's lesson was so effective.
The Fall of Heron, such a compelling tale that.
Yeah, it's accurately remembered.
As we just said, I'm kind of repeating myself, but you got to
my notes before I did. Shawn, you said the same thing.
Well, well, well played. 222 minds thinking alike.
Notice I didn't say great minds, just two minds thinking alike,
which is part of the like. So the embellishment here is
pretty minor. It's the seeking out hair and
where he hid like, OK, I don't know, the flames were seeking
him out. That's poetic license.
But that's basically what happened.
He was in there until the flames overwhelmed him and then he was
a charred heap of ash. So yeah, it it didn't seek him
out, but it was inexorable and destroyed everything in its
path. So yeah, we're just assigning
some personality to the flames. You know we're we're giving it a
brain here. But it's it it that is what
happened as terms of the the end result.
So the topic of ghosts in Heron Hall like Heron being angry that
all his pride, all his confidence was like carried over
into the afterlife. That's why he's still alive.
That's why he's a ghost because he was you know that's that's
that's often how ghost stories are are told like someone was
had such intense emotion or they were so deeply betrayed.
The murder, like they're the wife, was murdered by the
husband and it was such a betrayal that her ghost lingered
because it was so horrific. That kind of thing, like some
intense emotion enabled them to linger.
But it's added in with the the burning aspect, because the
ghosts of Heron Hall are supposedly burning ghosts and
their stories about people burned in their sleep or fires
starting and other things like that, and well, it's a bigger
topic than we have time for today.
Heron Hall is a huge topic, of course.
The 4th most popular location in all of Song of Ice and Fire.
Maybe even third. Of course there's going to be a
lot to say about that, even though it's only 300 years old.
But the ghost thing? That's something I want to come
back to later. I just want to mention one thing
though. There's there's definite
evidence of ghosts, but there's also evidence that it might be
just mundane. Think of how how okay, how big
is a shadow from a flame? It can be really big.
Like, think about the the first John chapter, The flames of
Tyrion, the cast Tyrion shadow make him stand as tall as a
king, because that's the the trick of the light.
Aaron Hall has enormous fireplaces, enormous rooms.
The shadows cast in that place would be huge.
The echoes in that place would be huge.
So it's going to sound ghostly, huge shadows.
Like, that's just my starter. That's my little teaser for the
mundane side. But of course, this is George R
Martin. He's not going to just make it
all mundane. He's going to do both.
He does going to do what he always does.
There's the soup. There's the mundane explainable,
but also creepy mixed with the supernatural.
He does. He does both.
So I think that's that's where I land on that.
You know, a quick thought in this is it if there's one in X,
people have ghosts, right? Like, I don't know how it works
or, but however you might suppose it works.
If everyone had a ghost, there would be like billions of ghosts
all the round. There wouldn't be any question
we would know it for sure, right?
But since it seems to be kind of rare and special, it's maybe
some percentage. Well, a lot of people died in
here and hall all at once, so there would be a higher chance
of there being a ghost, right? And if part of being a ghost
maybe has to do with like. Fulfilling something that you
didn't get to Well, when a bunch of people suddenly die in their
sleep when they weren't expected to, then there's more drive for
the ghost to be haunting the. Rumors really spread.
It's already primed. Like anything, anytime something
goes bad at Heron Hall, people are ready to go up.
That's the curse of Heron there. There's already a prelaid
reason, premade reason for people's reaction and that just
keeps the rumors going. And which is part of why the the
visuals of the place, the fact that it's still used, the story
is lingering. That's part of why all the
stories. And maybe he built it on native
burial ground. Maybe he built it on the
werewolf children of the forest. Yeah, they're not wrong, that
theory. Yep, you're totally.
Yeah, that's that's a valid guy element for sure.
Yeah. So let's set aside the ghosts
for now and come back that some other time.
Let's be more like Aria for now with this next quote.
If there were ghosts in Heron Hall, they never troubled her.
It was the living men she feared, wise and Sir Gregor
Clagaine and Lord Tywin Lannister himself who kept his
apartments in Kingspire Tower, still the tallest and mightiest
of all, the lopsided beneath the weight of the slag and stone
that made it look like some giant half melted black candle.
Here we are with that candle metaphor again.
It comes up a bunch of times. That wasn't me calling it the
candle. That's just how George repeats
that. Burning tower like a giant
burning black candle or five of them as it as it were.
So Yep, it's pretty big deal. But yet powerful people still
use the place. It still has that gravitas
right? Like Tywin takes up the position
like it says in there in the King's fire tower.
He sets up his office there and just makes use of it in terms of
not just in terms of it as an office, but in terms of.
It's dangerous and ominous and damaged, and as a symbol of
power, it's a guy who likes to rule by fear.
You can see how he would just slide right into that and make
it part of his, part of how people view him.
You know, like that's the guy that has no problem standing up
to the socalled Curse of Heron. Didn't, maybe didn't work out
for him since he died horribly, though not in Heron Hall.
So maybe, maybe that's not related.
But still, he did come to an awful end.
And as do. Most people who go to Heron
Hall. There's still a few people like
Roose Bolton hasn't had a horrible end yet, but he did
rule Heron Hall for a while, so that's another thing.
Likes Tywin can twist it into his advantage and show his own
like courage or his own ability to make Heron Hall his like, oh,
this is dangerous, cursed castle.
But Lord Tywin is strong enough to make it his, you know, so it
still works that way as a symbol, sort of in a reverse
manner. And again, there is still this
practical nature that even if the towers are burned, there's
still basements and vaults and walls and armories and
blacksmiths and fireplaces. It's it still has a lot of
infrastructure that with a lot of values.
Yeah, absolutely there. There is much and much of that
much and more of that, indeed. Let's see.
Next up, we're going to talk about the beginning of the Iron
Throne. We briefly brought it up, but
let's go a little deeper into that topic and started off with
a quote. When the ashes had cooled enough
to allow men to enter the castle safely, the swords of the
fallen, many shattered or melted or twisted into ribbons of steel
by dragon fire, were gathered up.
And sent back to the Aegon Fort in wagons.
So I think this sort of backs up your theory a bit, Sean, that he
was already thinking of King's Landing as his site because he's
hauling those the ingredients, the ingredients, the the medal
for his throne, which is clearly where his going to put his
capital, where his throne is. He's already got this part
planned out. So would you really haul all
that to to a place and then haul it again somewhere else?
Maybe you might, You might change your mind, but it's
unlikely it seems so. It seems like he already had
this idea that that he didn't have enough swords yet,
certainly, but he was on his way and that process it started.
This is the the first mention of the Thrones beginning, although
it isn't called the Iron Throne yet.
It's just. Talked about the fact that he's
gathering swords. It doesn't say why.
We know why, but it technically doesn't say that yet.
So let's think about that. Turn that around a bit.
What are his subordinates thinking?
Do they know? Cuz he seems like a guy that
doesn't just say all his plans, he seems like he keeps a lot of
his plans close to the chest and then reveals them later or when
he needs to, which is one of the few things we can say maybe
about his personality. So you wonder like what is he
doing with all those swords. Maybe he maybe he said so and
it's just not mentioned here. Maybe he's like, yeah I'm going
to build a throne out of this, but I don't think so.
I think he wanted just maybe surprise people overall them
with it when they first saw it maybe or once they learned what
he was doing, they would be like whoa, but just telling them in
advance that it kind of you kind of lose the surprise fact kind
of lose some of that oomph I guess.
I'm not sure about that though. What do you what do you think?
I could make a lot of my own point, counterpoints.
I think that he might not have had this idea of the Iron Throne
just yet, that I still think that he had at least tentative
plans for King's Landing. And whether or not he had an
idea for the Iron Throne or not, he might have been hauling all
this metal there just to make more swords and more armor, more
sales, more building material. Yeah, there's a value to it.
It's kind of a mess. He doesn't want someone else to
get hold of it on the. Other hand he's only taking
swords it says which is but that might be what.
You're still right though. That's might be what people are
thinking like OK, he wants like cuz this is this would be the
best steal the ones that make swords out of it.
And it also might be what people were noticing more.
If you have this sort of mesh of molten steel that some is swords
and some is armor, but you have these spikes of blades sticking
out, well that's what you're going to call it is the melted
swords and maybe not recognized or understand there's some
that's true, they might be in there too.
Fused metal, that's true. They wouldn't all just be.
It couldn't be 100% swords. There would be a little bit of
stuff in there, yeah. And here someone might have
noticed, like I can make something symbolic out of this
and and may have still used many of those swords to make new
swords and new armor and everything else.
But it set enough aside that like that the symbolic meaning
of a throne made out of these swords might be more valuable
than more swords. And even if he didn't have the
idea for the Iron Throne yet when he was guiding swords up,
still having all this stuff brought to the Eggon Fort is
still an indication that that was going to be a center of
operations, right? Even if you just plan on making
more swords and armor at the Eggons Fort from this stuff,
it's still an indication that that was a place he had plans
for. So yeah, yeah.
Also, just to think about the fact that it says when the ashes
have cooled enough to allow men to enter the castle safely.
I think that's probably not exactly right.
There's a lot of ways in the castle and I can't imagine every
single entryway was. Too hot to walk in because
there's like posture and gates and like, I don't know that he
just torched the main gate house that Jamie walked through, for
example. Or if the entire place was too
hot. I think he's this is just
certain locations within the castle stayed too hot for a
while. They were basically like a an
ongoing oven, you know, just a tight, tight or relatively tight
space. With all that heat that's
lingering in, it would take a while for it to cool off.
And they're not doing any anything to to facilitate that
quicker. They're not like dumping water
on it, like there'd be too much of that.
Maybe their entrances that weren't burnt down.
But still, if you try to go through those entrances, it's
too hot to breathe. So some parts of the castle
would be off limits. Some parts, you know, maybe,
maybe the whole thing is still just too bad.
Which would, if that's the case, if it's worse than we think,
then that would take us back to where we were before in saying,
well, maybe there were many, so, so many survivors after all.
Maybe it was just so damn hot there had to be sheltered that
the place is just so big. Yeah, even if the entrance isn't
burnt down, but if you go through it, it's too hot to live
in. That doesn't mean that 3 levels
of basement underneath couldn't still be good enough to live.
And there's a bunch of food and water store down there we know.
So you know, a couple 100 people might have made it.
Yeah. And the Godswood is like 20
acres or something absurdly huge like that.
So I think it's 20 acres. Yeah, like Winterfells is like 3
acres and and and the Heron Halls is like 20.
So it's a huge amount of space of unburned area, like a lot of
people would have taken refuge there.
That's. A sensible place to go just in
general if you're if you're pretty sure he's not going to
target it, you might think it's the last place you want to go.
Like, well, that place is just any second now.
He's going to burn that. But what an awesome story that
would be. By the way some sort of like
future thing George does or some fan fiction that someone writes
about like the the prisoners of the dungeon of Heron Hall.
You know they were down there in jail, but you know wake up to
realize Heron's dead, the building's burned down, but they
survived. Do they still get executed as
prisoners? They started that down there
waiting for survivor or do they get released and tell stories?
That would be someone I want to know that that.
Would be great, yeah. You could find out what happened
with those characters, like some of them would have just been
other river Lords that that Heron had imprisoned and or or
just other men. So they would just be let go and
we'd be happy to spend the knee to egg on.
They'd be like where'd you come from man I've been down here for
10 years I haven't heard anything that's been going on
That's that's great thanks. Yeah some of them might yeah
some of them might have been pretty important because he we
see that at when Ari is there there's there's important of
course that's a whole thing with the they're false prisoners that
are let out and they attack the place from the inside or we're
not bringing up any kind of theory like that for this but
they're still there would be interesting people down there in
those dungeons that. I mean this, this goes with our
other question, like what about Heron's Queen or Queens?
Like what happened to them? Were they just just not around
or dead already or were they killed 2 or I mean that one
tower is called the Kings Fire Tower because everyone thinks
that's where Heron was and maybe that does imply his body was
found and so there was some reason to know it was his or
it's just the tallest tower and so that's the one he was in.
It makes sense, but that's of course not what it was called by
Heron. No one knows what the original 5
names of those towers were. He may not have named them yet.
He was still maybe in the process of coming up with a name
for them, you know, just hadn't quite done that yet.
Yeah, but either way, that's what happened.
And there's gonna be, like I said, plenty more stories from
Heron Hall going forward. We'll have plenty of time or
plenty of opportunity to come back to it and discuss it.
Yeah, Burning Heron Hall Burning swords.
Just the metaphorical destruction of a Kingdom and the
literal destruction of these swords.
Both are reforged into something 1A throne, 1A cornerstone or
centerpiece perhaps, of the new 7 kingdoms.
And I call it a centerpiece because, well, the Riverlands is
in the center and it's been so different, it's it's been
restructured. It's remade and probably in a
way that creates a lot of positive outlook for them
because they've always had so many enemies, because they have
so many borders, but now they have a central, strong authority
figure on their border that won't allow the other kingdoms
to invade them. If they invade the Riverlands
going forward, they have to face the Dragons.
They have to face the very thing that did all that to Heron Hall.
So that example isn't just. About the power of the Dragons,
it's about the new Riverlands. It's about forging the new
Riverlands. Just as the melting of the
Swords is a forging of the new Iron Throne, the melting of
Heron Hall is a forging of the new Riverlands.
And that, my friends, will be our main topic next time.
We have a few things to get through before we're done here,
but that is our narrative endpoint.
As far as, however, how far we're going with Agon and his
history, I'm going to add a little corollary to that.
It's also the forging of a new Iron Islands.
You're right, that will also be the secondary topic.
We're going to be covering both those things next time probably.
Maybe we'll only have time for the Riverlands, but certainly
that it also on top of that forges a new Night's Watch.
But not just these, that's more of the whole conquest, that's
more the surrender of the North. But also the the start of it is
here because they got the King's peace.
Savagely and dramatically reduced recruits to the Knights
watch, because it's so often a losing side of a war.
Has a bunch of Benson there. Well, what happens when there's
no more wars? Well, that's obviously a good
thing. Except for this one side effect
here. Yeah, other things.
We'll talk about it seems like it's it seems like you got
there's a problem with your scenario in the 1st place.
If you have this line of defense that's depended upon war, right?
You should. You're doing something wrong
with this whole scenario, yeah? So, yeah, so next time we'll
talk about how the river lands and perhaps the Iron Islands
were resettled, who was given control of what, any marriages,
ongoing loyalties problems. And then as we make our way
towards the next set of the war where we'll be talking about
what Raines and Viseno will be up to, that's an important thing
that's that's going to be coming in the coming weeks as well.
So we have quite a bit more to talk about.
As we did today. We'll be mixing in some examples
of from A Song of Ice and Fire where possible, because the
lessons and maneuvers and plans of Aegon and his sister still
echo forward. And one of the best ways we can
engage in this material is to show how that plays out within
the confines of the main storyline.
Not to mention some things to do with House of the Dragon and the
Dance of the Dragons, which of course will be our our end point
for this reread. But many things that we already
know about that are going to have touchstones here at the
beginning of the Targaryen reign.
We'll finish off with this question from Steve Van Pruyen.
When did Aegon and Ironborn slavery enthralled him in the
Riverlands? That's a great question.
We may continue with this question next time.
I may have to think about it some more, but it seems to have
been immediate. I mean, once the end of Heron
came and his sons were wiped out, there was no like remaining
immediate relative to try to. Take U the Helm.
There were still surviving members of his bloodline, but no
one major enough to make any big plays here.
In the short term, I'm. Going to say it's still so hard
till like. Yeah, you can say the policy is
now that there's no throttle, but how do you actually go
through the homes and remove them and rehome them?
Like, were there initiatives to find homes for thralls that
didn't have like because I feel like probably a lot of people
just lived out the rest of their lives and thralled them still.
Yeah, I agree. It may have been or there's no,
we're not told of any sort of. Amnesty or speaks to what I was
saying before about what about just ironborn children and or
half ironborn half river Landers and people that enforce
marriages. Like what part of that, like how
did that all get undone How did this is 100 years of ironborn
rule there plus the storm lands rule before So like how did they
get back to being themselves and how did they make.
Yeah, it's not talking about very much.
So that's something we'll explore.
A bit more. The more I think about this, the
more I think, yeah, well, we're going to want to come back to
this question because it is something we're going to have to
use a lot of imagination on. Cuz yeah, it's not very well
detailed, but I do think that he didn't enthralled him in the
Iron Islands. He definitely left that around,
even though he did end the old way in terms of reeling.
So we'll have more to say on that as well, but the River
Lands is not. They don't have a long history
of that. The Seven don't approve of that.
The religion of the of the realm doesn't really approve of that.
So he would want to align things with the common beliefs, the
common culture of the realm. He's trying to rule that that's
something he did a number of times, the the worship of the
seven being perhaps the most obvious of that.
But other things, like having a, having a banner and a sigil and
house, words like those were not things they had done until the
conquest. So those are littler things, but
they weren't that little. Like remember that quote before
when he unfurled his great dragon headed banner with three
heads? All the Lords of Westeros knew
he was one of them? Like it.
It may not seem like that big a deal to us, but it apparently
was a pretty big deal to them. And that might be and that's
this too. I think this is easier to see
why it would be a big deal because it's explicitly against
their religion, whereas. The other stuff is like it's not
in their religion to have banners and house words.
That's just a cultural tradition, which is important,
but it's not like a deeply held belief about the universe and
everything you know, life, the universe and everything.
I imagine it's the burning of Heron Hall Celeste and thrilling
of those banners or whatever. It's almost like an Order 66
where everyone at Ribbon Line is like, all right, suddenly all
the Iron Born are like. Yeah, you might be right about
that. Like an all iron born who
aren't. Cool.
What if, for lack of a better word, who aren't in are going to
get murdered or or kicked out some.
Some of them might just be exiled like some of them.
If they especially if they have family bloodlines, that would
that might be a little too close to kinslaying or something for
them to just you know. It would be really tricky
though. So yeah, it is a little bit
slightly disappointing there's nothing written about this.
But we can make some assumptions and and go into that rabbit hole
anyway. It's still, there's still some
enough clues for us to figure some things out, and so that is
something we'll be thinking about.
Between now and next week, you all are welcome to think about
it too, as well as any other related topics.
Send us your questions, send them to
westeroshistory@gmail.com or put them in the Discord or our
Facebook group and we will consider them.
For example, Guinevere Greenstone's here has said, is
there a chapter or page references for next week?
Well, we're not really doing things chapter by chapter so
much or page by page so much. We're we're, I wouldn't say
we're jumping around, but we're really focusing in on each
section, so we're still. At Aegon's Conquest, we're not
past that. We're certainly aren't even
close to done with that yet. We haven't.
We've only done a chunk of it. So I'd say read up on what
happens after the fall of Heron Hall if you want to be curious
about that, because it's because the fire blood jumps around a
lot too, and one of the things we're trying to do is less
jumping around. We're trying to stay focused on
what Aegon was doing rather than jump back and forth between
Aegon, Besenia and Rainy's. We're going to tell the story a
little differently because it'll be it's a different way to take
it in. We don't want to just.
Reinvent the wheel. We're going to study the fire
and then we're going to study the blood.
I mean, it's not really, I wouldn't call that great
analysis if you just do everything the way he's doing
it. So by presenting it in a
different order in a way that's a little more connected, we hope
to analyze fire and blood more thoroughly, but in a way that's
maybe a little more directly. Yes, fire first, blood later.
You know, don't mix them up. Come much later.
And ice is still a ways away. Agon's worried about the ice,
but even he knows it's in the in the distance.
So the answer to our trivia question, let's get to that.
And which famous Viking king is Harwin Hardhand, The grandfather
of Heron whore? Based off of the answer is
Harold Hardratta. Harold Hardratta, the famous
Viking king who almost was King of England.
And was king of Sweden and Denmark and Norway, if I
remember correctly. Maybe just two of those.
But he was had an amazing life that's been a feature of many
documentaries. He was in the Verangian guard
for the Byzantine emperor. He may have had an affair with a
Byzantine Empress. He was a Raider and reaver.
He was a king and a Prince and an exile.
He was. He lost his throne.
He got it back just. And the reason this is such a If
you're familiar with the life of Harwin Hardhand, a lot of these
same elements are present. But the best clue, besides their
initials both being HH, is hard Rata translates as something
like hard ruler or Hard Man. Hard Hand.
Harwin. Hard Hand, right?
Like it's Yeah. Harold Harwin, Hardrata,
Hardhand. Yeah.
Say people threw out a few Viking kings as answers, but
lots of people go out this one, right?
Cool, cool people had some good arguments for.
I wish I could. I don't know that I can scroll
all the way up on it, but I might have to go read some of
these. Yeah, I forget what someone
said. One of them had done a lot of
building at the end of his reign.
And so they, I think Harold may have too, but maybe not, but
maybe not as much as this person are thinking of.
Yeah, a lot of Viking kings. Like I said, a lot of them, when
they settle down, they're not really Viking kings anymore.
They're just kings. So that used to be Vikings.
That was a lot of what was behind, quote UN quote, the
Vikings was there's just not a lot of fertile land in that cold
NT. They were just, they they didn't
want to be at war. They wanted farms for their
families. And so when they went South and
found England, like, hey, here's some farms for our families, too
bad there's people already living there.
But once they killed and kicked those people out, they brought
their families down, set up a farm.
That's it. That's what they're really
looking for was sustainable lives.
Yeah. And that's why this is becoming
more and more part of the public conversation that because of all
these DNA tests that are available nowadays, like, yeah,
if you have like Irish or English ancestry, you probably
have Scandinavian too, which speaks to the problem we were
just getting at with the new Riverlands.
Like if you're just going to like you want people of
Riverlands blood, well you can't do that.
Like there's people married the Iron Born people have married
other kingdoms. Like what?
Is Riverlands blood even mean? When you really get into that,
like what is, how does that, what's the difference?
Like they're all hand dolls, real Riverland Men or.
Real riverlanders are like my blood runs, muddy, runs thick
and muddy, and you don't know where we're all from.
That's the real Riverland. Real Riverlanders wield
Tridents. Yep, Okay friends and supporters
and fellow obsessed W Orians. That's our episode for today.
We'll pick it up at 3:00 PM next week, right where we left off
with the beginning of the forming of the new, new and
glorious Riverlands. New fandangled Riverlands if you
want to stay immersed. Whole bunch of Targaryen related
episodes, but you could also dip into our History of the
Riverlands. Very old episode, but pretty,
pretty solid, I think also some of our What's that?
You have to read our chapter on Heron Hall, our chapter on Heron
Hall. We have a chapter written in the
book Flight of Sorrows where we wrote about some of that curse
or no curse thing, something that I want to modernize and do
again because that was like 8 or 10 years ago.
But it's still good info and I still.
And the other essays in that book are really good.
If you never heard of that book, you can still find it on Amazon.
Yeah, been a while since we mentioned it, but we hey, we're
technically authors. A couple of times over.
That's right. We've done a couple chapters and
a couple books. We haven't done a book all
ourselves. Maybe one day we'll do that.
So yeah, check out our episode on Belarion.
That's a particularly strong overlap given what we talked
about today as well as the episodes on before.
The Dragons which kind of get speak to just their ignorance of
what Dragons could do and how things had always been the way
they were for so long and why it was so hard to change those
ways. Of course, we have an episode on
Dragonstone. We have an episode on Mentares,
which is for patrons and supporters only.
We have episodes on Summer Hall. Talk about Speaking of Wildfire
and another way that Stone can burn.
Well, that did happen a little bit more recently than the Fall
of Heron Hall, but pretty darn important for Targaryen history.
And we've got two episodes on that one featuring Aries.
We want a bit more focused on Ragar.
Yes, as I said, you can support us on Patreon.
You can also support us on Spotify.
You can. Now those two things are in the
process of being merged into one.
You can. Thus the world of supporting and
patronage is getting a little simpler.
It's a good thing we makes it easier for us to explain it to
y'all. But if you have any questions on
how to support, feel free to reach out to us.
We're happy to explain it all because I do.
I know it's confusing because it keeps changing, but what can we
do about that? We're just rolling along with
all the changes in this industry.
Podcasting is still a pretty new industry in the in the scheme of
things, and all the support industries around it are also
relatively new for obvious reasons.
So thanks again to Y'all for your support and whatever form
it comes, whether it's word of mouth, whether it's financial,
whether it's just tuning in every week and and listening and
adding to our view count, that helps too.
Thanks to our good friend Nina for her notes.
There's a lot of good stuff in there today.
I I particularly liked her comparison of Blood Raven
completely wiping out white walls versus the lesson of Heron
Hall by leaving it standing. That's a it's a great comparison
we could make there by two people who aren't afraid to be
ruthless but also have thought behind that ruthlessness.
It's not just. I mean do what I say.
No, they're they're trying to send a specific message with
that brutality. Thanks as well to Joey, Jesse
and Bran for the help with our music and intro.
Same goes for Michael Clarfeld for our original intro.
We have so many helpful and excellent artistic people that
have made our show better. That includes our friend, the
engineer who works on the sound quality behind the scenes.
And well, folks, Discord again, I want to remind you September
26th at 9:00 PM. That's trivia.
I'm going to throw that out there as often as possible
because I know trivia is. We'll bring a few extra folks
in. And until next time you know
what to do. Valerie read us.