Hello my fellow Westorians. It's another Sunday.
It's time for more Valar, reread us.
Let's see what today brings us. A my fellow Westorians and a
dancing Shawn of House Beard. How are you doing today, my
friend? What are you drinking?
I'm doing well. It's good to be here.
I have a delicious beverage. This is the Mango Naked drink
mixed with a coconut, pineapple, sparkling ice and of course
mixed with Mountain Dew. Of course.
The very sweet and citrusy do you?
Really like to take it from a like almost healthy drink to a
not nearly as healthy drink. I want that caffeine in there.
It's hard to have a healthy beverage when your basis for
everything is Mountain Dew. So imagine a soup where the
broth is a Mountain Dew. OK, no, I do not want to think
about that. Stop thinking about that.
Everyone. Don't do that.
I can't stop thinking about that.
Let's change the subject. So Sean, you have been talking
about movie stuff. You know, you've got your
channel and you have done short videos on movies that were up
for awards. But recently you've been
thinking about maybe doing some underrated films, things that
are maybe not gotten as much attention that you think are
worthy of more attention. Are there any, any, any in
particular that you're thinking about or just the process that's
something you want to mention? Yeah, I've actually got a lot in
my brain I want to do. I need to buckle down and get it
done because I kind of want to build a catalog.
I want to do some sort of classic movies that most people
have seen just so that you can see how my reviews are going.
So I'll do Indiana Jones and Star Wars or whatever, but also
want to do things that maybe everyone hasn't seen or maybe
even isn't aware of. Maybe underrated movies, Hedwig
and Andrea Inch or foreign movies, Amelie, maybe even
movies that are kind of well known but maybe not as highly
thought of as I thought. And maybe some movies you
haven't even heard of. I'm kind of the point of my
channel is to get people to watch good movies, whether it's
great movies that you haven't gone to yet or movies you
haven't even heard of and you know, even great movies you
haven't gotten to yet, There's going to be some that you're
going to end up liking more than others.
And I want to give people an idea up front what type it's
going to be. Is it going to be serious?
Is it going to be funny? Is it going to be romantic?
Is it going to be dark, etcetera.
You know and. Underrated is a harder category
than just films that are up for awards.
That's that gives you a starting point.
So underrated means you have to think about more what that means
and and take into account whatever people are thinking and
things like that. I made a post on Facebook that
about that and exploded to like 100 comets.
Both people talking about the movies they think underrated and
talking about what it means to be underrated.
So it's it's a yeah, it's kind. Of an interesting thing to to
hear what other people think of underrated, whether it's like
how it appears on IMDb, how many people bought tickets to see it,
what kind of ratings it has, you know, how what critics think of
it. Yeah, there's like it's
everyone's got their own definitions.
That's part of what makes it interesting in the first place.
So let's see here. Thanks to Nina for her help on
the hedge night. We've gotten a lot of great
takes from her. I've got a couple of
particularly exciting ones today that I'm excited to talk about.
Excited things that I'm excited to talk about.
Yeah. Report me to the Department of
Redundancy department yet again. I think I've been sent there at
least twice in the past two weeks.
The. Way.
The sworn sword begins versus the way the hedge night ends.
They, they really kind of bleed into each other, even though
quite a lot of time has passed because it, it sticks with these
familiar sort of plot centric ideas while maintaining its its
feel, its themes of these two characters learning each other
and working together and and getting into adventures.
I'll probably mention it when we start that, but I did catch
that. How does the hedge and I start?
It's raining. Yeah.
How's the sworn sword start? It's a drought.
Oh, good call, good call. And how does the third one
start? I don't remember that's, we'll
have to check on that some sort of.
I seem to remember it was hot, but I don't know if it was a
drought. Maybe it's just humid so it's
like in between you've got. The heat of you've got the heat.
Of the desert, but the humidity of the it's.
Just really windy. Yeah, you need Windy.
We definitely don't have snow. We know it's not snowing there,
so blood Ravens around. So there's definitely going to
be a little bit of mist at the at the little at the least.
So let's start with the reveal. One of the it's a fun moment.
Of course, when Egg reveals who he is.
There's a lot of clues that he's someone else, but it isn't
really something that the plot focuses on.
It's not like who is this guy? It's just kind of I don't know
where it's it's a lot along the lines of the way George does a
lot of mysteries. He doesn't even tell you there's
a mystery. Sometimes he just gives you the
answer that you didn't know there was something in secret
all this time and you're like, oh, this has been a a mystery
this whole time. So that's kind of neat.
I think you told me you already knew who Egg was before you read
this the first time. Is that right?
So it wasn't really a surprise for you.
It correct it was still AI don't know how to say it's an exciting
moment. When was it Raymond giving Dunk
a rundown of the different Princess and just this is about
to mention Egg. Egg bursts in and like.
Yeah, Dunk doesn't really give much thought to the matter.
He's not like, I wonder who this kid is.
It just kind of goes by when any time a Targaryen is revealed,
which you know, there's going to be at least one more in the main
series and perhaps one revealed to not actually be a target.
So we may have the reversal, like actually this guy is not a
Targaryen. So we may have that happen.
Both of those things happen, one with John, one with Young Griff.
So it's things like this where it's not just the reveal of egg.
It's like, well, George is going to be doing this again.
Is this like a warm up for him? Is he practicing the John
reveal? Is it like, how is he going to
do this? That's that's what I think about
because we've we already know the answer here.
We know the secret, but we know there's going to be more secrets
of this ilk that come into much bigger ones.
Like whenever the reveal with John happens, it'll probably be
a multi stage reveal because you got all these different
characters that have to react to it and then John himself has to
react to it. So it's not just going to be
like this where Dunk is really the only one that reacts to it
because Aryan's like, hey, what happened to your hair brother,
you know? So maybe a bit of foreshadowing
for the future of of their story.
When he says how many Aegons have been king and Aegon
responds 4 Aegons have been king and he'll be the 5th.
So and if Young Griff, if that all plays out, if he's actually
crowned, which I think he will be because part of the prophecy
around Danny is that she'll slay these lies.
And that would be a pretty big lie to slay.
He if he's crowned, he would be the 6th Aegon.
Whether that counts in retrospect is another question.
But he is still an Aegon, so that's kind of neat.
You know what I thought I had about that?
Not just how many Aegons there have been, but a lot of the
other Targaryens and kings. So there's a lot of repeating
names, you know, and sometimes it's even hard.
I finally started to sort out some of them, you know, but it's
it's kind of how the real world went too.
There were so many Charles's and Phillips and Edwards in European
history. I remember the the Danielle
Belleli podcast about Joan of Arc.
He he kind of joked about, I know this is hard to follow,
but. My favorite example is the show
The Last Kingdom and the books and the real History where I
like to think I'm good at this, but when they're all just like
Alfred and Alfred, I, I can't. It's very difficult for me.
I finally understand where some people are with A Song of Ice
and Fire. Yeah.
So it's real history is way. Worse than?
This, that's the thing, folks like all these Aegons and
Darrons, it's nothing like that. We're all like, how many
Kennedys are there? How many Bushes are there?
There's lots of them. Yeah, that's.
True. This happens, some of this
happens there are progresses towards Dunk being in a cell.
Something is somewhat familiar to A Song of Ice and Fire.
POV has been a lot of chapters of characters and cells.
This doesn't last very long. He's not in jail very long.
It's it's it goes pretty quickly.
He has a discussion with Egg. Egg apologizes to him for the
deception, not realizing it could get Dunk in trouble, which
that's kind of a recurring theme.
Even when nobility or or trying to be decent, sometimes just who
they are, just their presence has an impact on what's
happening around them. And sometimes that impact is
negative. And of course this is an example
of that. But obviously the biggest thing
is, you know, AG didn't make Dunk attack Tanzel, but he did
go get him knowing probably what would happen.
I guess it's just no chance, no choice situation, right.
That's we'll come back to that. There's this great quote here
that is pretty important. I think it's maybe one of the if
we were to rank them the quotes in this story, this one might
fall in the top five for most important just for the the many
different things it describes, explains and touches on.
Here it is. Dunk looked at him thoughtfully.
He knew what it was like to want something so badly you would
tell a monstrous lie just to get near it.
I thought you were like me, he said.
Might be. You are only not the way I
thought. Yeah, so.
I have a question here, what do y'all think the two ways that
they're alike are? The way that Dunk would have
thought they were like him, that Egg would have thought, which I
think we know, but what is Egg saying here?
That they're both. Decent people, yes.
I do think that. I think that he thought that
they were, he was an orphan boy like him.
But that's the part that he's not.
But he is like a, you know, a big hearted guy, one who cares
about other people, no matter how poor they are and cares
about justice. Is that how you interpreted
Sean? Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah.
You know, they, I, they thought they were alike and that they
were lowborn or, you know, it's all kinds of ways that they
thought they were like. But realizing there is other
ways they're like, they're even more important.
Yeah. It's a great way to put a good
set. That's that is what it comes
down to. That's the thing that ultimately
I think keeps them together. Obviously Egg couldn't know that
about him at first, when he just was trying to get away from
Deron and just go to the tournament and just do anything
other than hang out with his drunk older brother who's kind
of not doing anything. Like he was bored.
It's not just, and he wanted to, you know, it's a lot of things
really. And.
Maybe Egg really just had no one else that he could call to this.
But I mean, I think it just shows how how safe Egg felt with
Dunk already, how much he's got a good vibe from him.
Yeah, he knew. That this is the man to run to.
Like he explained, you know, it comes up during the conversation
like why didn't you run to the castle?
He was like, well, I didn't think I could get there in time.
You know, it was so far away. And those are pretty good
reasons, you know, the the woman is being injured in that moment.
You definitely don't have much time.
I think it. Was an emotional choice, though,
just as much I. Mean he plays it.
Off as that, but I think Egg is a little boy who ran to the
person than he thinks would keep him safe.
So might be. Some post facto justification.
He might be like, no, I would have run to him anyway, yeah.
And it made sense. It was like the right call, but
I, I think it was colored by that.
That's a great. Point.
Yeah, that might be I almost. Don't want to say this because I
don't want to spin it too negatively, but there might have
been an amount of selfishness. Egg could have just revealed
himself at the moment and ordered those guards.
Hey, stand back, let her set her free.
I it may or may not have worked, but he would have had to give up
his secret life. You know what I mean?
To do that, I agree. With that, a lot of that, I
think that Egg has enough fear of Aryan that he he can't trust.
He doesn't feel like he can even trust the royal guard right
there. Whether that's that's logical or
anything. I think it shows how he is very
fearful of Aryan. Yeah, I don't think.
He wanted to challenge Aryan without someone to back him up.
Quite possibly, but that's a good point because he did like
order them to stop, but only when Dunk was there.
Yeah, they ordered him to stop attacking Dunk right after Dunk
had already intervened. Yeah, when they were.
About to like when Aryan ordered awful things to happen.
That's when Egg was like OK now I got to stop the them from
cutting his head off or whatever.
Taking out, taking all his teeth out.
When Dunk was in trouble, then he no longer was worried about
his his his fun life. You know, I guess maybe his fun
life was over. Anyway, if Dunk gets killed, so
guilty. Guilty.
Undertaker also points out, strictly speaking, Aryan
outranks egg. Yeah, there.
Is that? Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely. Good point.
I'm sure some of those guards, on some level, they're aware of
the same thing. Who?
Who was it? Someone told?
I can't remember the conversation.
It was in A Game of Thrones. I think they're like, look, if
Joffrey says go get his horse, go get his horse, Joffrey says
kill all the horses in the stable, come talk to me first,
you know, because he's not. 16 yet he's not able to.
Yeah, they're allowed to overrule even the king because
he hasn't reached his age and majority.
That's what Tyrion's point was there.
And the King's guard in question is like, well, but I can't say
no to the king. It's like, yeah, you can.
Yeah, it's. Literally the law you can in
certain circumstances. So but of course there's more to
it. Like you don't want to piss off
a king who's going to be able to do whatever he wants when he's
16. So there's they're thinking
ahead. But anyway, we're we're getting
ahead of ourselves. Good thing Aryan was never king
because that's exactly the kind of thing that would happen.
So it's interesting a, a particularly strong thing is
here, Dunk continues to think about justice and and blame and
things like that, but he at no point seems to worry about
himself. He doesn't really worry about
the consequences until they're brooch, like, until Baylor's
like, yeah, you might lose your hand, maybe your foot.
He doesn't. Really think about the
consequences for himself. He's still even in jail thinking
about other people. He's like, damn, I might have
gotten in. Tanzel in Bigger Trouble, and
that is a really big sign of the kind of person he is in his own
internal monologue. He's still not thinking about
himself. That's the kind of thing that
POV structure gives you that you can't get from a narrator.
You can't be certain that this character is actually thinking
these things, right? You can't be sure that it's
honest if it's coming from dialogue.
But when you have your their internal monologue, you know
it's real as much as it ever can be.
You know, they could be lying to themselves.
There's unreliable self narration, I suppose, but it's
as close to the truth as we can ever get, I think.
And I think that's something that's worth focusing on at
times like this when it really speaks to their character that
that we're getting at. We've mentioned it a few times,
but Dunk also thinks about the horses at that moment, right
even. The lesser beings, quote UN
quote lesser. I mean, I think it's fair to
call horses lesser beings. But you know, he's thinking
about the suffering of anything, any anyone that means anything
to him. And that's it takes a big heart
to do that. So he's wondering whether this
is. What's going to?
Happen to them. But he still doesn't regret
doing it. He doesn't regret, Oh, I
shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have stepped in it.
It doesn't even seem to cross his mind, which just reminds US
of of Brienne again, just to someone who does the right
thing, consequences don't even. It's not that they weigh the
consequences and decide it's better to do the right thing.
It's they don't even. They just do the right thing.
It's just a snap decision. There's no.
Weighing. It's just instantly acting.
It's. Almost the same instinct you
might have to, like, pull your hand away from a hot stove.
You don't think, well, if I keep my hand here, it'll be burned,
You know, you just instantly do it.
Yeah, it's like this. Is wrong.
I must do something and when you're dunk, I guess you maybe
have a little more freedom to interfere or to feel like you
can do something 'cause you're a, a large person, you know,
like that's what it probably like.
If egg was the size of dunk, he may not have run off to get
dunk. He might have been like, look,
I'm almost 7 feet tall so I can do this.
You would have just tackled. It yeah, like.
Aryan probably wouldn't have picked on him so much if he was
7 feet tall. But anyway, yeah.
So he still doesn't think of it as a a mistake.
Even when Baylor states the obvious and says, you know, it's
never a wise idea to strike a King's grandson, he still
doesn't really. Yeah, I shouldn't have done
that. No, he's still like, Nope, right
Is Trump's might, etcetera. That always comes first.
And I, I love that. So here's another really
interesting quote for us to to play with for a minute.
Hedge Knight is the. Truest kind of knight, Dunk, the
old man had told him a long, long time ago.
Other Knights serve the Lords who keep them, or from whom they
hold their lands. But we serve where we will.
For men whose causes we believe in every night swears to protect
the weak and innocent. We keep the vow best.
I think queer how strong that memory seemed That could quite
forgotten those words. And perhaps the old man had as
well toward the end. Yeah, let's start with that.
What does that last line mean there?
That's very peculiar, very mysterious.
Like what was Arlen slipping in his no in his honor?
Yeah, there's kind of. 22 parts to this quote to think about
what 1 is the idea of a hedge night at least potentially
having better ability to be a a true knight.
They're less beholden to the will of some Lord than they are
to their vows to protect the innocent.
You know, I think we've even mentioned this before.
If some if Joffrey tell us some knight to go kill a cat or
whatever, the knight just does it.
But I'd normally at a hedge knight, like I'm not killing a
cat, you know, that's pretty much what happens.
With Micah, right? You know, yeah.
I feel like. Part of here is that Arlen would
have now been at the stage where he just wouldn't.
He wouldn't help a cat. OK?
Dunk feels that you should help the cat, whereas A Kingsguard
feels like if someone tells you to kill the cat, you kill the
cat. Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, that, that's the other thing here is the fact that Dunk
One had almost forgotten the words himself, but wonders if
Arlen had two. It makes you wonder if toward
the end if Arlen, maybe his standards were slipping.
He was too old, you know, or he was too desperate or too
frustrated or becoming bitter. I don't want to be too negative,
but something made Dunk think this.
So maybe Arlen serves some Lord, that was kind of crappy.
I mean desperation. Is a good point like he's
getting older. He's not going to have as much
value to a lot of Lords that like the job of like if he's
supposed to protect people like is he even capable of doing
that? You know, it's, it's a very
anxious lifestyle, not having like any means of retirement.
I mean, it's sort of like you're just expect to die in the line
of duty, I guess. But yeah, that's, that's tough
to think about and it's tough to to reckon with if you try to put
yourself in their place. Dunk is nowhere near that spot
himself. He's young and and and healthy.
So he made, he may lack that perspective at this point.
He may, that may be part of why he doesn't understand it, but
also he's just young and not very worldly in the 1st place.
So but like along the lines of what you're saying, the hedge
nights are also among the common folk more often just the people
you have more conversations with.
They're not sitting in the high halls and having their dinners
with the fancy people. Dunk is constantly among people
of a similar socioeconomic status, so he's more aware of
what their day-to-day struggles are.
So that's a great. Point of something to back up
what Arlen is saying there, that they may keep those vows best
because perhaps they're more associated with those troubles
they see. They're confronted with these
issues that the true Knights are supposed to be solving.
Sitting in a castle can give you some detachment from a lot of
these issues and that gets into this very important under the
radar or not under the radar. It actually comes front and
center here towards the end. Baylor's loaded question, but
very poignant question of how you know, So I ask you again,
Sir Duncan atall, how good a knight are you truly?
So there's good Knights and there's good Knights.
And in this case, Baylor's asking how good are you in
quotes, meaning like, how good are you at fighting?
Because ultimately that is, I mean, that's what we just
touched on. If Arlen isn't capable of
fighting anymore, then is he really even a hedge knight?
And then that it gets into the desperation angles and all that.
So how does this line resonate with you, Sean?
It seems pretty important, doesn't it?
Yeah. And I I also think in AI don't
know in a sort of an abstract way he might mean how good as in
how. Upright.
Or moral or whatever are you? If you consider a couple things,
one, if Baylor really does have faith in a gods, like if you're
really a good knight dunk, you know, then the gods will be on
your side for this this trial by combat.
Are you really a good knight? And also maybe I, I don't think
it's come yet to the trial of Seven, but on some level, if
you're really a good knight, will you be able to get other
swords to come to your side? You know, I don't think he could
have meant that here because that's not happening yet, but
you could see how it could also be a factor.
And yes, Dunk is on both counts, Yeah.
He maybe hasn't proved. It to himself yet.
I mean, he hasn't gotten into a fight to the death yet.
He certainly is about to and it works out.
Yeah, I mean, he isn't. Skilled.
He isn't a particularly skilled knight, but he just has such raw
talent that it's hard to beat him.
Yeah, like if you're. Baylor and you look at him,
you're like. I bet he could be.
Good. If he's untrained, he might not
be very good, but you could see that it's just like he might be
really good because you see that strength and size.
You're like, well, I definitely wouldn't just wave him away now,
Arlen. Yeah.
Like some older guy and his, you know, that doesn't look very
physically imposing. You might not be so intimidated
by that, but this is this is. You can't just sneeze.
It's A7 footer, right? So and.
This is something that goes back to the absolute beginning of A
Game of Thrones. If you're good at killing, you
can get away with a lot. I mean, talk about being ordered
to kill a cat. I brought up briefly the the
question of Micah, right? The butcher's boy Sandor
basically ordered to kill him and does it mostly
unquestioningly. But then later, of course, we
find out Sandor's somewhat bitter over the whole thing.
Maybe not specifically over Micah.
He kind of doesn't talk about that too much.
But you don't get the you don't get the feeling that he liked
it, even though he has this bravado about it 'cause he he
comes back with all this stuff about how Knights are good at
killing. That's what makes a knight.
He's insisting on it.
He thinks the rest is all nonsense.
The rest is bull. And if you if you're good at
killing, that's all that matters.
That's the look at who how his brother has advanced so high.
His brother's the absolute worst at nightly ideals, but because
he's good at killing, he's at the top.
And so to to Sandor that proves everything.
You're like, well, this is you can see.
Part of that, too. Is not just your physical
fighting ability, which is a big factor, but your willingness to
do it. I, I mentioned that before about
the idea of who wins a fight is a person who realizes it's
really a fight first. And especially in a lot of these
scenarios, sometimes the fight doesn't happen if you know the
other, if you know that this person will kill a little kid,
they're definitely willing to kill you.
Like maybe they won't be able to, but they're going to
freaking try. They're not going to.
I think about that scene and I'm forgiven when Clint Eastwood
says, yeah, I'm all money. I've killed women and children
and anything that walks and crawls, and now I'm here to kill
you, you know? And that's something.
That's a really interesting debate amongst the Kingsguard.
Like what type of knight is right for the Kingsguard?
Is it someone who's the best fighter or is it someone who's
the most loyal? Or is it some combination of the
two? And that that's a fantastic
conversation that comes up between Griff and Young Griff,
which is Griff is not happy that Duck is being added to the
Kingsguard because he doesn't think he's a good enough
fighter. But young Aegon, I think I kind
of agree with young Aegon. It's like, yeah, but he'll give
his life for me. I think you need a.
Mix. I think you need a good mix.
Yeah, I agree. I think you.
Need a good mix. If they're just good fighters
but you can't count on them, then what good is that?
Right? But if they will throw their
life away to give you a few minutes to escape, well, that
might be worth more than a skilled sword and I.
Think that you should throw in someone who is just plain
honorable, just plain a good night in the sense a true night
to, you know, help keep the other Knights a little honest.
Yeah, you. Don't want them to all turn into
You'd like the culture of the Kingsguard to be?
Yeah, yeah. Like that can be.
A thing I mean. This is all.
Nice to 1, but it's hard to find someone that fits all this.
Even if you find someone with all these things also, they have
to give up their inheritance. Yeah, it's a very.
Political thing, there's tons of families that want their kid to
be in the Kingsguard, so you're kind of slighting them if their
kid is is good. Almost.
Good enough and and the whole. Thing is, the Kingsguard are
like believed to be the finest Knights in the realm, but what
makes the finest knight is what we're here discussing.
And clearly there is no straightforward basis for that.
There is no universally agreed upon definition for what makes
the best night. If you ask Sandor, well, we just
explained that if you ask Brienne, she would not agree
with Sandor. She would include the fighting
prowess, of course, because that is part of it.
You have to have the ability to protect the people you want to
protect. But her, her definition would be
more nuanced. For example, even though she's
been through so much, you could. Even think about like even if
you try to ignore political aspects or chivalrous aspects,
one might knight might be really good at jousting, but not that
good at swordplay one vice versa, which is better?
What's more important? And even if you ignore all the
fighting abilities, think about just discretion.
Think about just like keeping quiet about things you hear in
corridor what you know is going on in a a treaty or an alliance
or a breaking of one or etcetera, etcetera.
You know some of that. I agree with you discretion and
I wasn't thinking about that exactly, but some of that is
covered under loyalty. But you.
Still have to, even if you, I think how it says you could be
very loyal. You can be a great fighter and
be very loyal and very honorable, but not very wise.
You could just be, you could just make mistakes.
You could just be incompetent or or or.
Yeah, you could not. Realize yeah, you could not.
Realize. That something is is how
important it is a perfect. Example.
Of that comes in Aryan 2 and she's with these lesser members
of the Golden Company and when she's trying to get information
out of them and one of them is chatty and she gets I think
Chains is chatty and she gets some information out of him.
And then it's contrasted by when she meets Lysona Marr and she's
like, OK, this is the guy who knows how to keep quiet.
This is the guy who knows who knows how to talk without saying
anything. This is a guy who's not going to
give any away any any information by accident.
So you really that that contrast is really brought out, drawn out
on the page there. And I think that's that's
exactly what you're talking about here.
Darren the dreamer. We skipped over him before to
try to talk about him all at once.
I see him as sort of a combination of Tyrion and
Rhaegar and his dragon dreams are more frequent and intense
than what we've seen from just about anyone.
It's. Not as if there's a.
Lot of examples of dragon dreamers.
Certainly there's plenty, but you you're generally looking at
that from a. Throughout history, there's.
Plenty. There's not like a lot of them
around at any given time. And the most famous is probably
Danny's the Dreamer. But we don't really know
anything about her personality. For maybe she was also a heavy
drinker, you know, somebody that was tormented by the intensity
of these dreams, but she wrote them down or maybe dictated them
or something. So she certainly seemed to have
a little more of a handle on what was going on.
Maybe it was more of an outlet for her, but also very more
importantly, much more importantly, her dreams were
taken seriously. They listened to her.
They left Valyria because of her dreams.
They she foresaw the doom. So that's a pretty big
difference. What I mean is that you're
validated. This poor Deron guy, He has
dreams that come true. No one seems to care and there's
there's no there's no like makars like well, what do you
think is going to happen next, son?
No, this is like a this is a burden on him.
I. Wonder how much Valyria
surprised it understood it One. And if they did, why did no one
else listen to Danis? Or did they not?
Or did the Targaryens keep this quiet?
Yeah. It's a.
Great question. And I suspect that they didn't
put a lot of stock into it because otherwise, how come none
of the other families got out of there on, you know, they, yeah,
Targaryens for leaving. So it seems like this was an
exception rather than a normal, or it wasn't.
I I have to wonder, is it possible that not all Valyrian
families even have similar abilities?
It's. Yeah, I would guess that's very
likely as a possibility. It seems like if all the dragon
Lord families had dragon dreams. I don't know, it seems like a
lot. I mean, yeah, if all.
The Dragon Lord families had dragon dreams.
They would put more stock into it.
Yeah. And and.
You wouldn't only have had one family stay and put, I think.
I think more families would have left.
So I think it it's circumstantial, but I think it's
pretty strong circumstantial evidence that this was an
exception we. Also, just don't have.
A lot of other examples of the dreams being taken seriously by
too many people through other dreamers like Damon the second.
This is setting up the third story.
This Daron's dreams like blood Ravens going to flat out say
well some Targaryens have dragon dreams so why not a few black
fires? They have the same bloodlines.
That makes sense right? But did anyone support Damon the
second when he came over? Only the people in Westeros his
the rest of the Black Fires didn't support this dreamer guy,
and Bitter Steel didn't support him.
So the long term seems to indicate that most of the time
these dreams are not listened to by the people around these
dreamers, even when they're a royal.
So this is a little unusual. You've got this guy who's rich
and powerful, but still this is still a handicap of some kinds,
viewed as a negative. So it's kind of unusual to be
fair there. Are other factors, like he is
also questionable honor and he's alcoholic, so it might be a
little easier for them to blow him off.
If Baylor was having these dreams, he might have taken more
serious. Yeah, that's true.
That's true. Potentially it just, I guess I
just what I'm getting at is it doesn't seem like they've ever
throughout the centuries ever tried to make it part of their
identity. You'd think that maybe it's one
of these dreamers or two of these dreamers, or some of them
wouldn't be a, you know, someone who is a dishonorable.
Yeah, it makes you wonder. Maybe what the cause and effect
is. Yeah, like.
I think and maybe makes you. Wonder if it's the gods playing
their games. Like, we'll give you the
alcoholic, you get the special ability.
Yeah, no one will believe you. Well, that is this.
Will create some. Irony.
That's a really good point because.
That is what we're told about the gifts of the old Gods,
right? It's it's generally quote UN
quote given to those who have some sort of physical ailment or
some sort of already existing condition.
So hey, you're not like it's almost seems like a random
connection to be made in a vacuum.
But when you line it up, like with the old God stuff, it, it
fits quite well. And that's something we're very
used to seeing. Something that's true about the
old Gods thematically also line up on the, you know, the fire
and ice things line up a lot of times, I guess, is what I'm
saying. But it's.
You're right too, Sean, that there's more to it than just
this, though. For example, the Seven Kingdoms
are overwhelmingly devout towards the faith or worshippers
of the faith. So if you have the royal family,
like listening to dragon dreams, yeah, they're not going to.
They're not going to be cool with that.
There's definitely some societal reason to keep that on the down
low. The other thing I want to.
Get at here is it just doesn't seem like it's very good for
your mental health to be able to see the future randomly.
Like sleep. Would sleep really be Restful if
you're having this happen all the time?
Constantly seeing the. Future but not knowing how to
interpret it like he sees Dunk and he's like oh God, I've seen
you in my dreams and he doesn't know exactly what's going to
happen but something terrible. What do you do?
You just like get away from me, I mean.
You can have non prophetic dreams and your dreams will
cause you to not have good sleep and haunt you and be exhausted.
That's what I'm saying. When they're real, it must be
just all the more worse. Yeah.
So it's it's hard to fathom just how bad that would be.
I mean, it's enough to. Drive you to drink?
Maybe. Yeah.
And. Here's another aspect we're
really getting into sympathy for the dare on here.
If he's seeing the future regularly, he sees done well.
I mean well, he is seeing the future regularly.
He sees this calamity coming from Dunk.
Well, think about this. What's coming in six months?
The great Spring Sickness is coming in six months.
Then there's another rebellion coming in a few years.
There's all sorts of Targaryens are going to die.
Is he seeing this stuff now? Is he dreaming about it now?
Is he already seeing his father's death?
Is he seeing his own death? Is he seeing like, how far in
advance did we did these dreams happen?
Like Danny saw the Doom 12 years ahead.
At least they moved 12 years ahead.
At least she had the dreams before that, right?
They didn't just wake up the next days.
Like, I had a dream about the doom.
OK, pack up now. No, it's probably a process.
Like, OK, I had that dream again.
You know, they probably finally believed it.
So quite possibly he's dreaming of the death of his family, the
great spring sickness, more rebellions.
And think about this, he winds up marrying Valar's wife, Valar,
the same kid we see at the end here.
Valar's named Hand after his father's death.
But of course, he's only Hand for a few months because of the
sickness gets him. So he marries his cousin's wife.
What about when he met her for the first time?
Did he have some sort of premonition?
Is he dreaming of her? Like, whoa, I'm going to, I'm
going to marry her someday, and that means I know my cousin's
going to die like. Like it's.
It just blows your mind. And none of it's good, right?
Yeah. I don't know how you would.
Deal with this burden like it it it's pretty constantly shown in
media and fiction and and fantasy that the ability to see
the future is not a good thing. You know, I've seen people
speculate on like, what POV do you wish you could have had from
Song of Ice and Firewood? Or Darren's might have been a
good one. It would be hard to.
Write. But yeah, it would be very
interesting. Yeah.
George would have to make these decisions on which visions to
put in there and how to portray them in a dream state.
Yeah, but had the way. Can I say we got a good thing in
the chat about Danny's? Yeah.
From a child of Valyria. Well, as she would.
Know I can't. Imagine where I can't imagine
moving out on a dream of my neighbor's maiden daughter.
Like how many? Things did she?
Prove she could foresee before they're like OK, well she
foresaw that that that that that that and that so.
Yeah. We better, we better listen.
But you'd think that maybe Daron could offer that sort of proof
too. But it's just, it seems the
dreams are too vague for him to to know.
It almost seems like if you're going to have these visions,
they should be more clear. Or it's just tormenting to only
see like a glimmer, like a brief glimpse behind the curtain.
It may also be that a lot of times he pieces together what
the dream was after the event happened.
And so if he tries to tell people they're like, yeah, sure,
if he had told them ahead of time, they might have been like,
hey, wait a minute. But he might not piece it
together until after the fact. So it keep people from really
putting too much stock in it. This might be the first time
he's piercing it together ahead of time.
Yeah. I wonder.
If after this he'll he will put more stock into it and be a
little pushier with bringing it up to someone and maybe still
get brushed away, you know what I mean?
That's a good point. Yeah, You wonder if he ever like
I I wonder if he's talked to his brother about it much Amon
because Amon's now off and gone. Like they Amon was gone at a
young age. You think that their
relationship could have been at their didn't really have a
chance to get going in a way that would have maybe given dare
on some relief from all this, some understanding cause.
Eamon later will. Express on his own death pad
that you know, all my brothers dreamed of Dragons and it, you
know, it tormented them all or whatever.
And, and this is he, he means that in a variety of ways, but
of course this is the most literal of that.
You know, Egg's dreams of Dragons may have been also
fantastical, but he he literally tried to bring them back with
the Summerhall incident. A couple more thoughts.
One down the road. Dunk himself might give Aaron's
dreams more validity. Yeah, since he knew that one
time. Yeah, you're right.
Which also might make egg. Additionally, Aaron might at
some point after having a dream, try to do something to stop it.
And it happened anyway. He might even felt like he
caused it by trying to stop it. I can also see that and destiny
versus decision is another theme that George plays around with a
lot. So I could see that being
another reason why he stopped trying to tell people or stop it
or do something about it. He just.
I just have to accept it. Wow.
Yeah, that. Would might make it worse.
Or make it feel more like I caused it rather than just I
knew about it. That's a very good.
Sad right there. I think you're onto something
with that because that also really explains why he just acts
like he's helpless, like he's a, he seems like a helpless person.
Like I, there's nothing I can do.
I just drink and I'm like, even the way he expresses himself
sarcastically, even his like that, he's like, well, I, I
looked for my brother, but he wasn't in the bottom of of my
cup, so I didn't find it like this is he didn't.
He obviously isn't trying, right.
And that's this is this is the guy who's given up on life.
And that that's that really fits well with someone who's just
like, well, nothing matters. Anything I do just makes it
worse. So yeah, for a man who's given
up, I think that's a great theory as to maybe why.
Yeah. I.
Mean I could see how that would make you a bit of a nihilist
just being like, yeah, fate and destiny are all I can't change
anything in the world. It's all just going to happen,
especially if you. Especially if he's seen his own
death or something like that. I mean that would.
Just make it even worse or, or like we said, like he's he sees
this great series of deaths coming for his family and maybe
he's amongst it. He can't tell it's it's bad.
And it's. It reminds.
Us a bit of Rhaegar too, someone who was very burdened by
prophecy now and Rhaegar's another character we don't
actually know very well. We've seen Deron on screen more
than we've seen Rhaegar. So tells you something right
there. But Rhaegar was fascinated by
Summerhall, perhaps obsessed by it.
There's maybe some supernatural element to that.
He may have had dreams. He was certainly, certainly felt
this. He was melancholic.
He didn't have a sense of humor. Daron's sense of humor is very
sarcastic. He does have a sense of humor,
but it's right. It's it's the self deprecating
cynical type. And so that is a a strong peril.
That's why I said Tyrion and Rhaegar, like Rhaegar, the
burden of prophecy, being highborn and you know, not being
capable of some of the things that the world needs from you.
And then Tyrion is. Of course, that's a little more
straightforward. The drinking, the the constantly
chasing sex workers, the disappointment to your father,
the the hair that isn't quite the same color as the rest of
your family, even just lots of little things like that.
Of course, the sense of humor too, That's that's it's really
does have a similar sense of humor to Tyrion, doesn't he?
Yeah, I was going to say. You were being really rough on
them, real mean, until you brought up the sense of humor.
That one redeeming quality. Hey, I'm.
Not the one who? Made the parallels.
I'm just pointing to them. But yeah, I think it's
important, like you to have this ability, this burden of
prophecy, you to handle that you need a strong personality.
And it just doesn't seem like maybe Deron just doesn't have it
now. Maybe I'm just not giving him
enough credit. It's just that hard to handle.
Rhaegar, maybe it's similar. Rhaegar seems like he's a little
stronger. He's able to handle this, this
burden more, although it's didn't work out for him.
So, Melisandre? Handles it all right.
Yeah, Melisandre. See, that's a good example.
Melisandre, someone who handles it pretty well, as far as like
the the burden of it. Maybe she isn't interpreting,
She might not. Interpret as well.
She might make mistakes, but yeah, she's not.
She hasn't turn to depression and alcohol, right?
And she is very. Focused.
She's like, Nope, save humanity, right or wrong, there is nobody
more focused on it than her. So you got to give her props for
that I think. And she may have.
Gone more struggle in her youth to to gain independence, if you
will, whereas Aaron's been cuddled cuddled, you know so I
mean she. Also wanted these abilities,
they weren't thrust upon her. She had, you know, she's.
Ambitious where Aaron doesn't seem to be.
Yeah, well, I mean she was given.
Away as a slave, as a child, I guess it's not entirely clear
what she Yeah, I don't know how. Much choice she had in learning
to read fires or anything like that.
I I have to think that you probably had.
Choice. In what line of work you went
into within the temple and what you were natural naturally
talented at and she claims. To be one of the best at blame
readings, Yeah. So I feel like that, you know?
Maybe they just, like, they go through some tests and she just
is naturally really good. So they're like, OK, you're
going to be a priestess. Yeah.
And it's a. Very similar concept to what
we're just talking about with Knights.
The the Knights who rise the highest are the ones who are the
best at fighting chivalry. That helps, other things matter,
but ultimately it's your skill that really carries the most
weight and that would. Seem to be true.
Here as well with the red priestesses and priests so as
well as it is with these Princess and princelings and and
all the rest. Here's another quote.
I do not need to be. Reminded of my son's failings.
Brother. He has only 18 years.
He can change. He will change.
God's be damned or I swear I'll see him dead.
We don't know. Exactly when?
Yeah. We don't know.
Exactly when Darren died, but it was via STD, apparently, and he
did die before his father. So we don't know whether it was
a lot before his father or just a few years, but it was
definitely after his father was crowned.
But his father ruled for about 12 years, and we're not sure
when in that reign it happened. So it's pretty bad.
Yeah. That's another thing we talked
about. Nina brings it up here as well.
Makar is very intimidating. Like we compare him to Stannis
and Stannis is pretty intimidating, but I think Makar
is more intimidating. Like just picture him in that
armor. The way his armor is described,
it's like one of the most intimidating armor sets I've
ever heard of, and it's just. Boosted.
By the fact that you know who's wearing it and Makar is just so
prickly and proud and and big intense, I mean.
The a mock art where George, you know, told mock how to draw him
shows Makar. Is this this big buff like
square jawed man of a king? Yeah, he's a.
Tank. Yeah, Tank.
Is the right word. Yeah, so.
Even like even Arion is pretty mild and behaving around when
his father's around. So it kind of gives you a sense
of even Aryan is intimidated by by Daddy Makar here.
So that's where you wonder. We don't have a comparison for
Stannis there because Stannis doesn't have a son.
Stannis, the way he treats Shereen is more like a dutiful,
you know, he doesn't have a lot of he doesn't really have warmth
towards hardly anyone really, but you.
Got a sense that if. Stannis had a son.
He'd be real hard on him, don't you think?
Yeah. He'd be like, no, you got.
To live up to this and that and this.
And Stannis doesn't understand weakness.
Like he he wouldn't understand it coming from a child of his
body even less. I would, I would think he would
be even less understanding or, or nuanced about it.
So that's something to think about.
What would it be like to have the burden of a guy like that as
your dad while also having these dreams and this intent to like,
I just can't fathom. I'm like, I, I it's hard to feel
sorry for a guy with his much privilege, but I do feel pretty
sorry for Darren giving all this other stuff he could have made
more of his life, but maybe not his mental health is just that.
Can't make that assumption. I I don't know what it's like to
have dreams like that. You should.
Try it and then. Yeah, we're going to stick.
A Lance in you because you said you.
You said you couldn't relate to that either.
Wow, if you dream. About having a Lance stuck in
your Aziz, I don't know. You better have a drink.
So of course this. Proceeds now to the recruiting
of of members for his his group of seven.
This is pretty neat. It's not a common thing.
A little more on this later, but the Laughing Storm says this is
the first trial of seven in a century.
He says, I suspect it's going to become a famous event or he
suspects it will be because of that, which is probably part of
why he wants to be involved, because he wants to be, you
know, it's a good way to be in the history books.
And these, these these nobles are always thinking about things
like that. Fame is part of their parlance
of what they're looking for. So there's there's a little more
irony here with Stefan Fosseway, wasn't there, Sean?
Yeah. He had told he had told Dunk I.
I think I've got the quote here. You have one false away, at
least the right one. Not so much in the end.
Maybe he did have the right one. Yeah, he did.
He got the right one. The wrong was on the other side.
Yeah, it was nice to hear that. It seemed like Raymond came out
ahead and they're fighting, too. He's like, I think I broke some
of his ribs. And Raymond himself seemed
unhurt. So.
All right, He may have been the better knight in both ways,
right? The better fighter and the
honourable guy win 1 for the good guys there.
So I really wonder, this is a big, big question for me, what
drives Baylor to do this? Like he knows it's risky.
He. Knows it's.
Justified he knows the dunk is like he's at least he's
convinced himself based on talking to dunk.
Still this. I mean I don't think he has like
I'm not suggesting an ulterior motive.
I don't think he's like trying to like get his brother in a
position where he can kill him or something like nothing like
that. Not even that's not even
remotely a possibility in my mind.
But what is What Does he have an angle?
Is he trying to like think ahead to being king and try to set an
example? Is he trying to like get more
Knights to be like him and be more chivalrous by loudly
standing up for someone who can't stand up for themselves?
How do you interpret this? It's really interesting.
I've real. Quick, I have one.
Question to add on to that before Sean answers, is there
any chance that he wanted? I mean, I think it's a bunch of
those reasons. To be clear.
I don't think it's just one reason, but is there any chance?
Part of those reasons was that Daron was in the fight and had
to fight, and Baylor didn't really want him killed.
And he felt that Aryan might actually be happy if Daron was
killed. Rather than.
Trying to kill a brother. He was trying to mitigate the
chances of a brother being killed.
Putting. The danger?
Taking on some of the danger himself.
Yeah. I think that's that's an
interesting idea for sure. That could be.
I could have been in his mind. What do you think, Sean?
Again. It's, it's, there's so many
reasons I, I got to believe, especially the little bit we
know about Baylor, which is almost all positive.
He seems to just be perfect in every way, right?
And you got to imagine he was up all night plotting all the
pieces of this together. So one piece might be there may
be a little bit of a gamble if I take the other side, that might
be enough to get Aaron to back down.
It might just be done with as soon as I appear on the other
side. He may have like, all right,
fine. I didn't know you're that
serious about it. Forget the whole thing, right?
It's almost given Aaron and out to not have to follow through
with this. I kind of wonder if Aaron might
have been a little scared to fight Dunk in the 1st place and
that's why he wanted to trial by 7 and not heads up combat it one
if he's not only afraid to fight dunk heads up, but also might
know that Dunk can't gather 6 other nights.
But now that that's happened, Baylor was like, you know, you
know, Baylor was not happy about Aryan insisting on the trial by
7. He's like, this is a seldom
called. It's an ancient thing.
We don't normally do this, but technically you have the right,
you know, so Baylor's like, well, now that he's done this,
you know, what's my next move? You know, so I could see a
million angles of how he looked at this.
Some might be very straightforward, like it's the
right thing to do. He's just being chivalrous.
He might have that same instinct to do the right thing that Donk
and Brian have. It might be a gamble to nip it
in a bud before the combat even happens that maybe Aaron will
just back down. He probably knew Darren was like
looking for an excuse to back down already.
You know I knew Darren wasn't serious about fighting to the
death, right? So he might need to be set an
example. You might want to put Aaron in
his place for the killing that horse and then attacking a
girl's like jeez, can't fight with them Dunks kind of right
here. You know he doesn't want to be.
Seen to not. Give justice for.
That like, if he's going to be king, he doesn't want people to
be able to do that sort of thing.
Yeah, they can't attack a woman and just get away with it.
Yeah, they can't associate. Baylor, with Aryan's actions
there and in the inverse of what I was saying in terms of Baylor
maybe thinking he could mitigate things in the trial of seven,
I've always wondered if there's any chance that you, you
mentioned Aryan, maybe he was afraid or had some, you know,
leeriness there. I've wondered if he chose it
because he knew Daron would have to be part of it and Aryan wants
his. Is that Darren?
Darren is ahead of him in the line of succession.
Like Darren should be dead. That I I feel like Aryan does
have that in his mind. I don't I don't like him so I
don't trust him it. Didn't occur to me.
But the more more I think about it, I think you're right.
I think that is like at least another part of the angle that
Aryan can shoot. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean that. Way Aryan is not a kinslayer.
He isn't involved at all. But Darren is not a good fighter
enough that it's. It's entirely possible that he
is killed, or that Aryan can even be the one to kill him and
no one will ever know, but it hasn't been clear enough that
Aryan would go that far. To add on to what you were
saying, Sean as well, the idea that he may have thought there
would be someone backing down, he may have thought to just his
entering may have changed the picture.
Nina. Suggested.
A similar thing and are over on Flick.
Stefan B had a question for you Sean.
I would like to hear Sean's managing and ruling oriented
thoughts on this. The whole affair was extremely
poorly handled by the rulers in my opinion.
The Hand of the King dead and risk of three Kingsguard and
four Targaryens coming to harm, 2 of them very important.
Baylor and Makar over a minor incident between a loose cannon
Targaryen and a hedge knight. Surely there must have been a
better way to resolve this. 12 by 7 is.
Part of the law. So that is maybe maybe there
isn't a way, but what do you think Sean is that?
Is that kind of how you see it or are they kind of trapped by
their own honor or maybe there was another way you.
Know there might. Have been another way.
Like I have to think for a quick second about this.
One of my thoughts is I don't know if this was necessarily a
minor incident. Like maybe by itself it's a
minor incident, but when you add together all the stuff that
Aryan's done, maybe it's not as minor, might not necessarily be
minor in the 1st place. Assuming that there is some,
assuming that Baylor believes in chivalry, assuming he wants his
family to be honorable. Like, doggone Aryan, you can't
do this, you know, like, I have to do something about this.
Letting this go. This one incident maybe isn't
that bad, but it sets a precedent.
How many more times does Aaron get to do this without better
doing something about it? At some point, it's kind of his
role to put this in check. And it may on some level seem
minor right now, but as a whole, he, I, I, I feel like he's
obliged. Now, if he is obliged to do
something about it, I don't know if like, having royal family
fight to the death maybe isn't the thing to do.
But it they are trying to treat this, I don't know quite how to
say this, but like by the books, they're like trying to like use
whatever laws of the land they have.
And this is what is coming. I think it would be worse for
Baylor to say, nevermind, we're not going to follow the law.
You just have to do what I say. That's kind of dictatorial, you
know, And I don't think that's his character or good precedent
for him to set. I mean, it's a.
It's a tough situation, and maybe there's a better way.
I can't immediately think of one.
Yeah, Baylor might have been up all night trying to think of one
himself. I don't know.
There's so many. Things he's trying to balance
here, like Ashaya said, it's hard to it's hard to get at what
Baylor would think is the most important thing.
And and yeah, we really don't know what's in his head here.
A lot of our. Tanzel talk will be the
beginning of the Sworn Sword because he thinks about her so
much having not found her. So we've got a few notes on that
that we'll say for then. But I do want to say it's a kind
of a micro tragedy that she leaves before seeing Dunk win.
It's like, Dang it, she's he wins.
Oh man, she doesn't even get to see that.
It's so, but you get it, right? You understand why she left.
When it's laid out for him, he doesn't even quite.
He's not like he's disappointed, but he doesn't think she made a
bad decision. She's like, Oh yeah, yeah, get
away while you can. You can.
Maybe save it more for a later talk with all the other stuff
that was surround this, but think how differently the whole
story might have played out if she had stayed.
Oh wow, yeah. She would have.
Would he have? Still gone on to be in the
Kingsguard. Would he have wanted to marry
her? Would he still cared as much
about being dunks? You know, about Egg being his
Squire, which you've been happy to settle down.
You know, it's a good point. Good.
Point SO. You.
Cited a quote here that I think is absolutely worth discussing.
Let's let's go to that. This is when.
He got in the shield from from Pate.
Now the Dark held it in his hands.
It seemed all wrong. The star was falling.
What sort of sigil was that? Well, he'd fall just as fast,
and sunset heralds night. I should have stayed with the
chalice, he said miserably. It had wings at least to fly
away and Sir Arlen said the cup was full of faith and fellowship
and good things to drink. What do you do with Al?
That that's, that's a powerful question.
One it it kind of shows like his his his lack of confidence.
So you know, there's a thing I don't know enough about it, so I
don't want to speak on it too much, but it there's something
called imposter syndrome where the idea is someone even it's
expert or experience, it might be it's something they still
feel like they haven't earned it or they don't belong or
whatever. And sometimes I feel like Dunk
might have that he is almost always looking at himself and in
in a negative light, you know? And additionally, by the way,
it's it's there's a lot of this. This may be a moment of him
getting out from under Sir Arlen's wings, right?
He's got to be his own. But he has to accept this is his
own sigil. This is his own path also, he's
not flying away. He never flies away like and it
almost shows like that the Ned quote where you know you have to
be scared to be brave in the 1st place.
The fact that he considers it makes it better, makes it more
valuable or honorable that he does stay time and again.
You know he isn't just completely dumb bumbling into
these things. He knows it's dangerous, he
knows he's risking his life, but he does it anyway.
Side note, another clue here. We keep hitting, I'm trying to
save it to the end, but we keep passing these little moments of
evidence back and forth about whether Dunk might be a nice.
And one of my thoughts is it maybe Arlen was just blind drunk
and didn't even remember it the next day and that.
And so Dunk doesn't think it counts.
And this is, you know, his Arlen's cup is a chalice.
You know what I mean? Like he there's a few hints that
Arlen might be alcoholic in it. It could give Dunk reason to
question the validity of his knighting.
But that's a good point. Yeah, it's.
Interesting. There's, there's like certainly
people do tend to frame the question was he knighted or not.
Whereas you're raising the question was maybe the knighting
was incomplete or something was wrong with it, which is what
you're saying here. And that's a really good third
option. I think that's very much worth
consideration. Yeah, not.
That Dunk just straight up lied about being knighted.
That maybe Dunk knows it didn't count even if it really
happened. Yeah.
With. And all.
Kinds of reasons he might think it didn't count maybe Arlen was
drunk maybe he knows there's supposed to be a septum there
maybe Arlen hadn't been honorable in his final days,
maybe you know etcetera. Maybe he wakes up and he's.
Like I didn't know you. You kidding me?
You're not worthy. You know, something like that.
He's like, well, you sorted. You know, take it back.
Like that, Yeah. Anyway, we're just speculating,
but it just goes to show there are other possibilities besides
just yes or no here. Yeah, a straight.
Yeah, I like that. I like because I don't.
I don't. I'm not terribly open to it.
Never happened at all, but I like this sort of hybrid concept
of something. Wasn't.
Quite right about it. Maybe the dunk season incomplete
that that works better for me as an as an alternative.
But maybe one day we'll find out for sure.
Also with this falling star. Yeah.
Like as a metaphor, A lot of good things come from falling
stars, like Dawn, the sword, right, the metal that comes out
of it. the IT founded a house and it happens like them in
their fight, Aryan swinging his morning star and the ball comes
down on Dunk's head and, and it's very symbolic, but Dunk
gets back up again. And it reminds me of So what
Arthur Dayne says to Jamie when Jamie's being knighted.
He's he lays dawn on his shoulder to knight him, you
know, back and forth like, but dawn is so sharp that it cuts
him just being laid, just laid on his shoulder like that.
And and Arthur says all Knights bleed.
This is a function of that Dunk sitting there and questioning
whether he's good enough is a function of that of all Knights
bleed. He's getting he's.
Considering. Himself and asking himself
whether he's good enough. It's the same thing as
sharpening your sword or practicing your strokes.
Getting down in the mud and actually fighting is.
If we agree that knighthood is part fighting and part behavior,
then you better have some self reflection.
You don't necessarily have to ask am I good enough?
It doesn't have to take the exact shape that dunks.
Imposter syndrome I. Think is a good thing to use as
an example here that you brought up.
The fact that you're if you're not questioning yourself like
there too much confidence is a bad thing.
Too much confidence is arrogance like Aryan.
Is pretty arrogant. You know, like the guy just
seems very full of himself, you know, a good example of that
perhaps. I mean, obviously he's, it's not
just about his confidence. He's not.
He's also like a psychopath, but hey.
Let's take a few. Questions here.
Julia says it's proof that Aryan is a bully and a coward.
By demanding the trial of seven, he would risk 14 lives instead
of just one. Yeah.
I I think you were right, Sean.
I think by demanding a trial by 7 rather than a trial of 1.
I think that I don't know that he was afraid of him to face him
head on because he did go right for him in the fight, although
maybe that was just because people were watching.
But you're there's definitely something to the fact that he
probably thought there's a good chance that no one that he
wouldn't be able to get 7. After all, they tried to bribe,
they've successfully bribed Stefan away.
So they were definitely trying to undermine Dunk getting to 7.
So there's pretty straightforward evidence of
that. So yeah, I guess Aryan wasn't
afraid to fight when it came down to it, but he maybe was
trying to avoid the fight in the 1st place.
Just that's the way bullies are. They'll they'll use violence but
they prefer to and not have it returned.
Yeah, 1 sided there's different. Types and levels of cowardice.
And I think Aryan isn't a straight up coward, but he's not
a straight up hero either, right?
Dornish Dame wants. And you got to wonder what
Darren the second thought Slash did when he was told about about
this death. Apparently he news went back and
forth pretty quickly because they argued about there was some
debate over the funeral practice and it was Darren's word to go
ahead with the burning. Matthew Dominique.
Says I do feel like Baylor picking a side is just as much a
political scandal than letting Dunk go and.
I wanted. To say that I agree with this,
but that I wanted to bring it back to what Sean said about it
being more dictatorial, about it not necessarily being political,
but about not just telling people what to do.
It looks bad outs from the outside, kind of like like the
Targaryens were fighting each other, like, you know, like,
wow, what's that all about? Yeah, it it.
You can definitely like look at pieces of this and judge them,
but what are the alternatives? This is sort of a, a, a no good,
a lesser of five evils, if you will, you know what I mean?
Like all the different ways you could potentially handle this
have some problem. And this one I think in the end,
maybe on some level has the the greatest risk, but also has the
least problems. You know that that it doesn't
set bad precedence for the future.
It maintains the level of honor and integrity for the family,
the law, never mind just the right thing or dunks character,
etcetera. Some.
Yeah, right. On and also for.
The most part, everyone, I don't know, I say this risking their
lives here is, is asking for it. They're they're they're in on
this. They're agreeing to it.
No one's being coerced. You know, that's true.
That's true. I think Daron's a little.
Bit being coerced, I think Daron is honestly.
I guess Daron is a. Little bit dunk kind of is a
little bit too. Yeah, I guess you're too.
But hey, you know. Yeah.
Their. Whole life is coercion.
So here's a question from CCAKA, Mrs. Duncan the Tall.
Hi friends, I'm loving the new Valeritas episodes.
Here's a question. At the end of the story, Makar
asked Dunk if his tree, his Elm tree, gives him any answers.
Dunk replies. None that I can hear.
Is this perhaps foreshadowing or a nod or some sort of
implication that the old gods will communicate to Dunk via
weirwood or Blood Raven himself communicate to him?
Certainly he's going to have Blood Raven in his life.
So you could have the sort of the middle man communicating
there. And there's this quote.
That comes. At the beginning of The Sworn
Sword, I think it is doesn't matter where it is really.
But Dunk, remembering the first time he met Bloodraven, which is
when he was a kid, he saw Bloodraven from afar, and he
said he looked like he was looking into his soul.
And by the way, Jimi Hendrix. Behind me, he's looking into
yourself. It's true.
That's. True, He is good at that.
Jimi Hendrix, rather in honor of the Red Keep, he wrote a song
about the Red House. Yes.
There you go. And so, yeah, this is an
interesting question because, yeah, it is.
I I took note of that quote, too.
It's a little, you know, it's an Elm tree, not a weirwood.
But of course, if it was a weirwood, that would all the
alarm bells would go off. And what's a weirwood doing
there? And, you know, let me see its
face. And yeah, that maybe would be a
little too obvious. But yeah, anytime someone asks,
are the trees talking? You, you got to go away.
What's this all? What's that now?
You can't just skip. Over talking trees in in the
song of ice and fire or related properties.
So yeah, I do wonder about that. You know, all this connection
with the blood Raven and maker. I'm not sure we can.
We certainly don't have a definitive answer.
But yes, I think there is George's alluding to this as his
future as the the whispering of trees is going to matter a lot.
Probably more for AG than Dunk though, if we're being honest.
Although things that. Matter for AG, matter for Dunk.
Yeah, that's true. They're really tied.
Together, it's hard to separate them, I guess in in a lot of
ways and of course we know they're going to go to the wall
right at some point that's going to happen.
So we'll see about that. That's that's later.
I. Wanted to.
Cite this comment from YouTube by Ferrell 75 because it very
well summarizes the issues facing Dunk from A and and
Brienne from a societal angle. So this is a good sad from
Pharaoh 75. It's the inherent sexism which
defines chivalry that is Brienne's biggest obstacle, and
for Dunk it's the inherent snobbism which comes from the
upper classes. It also defines chivalry as his
obstacle and both are managing to show to everyone that these
two age-old tropes of chivalry are meaningless mummery.
Very, very well said Snobbism which?
Comes from the upper class AKA classism, yes.
Yes, Good said. Yes, So that's awesome.
That's really well said. Feral 75.
It's true. This, this story not only
highlights those aspects of chivalry which maybe aren't
chivalrous, they shouldn't belong as the as part of the
definition of chivalry, although they often are lumped in there.
And George is showing us that by highlighting that, we really get
the sense of yeah. What the upper?
Class thinks of his chivalry a lot of times involves these
sexism and classism, and that's very much defeats the purpose in
the first place. Igor.
Igor P says my most memorable cheating technique from this
tourney is injuring people during practice.
Yeah, that's what we didn't mention.
That's just there's we we did mention that there's just this
assault of little examples of cheating and unshoverous
behavior, just just countless examples.
And this is one we didn't specifically cite, but that's a
pretty good one. Like like.
Looking for an. Edge, it's a good.
A good hint at the idea of a tournament night that we see in
the third book. The idea that that sort of
angles that people have just to win these tournaments.
I don't have anything to do with chivalry or even being a good
fighter. Just like ways to game the
system. I even understand.
I understand it. It makes sense to try to find
edges, but it maybe doesn't make sense for a chivalrous knight to
try to find those edges, you know?
Or maybe they need to have better rules for the tournament.
I don't know. But yeah, Andrew.
Lim calls back our example of dragonflies.
When I was stationed in Korea, we used to have competitions to
see who could get a dragonfly to catch the biggest Pebble.
Some of the dragonflies were big enough to grab and momentarily
hold pebbles twice the size of a pea.
They are wonderful insects. Whoa, dragonflies catching
pebbles? That's wild.
I didn't know that was a thing. Learn something new every day, I
suppose. Yeah, That's really cool.
Thanks for that, Andrew Lim. Dragonflies are pretty amazing.
I mean, it makes sense that they'd be amazing in a lot of
ways. Like human evolution didn't
start. As long ago.
As dragonfly evolution, they've been evolving for what, 60
million more years, years than us, something like that.
So yeah, they're impressive. Jefferson says.
On the subject of the Laughing Storm knocking off pieces of his
opponent's armor and tossing them to the crowd, a victor, an
attorney or melee, wins his defeated horse in the armor.
So he really is giving away part of his winnings to the Commons,
which I would argue is chivalrous.
Yeah, it is sort of a Gray area now, to be fair.
Yeah, I we even called it Robin Hooding their helmets at the
time when we brought this up. But the understanding between
defeated opponents is that you'll get to buy your stuff
back. Like they generally sell it
back. Like you almost always sell it
back to the person you beat. You take the money and let them
have their stuff because their stuff is customized.
It's personal. It's it's their understanding.
But it's not the rule, right? So that's.
That's the argue. Is it chivalrous to not go by
this understood rule? Like it's definitely chivalrous
to give money to charity, I would say, but is it chivalrous
to divert that from like he could just get the money and
give it to them. He doesn't have to give them,
you know what I mean? Like it's not like this.
Is his only way to give money to charity here?
Yeah, it's it's. Starting the line, it's.
Selfish. Yeah, it's just.
Straight up. Is he wants the, you know,
people applauding him. He wants the pageantry of it
all. It's showy.
Yeah. I don't, I don't really think
that it's like he wants to help the common people.
He wants the. Approbation.
Yeah. He wants the Cheers.
Yeah. Yeah.
I don't think he cares about health.
I do want to. Give him a little benefit of the
doubt because later on, when Baylor's presenting his plan of
fighting like, I'll take the Kingsguards because they can't
attack me anyway, he's the one that says, is that chivalrous?
Yeah, that's a good point. About that, that's a good point.
He he so he seems to be mindful. Of it, at least, that's exactly.
Where I was going, what I was going to say, he seems to care.
Whether or not this act is actually chivalrous is
debatable, but he might see it as that, and he maybe is a
chivalrous guy in general if he got into.
An intellectual debate with someone he might like re
evaluate and stop doing it, you know?
But maybe not. He might just be like Nah.
I'm going to keep doing it. It's it's Gray area, whatever.
Who knows? Who knows?
They're like, I didn't take. Their heads off with their
helmet. Julie A.
Asks. Question for the panel.
Is John having dragon dreams? I don't.
Think so. I don't think any of his dreams
have been explicitly dragony. Like he doesn't have dreams of
specific Dragons. He has dreams that you could say
have like flame and fire in them and stuff like that.
But most of his dreams are like the crypts.
He has a few skin changing dreams.
I would. Say magic.
Dreams, yes. Dragon dreams specifically, no.
If that's actually if I concur. OK, cool.
Any. Anything to add to share?
Did I concur? I would be a fool if I did not
concur. Should have concurred.
Why didn't I just concur? Just concur.
That's a reference to Catch Me if you can.
You know, if you haven't seen that movie, Very fun.
Very fun. By the way, it's supposedly
based on a true story. It's not almost.
Oh, really? Yeah, it's not.
I read this whole takedown on it, Frank.
Most of what is in that in the movie is not was never
independently verified Abagnail like tells this story and wrote
a book about it, but people just didn't question it.
But people who have questioned it, yeah, it's almost all bull.
It's too bad because it's still. It's like maybe.
Based on a true story, but it's highly embellished.
It's it's massive, massively embellished.
Yeah. Like, for example, he like he
really massively harassed that family in in in Louisiana and he
didn't ever escape from the plane.
Like a lot of these other things just didn't happen.
And yeah, he he downplayed how bad he was and upplayed,
upplayed how how clever he was. So yeah.
And also the bigger, the bigger issue was that so much of this
happened in a pre Internet era when people just couldn't
question, like things couldn't be questioned.
And and no one's now only a few people have gone back to check
here in the year 2021. So anyway, quite a tangent there
folks. Let's get back to it.
I want to shout out our friends over at Shire Post Mint.
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A Song of Ice and Fire coins, but also other types of coins
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Next time you talk about Shire post, we need to grab our our
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I'll. Jingle my I'll Jingle my sack.
Oh God. Yeah, I think I.
Got they're probably in storage from when I moved here to Denver
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Yeah, that was the the. The Bravosi iron coin is
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There's very there's a lot of versions of it, though.
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Some variations on the artwork and stuff like that.
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know the Bravosi right? That's true.
There's a. Couple of but if you.
Want to buy some for yourself or for a friend or loved one?
If you go to our website, on the sidebar to the right you'll see
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They're really, it's a really easy way to just be like, oh, a
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Has some cool, you know, historical ones.
They don't just have fantasy. Yeah.
All right, let's talk about. The plan as you said, Sean, you
already mentioned this quote from Lionel.
The gods will let us know. We've talked about how the gods
don't have any powers the seven, but maybe they do They didn't
seem to be happy with this trick with.
Baylor. 'S that's the same clue, yeah.
It depends on what. The gods were letting them know
exactly. By the way, that's one of my
favorite lines of the whole series was when when Baylor says
the gods will let us know, it's I like it because you can't
really argue against it because all the people that ostensibly
believe in the gods, he's like, all right, well, if you believe
in the gods, here we go, you know, like, how can you argue?
Again? It's like this sort of excuse.
But also maybe he really does believe in the gods.
It's, it's so many angles to it that it, it, it seems like it's
a good plan. If there is a problem with it.
Look, we're already putting our hands, we're already putting our
lives in God's hands anyway. So it's a very, at least we're
going to do it in a way that seems wisest.
And if the gods don't like it, they'll let us know.
So that's a good. Set right there for sure.
He's probably devout and I think there's a really strong argument
that he is legitimately devout and not just saying this.
After all, he's the son of Daron the good who idolized Baylor the
blessed, the so-called Septon King.
So I mean, as he's got a Direct Line to, I mean he's named after
Baylor the blessed. That's so absolutely.
This guy was given of religious upbringing, his family's
brought. He was brought up amongst people
that are devout believers that have Syrian faith is a big part
of their life. So yes, we have to reckon with
that as part of his attitude, part of his character.
I think it would be a mistake not to something.
That prayer is religion aside, you know, even if you're a
straight atheist, there still is something.
Prayer still has these, I think at least two purposes that it
served. You reflect on what you're
thankful for a lot of your prayers or you know, thank you
God for this, whatever. And I think that's a valuable
thing. And the other is to think about
what you want. You know, please let my cousin
be cured of cancer or let me get this job or whatever.
Those are things that prayer do, whether or not you believe in
the gods. And so whether there are real
gods, whether Balor believe them or not, you got to imagine he
probably prayed on this. And part of his prayer was what
I want to happen here. How do I make that happen?
OK, I got a plan not to let us know.
Yeah, well said. A couple of things about.
Jousting here about whether this like the legitimacy of this
trick and just a couple of things that are useful to know.
OK so the first of all I talk about breaking a Lance is
honorable when bails is breaking in a tournament.
Breaking a Lance is honorable but but here it might be the
difference between life and death.
OK, the reason breaking a Lance is honorable is because it means
you scored a clean hit. The lances are designed to
break. Tournament lances are designed
to break, but they're designed to break in a manner
commensurate with this would have been a fatal blow if or a
strong blow if not for this breakability put into the Lance.
So it's in other words, they're only designed to break when you
strike a a really good blow or if you know, just bends
backwards or something like that obvious you need to have.
Good skill to to to aim at will, right?
But if your aim is at the horse or their head, you're not going
to break the Lance, you're going to break their head or kill
their horse. So it's honorable to to have
enough skill that you could have hit their head, but to hit their
shield so that your Lance breaks.
It's like it's what the goal is in a tournament.
So think about a. Bunch of your friends, like any
of your friends who are gamers. Maybe you're a game or two you
talk about your favorite game, like your whatever game you guys
are playing right now, some game they've been playing for a long
time. Maybe you, or maybe you're some
of you have friends who like to discuss battles or real
historical battles. Picture this with these guys who
go to tournaments all the time who joust a lot.
They probably have thought about a lot of the tactics and
strategies and a trial by 7, though, wouldn't be something
that none of them have ever participated in.
So they probably have thoughts on like the right strategy for
A7 on 7 and things like that. This is what like like jousting
nerds, right? Like there's these Knights that
think about jousting strategy. Baylor quite possibly has had
this idea for a long time. He's like, you know what, this
is that time to try that, you know, just thinking about reach
because I I wonder if he had this idea just now, like he was
praying like he's up all night thinking about it.
And this is one of the things that that came to him and he he
considers it like a inspiration from the gods, like the father
sent him, you know, some inspiration or something like
that. It's kind of interesting.
I wonder how much they thought about this.
We think about like how much of a question of politics is here.
But probably quite a bit of tactics has been discussed or at
least hashed out those kind of things.
These these nobles talk. We talk about fighting all the
time, right? Like, yeah, it's another thing.
That sometimes, for better or worse, tradition can seep its
way into into a lot of things. But in into war, you know, even
like in colonial times, it was standard for the armies to like,
schedule a meeting, all right, nine O clock on this field.
We're going to meet up and then shoot at each other until more
people die on one side of the other, whatever.
And it was kind of like, what do these Americans do?
And running into the trees, you know, these sort of gorilla
tactics. But Americans weren't as
attached to the traditions. We're just trying to win this
battle. And so I can imagine over time,
tradition arose like, this is how you make a whirl Lance.
And it just made them all the same.
But it sounds like what if I make mine a little bit longer,
You know, how, like, maybe it's more likely to break, but I'm
more likely to knock them off their horse first.
But people aren't actively thinking about that.
Mostly Baylor thought of that. So yeah, you're.
You're you touched on a lot of important concepts there.
One of them is that eventually, early on in early warfare,
that's exactly what happened. They agreed to fight at a
certain place and time. Sometimes it was just
one-on-one. It was like a trial by combat.
Sometimes it was just like 40 dudes versus 40 dudes.
So this is this trial by of seven is, is reflective of
something that was true in ancient times and they didn't
involve the peasants. That's that's what happened.
A lot of times they just didn't involve the peasants at all.
It was just the nobles gathering and fighting and hashing out
their problems. It was a later advancement of
quote, I guess you could say. Actually it was more of a
sliding backwards of a regression A.
Regression of adding in the. Peasants and making them fight
too. And that's part of that came
from these. When you have a powerful nation
that can go up against a powerful nation, what you do is
you attack their castle, you attack their base.
But the problem is you get these barren level nobles who are
permitted to fight. They're permitted to conduct
private wars. That the Cursed Kings series,
which we've cited A bajillion times, is an example of a king
who tried to stop that. He's like, no, no more private
wars. Aegon the 5th.
This. Egg.
Tried to do the same thing. He's like, stop it with the
private wars, y'all? Enough of that.
And one of the reasons is historically speaking, the
private wars are can be so much more destructive than the big
ones, which is oddly unintuitive, but it's true.
The reason is think about this. I'm a Baron.
I got 500 men. You're a Baron, you got 500 men.
500 men is not enough for me to take your castle. 500 men is not
enough for you to take my castle.
So what do we do? We attack each other's weaker
spots. I attack your village, you
attack my village, I attack your village.
And so the peasants just pay the price because it's the, they're
the, they become the targets because these guys literally
can't attack each other's bases. And this went on for hundreds of
years. You also get a.
Greater concentration of people dying in one little area where
if, if the, the, the larger, you know, the levels up and the
feudal system Lords declare war. This this village might have had
to give up 20 men to go fight in some war.
And all the villages give up 20 and they all go off and they
fight in some war. And you get, you know, 3000
people raised. But if these villages fight each
other, all 200 of the men go fight all 200 of the other men.
They all end up killing each other.
And two villages are completely wiped out instead of a little
piece of a bunch of villages being wiped out.
Yeah, Yeah, it's totally. True.
And you see that even in modern war, sometimes you would have
because you, like, I think you alluded to this a long time ago,
you'll occasionally have units that are formed from one town,
the 82nd. Airborne division is called the
all American Airborne Division because it was the first one
that had a soldier from every state.
This is like, you know, the early 1900s, you know, this is
it was the American Army was still fundamentally going up
into World War 2. Every soldier in a unit was just
all from some town in North Carolina or all from some town
in Wisconsin or whatever. It was a relatively modern war
that you started to have people from enough different areas
mixed together in army units. So 1.
Last thing about Lance's they did start off basically it's
just Spears on horseback. It's kind of a misunderstanding
that Knights fight with their swords a lot.
They don't really. So the sword was like your Plan
B weapon when you were a knight fighting other Knights.
A sword is a fantastic weapon against unarmored folk, but if
you're fighting against someone in heavy armor, a sword isn't
that great, especially compared to other things.
And the sword was often used more like a spear or a Mace when
fighting an armored opponent. Your three main nightly weapons
were the spear, slash, Lance, then the poleax, and then the
dagger. Dagger was more important than
the sword because the dagger is what you use when you're
wrestling, like which we see Dunk get involved in multiple
times. That's when he's at his best
because of his size. So basically over the years,
it's just a bajillion versions of Lance war Lance, jousting
Lance, this and that. At first there were just
Lance's. The jousting Lance was an was a.
Advancement. Because of these tournaments
that weren't meant to be killing each other, although they were
clearly still deadly. And they invented something
called the Coronel tip. Coronel tip is like a like a
tripod almost and it's designed for unhorsing rather than
putting all the the force of the horse and the rider into that
tip which. Would kill.
Obviously. So in a tournament, you change
to that point, you have a like a, a, a brace, which is better
for shoving. So there you go.
That's why. So this, these lances would have
had those Coronel tips most likely, which was like, yeah,
they're better at on horsing, which they really would be
better at on horsing because they're designed for that.
Whereas in a war situation. On horsing is.
Nice. But you really just want to kill
them. Yeah, getting them off the horse
is great, but they can get up and still fight if they're off
their horse. So let's go to the actual trial.
Something that strikes me here very majorly in this somewhat
extended quote, is just how much Ice and Fire, Others and Dragons
theme work is being done here. It's really quite epic.
Let's have it. Roar went up from the crowd.
At the North End of the Meadow. A column of Knights came
trotting out of the river Mist. The three Kingsguard came first,
like ghosts in their gleaming white enamel armor, long white
cloaks trailing behind him. Even their Shields were white,
blank and clean as a field of new fallen snow.
Behind rode Prince Makar and his sons.
Aryan was mounted on a dapple grey, orange and red, flickering
through the slashes in the horses caparison at each stride.
His brother's Dexter ear was smaller with a smaller Bay
armored and overlapping black and gold scales.
A green silk plume trailed from Darren's helm.
It was her father who made the most fearsome appearance,
however. Black curved dragon teeth ran
across his shoulders, along the Crest of his helm and down his
back, and the huge spiked Mace strapped to his saddle was its
was as deadly looking a weapon as any Dunk had ever seen.
That's. What I was saying when I talked
about Makar looking intimidating, I mean picture
that. That is just woof goodness.
I remember when I was a kid, I don't know, kind of probably
most kids go through phase. We're kind of enamoured with
Knights and medieval kind of culture and combat and swords
and such. And I remember thinking that
ball and chain, I was like, man, that's it.
I don't know. For some reason in my mind it
was like more real that would just smash someone's skull in.
Yeah, it's more. Dangerous or scary?
To me than a sword or whatever else.
Yeah, well, you're not. Wrong, apparently that's.
Yeah, the the Mace was didn't really become a thing until
armor became a thing. I mean, back in the day people
would fight with clubs and Spears.
You know, clubs became less effective when people developed
armor and stuff. But then so this was an answer
to that. It was like, what if we make the
ball heavy and spiked and fully metal and all that?
Yep, most of. These almost every piece of
armor or every weapon is an answer to a previous armor or
weapon that gets used regularly. And that's the the history of
warfare is is just a history of building something that defeats
the last tool your enemies were using.
Rock, paper, scissors. A lot of times it is.
Yeah, like. You go from, oh, this armor bees
to where the, to where the proper armor you you get too
slow. OK, well, what if we don't wear
any armor and like, oh, then now we're going to change weapons to
fight against people that don't wear armor.
And yeah, just it's very cultural.
Rock, paper, scissors turns into knife, gun nuke eventually.
So what we have here, though, the portrayal, the theme work,
the symbolism here is very heavy.
You got three Dragons, Makar Aryan and Deron the dragon with
three heads and then you have 3 kings garden, all white.
So ghost shadows. They're they're portrayed as
pure white snow and ghost. Those words are both used.
Then you have the Dragons with all their colors and teeth and
it's just over the top awesome and.
Of course there's. Also Stephen Fossaway, SO3
Dragons, 3 white ghosts and an apple.
And that, by the way, it didn't occur to.
Me the, I don't know, allusion to the death of those Dragons,
that the ghosts are accompanying them?
Yeah, you can. Call and then and who are they
lining up to fight it's a coalition united by a common
goal this is Dunk's side is like mankind all of humanity facing
these huge supernatural challenges is of of the twin
supernatural challenges of ice and fire.
They got we got to face the Dragons, we got to face the
others. And is it going to be enough?
Do we? Are we enough?
Well, you you want the Dragons the.
Others and the apples, yeah. Apple, what is he doing in
there? Well, they need is the 7th.
So you got to have that guy. Well, it's the he.
Represents the the humans that take the side of of evil, the
ones who don't stand with their fellows.
Like I'm, I'm making this up as I go along, but there's
definitely something there, you know, the apple as a symbol of,
of being tempted right by. Yeah, by the Yeah.
Well, that's actually. Really good.
I mean, yeah. Because he was tempted by the
dragon to with rewards to be made a Lord.
Didn't work out, but hey, yeah. That might be.
It, I mean, we're actually talking about the faith and the
seven, which, you know, that is the closest to real world
Catholicism or what have you, other Christian versions of
Christianity if you prefer. Let's talk about the.
Fight itself here's a quote about his him kind of struggling
to get it going in the fight and it's very meaningful like this
is you know, the action itself is is interesting.
You know, it's gripping, but George, once again, he does so
much with how he describes the action that you can make
connections to elsewhere and you can really feel for the struggle
like you really feel for dunks imposter syndrome here because
that's what he's that's what's happening, right?
He's he's losing, but he's not like, Oh my God, I'm dying.
Oh my God, woe is me. No, he's like, I've failed.
You know, he's worried about the people that were counting on
him, and I just like to see that.
Let's have the quote his long. Sort of went spinning from his
grass in the ground, rose up to meet him.
He landed with a bruising impact that dragged him to the bone.
Paint stabbed through him, so, so sharp.
He sobbed. For a moment, it was all he
could do to lie there. Taste of blood filled his mouth.
Hunk the Lunk thought it could be a night.
He knew he had to find his feet again or die.
So he does find. His feet again, but then he gets
smashed. It's actually I have these lines
out of order. The spiked ball whirled round
and round the sky and fell towards his head as fast as a
shooting star, which is a call back to him.
Like, oh, the shooting star goes down.
That's bad. You know what he's like, AM.
I going to fall as fast and then indeed.
The quote he starts like this. He broke my.
Head and I'm dying. What was worse was the others
who would die with them. Raymond and Prince Baylor and
the rest. I failed them.
I'm no champion. I'm not even a hedge knight.
I'm nothing. He remembered Prince Darren
boasting that no one can lie and sensible in the mud as well as
he did. He never saw a dunk to lunk,
though, did he? Shame was worse than the paint.
Yeah, the shame was worse. Than the paint and he just said
his he broke his head. I mean, he was just whacked by a
spiked morning star, for God's sake.
He's just in horrible pain. He's already had a Lance.
He's already. This is past the point where
he's yanked the Lance out of his side.
But the shame is worse than the pain.
This is a man who has a humongous heart.
But here's where we get a parallel to perhaps the most
famous duel in all of A Song of Ice and Fire.
Also a trial by Combat Bill with only one-on-one, not 7 on 7.
And that is, well, let's see if you can guess as we are reading
the quote. First, the Dunkin Egg quote.
He rolled into. Aryan's legs threw a steel clad
arm around his thigh, dragged him cursing into the mud and
rolled on top of him. OK, so at this.
Point when you're a huge man and you you know, he's wounded so
it's not definitely over. But this point Dunks probably
going to win almost certainly huge guy on top of small guy as
close as possible. That's what Dunk maybe should
have been aiming for all along to get into a spot like this.
Because this is as he knows he's good at this kind of fighting.
He's already skilled at it because it's part of his
upbringing, but his size and strength make him just
overwhelmingly talented at it too.
So if you haven't figured out well, here's the quote that this
lines up with quite nicely. Clegane.
'S hand shot up and grabbed the Dornishman behind the knee.
The Red Viper brought down the great sword in a wild slash, but
he was off balance and edge to no more than put another dent in
the mountains vam brace. Then the sword was forgotten as
Gregor's hand tightened, twisted, yanking the Norden's
been down on top of him. They wrestled in the dust and
blood, the broken spear wobbling back and forth.
Tyrion saw with horror that the Mountain had wrapped one huge
arm around the Prince, drawing him tight against his chest like
a lover and at. That point, it was over, right?
I mean, there was once. Oberon A.
Huge advantage. Swung the other way.
Yeah, right. That's.
Like he used his spear, his reach.
He did all these things to keep Gregor's size and strength
muted. But then he got cocky.
He got close. He taunted him.
I thought it was. Over.
But it wasn't. And that's exactly what happened
here. Aryan was like, oh, I've got
you. It's over, you know, beg for
mercy. He's trying to get him to talk.
It's exactly what the Red Viper's doing.
He's like, admit, admit your guilt, you know, and then I'll
kill you. And this is exactly like, yeah,
admit that you're you're you're a loser.
And maybe I'll only take your hand and maybe we'll leave your
foot. You know, it's just the same
kind of gloating. He's not after Justice here,
unlike the Red Viper. There's, you know, you don't.
You're not rooting for the guy on the ground in that case.
You're not rooting for the mountain.
But the physical similarities in the fights here are just
unmistakable once you point them out.
What's he start? Doing.
He starts monologuing. Yes.
Never start. Monologuing in a fight.
Even when your opponent. 'S down and poisoned and you
pinned him to the ground with his with the spear just to make
sure he's dead when he's 8 feet tall.
And this is another parallel we have here.
I like to bring this one up. Nina cited this one.
This has been a long time coming us talking about Brienne and
Dunk, but oddly enough, this is the first thing we see from
Brienne. So this is a nice long quote but
we're going to enjoy ourselves dissecting it afterwards.
The White Horse. And the black one wield like
lovers at a harvest dance, the riders throwing steel in place
of kisses. Long axe flashed in morning Star
World. Both weapons were blunted, yet
they still raise an awful clinger shield list.
The blue knight was getting much, much the worse of it.
Soloris rained down blows on his head and shoulders to shouts of
high garden from the throng. The other gave answer with his
morning star. But whenever the ball came
crashing ends Loris interpose his battered green shield and
blazing with three golden roses. When the long ends caught the
blue Knights hand on the backswing and sent the morning
star flying from his grass, the crowd screamed like a running
beast. The Night of Flowers raised his
axe for the final blow. The Blue knight charged into it.
The stallion slammed together. The blunted axe had smashed
against the scarred blue breastplate but somehow the blue
knight had half had the half lock between still gauntleted
fingers. He wrenched it from swords hand
and suddenly the two were grappling mount to mount and an
instant later they were falling. As their horses pulled apart,
they crashed to the ground with bone drawing force.
Of course, Tyrell on the bottom took the brunt of the impact.
The Blue Knight pulled a long Dirk free and flipped open
Tyrell's visor. The roar of the crowd was too
loud for Caitlin to hear what Sir Laura said, where she saw
the words from his split bloodied lips.
Yield. So compare.
That to end of the duel here and it's very similar.
A visor is a weak. Point here, remember?
Steely pit point steely Pate saying.
The Prince had all but ceased to struggle.
His eyes were purple and full of hair.
Dunk had a sudden urge to grab one and pop it like a grape
between 2 steel fingers. But that would not be nightly
yield. He shouted.
I yield. Dragon whispered, pale lips
barely moving. So that was those two.
Fights spliced together is also going to like like a triumvirate
of fights because dunk versus Lucas long inch in the next
story is very similar. It's the same thing where he
loses his weapon and then charges forward and wins because
he can out grapple the other guy.
Now that's a tougher grappling because long inch is huge.
But here it's over really quickly because Loris is more
like the Red Viper versus the Mountain in this case, where
he's great at a distance. He's an amazing fighter, but
once he gets in close combat with someone twice his size,
well, all his advantages are gone.
Notice too. Dunk talking about the urge to
pop his eye, which of course given we were just talking about
the Red Viper in the mountain, well, someone did not have any
qualms about doing that. He didn't care about it.
He was not very nightly either. He.
Was not very. Nightly.
Nor was yelling out about how he did those things to his family.
Yeah, that's right. I'm.
Not a knight, and I'm going to keep not being a knight.
Yeah. Also, this is a nice little
setup for we've got Aryan down in the mud all brown, which is,
you know, we're about to we're going to have that two stories
from now when the brown dragon, you know, they mocking him for
that. So it's a brown dragon before
the browner dragon. We also even have similar
weapons at use. They're like the morning star
being used by Loris versus the morning star being used by Aryan
here. And of course, the flicking of
the visor open with the dagger, that is a similar aspect as
well. Also, when he's getting ready to
joust, he thinks to himself, my Lance is part of my arm.
All I have to do is reach out and touch him with my one long
finger. Which hey.
Folks, did you? Think of Serio saying the sword
is part of your arm. You cannot drop your arm.
So yeah. That gave me good feels thinking
about Serio there. Oh, here's a, here's a fun line.
He pressed his heels. Down, tightening his legs with
all the strength and letting his body become part of the motion
of the horse beneath. I am Thunder, and Thunder is me.
We are one and we are one beast. We are joined, we are one.
So he became a. Centaur.
Right there, yeah. He switched.
Centaur has always made me think of that Center Live skit with
Christopher Walken doing the interview.
Remember that? Oh, he said someone comes in for
the interview and and it's a Centaur and, and everyone's
being normal at 1st and Chris Walker is XO.
I'm looking at your resume. How long were you at your last
job? Are you?
Attracted to horses or women and.
Since I was like. Can we just keep the interview
to my job call in case you stick out a sure core but.
If you saw the rear end of a horse.
And didn't know if it was a horse or a Centaur.
Would you be attracted? Like, can we just stick to my
qualifications? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But just tell me what? And he's like, I don't know, I
guess I'd be attracted. It was a horse.
It was a a few other. Historical quotes here more
parallels George showing consistency within his world
building. We of course love to draw
attention to these things, so here's a series of quotes that
work together, starting with another quote from Oberyn Martel
in the. Days of the Targaryens A man who
struck one of the blood royal would lose a hand he struck him
with, observed the red Viper of Dorn and what does.
Baylor Brakespear say here the last time a man.
Was found guilty of striking one of royal blood.
It was decreed that he should lose the offending hand.
Roose Bolton also. Not a big fan of of hands I
guess. Roose Bolton reached down,
snapped the cord and flung the hand at Hote.
Take this away. The sight of it offending an
offending. Hand.
That hand. Was already struck off, but.
So. Jamie hadn't struck any royal
blood. There was no justification for
that. Are you sure?
He's he killed Aries with that hand.
Oh, right, never mind. Yeah, he should have had his
hand. It was.
It was a. Long delayed punishment?
Yes, 17. Years.
Later or 18 years old. Yep, Yep.
What's funny is I actually didn't.
Think of that. When I wrote this quote here, I
was like, Oh yeah, he really did strike.
He struck him pretty roughly there, didn't he?
Aegon the force had he tried to invade Dorn like so many
Targaryen kings, he tried to invade Dorn, unlike most of
them, was even weaker. His was probably the worst
attempt of all of them. He he actually built Dragons of
wood and tried to roll them into Dorn through those hard mountain
passes. And these things were like,
meant to shoot wildfire. Yes, you heard that right.
Wooden Dragons that shoot wildfire.
He wanted to roll these through the mountain passes of Torn.
Torn. Yeah, it.
Didn't work out very well, but when you see Tancell's wooden
Dragons in the in the puppet show, it might be a little
something else for them to be upset about being mocked over
this ridiculous attempt. I mean, fair play on mocking
that, right? But still.
Still. OK, so.
Remember when the story was written?
The Clash of Kings right around the same time.
So here's another little George filling it all out at once.
Quote Prince Darren gave it. Where?
He shrugged. It has the truth of it.
Aryan's quite the monster. Thinks he's a dragon in human
form, you know. That's why he's so Roth at that
puppet show and then here. John's first chapter in A Clash
of Kings Aryan the. Monstrous John knew that name.
The Prince who thought he was a dragon was one of old man's most
gruesome tales. His little brother Bran had
loved him it. Reminds me of when.
Darren says too bad he wasn't born a fossil wave.
True that they'll. Have a lot less to.
Worry about if he thought he was an apple.
True that. True that.
So this is the first trial in seven in a century, according to
the Laughing Storm. You know, of course, that we
would be on point with telling you about that, but we don't
know what that one was. The only other trial of seven we
know of is from Magor the Cruel, and he fought a group of the
warrior sons. Now, Baylor pretty much the
opposite of Magor. Yeah, Magor kind of pretty much
an opposite to Dunk as well, although maybe through the
transitive property, Magor is a lot like Gregor.
The parallels we've we've shown between those two are are
overwhelming. And of course, as a mirror
image, like Baylor is a mirror, the opposite of Magor in a lot
of ways. Well, here you go.
Dunk being the opposite of Gregor is something that we've
come back to many times. So these things sort of fit
together now. Magor had been stripped of his
position of hand to the king after taking a second wife
without permission and refusing to undo it.
So he went into exile. And when he came back upon his
brother's death, he's like, I'm the king now.
And some other folk were like, are you?
And well, they fought this trial of seven over that question.
So talk. About.
The opposite of like political importance on this on the you
know, on the surface here you've got a hedge knight being a true
knight, rounding out his seven with bail or break spear.
Instead, we have the usurper Magor the Cruel, who had been
the youngest knight in the realm, so very, very openly a
knight in deserving of it in terms of his martial prowess and
very undeserving of it in terms of his personality.
Magor was challenged over his right to rule, so the stakes
could not have been higher. Instead of the life of a hedge
knight, you've got the actual throne, right?
He's having a trial by 7:00 to take the throne away from these
warriors sons who were arguing he doesn't have the right.
Like Baylor, Magor doesn't have the Kingsguard on hand to fight
with him. He basically.
He came back from exile. Stopped on Dragonstone got
crowned and then flew to King's Landing to claim the crown so
the kingsguard you know they weren't what are they going to
ride on the back of his dragon with him so this is pretty cool
here's another quote this this should ring familiar kind of
like the the our lead into the red Viper quote this should be
very familiar and it's very cool many turned.
Away in fear or pretended today to not hear For the prowess of
the warriors song was known to all, But at last one man offered
himself no knight, but a simple man at arms who called himself
Dick bean. I've been a.
King's man since I was a boy, he said.
I mean to die a King's man I've been to.
Dirt I love. That.
Only then did the first night step forward.
This bean shames us all, he shouted.
Are there no true Knights here? No Leo men?
The speaker was Bernard Brune, Squire, who had slain Heron the
Red and been knighted by King Anise.
King Anise himself. His scorn drove the others to
offer their swords. So instead of a bean.
We got an egg, I suppose. I don't know.
Yeah, but. This is.
Very similar right to are there no true Knights among you like I
like it's like no one comes except for no one actually comes
forward except for Baylor in that case.
But here it works because it's kind of the reverse.
It's the the hedge knight is the one stepping forward to defend
the king rather than the hedge knight asking for help against
the royal family. So you can kind of the, the
politics of the situation are pretty straightforward in terms
of how it plays out. But in terms of standing as a
mirror image slash parallel or as a example of this, it's quite
similar in a lot of ways. And I think it's pretty neat.
Of course, it's much bloodier Magor.
Of those 14, only Magor survived in his battle, whereas here,
none of the guys on the losing side actually die.
Three guys on the winning side die and no one on the losing
side. So that's kind of odd, but hey,
that's what happens. Now we have also even the ending
point has sort of a reverse to it.
Now what happens with Baylor? He's like, he looks like he's
fine. Maybe there's a little, maybe
there's a little clue something's wrong because his
speech is slurring, but he doesn't die till the helmet
comes off, right? Well, check.
This out what happens to Magor right here even as he fell.
Sir William dealt the King a terrible blow to the head,
cracked his helm and left him in sensate.
Many thought Magor dead until his mother removed his broken
helm. So.
This magor. Was dead until they removed his
helm, whereas Baylor is alive until they removed his helm.
The. Baylor.
Scene where his just brain falls out is the the most disturbing
and visceral scene in all the books to me.
Like, I see it the most clearly and next to Oprah and getting
his head exploded. And that was on TV.
So I, you know, have a visual there.
And here I don't even have a strong visual from anything
except I just, I can, like, hear it in my head, like the swelps
of it plopping down. Yeah.
Have you been exposed? To any zombies you don't have
craving this brain, are you? Well, that's a great.
That's a great segue to a topic that's almost next.
We'll just jump ahead to it. But before we do that, I wonder
about this trial of 17, Like most of the major events in the
Song of Ice and Fire history, especially the ones that
happened more than once, are setups for it to happen during a
Song of Ice and Fire. Is there going to be a trial by
7? We got that question.
From Julie A asked what scenarios are likely to have one
and obviously the ones you immediately would think of are
Cersei, Marjorie. Who else would be on a trial?
I don't know. We have a tourney happening up
where Sansa is. Yeah, the current of the wing
night. So.
You wonder if there could be some similar kind of thing where
like someone doesn't have the people to fight for them, that
kind of thing where they have to like, yeah, I don't know who
would. Be on trial at that tourney.
That is one of the places I think of, but I think it's far
more likely to happen for Marjorie or Cersei.
Yeah, like the other. Notion of the faith fighting
Megor just makes you think of Cersei, right?
Like fighting against Gregor or something, right?
So. Yeah, I think, I think spinning
it around Cersei's arc makes the most sense, perhaps because of
for going against the faith. So I think that might be a maybe
it's going to come much later. Maybe it's like a dream of
spring thing. Maybe it's like after the
Dragons and others are beating them, the the land is trying to
fix itself in the great aftermath period.
Maybe that's when this will happen.
So that was a great Segway of share bringing up the the gross
brain part, because it's so it is really tragic.
You can't even people that get it.
They understand what happened. They still can't help resent
dunk because it's just the pain the realm is going to suffer and
they can predict they'll suffer without Baylor is is just so
heavy, but quite possibly written with some real world
sorrow. Mick mingled into it.
And you touched on the reason this is so meaningful.
Is this brain bit that you're talking about.
OK, this comes from Steven Atwell.
Shout out to Steven Atwell. Race for the Iron throne.
Great. A song of ice and fire thinker.
Nina pointed this out to us and that he's written about this.
Think about JFK, OK JFK was killed when George was 15 years
old. George's family was Roman
Catholic Democrats. JFK is one of the most popular.
Presidents of all time, especially among people with
that background, Roman Catholic Democrats, right?
Like, that is the bullseye. I mean, that's literally what
JFK was, a Roman Catholic Democrat.
So this is a handsome, charismatic leader who was
killed. You know, the assassination and
the descriptions of his death involve the brain, his a piece
of his brain of coming out. And that was the fatal shot.
He was shot in this in the back of the head, the same spot where
Baylor was killed. So it's the same wound, the same
sort of like promise unrealized for this leader that so many
people cared a lot about. I mean, folks, it's hard to in
part if you didn't live through it.
I didn't live through it, but it's a but hearing people talk
about this is how popular JFK was.
It really does give this Baylor vibe of just how tragic his
death was and, and how, you know, the nation was so sad.
Like people, people would put JFK pictures next to Jesus.
You know, like they it was it. Was like the.
Patriots, Jesus and JFK. And I have to.
Think. People like George and, you
know, other Kennedy Heights. No, I'm just, I have to think
that the people back then, when terrible things happened in the
future, at least for the next 10 years or so, they had to be
thinking in the back of their mind, if Kennedy had stayed, you
know, president, this would not have happened.
And what? Come what comes after this,
right, more turmoil and death for the Targaryens.
Well Robert Kennedy was assassinated a few years later,
so it's like that also continued.
So I don't know does do you have any take on any of this Sean or
is this kind of it never. Occurred to me.
But when you talk about it, I feel like it's got to have an
influence. George's writing here, even if
it was subconscious, you know, like I went searching.
In his SSM to see if he talks about Kennedy or or anything
like that. I couldn't find any direct
reference to it, but the circumstantial evidence is
pretty damn strong. Yeah.
OK. So that.
Yeah. So it is really sad.
The funeral really does reflect that.
So you kind of wonder if he was trying to channel some of that.
It's funny. I went looking for just like,
more like Ashford Meadow. Is that like Grassy Knoll?
I don't know. You know, it's just like really
trying to like find more about this, but I think.
The basics, really. Do the work.
You don't really need more details to to feel this
connection. So yeah, so there's that sort of
like great loss of what could have been and you know what was
instead. And that leads us to, did you
have anything more to say about the, the funeral or the bargain
or or the the trial itself? So much of it we talked about.
OK, Yeah. I don't.
Think I have anything in? Particular.
OK, I'll I'll add. This comment right now from
Guinevere Greenstones about the trial.
Might Jamie pull a Tyrion and request a trial of seven from
Catlin that would bring in the Duncan Brienne parallel?
I wonder if they. Would accept that.
I wonder. If we're past that point, who I,
I'm, who would even be involved? I hadn't considered it.
I wonder if Jamie could even. Jamie would be maybe the one to
struggle, to find seven people to fight for him.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So when they're faced with this night, we we move from the
sorrow of the tournament. We move from Valar.
You just you can't you just feel bad for the kid?
We don't know very much about him.
We know he become I I need the correct thing.
I said earlier, we don't know how competent he was.
We do know he becomes hand after this.
He takes his father's job, which might have been politics, but
probably not because Daron was a good king.
I mean, he's Daron the goods. He probably didn't just make
this guy his hand because he's his nephew in the air, but he
might have. Either way, it didn't last long
because the sickness came along so quickly.
Yeah, You feel kind of feel bad for him.
Makar summons Dunk and before he goes to see Dunk, he once again,
while he's thinking about it, rather he's thinking about
dragonflies. Well, we get another quote.
What shall it? Be Dunk, he asked himself.
Dragonflies or Dragons? A few days ago, he would have
answered it once. It was all he had ever dreamed.
But now that the prospect was at hand, it frightened him.
Just before Prince Baylord died, I swore to be his man.
Yeah, that's. Really a big deal.
He he's that vow. This is very Jamie, right?
Jamie becomes someone that decides that his vows are
important, even even though he's broken so many of them.
He's like, I'm not doing that anymore.
You can't make up for vows I've broken, but I'm going to hold my
vows from now on. Like if I swear something
sticking to it. And he, he really seems to.
But once again, because we can see in his head, we know he
means it. And this seems to be kind of a
key decision here. It's not really about what Dunk
wants. It's about what Dunk has already
agreed to, right? He's already given his word,
even though it was to a dead man.
What does that? Say to you, Sean, what do you,
what does that? How does that resonate with you?
This notion that there's a promise stronger when you make
it to a dead person? Does that kind of carry you like
a sense of from a sense of humanity?
They can't do it. You have to does there and an
emotion behind that that isn't present when you swear to
someone who's still alive. It's kind of hard to hard to
parse. Yeah, I.
Think it could go? Either way, and I think there's
other factors involved because I can't imagine someone feeling
more committed than ever, but I can also imagine someone feeling
like I guess it doesn't matter anymore and it might come down
again. It might been person to person,
like some people might use it as an excuse to not have to fulfill
some obligation, where some people might use it as
motivation to fulfill an obligation, but some people
might use it as a legitimate reason to not pursue something
that's not practical, you know? Yeah, it'll be.
Very fair or otherwise? Yeah, it'll vary person to
person, society to society, I guess.
Task to task, certainly. That's a good point.
Yeah, a good said. Yeah.
And that that was particularly important here because can I
just say real? Quick Yeah, I want to make a
reference to King of the Hill, where Cotton Hill is going to
die. And he tells his son Hank, he's
supposed to cut his head off and deliver it to Japan.
And. Hank's like.
Oh, I guess I got to do it. Sir Arlen House motto Ha tell
you what? His sigil.
Is the blue flame of propane. Right in this moment.
He's thinking about what to do. Makar also brings up the fact
that they're both going to be the guy that is blamed for
Baylor's death for the rest of their lives.
So the fact that that point being raised as he's thinking of
the fact that he swore to be Baylor's man is going to really
for a man like Dunk, that's going to hit pretty hard
thinking having those two ideas side by side like that.
Like, yeah, I got to I swore to be his man and to be like that,
this kind of person. He kind of already is like that.
But yeah, all the more reason to live what you swore when when
you're going to be when everyone's going to blame you
for killing the guy. Is he thinking?
He's sort of cursed. Yeah, right.
Yeah, like. It's not like a supernatural
curse, but it's, yeah, a social, yes.
Very much. True, it arguably it's worse for
Megor because he's or Megar because it's it's not for for
Dunk, it's at least not kinsling, but this it's pretty
bad from a kinsling perspective. Well, I was kind of just.
Picturing Dunk being like anyone I swear to is colored by this
and maybe doomed a little bit. All the more reason to stick.
With egg I suppose. Eggs was like yeah, well, I.
I forgive you for that. Yeah, I really.
Liked that. I really did appreciate that,
that conversation between Makar and Duncan and the aftermath in
general, I think did a good job of dealing with the
repercussions. But on both the personal level
and and the effects of the, I don't know that the politics of
the realm or whatever, you know? Yeah, yeah.
It's neat too, thinking about how similar this is to Stannis
with Renly, right? Oh yeah, right.
Like the whole. People say, like, I don't, he
doesn't even remember doing it. He's like, I, I must have hit
him, you know, there. I don't even remember doing it,
though, which is Stannis saying he doesn't remember the dream.
He's like, I have this dream, but when I woke up, my hands
were clean. How could I have been there?
Like he doesn't make sense to him.
It's very surreal, but there's no doubt right in the reader's
mind, right, that he was, that he's partly responsible.
The insurance and outs, the logistics of it aren't clear,
just as they aren't here, although they're a little
simpler here, but still very, very similar.
And I love too, that when Dunk confronts Makar with the point
about roughing it and how maybe roughing it would be good for
Egg, do you remember his reaction?
I. I don't I don't know if there's
an exact quote, but I I my my memory is that he was like.
He does just walk. Off but his jaw, his jaw moves
back and forth. Oh, that's.
Right, like grits his jaw like standards.
Yeah, it's not the grinding. It's not the grinding, but it's
very similar. Yeah.
So it's like. And they even gave make our POC
scars, which Scannis doesn't have scars as far as I know, but
his daughter has grayscale scars.
So I just feel like I don't know, George's having a little
extra fun. It's like how many more dots can
I connect between these characters?
That is not nearly all the connection between maker and
Stannis, But we're we're going to do some of that in our end of
Dunkin egg wrap up. We'll we'll summarize a lot of
these a little better. Rather than just diving into the
piece meal here and there. Let's talk about some of our our
funny moments as we close out the story.
We'll do this at the end of The Sworn Sword and at the Mystery
Night as well, real quick. There was a a comment I meant to
to get in earlier. Oh, sure, go ahead.
And we were talking about good that how like how good of a
night are you when he was asking Don, can we think about the idea
good. It also reminded me of what
Makar said and that I don't know that arraignment, if you will
when they're deciding to have the trial of seven.
He says if it causes just good, mill will fight for it.
I think you might have even said how much more plain can it be or
something like but, and, and I kind of also fits what I was
saying about the idea of like dunk.
If he really is a good night, he'll find other good nights to
fight for him. And and on some level, I I
that's Makar being the same as Baylor.
Like it's in the hands of the gods.
You know, like if, if you can do it, that's what they wanted.
So go ahead and try. It also made me think.
About the I oh, what's that? I was just going to say that's
their. Privilege, yeah.
They don't know what it's like. To not have, you know, bevies of
men willing to to step up for them.
Yeah. He yes.
Is he not? I'm not saying they're is he not
aware? Of the about this but.
Yeah. But another thing to think about
is there's a lot of other ways to like from a logical
standpoint, if a cause is just, Goodman will fight for it.
So if a cause isn't just Goodman won't fight for it.
If a cause is just bad, men won't fight for it, or cause is
not just bad men will fight for it.
There's all those different ways you can look at it.
And so you on some level, it made me start thinking about the
different people fighting on the different sides.
Were they all good or bad based? Like they had different causes.
Yeah, right. Makar, his cause is really kind
of to defend his family's honor. And it's like my son's got in
trouble. I got to try to protect them.
Yeah. And I think his cause is just.
I think he's a good man. Right.
Like Baylor almost obviously dunk, obviously, but Aryan's
cause was not just, and he was, he was a bad man fighting on the
bad side, you know, So it's kind of it, it also sort of fits that
idea of like. You miss it Exactly.
And however you define good, it kind of fits almost every way
you look at it. It's at the end.
Of A Dance with Dragons that Varus says.
You know, I don't want to kill you, Kevin.
You're like a lot of people, a good man in service to a bad
'cause. Yeah, when?
You were just talking about that I.
Think that's that's very much in line here because yeah, Makar
may be a decent man, but but by backing his son up on this
'cause he's very unjust and that's a huge point.
That's why I wanted to draw our attention to the thematic
resonance of the dragon knee stuff with the others paired
side by decide because both of those things are just enormously
powerful, but they're not good or evil on their own.
They're good or evil based on who's in charge of them.
Like the Dragons have been used for good and they've been used
for evil. The others, well, they're all
evil, but if they were created by the the children, there's the
source of them isn't all evil, right?
And the people that work for them, like if the others are
raising the dead of Knights or people that used to be good
people, they're using good people for a bad cause in in a
more supernatural way rather than a you have to do what the
king says kind of way. But it's the same sort of thing.
You're compelled to obey whether it's good or bad, whether the
whether the orders are evil or not.
Usually it's Gray right in the story, but sometimes it's not
like Aryan. Like obviously Aryan is not grey
in that sense. Maybe some of his upbringing,
maybe some details around him, but like in terms of whether
he's good or or not, no, there's not.
There's really no nuance there. Same with Gregor, Sometimes you
might. Find a reason for something, but
not a justification for it. Yeah, yeah.
Good point. Well, Good's said.
Good's said. So you.
You cited. Let's see, you've got the first
quote here under our funny list here the.
The the gist of it is that Arlen is insisting that they bathe at
least once a month, even if they're not that dirty.
And it's like a true knight is cleanly as well as godly, the
old man always said, insisting that they wash themselves head
to heels every time the moon turn, whether they smelled sour
or not. Now that he was a knight, Dunk
vowed he would do the same now. Whoa.
I mean, obviously it's a different time and place, but
hearing that they might not smell sour after not bathing for
a month in the rough, yeah, there's a difference.
They have a different standard for what smells sour than, say,
we sour. Might be relative.
It's like how? Sour is it like?
I like this one. Very short line dunk was as good
an elbow were as any. When he was pushing through the
crowd so they could see better and my my thought was that if if
they make this into a show, they definitely need to have Ludacris
playing at that moment. I'm see I'm.
Picturing Dunk at like a Black Friday sale.
That's who you want to go. Shopping with yes, yes, you
definitely. Do.
I like this line. Before long, only crestless men
were choosing him, which is. Out of context.
Like, wait, what? That's of course people who are
not challenging Lionel Baratheon anymore because of his throwing
helmets in the crowds and crests.
But it's just crestless. What are these?
This is another thing about bathing is these guys that don't
brush their teeth because I'm picturing.
Like lizards how they have their crests.
How about this line? He.
Seems a likely lad. Might be one day he'll make a
knight or the king. Yeah, it's kind of a weird.
Term by the. Way a likely lad.
A likely lad. Yeah, I guess that is that an
old English term? Yeah, like I was kind of
assuming. Because we don't really say.
Lad in America, but they say lad in England a lot, you know?
Yeah. Does that like?
I'm guessing it means that his promise.
Yeah, yeah, I. Do yeah, I think you're totally
right. That's what it means.
But yeah, the boy shows, probably.
Promising, I guess. Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, Whereas you. Might all otherwise interpreted
it as I like him. Yeah.
Like worthy or something? Yeah.
His name is Lee Ladd. I like Lee Ladd.
What's his name? OK, so here's a pair of quotes
that stand in contrast to each other.
First we have. Boy, I do.
Not require your counsel on who to challenge that a few minutes.
Later Hag. It was the least.
Dangerous of these challenges. Hey, don't counsel me.
Hey, can you counsel me? Yeah.
Because then he's like egg, sure.
Doesn't know a lot about these challengers.
That's, that's one of the clues that he's not, you know, that
he's actually highborn or whatever he's like.
There's a lot about these guys, like specifics about how they
joust. Apparently, according to
Guinevere, Greenstone's likely lad is a very common term.
Common. And enough that there's a
British sitcom named Whoa Yeah. Thanks from the 70s.
In the 70s. Yeah, 60s.
And 70s, actually just the 60s now that I look at it, but yes,
that's. Cool, here is.
What? Nina says it's her funniest line
in all of A Song of Ice and Fire.
Whoa, that's a big one. You're not too tall.
Dunk blurted out. You're just right.
For he realized what he had been about to say, and furiously 4.
Said. 1010 cell, cock your head inquisitively.
Puppets, he finished lamely. Yeah, yeah, puppets.
That's that's a likely. Lad story, yeah.
Puppets. That's good.
So, well, we'll pick. Out some more funny lines from
for the from the next one. There's always a few you know
George isn't like super big on up out loud laughing, but he
gets the jokes in there. He sneaks the jokes in for sure.
Egg gets. A lot of zingers he does.
He does, I think one of. My favorite, funniest moments
has to do with all it's related to the art that's in A Night of
the Seven Kingdoms, you know, by Gary Gianni.
It's the scene where Egg, I mean, where Dunk takes a bath,
an Egg is, you know, ministering to him in the bath.
So he fills the bath water like so hot, crazy hot.
But Dunk like doesn't want to show weakness, so he gets in
anyways, even though it's like burning his skin.
He hates it. And the picture of the art in
the night of the Seven Kingdoms just so.
It's like huge Dunk in a small bath and his teeth are just
gritting in pain while like Egg stands next to him.
Quite a bit. Different than the humongous
bathtubs that Brienne and Jamie hang out at in Harrenhal.
True, yeah. A mirror.
There's always a. Mirror or a parallel somewhere
with with Dunk and with a lot of other characters.
Folks, we're still building a long list of of fuller completer
list of parallels. If you have parallels and and
connections that you want to make sure we catch, send them to
us. Do the same with any regular
other types of questions you have or comments you have about
Dunkin Egg. We will be moving on to The
Sworn Sword next week. Let's do a little more wrap up
though. Did you have any final thoughts
on the Hedge Night? Anything that you think is Hedge
Night specific, Sean? Anything that maybe isn't
appropriate to talk about in the following stories because
obviously they have a lot in common.
So some of the themes will continue.
The main thing is. That a couple points that I've
missed about the idea of Dunk being a true knight or not.
We've hit on it a few times and I think I've sold you, I think
on the idea that it's not just this is there isn't that maybe
there's ways that dunk is it straight up line, you know, and,
and, and that's kind of what I was kind of concluding because I
found most of the little arguments, like when I first
read it, I, I was just oblivious to the idea that he wasn't
really a knight in the 1st place.
And but then it was the idea was presented to me and I was like,
I read it again. I was like, I see, I, I, I
became suspicious myself. But then reading it again, I was
like, I don't know. Almost every little piece of
evidence I found could argue both ways.
Some have brought up, like, for example, you know, piercing
different things together. When Dunk describes how he was
knighted, it's different than how Lionel Brathian Knights
stuff on him. So I'm like, oh, so he did.
But then the person he describes how he's being knighted to,
who's already challenging him, accepts that he doesn't question
that method. It was like, OK, so that's an
argument. You see how it can be like an
argument in both directions. And I started concluding, you
know, with these different things.
There's another one. Was the idea that like one thing
that makes people point at Dunk not being a knight when he
hesitates tonight, Stefan? Maybe it's because he's.
Not really a knight so he doesn't feel like, but maybe
it's the same reason we talked about this.
Maybe it's the same reason it's embarrassing.
Didn't want to knight his Squires.
Like I just, I just attacked the Prince.
And if I deny you, they might and lose this, they might
execute you. It might just merge your honor
and not help it. And that might even be why
Lionel stepped up. And you're like, my honor's
safe. If I know you, you're good.
You know what I mean? We don't get to hear what
Lionel's thinking. And Dunks doesn't have time to
even think about it because it gets called away.
And I almost think it's it makes sense that all these things can
be argued both way because that's what George wanted.
He didn't want it to be clear one way or the other.
He's trying to be be ambiguous that he's very careful about the
different clues, if you will. The one sort of smoking gun, the
one I have the toughest time with, that I'm sure Scott
Wortman is like on the edge of his seat because he keeps asking
about. This is the monstrous Sly, yes?
Dunk thinks. About the monstrous Sly he can.
He can relate to Egg and the line.
About have you ever you You wanted something so bad that you
were willing to lie for it, right?
So here's how I addressed that. And again, I don't think I'm
completely discounting it, but I'm showing if if this was a
Corda law and I had to make my case, the case I would make is
just because Dunk knows how it feels doesn't mean he did it.
That's cool. Yeah.
B. It could be something else the
story doesn't give us. Something else.
But you're right. Like, that's right, but you're
right, it could be another one of the.
Arguments that that people make is that Dunk doesn't think about
the moment of being knighted by Erwin, but he also doesn't think
about lying about being knighted by Erwin.
So, you know, if he doesn't think about Owen doesn't think
about the other. That's true.
He thinks about lying, but not. About that, and he thinks about
not being knighted, but the two aren't directly connected.
You're right. Yeah.
So again. I, I don't want to just assume
like I, I think it's clear George is trying to get us to at
least think about it, which means there's a strong chance
that it's true. But I still feel like there's a
lot of evidence and no proofs. Incidentally, and this might
even tie in later in one of the other books, but he he had a
whole another life before, right?
He was a thief and a beggar on the streets of Flea Bottom.
You can imagine he might have told a monstrous lie there.
He might have told some lie to Sir Arlen to get into a service
in the 1st place there that he lied about to to to get close to
a girl or to get close to Sir Arlen or to get out of Flea
Bottom. Or anyway, my point is, I can
think it like Dunks had a lot of other stuff in his life that he
potentially could have lied about that maybe he didn't think
about. And maybe even a little further
evidence to that point is another argument people use.
Is it Dunk? The first couple times he
introduces himself, he just says Dunk and not Sir Dunk.
Well, he just became a knight. He's not used to it yet.
Think of himself that way. Like people get married where
the last name changes or how often you write the date wrong
when the month changes or whatever, you know?
And it could be that the thing he did, the monster, the monster
Sly, was long ago enough that he's not thinking about it
anymore. Anyway, I totally accept that so
many people don't believe Dunk is a true knight and but I at
least wanted to make my case, hopefully getting some people to
rethink it even if they keep believing it, that these are the
points you're going to have to beat me on to prove your case.
And but what I'm really hoping to offer is 1/3 alternative.
Is it Dunk isn't necessarily straight up lying about it, that
Dunk just has some question about the validity of it between
his personal lack of confidence, between the potential of Arlen
having been alcoholic, maybe even in his own mind he's
distinguishing between a hedge knight and a real knight.
You know, I could just see a lot of ways why in Dunk's mind, he
might not think of himself as a real knight, that when those
moments come up in a story, we interpret it as he wasn't really
knighted. But I want to interpret it as
he's not lying about it. He's just questioning the
validity. Yeah.
And and one thing. That supports is 2 things that
support your argument pretty well here. 1 is that Dunk is the
kind of person that would take it that seriously, that he would
question the validity of it based on the circumstances.
Whereas other people would say OK, it's done.
That's it. It's like it's, it's I'm in the
club, you know, they wouldn't question it.
Dunk is one of the few people we can honestly say might actually
take that seriously whether whatever ceremony may or may not
have happened. Well, if it did happen in some
degree that it counted. And one thing I want to cast our
eyes ahead for in regards to this is Brienne.
If Brienne is eventually knighted in the confines of A
Song of Ice and Fire, will there be people who question whether
it's valid? And that would come back to this
and be a parallel to like, except instead of Dunk
wondering, it would be, it would be everybody else questioning
it. And Brienne might question it
too. Who knows?
Even Brianne. By the way, even similar to like
if Dunk kid Knight is Stefan might have worked against him.
Brianne on one hand often might have sort of a claim toward
knighthood at least, or deserving knighthood, having
been on the Kingsguard, but it was a traitor king.
It's almost worse that's. True, that's.
True. Yeah, these grants, that's
interesting. I never really thought about her
being on the Kingsguard and being a knight.
Yeah, that's. True, she was in.
Non Knights on a Kingsguard. OK, Yeah, yeah.
But. Clegane was broke the rules so
Brianne kind of did too I guess. Well the Queen's the the Rainbow
Guard was a new institution so technically they make up their
own new rules. Like they changed the colors so
why not the rules? Another.
Sort of funny half foreshadowing moment that I forgot to mention
was Dunk passing by a tent where he hears 2 people having sex and
he's like I wonder if I'll die before ever kissing a girl.
Well, considering that there's a large amount of theories in the
Phantom about who amongst these many people who with large size
are Dunk's descendants, and many of them seem to be the case,
clearly he's going to have some encounters that result in
children. So no worries.
Dunk the women and the men both find you very attractive, so no
worries at all here. Is one more last little
question. Did Lord Askford?
'S daughter keep the title of Queen of Love and Beautiful.
Boy, yeah, we. We we brought her up like a
couple episodes ago. Like boy, this really didn't
work out for her. Are they going to look at her as
cursed? Like this didn't go well?
Like she going to cry about this?
I would, I mean, if I were in her place, if I was a 13 year
old girl and this was brought, this was all made for me.
I was like, oh, I'm the center of attention.
This is going to be great. And then this happens.
That is traumatizing. So yeah, I don't know.
I don't know what her status was after this, but her emotional
stay probably wouldn't be so great.
OK, yeah, let's. Let's say some thanks here.
Appreciate everyone coming to hang out today.
Appreciate Nina giving us a lot of great discussion points and
and quotes and especially thing with Steven Atwell and JFK that
seems really strong as a as a parallel, thank you to our there
are people over on flick and Facebook and slack and Discord.
You guys are also doing great work drumming up things for us
to talk about and consider throughout these episodes and
of. Course we're.
Talking about other things over there as well, I mentioned it
last time. We've got a Expanse reread going
on in the discord right now. That's pretty fun.
We're still on Book 1, so this is July 2021 that we're
recording this. So if it's you could.
Still get involved. Depending on when you're hearing
this and I want to. Bring something up for when The
Expanse reread is finished. I'm thinking we should get a
group together to read at least the first Wild Cards book, but
for maybe I'm hoping for the first trilogy.
After that we can scatter to the wind because there are many
books. But, you know, reach out if you
have some interest and maybe we'll start getting things in
line for that. Yeah, did.
You say wild cards? Yeah.
Are you not familiar? With wild cards on, you don't
want to be a wild Carter with me.
I mean, I'm familiar. With Charlie Kelly.
George R Martin. It's that's one of his
properties. Yeah, it's a shared.
Universe Charlie Kelly is one of.
George Martin Property, Yeah. Funny, yeah, but.
Sean Wildcards is one of George's shared properties.
Tons and tons of authors right in the world, different
characters, and it's all about people with superpowers.
But they're not just heroes and they're not your standard
powers. It's kind of in line with The
Boys. And what you would like there is
my understanding. Misfits.
Yeah, kind of in. Line with that, that's my you
know what I think of it as there's a famous story.
Where there was a time when Neil Gammon pitched Sandman for the
Wild Card universe, they rejected him.
And George likes to. Joke about how it worked out
well for him that we rejected it.
So yeah. So, so yeah, like it's not like
super famous, but it's pretty big and it's been going a long
time and honestly. He tweets about it and posts
about it, and I would just like to see a tweet about wild cards
and be like, hell yeah, what's new in the wild cards world?
Yeah, it's. Unfortunately, when George talks
about wild cards too often there's people that just jump on
him for it not being a Song of Ice of Fire.
I've even been. To two wild cards panels so I
it's really I I should at least read one book and I hope some of
you want to join me in this journey of becoming a wild
Carter so that's kind of. Neat.
We didn't know you weren't aware of wild card, Sean.
Now this given. Yeah, given your your enjoyment
of the boys and and this kind of thing, you might this might be a
big thing for you. We'll see.
We'll have to circle back on that at some point.
Thanks everyone for coming today.
Appreciate the support. If you're a patron, we are.
I don't know what we would do without you.
If you want to join the crew over on Patreon, go to
historyofwesteros.com and click on the Patreon link or go
straight to patreon.com/history of Westeros.
Pick the level that is right for you.
This is a great time to be supporting us when we're in
between without lots of new material to deal with.
Although, hey, we've never talked about The Hedge Night
before. It's kind of new even though it
was published in 97. Yeah.
I'm. Super.
New to me in terms of talking about all of this, for sure.
We just, we really haven't talked about this.
I feel like the Sworn Sword will be the one we've talked about
the least, yeah. Like we've.
Talked about the history surrounding it the most, but the
events in it perhaps the least. And it's really interesting.
I mean, a lot of people don't even know some of the
connections Rohan Webber has to the greater story.
And that's going to be fun. We look really look forward to
that. So folks, TuneIn next week or
download the podcast version when it's out.
As usual, we record every episode on YouTube live, almost
always on Sunday at 3:00 Eastern and then by early morning
Monday, also Eastern Time, the podcast version is out.
Usually I stay up all most of the night editing it to have it
ready for y'all who are commuters Monday morning or
wherever you happen to be. If it's not Monday morning for
you and it's Monday morning for me.
And we'll keep them coming, folks.
See you next week for more Velar re Reese.