Aegon's destruction of Heron, his line, and his castle was
huge by itself, but when we put it all together, with the events
of the few centuries that preceded it, things got even
more interesting. And in turn, the conquest and
the rebirth of the River Lands itself does as well.
It's a rare glimpse at the Game of Thrones playing out prior to
the formation of the Seven Kingdoms.
Under the Iron Throne. We've got a host of the usual
suspects in the River Lands and the Storm Lands, Blackwoods,
Brackens, Durindins. Also the Face Militant, Did I
say the Face Militant? The Faith Militant?
The Face Militant. They have very militant faces.
And when the Ironborn joined the fray, we've got an early mention
of what might be the same dream slash prophecy that Aegon
himself had. So today we'll go back in order
to go forward because we have ample reason to do so.
All that and more on this episode of History of Westrose
podcast. Hello, and welcome back,
everybody. We are here every almost every
3:00 PM Eastern on YouTube for our live streams.
Afterwards, those get posted on YouTube, or rather in Spotify.
So you can always see the video on YouTube and you can see the
video on Spotify. And you can catch the podcast
version also on Spotify or anywhere you catch podcast,
whether that's iTunes or Pod. What's that place called?
Pod. Any Pod catcher?
I'm forgetting the name. We're saying it's every Sunday
at 3:00 PM Eastern, not every 3:00 PM.
We do not street. Did I say every 3P?
M You did say every 3:00 PM, but we do not street.
You said it. We have to do it now.
You said it. I just I just 7X star schedule
with with a careless sentence. No.
I think Speaking of careless sentences, I think the face
militant is clowns. Because yes, that's clowns.
Yes, they're the militant faces. Anyway, thanks for the
corrections. Yes, every Sunday at 3.
And because we're putting up the videos on Spotify, the release
date's a little longer. It's not usually up on Monday
these days, but that's okay. It's up on Tuesday or Wednesday
and you get just as much time to enjoy it before the next one
comes out. And if you catch us on patron,
yeah, it's ad free. That's nice if you're a.
Three. And it doesn't have UMS and UMS.
That's right. We do extra editing.
So it's a little tighter. You lose the visuals, but you
get a tighter edit. That's the trade off.
So how you doing Sean? You got what is that on your
shirt? I see.
I can't make it out. I see you got.
That's a tree, right? It's an image from Avatar, the
last Airbender. The characters sons was buried
and you went to visit the grave of this tree.
Well, that's sad. Yeah, it was a touching moment.
I have just a regular old House of the Dragon Sigil here.
Or Targaryen, House of the Dragon Sigil.
Well, it's got black fire and dark sister of swords crossed
above it, I think it's not so regular.
I love that it's true. You're right.
It's not so regular. It's.
It's official. It's an official shirt that
makes it regular, that it's not fan made or anything.
Yeah, that's. I will say that my shirt this
moment reminds me of Dunk and Arlen.
Yeah, that is what it made me think of as well when you were
describing it. My shirt, y'all can't see it.
I feel like I wear that shirt frequently during streams.
It's a game of Owns shirt. Our good friends A game of Owns
gave me the shirt years ago and I feel like every time I stream,
I'm like, what shirt are we wearing?
Game of Bones. I think they're doing a Dunkin
Egg reread right now. Yeah, they sure are perfect.
Shout out to our good friend Nina.
Her blog is good. queenalley.tumblr.com That's 1L
in alley. Her latest post is very relevant
to what we're talking about today.
A comparison between Shiera Blackwood and Argella Durandon.
Now Shiera Blackwood, you may not know that name.
You know the name Shiera and you know the name Blackwood, but you
may not know this particular individual.
She comes up in the World of Ice and Fire, and she's going to
come up today. Argela Durandon, of course, is
the daughter of our Galac, the arrogant, who will be getting
into more detail and in an episode or two when we talk
about the Battle of the Last Storm and the campaign against
the Storm lands during the Conquest.
So her comparison will perhaps mean a little more after you've
listened to those episodes. But if you want to preview,
check it out now. And there's lots of other great
posts on Nina's blog as well that are relevant to our recent
episodes or not. Some of them are, some of them
aren't. I do want to bring attention to
my drink this week. I'm having mighty water.
Look at that. It's green and purple.
That's so weird. It's the green machine naked
drink mixed with watermelon, Red Bull and Doctor Pepper, and I
was trying to make it as murky and muddy as I could for the
representation of the River Lands.
The trivia hangout this month will be Tuesday the 26th at 9:00
Eastern. It's going to be a Jeopardy
style trivia game with a grid of questions.
If you you can join through Discord and access the game
using your browser. And it's going to be if you're a
patron, you can play. We're doing this test.
Maybe in the future we'll be able to open up for more people,
but that's an incentive for you to join our patron.
If you want to play some Song of Ice and Fire game with trivia,
the questions will be written by me, so if that's extra incentive
then join us. Or e-mail us for more questions
if you're curious about how it's going to work.
Yep. Just join the Discord and you'll
get more information. That's right.
There's a link to join the Discord in both the link of the
video, and we'll make sure it's in the link for the podcast as
well, which I don't think we usually do.
So we'll put that in. All right, Our trivia.
Speaking of trivia, our trivia question for today, who is the
first character in A Song of Ice and Fire to say Blood and Fire,
To say Blood and Fire. Not in this because sometimes
people think it right. It's sometimes part of the
narrative. And I'm not saying fire and
blood. No, I'm saying blood and fire.
So fire and blood, Blood and fire.
Who's the first person to say blood and fire?
Yes, it's a little. Is it the is it the first person
chronologically to utter those words, or the first time we got
it in the book? Good question.
The first person to utter it in the books, going through that
order? Yes.
The first person to utter it chronologically, as far as I
know, is in this episode. So good catch, Sean.
That may have been why you pointed that out.
Very sneaky, yes. So let's start with the We're
going to start in the with right where we picked off, and then
we're going to Wiggly, Wiggly, Wiggly.
Jump back in time. But we'll start with this quote
at the aftermath of Heron Hall. Heron and his last sons died in
the fires and engulfed his monstrous fortress that night.
House Four died with him, and so too did the Iron Islands hold on
the river lands. The next day, outside the smoky
ruins of Heron Hall, King Agon accepted an oath of fealty from
Edmund Tully, Lord of River Run, and named him Lord Paramount of
the Trident. The other River Lords did homage
as well to Agon as King and to Edmund Tully as their Liege
Lord. Weeks if not months later.
The castle was still hot, and we know that when Foreign Stark
shows up there later, it's still going to be smoldering.
And this is maybe when this talk of burning ghosts begins.
Certainly couldn't have started before the castle was burned.
Don't know that it started right away.
But yeah, maybe it didn't happen until people started living
there. But people may have already
started talking about the curse cuz of just the dramatic fall of
Heron and the way the story was being told.
The day that Agon landed was the day the castle finished all
these things. That's the kind of thing people
would start talking right away. But anyway, what a place to give
homage, right? I I wonder a little bit about
that, by the way, if George had any ideas in his mind of of
Chernobyl, the idea of this. Massive construct that had been
burned almost fantastically still.
Smoldering cursed land Still doing harms?
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that possibility.
I don't know if it's. Sort of a lesson to future
people, you know. Lots of parallels, whether you
thought or not. I like to draw the parallels.
I like the lesson aspect of it too, because we've certainly
talked about that quite a bit. You're right, that's a great
point. And I think we've used that
metaphor of Chernobyl in other areas of West of not Westeros
but of Planetos because we put that out as an as a possibility
for Ash I for what went wrong there as well As for Mentares,
we've used the Chernobyl example for both of those.
Some sort of permanent long lasting damage that causes
mutations and maybe we don't have the mutations here at Heron
Hall, but we have some strange things that that work for that
metaphor. Yeah, that's a great catch.
So it's a strange place to give, Ahmad.
You're bending the knee in front of the largest castle ever and
it's on fire or smoldering really hot.
And you're well cowed, I think by or awed by what just did
this. The dragon Valerian.
Probably just sitting there chilling, eating an entire aurox
in one bite, you know? Well, you know, I hadn't
considered that part of the image that Valerian would be
present for this. I mean, right, Like you're
bowing to the king, but you're acknowledging, and he's probably
acknowledging that the one of the reasons he is king is
because of Valerian. And that's who did the damage
there on this castle. So, yeah, reminder of what?
Who? Who bears the great weapon here.
And by the way, we're gonna have to think about this later, but I
want to set the stage now. Megor.
Megor did a lot of this demonstrative, burning and
destructive things, but he did it for the wrong reason.
He didn't do it for reasons that that it were as cunning and
nuanced as as his father. Aegon used destruction as a
deterrent, whereas Megor did it as a challenge to his enemies.
He's like, ah, what's up? You know, I burned your thing.
Come get me. You know, like this was Aegon
did. This is like the exclamation
point, the period, the ending, you know, But Megor did it to
like cause more harm, to fire his enemies up, to get them mad.
And to yeah, Megor went after things that were popular, made
himself the one who was hated. Where Agon destroyed the things
that were hated to make himself popular, and Agon destroyed his
foes, Megor destroyed his friends.
So Megor did a lot of the same things, but for very different
reasons. And and and didn't have the same
thought processes. So just a little tidbit of
preparing for that, because of course it's going to be a little
while before we get to Megor. Agon's reign is long, and Megor
of course isn't the second king, he's the 3rd.
And of course he had Vsenia for a mother, which I'm not sure is
the the best thing to grow up peaceful and friendly.
Anyway, we'll have time for Megor when the time comes.
Let's rein it back into the timeline.
We're focused on it for a minute.
Actually, no, let's not. Let's go back.
As I said, Wiggly, wiggly, Wiggly back in time for some
fun. Additional context to when the
Riverlands was last. Self ruled.
Now side note as we begin our Riverlands flashback.
We did two episodes on the history of the Riverlands, but
it was so long ago that the World of Ice and Fire wasn't
even out yet. So those episodes aren't up
anymore. We took them down quite a while
back. There's a part three that's
still up because it's just the current times, which we didn't
need the World of Ice and Fire or Fire and Blood to talk about.
We might say a few things differently since it's been so
long, but other but the information wasn't out of date
when we said it. Now, of course, we're coming
back to this topic, but we didn't.
Well, I have a question. Yeah.
If do folks have access to that if they're patriots?
Does anyone have that one? I don't think so.
OK. I'm just kind of curious if it
was in our like archive, like if someone did was really it might
be on the Patreon. They might be able to find it.
It might be. Actually, I'm not sure.
I don't. Know anyways argument that you
know, I think it predates our patriot, that's how.
Yeah, I think it does create our Patreon, but I feel that I think
that in our episode searcher in the database, it might be
catalogued there. Anyways, some of you would have
seen it way back. Probably like if you're a patron
or something and you're like, I'm dying to hear this like,
really inaccurate episode and like, go back in time and have a
time club. So like, yeah, we could do that.
We just don't want, like, people accessing our content and being
like this, thinking that's our quality level.
Yeah, yeah, just to. Be clear, some people might be
interested. If we, I was going to say if we
redid the river lands, it might be need to compare and contrast
those old episodes. But we're we're almost doing,
redoing the River lands right now, right here.
Yeah, at least this historical part.
Because when we did the World of Ice and Fire coverage, we never,
we didn't do the whole book. We didn't do every single thing
we realized we were. We're just picking topics and
covering them. And a lot of those came from the
World of Ice and Fire. But there wasn't any read to
call it need to call it Valoridus, because we weren't
going in any kind of order. We're doing a little bit of that
here, but it's not a regular thing here.
And we didn't get to this part of the world of Ice and Fire,
which was the long history of the Riverland.
So anyway, let's talk about that, which it reminds us that
Heron's vassals amongst the River Lords they turned on and
when they turned on him, they were merely following a
tradition of sorts. This kind of thing of the River
Lords fighting amongst each other or whoever was in charge,
whether it was an insider or an outsider, was very common,
though I doubt Haron himself would have bothered to learn
this or cared if he actually did.
Anyway, here's what the World of Ice and Fire has to say about
that. Quote In all the long history of
the Trident under hundreds of rulers, there was hardly ever a
time when the river folk were not at war with at least one of
their neighbors. Sometimes they were forced to
fight upon 2 or even 3 fronts at once worse.
Few of the River Kings ever enjoyed the full support of his
own Lords. Bannerman memories of ancient
wrongs and bygone betrayals were not OFT put aside by the Lords
of the Trident, whose entities ran as deep as the rivers that
watered their lands. Time and time again, one or more
of these river Lords would join with some invader against their
own king. Indeed, in some cases.
It was these very Lords who brought the Outsiders into the
Riverlands, offering them lands or gold or daughters for their
help against familiar foes. Many a River King was toppled by
such alliances, and each new battle only served to set the
stage for another to follow. With hindsight, it is plain to
see that it was only a matter of time until one of the invaders
chose to stay and claim the Riverlands for his own.
Yeah, I mean, think about it. If you think of the biggest
rivalry, house versus House in Westeros, let alone the River
lands, you think of Bracken Blackwood.
Most likely that it comes to the top of my mind anyway, I imagine
most of you all are the same. It's the example of a
longstanding blood feud, just unbelievably long that it's been
running, but apparently that attitude is supported within the
River Lands, which is full of feuds and long running grudges
and long memories and stubbornness and lack of
forgiveness and things like that.
So yeah, it's a very bloody region for a lot of reasons and
that's one of the reasons as well that it's rarely united
because of this long running enmities, these grudges, these
you know, things they don't forget.
You might say the phrase with the only ones with water under
the bridge. Nice.
It's funny to do you point that out too, because the phrase
would be relatively new on the scene, especially at this point
that we're getting into. They probably weren't that big a
deal. Yet they are.
They're only about 600 years old as a house, and right now we're
going 300 years. The conquest is 300 years prior
to with the current times, right?
The books are 300 years after the conquest roughly and we're
400 years before that. So actually yeah no we're but
we're 100 years before house Fray so we are in the pre fray
times of the river lands here. Y'all.
It's before they existed or before they built their, their
toll bridge. They may have existed but they
didn't have a castle. So they're they they built the
bridge 600 years ago, a wooden bridge and then just with the
little keep on each side and those were wooden also.
And now now they're both. Now all of it's stone, the
bridge and the the castles. So yeah, it's been a nice run
for them. So if you.
Is a little humorous or ironic or whatever you hear you say.
They're only 600. Yeah, they're only three times
older than America. So if you knew, if you've been
playing close attention or well read on the subject already, you
know that it we're not talking about the iron born in terms of
inviting an outside conqueror, they were not invited.
They were unfortunately supported by some river Lords,
but they weren't like hey Harwin Hardhand, come here.
Nope, that's not what happened, but it is similar to what
happened here. Like Agon Heron's grandfather
took the river lands away from a different conqueror.
So let's start with who it was taken away from.
When the river lands ruled, it ruled itself last.
The title was actually called the King of the Rivers and Hills
as opposed to Heron who was the king of the Isles and rivers.
And the Teagues were originally who are the ruling house house
Teague. They were originally called the
King of the Trident, but they eventually became king of the
rivers and hills because they expanded their domains and maybe
increased their prestige. And the borders with the West
are hilly. So some of those areas have been
kind of a neutral zone, sort of a sometimes it belongs to the
Riverland, sometimes it belongs to the West, and those those
hills mark that border. So sometimes those hills are
part of the Riverlands. If you recall Rob, when he was
named king, several people shouted King of the Trident
because it was like an ancient title being brought back again
that they remembered. They wouldn't have said king of
the rivers and hills to rob at that point anyway.
So this is the final king that we're going to, well not really
the final reign. Technically there's more kings
because, you know, sometimes someone king dies in battle and
then their son immediately becomes king and then they die
like 5 minutes later. We've got that sort of scenario
here. So technically there were
several more kings after Humphrey Teague Humphrey the
first Teague, but they didn't really rule.
So 700 years prior to A Song of Ice and Fire, this Humphrey
Teague had a lot in common with Baylor the Blessed.
He wasn't frail like Baylor and he didn't have any problem
having children, but he was extremely pious and spent a lot
of his reign founding new Seps and Mother Houses.
This might have made the local Olds God's worshippers a bit
anxious and for good reason, because he really did have a
target painted on them. You can pretty easily guess
which house would be the most concerned.
That's right, the Blackwoods. Lord Roderick Blackwood might
have seen this problem coming ahead of time.
Or perhaps he was just playing the Game of Thrones the way it's
often played, which is, you know, get as much power as you
can. He married one of his daughters
to storm King Arlen the Third Arlen.
Yeah, we always talk about King of the Hill somehow in the show,
and it might have been a double marriage because Lord
Blackwood's daughter, Shiera. There's Shiera Blackwood that we
mentioned at the outro here at the intro.
Rather, she married King Arlen's son as well.
So two marriages of Blackwood to Durindon.
That's pretty interesting. Blackwood's not super close to
Durindon. They're on the other side of the
Red Fork. It's not that close.
They're not in the same Kingdom. So it's kind of interesting that
this happened. It's not not just one marriage,
but two. It implies a very tight
connection, more than just an alliance.
It looks like they had plans together.
This was not King Arlen's first marriage, which you may have
figured that out by the the fact that a a son and a daughter
married this guy and his son. So, like, how far apart could
they all be? Anyway, Arlen may have regarded
the old God's well because he actually got married at he
married Lord Blackwood's daughter at Raventry Hall in
front of the dead Wherewood, because the Wherewood was still
dead back then 700 years ago. Which is kind of a neat little
detail. Usually what we see is the bride
marrying the husband at his castle because she's joining
that house, right? That's usually how it works.
In fact, that's the overwhelming majority.
So the king of the Stormlands getting married outside the
Stormlands is pretty interesting, especially because
this is a separate Kingdom. This isn't like in West like
modern Westeros, where if the Lannister marries a Baratheon,
they're all maybe they're in different regions, but it's all
the Seven Kingdoms, it's all one ruled by one king.
This was not the case at this time, so it's even more unusual.
Nina comes up with some examples of other times when this
happens, because we wanted to kind of compare this and say,
hey, how often do marriages happen at the bride's place and
the bride's house? And there's definitely some
examples and they all have some things in common.
We it looks like we uncovered a bit of a pattern here.
Ned and John Aaron's double marriage to Catlin and Lysa took
place at River Run. That's one example, and this was
part of partly in due, due to the need for speed.
They were at war. They needed to get this thing
done quickly. They couldn't just go have a
marriage at Winterfell, have a marriage at the veil.
I mean, there was fighting in the veil already, you know, and
the and Winterfell is damn far away.
So I can't do. That and that's like the thread
through, that's the thread through all these examples,
right? That the basically some sort of
war or immediacy was necessary, but that's not the case for this
Blackwood Durand in marriage. They may have seen war coming,
they may have been worried about it in the future, but it wasn't
actively happening. No one was actually at war at
the time. So they could have gone back to
Storm's End and had the marriage there.
There was no pressing need that we know of.
So that's pretty interesting, and it may imply some politics,
some symbolism, some making some statements that the other Lords
would be able to see and interpret.
These other examples, I don't know if you're going to run
through them all, but they're almost all in the river lands
too, right? Wherever the.
I wonder if that's because maybe the river lands are quicker to
abandon tradition when there is war, or maybe because they're
more likely to be mixed up in war, right?
Yeah, more likely to be in the cross of two entities that are
coming at each other or they themselves being split apart.
So that's a good call. So yeah, let's run through these
real quick, just we don't need to linger on them.
But I want to throw the examples out there.
Rob Mary Jane Westerling at the crag, which Rob felt pressured
into marrying her cuz he got her pregnant and thought that was
the honorable thing to do. So that was another that was a
bit of a shotgun wedding. Do it quickly.
Let's say he hadn't. He would have been marrying,
Yes. What's your name at the He
hadn't picked. He hadn't picked a Fray yet He
was allowed to choose, and he hadn't.
So that's why you can't think of 1, because he hadn't shown one
of those phrases. But you're right.
So he also did it to avoid having to marry the one he had
promised to marry. And then that one did as well.
That one actually became Ed Muir marrying at the twins.
Which Ed Muir didn't want to do that.
He wanted to do it. He he's like, no, why do I have
to go there? He argued against it.
And they're like, dude, we got to make amends.
Oops. So there was an There was an
extra reason there, too that was acknowledged as unusual.
Marjorie marrying Renly at Highgarden.
Now that was where Renly fled in the aftermath of Cersei's coup,
when Renley first tried to team up with Ned and Ned rejected
him. So this was also very much a
matter of of doing things quickly.
He also had to out be quicker than Stannis.
It also seems like Dick and Tarly wed Eleanor Mooten at
Maidenpool. That's Randall Tarly's second
son but chosen heir, right? And Maidenpool was.
Randall was basically ruling Maidenpool when we see him
there, right? Brianne showed up and he's like,
well, I thought that, you know, his own night says it isn't this
in this Lord Mutton's roof, you know?
And he's like, you're fired. You can't speak to me that way.
But he made a good point. Like, it is Lord Mutton's roof.
But Randall Tarley is this brutal, strong man who just kind
of took over and the same. That's why Nina put this example
last, because it's a similar, maybe a similar case where
someone's making a statement like, yeah, I don't own this,
but I'm kind of taking it. I'm kind of running this thing,
you know? I'm not the Lord, but I'm
effectively the Lord. And I think maybe that might be
what the Storm King was doing, was like, this isn't my
territory, but I'm the highest ranking guy here.
I'm gonna flex a bit, that kind of thing.
And Roderick Blackwood may have been happy to have him in there
because he may have had ambitions he may have, on top of
being worried about what was going on in the River Lands,
which is the persecution of worship of the old gods.
And a lot more could be said about this if we had a better
timeline of when these marriages happen.
We don't even know that this double marriage happened at the
same time. The second marriage between
Durden and Blackwood may have come years later, may have been
a double ceremony. It may have happened at the
exact same time. That probably would have been
mentioned if it was the case, but still, we're not really
sure. The timeline throws us off a bit
here either way, The Durindans having a base in an ally in the
River Lands. Let's pull up the maps.
You can see what I'm talking about in terms of how they get
boxed in here. Look at how the storm lands and
where the location of House Blackwood which is in the West
there of the river lands. They kind of box in the area of
Maiden Pool, which is what we're told is the center of power for
House Teague. So the King of Hills and Rivers
had their power base in Maiden Pool.
Just South of them is the Storm Lands, and just east of them, to
the OR just West of them rather is House Blackwood.
So they've got them covered from South and West.
Southwest is the God's Eye. There's nothing there, and
there's no Heron Hall there yet. And N is the Vale, so there's
nothing there for them either. That's like a hard barrier.
So they're kind of trapped. They're kind of cornered in by
this new alliance, which may have put things to a head, push
things to go get worse. Now we've theorized that Baylor
the Blessed might have had designs on repressing worship of
the old gods, and we wonder if he was murdered, if Baylor was
murdered, if that was one of the reasons why.
Because his actions were going to cause civil war.
In this case, no one stopped Humphrey, and it did lead to
civil war. Humphrey's repression of the Old
Gods. It probably grew over time.
There may have been some breaking point, some sort of
straw that broke the camel's back.
I don't know what that thing was.
My favorite head cannon is the cutting down of a heart tree or
two or three or something like that.
Because it's not like there's some old God cept to despoil or
a priest to murder right? So the only like holy symbols
they have are the heart trees. Some kind of hard for me to
picture how you persecute worship in the old gods except
cutting down heart trees like people just go worship in
silence in the gods would what He has a big problem with this?
Well he would cut off cut down the tree if he had a problem
with that. It's hard for me to think of
what else they would do besides like the more traditional
rounding up worshippers and killing them.
Which it doesn't sound like he did something like that.
That's severe, but it's possible.
There might have been some preferential treatment tonight.
There might have been people who were, I don't know, honorable
and trustworthy but didn't believe in the idea of
knighthood. And other people who were maybe
kind of crappy like, you know, Gregor, or maybe not even that
extreme, but who got to be Knights.
And then because of that they got certain benefits and other
people didn't. I could see that being this sort
of a I like that. They're nuanced way.
They could still end up sliding a lot of people.
Yeah because it's rooted in who you worship.
Not your personnel, not your behavior.
Not like calling you to account for what you've done.
It's just what team you're on. And yeah so that would seem
unfair not just to worshippers of the old gods but to a lot of
just decent folk will be like no it's not your who you worship
that makes you a good person. It's your actions.
It's like Gregory Clagaine is a good guy like you said.
That's a perfect example of of that dichotomy.
So it could have been any number of things.
The the word and used in the text is repressed though, which
is a pretty strong word. So I don't think it's just, I
don't think it's minor. So I like your example of of
political favors to worshippers and leaving the old gods people
kind of out in the cold. And what's interesting about
this is it became a civil war but it wasn't like we're going
to overthrow you, Teagues. It was we're going to force you
to back down. We've seen cases like this.
It's not what we normally think of when we think of civil war or
someone rising against their king usually think oh they're
going to overthrow them. That's the whole point.
But there's lots of examples in real history and in Westeros and
elsewhere where they rose up to curb the power of the king or
queen, not to overthrow them entirely.
For example, that's what the original plan for Aries was
within the Targaryen and the house and their allies, a lot of
them are like, we're just going to force Aries out.
We're not going to overthrow the Targaryens.
But then things, you know, went their own direction and and
Robert and his allies, you know Aries pushed things too far and
they couldn't Reg. Our replacing Aries no longer
became possible and instead it was Robert.
But and that's kind of where this went, very similar in that
they initially were just trying to force this king to behave
better, to treat their the old gods worshippers better.
But at some point, it pivoted into a fullblown.
Let's replace the Teagues with the Blackwoods.
But what we're pretty sure that didn't happen until the
Blackwoods were almost beaten, which is very interesting, is
why didn't they call in their Storm King allies early in the
war, or even halfway through the war?
They waited until they were losing badly, which is like,
well, why? Why didn't they do it sooner?
Well, for one thing, that really heavily implies that, yeah, they
weren't just trying to overthrow King Teague here.
If they had really wanted to overthrow him and install a new
king, they would have just brought everyone at once.
They wouldn't have just made it a fight within the Riverlands by
making it a conflict within the Riverlands.
Only they were keeping it a Riverlands issue, trying to keep
it an internal thing. Hey, we're trying to get more
rights. We're not trying to bring in an
outside conqueror cause would you bring in an outside army?
Well, you risk the thing that happened happening, which is
they decide to stay. They bring you.
You let you invite someone to bring 20,030 thousand soldiers
into your domain. Well what happens if they don't
leave or if they don't want to leave?
Like you know what I think we like it here also.
It's it's as far as legitimacy. You earned your throne by
bringing in an outside power that's going to create long
term, long standing grievances. And what would we what did we
just learn about the Riverlands? It's a place of long standing
grudges and people not supporting each other.
If you don't do it right, you're going to find yourself toppled
or. You might temporarily get rid of
the teagues, but then you won't have respect after the fact.
Yeah, someone else just be getting rid of you a generation
later. You've just painted a target on
your head. So you they're very careful that
they don't want to seize power if that power is going to
destroy them. And and the Blackwoods, having
lived in the Riverlands was a very long are savvy about this,
at least on some level, I think they're not.
Yeah. We're not just going to blindly
grasp as much power as possible and then try to hold on to it
after the fact. They know better.
They're not. They're they're too smart for
that. Aside from all that, there's
even a, I don't know, a list of other reasons I consider just
basic pride. We'll just do this ourselves.
Basic ignorance, not having knowledge of how big the enemy's
forces, or even of your own forces.
A lot of times that's a mistake that people make is just
underestimating what they can accomplish.
And then maybe even after realizing it just takes a minute
to send an envoy to another land, have them come back.
Any kind of negotiation that, you know, I can imagine, like
weeks of back and forth trying to convince because just imagine
if someone says to you, hey, we need help, please come to war.
Like, hold down, slow down. How many forces you have?
How many forces are you? What are we getting out of?
And so you have to send a Raven to someone who's in the middle
of war, and then they have to like just the logistics.
Of communicating. We need your help and then for
the help to come by the time all that happens, crap we've almost
lost. So now the person come and help
is really saving you and they expect to be rewarded for that.
So it's even it's even more dangerous.
The longer they waited, the more of a reward the Storm King was
going to expect for bringing his assistance in.
And that's that's exactly what happened.
So but backing up a little bit here, another thing that may
have been in the minds of some River Lords is this King Teague
might actually be making the right moves to lock this down in
a way that's never happened before.
And that might be what he was. He's doing with all the
religious stuff, with all the pushing of the seven and
building chapels and new temples or what have you, because he got
the Faith Militant on his side and he may have seen that as an
as an angle. He's like the Faith Militant
supporting what I do. I'm a religion, I'm an 8 of 10
on religion and the Faith Militant like that.
But if I'm an 11 of 10, they'll fully back me and they'll
basically be half mine, be part of my army.
It will be that tight and that might be what he did.
He may have leaned into it even more.
He might have been a very religious guy that took it to
another level because he saw it would gain him power.
It's like an extra way for his dynasty to get legitimacy.
Like we're the, you know, big pushers of the seven and we're,
you know, we're going to make that our centerpiece of our
dynasty, and that's going to enable us to grow and and become
more powerful. It's a little bit of a different
context here, but that's what the gardeners did, right?
Yes, you're right, they did it. Was a long time ago, but it's
crazy idea for him to have. We've seen it work before, so
you're totally right, Yeah. And it's kind of what a gun is
out doing too, right? So.
So the Blackwoods rose and it with them came King Humphrey.
Or rather, against King Humphrey came the Tullys and the vances
of a Tranta. But not the vances of Wayfarers.
Rest, because of course there's two house vances now.
You wonder what it was for them, because they're not all God's
worshippers. They may have just been more.
They saw House T getting too powerful.
Or they saw the the the way things were headed.
And it wasn't good. A lot of reasons why they might
join. It might just be like we were
talking about the the the basis of honor or politics.
Them getting shut out of things. But either way, because one way
to look at this is it's a violation of the feudal
contract. I'm your.
I'm your vassal. You're my Lord.
You're supposed to protect me. You're supposed to protect keep
me safe. Right?
That's the basic trade off, right?
I give you taxes, I give you food.
I send you soldiers for your wars.
You keep me safe. You protect my honor.
How is repressing my religion? How does that fit into that?
It doesn't. It's a violation of that.
It clear. It's a clear violation of the
feudal contract. If you're repressing my
religion, you're definitely not protecting me.
You're telling other people my religion is bad and they're
coming after me because you've validated persecution within
your realm. You've said that it's okay to
treat these people badly. I mean, this is something that
happens in the real world. You don't have to make a law
against a religion to get people fired up about attacking
worshippers of that religion, right?
You could just have to denigrate it or say it's bad or say, oh,
they're evil, like they're not worshipping with the good
religion. So this is something that plays
out all throughout real history and fantasy history, and it's
pretty easy to see when you frame it that way, I think.
So that might might be another reason why the the Tullys or the
vances of the Tranta Rose are like, well, this, this Liege
Lord is violating the feudal contract.
It's our duty to stand against that.
I mean, it could be some combination of the above, of
course. And the Vances and the Tullys
might have said Okay, we'll support you, but not if you
bring in the Storm King. You know, we can't have that.
But things got desperate and well, yeah, Roderick may have
been banking on people disliking the Teagues more than they
actually did. He may have expected more allies
based on the way the Teagues were treating their vassals.
But this didn't happen. #2 maybe.
Well, #2 is what we had already said about the optics of calling
in the Storm King, let alone the the danger of what happens if he
stays. So the Blackwoods didn't want to
lose that. You know that the optics and and
look like the good guys. They wanted to keep themselves
looking like the victims. But once they call them the
Storm King, that changed. But they didn't have a choice.
They were losing badly. Raventry Hall was besieged.
So they were they were they were screwed.
They lost all the major battles, maybe because the Faith Militant
was enough to turn the tide, but also just sounds like more of
the Riverland supported House Teague.
Because of course the Brackens supported House Teague against
the Blackwoods. That's the most straightforward
guest one could make here. And since the vances of a Tranta
were on one side and not the Vances of Wayfarers Rest, yes,
indeed, the Vances of Wayfarers Rest did take the side of the
Teagues. The dairies and small woods as
well did so, and probably some others, but they're not
mentioned. Maybe both sides hope for more
defections. Maybe a lot of the river Lords
houses just sat out. We can suspect there's several
river Lords houses that had grudges against both sides and
we're like, I'm not fighting for either of them unless they beg.
And of course, no one begged, so probably not.
Anyway, so he maybe Roderick underestimated some things.
Maybe he overestimated other things.
Either way, he found himself in a position where he had no
choice but to call in the Storm King and.
Or did he have no choice? This isn't kind of an
interesting thing. Like he may could have just had
bent the knee and said all right, we lost.
I'll accept this punishment. And this is one of those things
where it gets kind of real, where someone something is
turned evil, something is turned corrupt, but it's so powerful
that people don't want to give up on it.
They want to keep it, they want to keep using it.
And this, this thing that's causing harm to society, to
culture, to a Kingdom, continues because the people are been at
the people who own it are benefiting too much from it to
give it up, even though it's causing such great harm now that
is. So that's what the Blackwoods
did. They decided rather than face
the music, rather than face this zealous king that might take
full opportunity to punish them more thoroughly than they might
otherwise deserve because of the religious differences.
They called in the Storm King. He came quickly.
He may have already been ready. We're told he gathered his army
quickly and showed up. The timeline doesn't really
support the way things go. It's described like did they
really wait till they were besieged to then ask for help?
Then he called his banners. Then he marched all the way
there and they were still besieged.
I'm thinking there's a little bit of looseness here.
Intentional looseness by the sources because they wouldn't
have the precise details probably.
That adds to my thought earlier that they've been trying for a
minute and the details just weren't hammered out yet, yeah.
That's why it seems like it all happened so suddenly because
really have been planned out for weeks.
Yeah good point. And if we think again of of like
Tywin we think again of Robert Trebellion which is such a great
model for some of the things that are happening here
including the reasons people go to war.
I mean, look at why look areas violated the view of contract
he. Executed some Lords for very
little, and then demanded more. Dead Lords, children Lords for
just for the crime of being related to them.
And John Aaron's like, well, that's evil.
I'm rising up against that. Plenty of people still supported
Aries even though he was clearly doing violating the rules for a
king, like breaking the contract.
So obviously people will still support the king even when he's
a mad, murderous, you know, evil guy breaking his own rules.
So maybe Black expected more people would be upset about
that. But no.
If they haven't done it to you, right.
It's a little ease like, well, that's what those Northmen get
or whatever. And and also it's not like the
King doesn't have an army. It's not like that's not, yeah,
it's not an easy decision to go to war.
No. Even when it's quote UN quote
correct, there's still a lot of risks.
There's still, well, it comes up a lot in modern times.
Like people are like, well, you expect people who work for a
company that's doing wrong things to stand up to that
company. Well, it's it's it's almost
harder for people who work within the company to stand up
to that company because they get fired.
Like for me, a consumer of the product, it's very easy for me
to complain and be like I'm never buying your product again.
But for someone who works like I'm never working here again,
like giving up your job, that's that's rough, like that's that's
simple. And this is even bigger because
you're giving up your life potentially to to take it to.
To do the right someone else's life.
Yeah, because even the idea, like maybe you should be want to
give up your job rather than work for a crappy company.
But are you also going to like your wife and your kids?
Or your it's not just you. Suddenly you can't feed your
family anymore. And that's just in modern times
when there's wealth and safety Nets back.
Then you says like you're going to war, like you're going to
send a whole village to be slaughtered.
Like every able bodied man in a village is going to go to be
slaughtered. That's what's happens when you
go to war. And the only one with the safety
net is the one saying, yes, let's go to war because the
Lords can often expect to to bend the knee and give away
their child as a hostage rather than themselves.
So they they're the ones that have the least to lose in some
ways. Because yes, maybe they can lose
a ton of power they have, they can lose power that that no one
that's following them, even it has in the 1st place.
But they're like they're not risking their life in the same
sense, although they are, they're going to battle.
So they are risking it in some ways, but less risk, we'll say.
They're going into battle with swords and armor and horses at
the and a personal guard. Yeah, like to survive by.
Hand, the random farmers of their land are being sent to the
front lines with maybe a spear. Yeah, no armor.
Like, yeah, hardly anything. So it's a much different game
and it's a much tougher decision.
But some of these Lords would be thinking about that.
A lot of them would be callous and like, Nope, these peasants
are my property. They do what I say, but some of
them would be like, no, I'm not going to put these people at
risk just because these two Lords are arguing about which
gods are real and when. I'm fine to worship them both,
you know, So there'd be a lot of different opinions here and a
lot of just people being pulled in a direction they don't
necessarily want to be pulled in because of greater risk if they
don't act. There's a little bit of shades
of A Dance with Dragons here where Raven tree halls under
siege and then Jamie comes and you know, fixes that quote UN
quote fixes it, whereas here it wasn't resolved so easily.
They had took more war to solve it.
So I'm going to guess like what you said Sean the Storm King had
some conditions. He's like I'm just going to come
over here and help my fatherinlaw because you know I'm
getting something out of this. And that said, it doesn't seem
that his initial plan was watch this y'all I'm going to go in be
the hero and then I'm going to take it all for myself.
That is what happened. But I don't think that's why he
how he planned on it. For one thing, anyone, not just
a River Lord knows what a chaotic mess the Riverlands is
like. Do you really want to rule that?
Well, maybe you want to, but can you?
I don't know. It's pretty hard.
Look at how hard the internal, the Riverlands Born Kings have
had holding it all together. What makes me think a Storm King
who lives all the way over here? What makes me think I can keep
it all together? Maybe pride.
Maybe arrogance. Sure, there's there are reasons.
But you can also see why I wouldn't just be like, yeah, I'm
going to take all that for myself.
There's reasons no one else had done that before, and there's
reasons it hadn't been held. Yeah, it's hard.
It's difficult. It's a challenge.
It might backfire horribly. So we're going to guess that he
asked for some things. Maybe.
Maybe that second marriage was part of it.
Maybe it hadn't happened yet. Maybe he expected money or other
political favors. We're not sure.
But whatever it was, it changed because it whatever he asked for
he got more and by the end because he didn't initially ask
for the the river land, we know they would they definitely would
have told him no if he had asked for that originally and.
And to be clear, we'll go into it.
But he didn't leap right to that either.
He went through several different sort of like options,
if you exactly. The last resort was fine.
I'll just do it myself, yeah. And and like same thing with
Robert and Ned and John Air. And they was they rose up
against the tyranny of Aries. They didn't rise up to make
Robert King. That wasn't the initial play
that came later. They were like, well we're this
is not quickly resolved we're this is going on too far now.
It's several battles have been fought now it's a fullblown
rebellion. At first it didn't start that
way. So that's what we're saying.
Like things can when you start wars, they can go in directions
that you had no idea. You know Storm King starting a
war with the Riverlands could end up in him losing his own
life and he's trying to double the size of his Kingdom.
He may end up ending his life instead or or screwing up his
own dynasty. So it's a very tough decision.
That's something you do lightly. And so whether we've sussed out
his motivations properly or framed it properly, the Storm
King called his banners marched into the Riverlands with a very
large army for he won several battles before getting to
Raventry. So there were other they were
armies met him along the way. Or perhaps he freed other
castles, like maybe the vances of a Tranta had lost their seat
during the war and he restored it to them.
Or maybe they were also under siege, something like that.
Maybe the Tulleys were also under siege, although he he
wouldn't have gone to River Run before Raventry Hall, because
that would have it's farther W That would be really weird.
But either way, there were battles before he got to
Raventry, which implies that there was still stuff happening
elsewhere. The war was raging in other
places. Maybe.
See, if I'm Roderick, I send I I send my Faith Militant Army
against the Storm King first, because maybe he doesn't want to
fight them. Maybe the Storm Landers aren't
excited about fighting against the the Warriors of God.
You know, for lack of the that's probably not what they called
them. But it's that same idea of like
do we do we 7 worshippers want to fight against these guys
who've devoted themselves to the seven?
That might not that might not sit well with them.
That might make them uneasy. Maybe not, though.
But I like the idea. It could.
It could be a strategy, even if it wasn't used here.
So where it all culminated, there's a we don't know a whole
lot about those early skirmishes or battles.
Whatever they were, we do know where it all came together.
King Humphrey had to be aware of the Storm King's approach, at
least because of those other battles, if not before that.
It's a rather large army, and you know it's hard to keep that
a secret. The final battle was fought near
Raventry Hall, not at it. So maybe the siege had been
broken, or really what I I figure what happens was the
Stormland's army approaches the the river Landers under the
Under the Teagues Hear about this or see see it.
They form up to face them, and the Blackwoods emerge from
Raventry Hall to try to catch them in between.
Now the battle actually took place at the Teats, Barbas Teats
or the Mother's Teats. It's had a lot of different
names, the same one that have been owned by the both Brackens
and the Blackwoods. That's right.
Okay, Missy's teats, Barbas teats.
Missy's teats, Barbas teats. Anyway, the battle wasn't on the
teats, it was in between them. So the cleavage.
The battle was fought in the cleavage.
Was that that were me. So fought with a lot of axes.
A lot of axes. Yes, there was cleaving all over
the place. And rather than describe the
battle, let's hear the account from the quote.
King Humphrey was the first to die that day, it is written.
His heir, Prince Humphrey, took up his crown and sword, but died
a short time later, whereupon the second son, Hollis did the
same. Only to be killed and turned.
And so it went, the bloody crown of the last River King, passing
from sun to sun, and finally to King Humphrey's brother, all
within the space of a single afternoon.
By the time the sun went down, House Teague had been entirely
extinguished, along with the Kingdom of rivers and hills.
The fight in which they died has hereafter been known as the
Battle of 6 Kings. In honor of Arlen the Third, the
Storm King, and the Five River Kings his Storm Landers slew,
some of whom reigned for minutes, not even hours.
A little bit of Damon Black Fire and his sons in this moment
here, a little bit of the War of 5 Kings, given it's the Battle
of 6 Kings. And yeah, it sounds like quite a
battle. Incredibly bloody and stubborn.
The Teagues knew their place at the top was at stake.
The Faith fought for their beliefs and the Blackwoods
fought for theirs. Or at least many would have.
Others fought for power. The Storm Landers fought for
their king. It's because of so many people
died. It's one of these things that
you don't normally see normally, like one side gives up and saves
their lives. But this was just unbelievably
bloody. So many people dying.
Lord Blackwood was killed too. We're not sure when as compared
to these teagues, like maybe it was before, during, after.
We're not really sure. All told, apart from the
complete end of the Royal Teagues, both Lords Vance as
well were killed. So Lord Vance of A Tranta and
Lord Vance of Wayfarers arrest and Lord Bracken.
Not to mention Lord Blackwood and Lord Smallwood and Lord
Tully like, wow, that's great. That's another reason it reminds
me of the War of 5 Kings, because this is a lot of kings
to die in one battle, let alone one full campaign.
So because it was so bloody that that's the the good side to it
being so bloody was that ended the fighting.
That was it. Like there was no no more will
to fight after that no army of of teagues.
All the teagues were dead. So I guess that's the positive.
But the death of Lord Roderick really threw a monkey wrench
into everything. The the Storm King was like,
okay. We don't know what other favors
he demanded, but it's at this time when he entered the war
that the talk of making Lord Blackwood King began.
Because of course, it hadn't begun when he was, oh, I'm a
persecuted guy. That's, you know, fight with me,
the Persecuted Man, not fight to make me king.
Like, they wouldn't care about that as much.
That's not what they rose for. So it pivoted to that.
And it may be because of the Storm King's pushing, because he
wanted to be married to a king rather than a Lord, and he
wanted his son married to the son of a king and all that
stuff. It's a great way to raise his
own prestige, and he may have had these designs on his
descendants, forming some new Kingdom or something like that.
But of course he had to pivot when Lord Roderick was killed.
Now you might say, well, why didn't he just why not just make
Lord Blackwood's son the king, or something like that?
Why not make him a puppet ruler? Well, let's talk about why
earlier we mentioned the marriage of Shierra Blackwood to
King Arlen's son, and it's possible that didn't happen
until this aftermath rather than the double marriage idea we
floated. Now in other words, he could
have married her to his son after father's death like we
said, like that second marriage could have been like, okay, this
is the way for me to lock down power.
Roderick is dead. I'm going to marry this son to
my to make another marriage to tie myself to this family even
more and have even more power over them.
I want to real quick. Put a slightly less cynical spin
on It might not have wanted more power.
It might have wanted more stability.
He might have just been happy being a Storm King.
He didn't have some longterm design to take over the
Riverlands, but he just knows it's better if we have peace
getting our families tied together.
Work to that end, yeah. I mean there it's.
Got to be at least a potential motivating factor.
That's a great point because they're neighbors and they trade
with each other. So you would want them like you
hey settle your business so we can go back to me shipping you
iron for your grain or whatever you know like my people need
that food and and we want to sell that iron for money
etcetera. The Storm lands is really good
at forging weapons, you know and if it's Smith's there and they
have ports there and. Yeah, river Landers are a
barrier to the Ironman, yes, if you're warm with each other,
you're not going to stop them. You're a cross path to the north
and the West. And like, there's all kinds of
reasons for people outside the river lands to want the river
lands to be stable and at peace and secure.
So yeah, and one thing we'll see as well is when much later if we
jump back to Aegon's conquest for just a minute when our Galac
summons his forces to face Oris and Rainey's in battle within
the Storm Lands. Pirates and Dornish Raiders take
advantage of the fact that the Storm Landers have concentrated
their armies up in another area within the realm.
So they they start picking off at the borders and and attacking
the the the areas that are become unprotected.
So, so that's a risk. So that's something else a Storm
King would be like well hey I'm taking a risk coming here I
expect to benefit from all this. So Shiera was floated.
The idea was presented to the River Lords as queen of the
river lands and King Arlen supported the idea because his
son was her husband. That would be great for him and
so he his son would be King Consort and then eventually his
son might would be king of the River land or king of the storm
land. So he would be King Consort the
River lands and king of the Storm lands without any more
fighting having to occur, right? They were just boom, it's done.
But the River Lords were like, Nah, we don't want to, we don't
want to Queen. This was very stupid on their
part because they didn't consider by pushing away these
viable options, what they'd end up getting what they probably.
It was stupid for other reasons to be It was awesome to get for
other reasons. But the the sexism here is
really going to bite them in the butt because it's a it's another
case of rejecting a woman for a worse alternative that they
should have seen coming. Now.
It's not just that it's not just sexism.
It's not the only thing even Nina points out.
It's not. She calls it a simple Westerosi
or aristocratic misogyny certainly played a major part
here. It's not the only thing because
you're not only handing a crown to a woman, you're handing a
crown to a woman who's married to the storm king.
Who are the future Storm king? That's the political instability
or political reality they may not want to see come to the
floor. They may not want that
connection. They may not want the they.
Maybe it may have been Okay with a queen, but not a queen who's
got such ties to the Storm Lands.
But they may not have wanted a queen who was like a worshipper
of the Old Gods either. That's probably not it, because
they seem to be Okay with the idea of Roderick and he was a
man worshiping the Old Gods, so probably wasn't that.
But still, Rob didn't want to leave his throne to Sansa, not
because she's a girl, but because she was married to
Tyrion, right? He's like, well, we're just
handing it over to the Lannister.
So now Sansa was fully in the clutches of the Lannisters at
this point, where Shiera is not, but they could be worried about,
like the Storm King takes her back to the Storm lands and
keeps her there, you know, what are we gonna do about that?
So it still could happen, even though it wasn't happening at
that point. So, and if you think about
continuing on the line of Winterfell, like, there's still
gonna be factionalism here, like who's gonna end up with
Winterfell? Is it gonna be Rickon, Bran,
Sansa, Even Aria has a claim, sort of right.
So there's like, and if different factions get behind
them, it becomes almost as much about what those factions want
than about what those individuals sort of ostensibly
leading those factions, what they want.
So the reason they rejected Lord Blackwood's son over Shiera is
because he was only eight. Too young to be a king,
certainly. Now that that makes a lot of
ageism. Ageism is better than sexism, so
I think so. What I think the River Lords
were angling for was one of Lord Blackwood's brothers.
Or maybe they just couldn't see that far ahead and they were
just saying no to things they didn't like without thinking of
what that would leave them with. Because with all these options
being taken off the board. OK, no, we don't want we can't
have an 8 year old. We don't want a woman and
especially not one married to the Storm King if that was the
reason that we're really backfired.
If it's the connection to the Storm King so.
But the Storm King's like, no, I don't trust Lord Blackwood's
brothers. This may be where the politics
gets he may have that may have been an excuse.
We don't know if Lord Blackwood's brothers are
trustworthy or not. We have no idea who these guys
are. This is the first mention of
them. We didn't know he had brothers
until this this comes up. They weren't described in the
war at all, so we have no basis to determining whether or not
this was like a he saw Okay. Almost everyone's been cast
aside as an option. There's only like, these
brothers between me and claiming it for myself.
That's the only thing in my way now.
All these things have been cleared out.
He realized the position he's in, where I can just take this
all for myself. Well, only Lord Blackwood's
brothers are in my way. He just has to say he doesn't
trust them or something like that.
Now if they were really, really honorable guys, that might not
have worked, so they probably weren't like super upstanding
guys, but maybe it was just a big power play and he was able
to control the narrative. I don't know.
So. I still lean on him not being so
I don't know what word to use. Manipulative or or ambitious?
Because like you said, I think if they were like he didn't, he
didn't have him killed after the fact, right?
So it doesn't seem like he's just this evil, war mongering,
power hungry Lord. He he didn't have him killed as
far as we know. Potential legitimate.
But the fact that we didn't know anything about him, He might not
have known much about him either.
Or the one thing you might have known about him is they still
like grudges against these other families and it's just going to
be a war in a few years. Again, if I let them take over
like I I. Again, it's hard to know, but it
it just, it doesn't follow the pattern of someone who's being
ambitious to me. I think he legitimate and and
especially because he went through these levels already of
trying to find someone else to be in charge, scratched his
head. I think the whole thing he's
trying to do is just find stability.
I can see that, Yeah. I mean.
You can't trust anyone else to do it.
I'll just do it to be fair. That's pretty much what happened
to Robert Trebellion Once they realized that like there's no
Aries has to die or Aries is dead.
You know they. Yeah, they weren't aiming.
They were there's no ambition. Wasn't there at any point for
for Robert, really. I don't think.
Not much anyway. Certainly not for Ned or John
Aaron apparently. Yeah.
Like John Aaron was more like, yeah, we got a John.
Aaron was about the stability. He's like now we've the Civil
War has happened. It happened for honorable
reasons. But we got to settle things or
it's going to get worse and that's going to be on us.
And so yeah, maybe I'm being a little too cynical, but it's
it's still the cynical options are on the table and you're
right to float the less cynical options.
They're on the table too. Another option is very.
Reasonably cynical, especially in this world.
Another awkward angle to having one of Lord Blackwood's brothers
as the new king was where is his seat of power?
He doesn't inherit Raventry Hall.
The that 8 year old kid does, no matter what, that's not
changing. He still inherits.
The 8 year old boy gets Raventry Hall.
That that shouldn't matter. None of this should change that.
Now maybe if one of them was going to be given made king,
they might be like, well, we're going to have to give you
Raventry Hall too, because then you don't even have a castle.
What's a king without a castle? So it may have been part of the
argument against one of the brothers, I'm not sure.
Either way, it doesn't seem like they saw what came as coming,
and maybe that's because it didn't seem like a very maybe
because it was a long shot. Maybe they maybe I'm calling
them short sighted when really it was at the time it it did
seem really outlandish, like the river at the Storm lands had
never ruled the river lands before it.
You could see why that wouldn't have necessarily been an idea
that was prominent in many people's minds, but however
prominent or not prominent was, that is what happened.
He just said, you know what, Y'all this is mine now I'm the
king of the of the river lands and he didn't even go and rename
himself a king of storms and rivers or whatever.
It's just the storm land. It's all the storm lands.
Like what? What an insult.
They didn't even get to keep their name.
This is 1 big Kingdom now. That's another thing that makes
me think a little bit like that he wasn't really planning this
that because if he was, he might have done some of it better,
right? Because in a way that is a
mistake he made. I want to say that even if he
had good intentions, he did sort of rob them of their identity by
doing that. But I don't think that was his
goal. I think it was an error, right?
Because like, yeah, like before Roderick Blackwood died and and
there's no reason to think he murdered him.
He died in battle and it's pretty hard to murder a Lord in
battle when he's surrounded by his own guards.
Like your army's, like your army's over here, His is over
here. Like you're not even next to
each other. You're fighting as the same
battle, but you're you're not even like near each other, you
know, in terms of proximity, direct proximity.
So as Nina, as Nina phrases it, Roderick Blackwood is the
ideological leader of the rebellion and the leader with
the most royal credentials. And Blackwood's had been kings
before, so they had that going for them.
So it wasn't like raising someone up who would never had
the royal title before. And they may have been kings in
the north as well, so it may have been double kingships.
But regardless they were worthy in the eyes of the river Lords.
At least enough of them. But not only does he die, but
then the other teagues died. I didn't even mention you know
we we mentioned Damon Humphrey Lord or King Humphrey's champion
was his brother. That guy was a great fighter.
So you know that he could have, if he had survived, it would
have been a real big deal. The war could have continued for
a long time. Like how would and if they had
fought of themselves rather than Storm King Just saying okay,
it's mine. The river lands could have just
shredded itself even more. And and that's part might have
been part of the reason he's like I can't leave them to
choose either. They just, they won't.
They'll fight each other. They'll just go back to war.
Like it's might seem a little like who get what gives you the
right to to tell these people what to do.
But come on, like they're going to kill each other, like.
He What gives him the right to tell each other what to do?
Yeah. It's like, no one's right here.
So it's just the least bad option.
It's it's like, yeah, that's that's what war brings you to a
series of least bad options. It's never you don't often don't
have good choices. So anyway, Anita agrees that
with you for the most part, that Arlen the Third was probably
being sincere when he envisioned setting up Roderick Blackwood as
king and then had to pivot. Because yeah, he was really
closely tied to Roderick. He had two marriages and that
would be enough to get influence and concessions and you know
good deals between the two of them and and not likely have
things come to war, have a border they could trust because
you have two kings that are married and and that's the core
of a lot of royal and and noble marriages, is to force each
other to get along. You're not going to fight your
family, are you? Well, you might.
But hopefully it puts a big barrier between that and the
worst possible outcomes, which is yeah.
A couple of things I can imagine in the scenario, like I
constantly imagine if they made a show out of this.
If Martin did write a fully expanded 3 Series books covering
all the details, I might have considered some of these worst
case scenarios like well, if. They do.
If all the errors die, well, then I'll make this girl in
charge. Oh, with that.
But I guess in a worst case scenario I'll just take over.
He might have had this back of the mind.
Plan B, Plan C kind of stuff. Didn't expect it to come to that
also. He might have had those ideas
because someone was playing. There might have been some
Littlefinger in his court. There might have been some other
advisors, some other people who had something at stake, or even
if again not to be too sinister, other people who were just
trying to think about what would be the he might have had a
meeting with his counsel and they all had their different
thoughts, how it might go, what we can do to make the best of
it, how important stability is. They might have pitched these
ideas to him and things he might not even thought of claiming it
for himself might have been suggested to him, you know, Good
said. Here's a little piece from Nina.
It can't be overstated. What overstated?
What Arlen the Third decided to do with the Riverlands because
his decision directly contributed both to ongoing
rebellions against Durand and Rule, as well as the eventual
willingness to support the horror invasion on the part of
some River Lords. Like that's what's going to
happen, is they're going to be so eager to get rid of the Storm
Kings, they actually support the Ironborn invasion, which is
like, what planet is this happening on?
Like this is Bizarro World. They're supporting the Ironborn
like, whoo. Yeah, that's bizarro toast,
Bizarro toast, said Bizarro toast.
And partly and and, and though it might seem small, partly this
is this. Eliminating them as a region,
like not even naming them as a thing anymore.
They're just part of the storm lands now like that.
That was probably adding insult to injury.
And they have contributed in some small measure to the the
longstanding grievances that would eventually come to a head,
but not for quite a while, where the Storm Kings would endure A
rebellion from the river lands almost once a generation again.
This is why you don't rule this place lightly.
It's a hard place to rule. They will not be ruled lightly.
They will try to throw you off. They will try to throw each
other off. They will fight that, basically
that they are. It's a warlike region.
Arlen and his and his advisors. Surely you saw that coming,
which again, is why they didn't do this lightly.
So much defending. They have to send their army out
all this time, and their army is all the way down in Storm's End.
Like it's a hassle. So yeah, the bigger the Dernden
Empire got, the more some of the other houses would see them as a
threat, would look at them as the big dog that need to be
toppled down a peg or two. The more likely people would be
to gang up on them. So yeah, again, just like it,
like any. We've talked about this in terms
of war board gaming before. Right, Sean, you have like 5 or
6 people. We're all playing and no one
wants to stick their neck out and be the one to to to attack
someone else because then you put a target on yourself.
And that's that's the same kind of thinking that the storm lands
would have been engaged in here. Like, well, if we take the whole
river lands, we're taking the center of Westeros, the part
that everyone's already or is fighting over, and people won't
want us to have that and they don't want us to have
everything. Yeah, just a lot of target
painting on self. It's another dynamic we talked
about a little bit with Agon too.
I don't know. This can apply in a lot of
different ways. If you're the big dog, you don't
want to barely be the big dog, yes.
Because then people think they might be able to take you,
especially if they team up. But Agon is like, I'm the clear,
dominant big dog. Any two or three of you couldn't
even come close to taking me out.
And that that's better for stability.
It's more dangerous for tyranny, but it's better for stability
when you have a clear, dominant big dog.
Agon is the personification of walks off and carry a big stick.
That's big stick is Valerian, obviously.
Eddie has black fire. Well, how?
He's got two big sticks. One's a lot bigger than the
other, however. All right, so we're working our
way. We're almost to the midpoint
here. We're ending our jump back
through time. But here we'll leave it with a
quote about the Storm lands doubling in size and what
preceded the next few centuries. And so they would remain more
than three centuries, though the river Lords rose against Storm's
End at least once each generation.
A dozen pretenders from as many houses would adopt the style of
River King or King of the Trident, and vow to throw off
the yoke of the storm Landers. Some even succeeded for a
fortnight, A moon's turn, even a year.
But their Thrones were built on mud and sand, and in the end a
fresh host would March from Storm's End to topple them and
hang the men who presume to sit upon them.
This, by the way, explains a part of why Heron was like
trying to do the big dog thing that we just described.
Like, well, if I have a giant castle that's unassailable, then
maybe for one, someone can actually lock this region down
and and get these Lords to to fall in line.
Of course it took someone with a big dragon not a big castle, but
he he did have the right idea, I think, at least in theory.
Not like it wasn't ethical necessarily, but maybe it was, I
don't know. Not the way he built the castle
that's for sure. But anyway this this point about
But the Thrones were built on mud and sand.
Now that's metaphorical, but literally the river lands is not
a a place that has a lot of really powerful castles.
River like river Run is very defensible but it's not like a
place to mass a ton of troops. It's not a powerhouse in terms
of an aggressive option. You think about the big strong
castles in the river lands, you're like, well who who would
that be? Yeah, like it just doesn't
really compare to the other reasons like the other regions
have probably partly because they're less war-torn.
You know they've had more time to more of their money can go
into making their castle strong rather than paying their troops
and and losing money to battles and.
Then there's been more stability around their land, so they've
had more consistent crops and larger populations and on and
on, yeah. That's another thing too, like I
would say a difference between Heron was trying to be big
enough a dog so that no one challenged him.
Egan was trying to be big enough, a dog so that there was
stability in the land, Yes. And you see, This is why.
Part of the reason, I mean this was just a fun story, but part
of the reason I really wanted to bring this all up at this time
was to show what a big deal it is that Agon actually settled
them. And they actually did stay loyal
to him. Like the Tullys led the
rebellion against the are helped were the first to join Rodrick
Blackwood against the the the teams.
They were the first to join Agon against Herron Herron.
So they're ready to go all these times, they're like, yeah, we're
ready to join this rebellion. Let's go.
But when it comes to the Targaryens, they're staunch
Targaryen loyalists until Aries like that's what broke.
It was right like that and some things that happened right
before that. So that's a long time of staying
loyal after rebelling every generation, right.
Like, that's a lot. And then you get to Targaryen
rule and it's like, no, this is locked down better than it's
ever been locked down before. We got peace here for the and
you see as as soon as the War of 5 Kings starts, it's like it
goes back to those old days of the Riverlands becoming this
hellscape of war. Whether it's them or their
enemies coming there to make it a battleground, whether they
started it or not, Ari is wandering through the
Riverlands. They're horrible, right?
Like the the what she sees there.
This would have been happening in this time.
Maybe not a Greg Oracle gain, not the specific personalities,
There wouldn't have been bloody mummers, but there would have
been awful people doing awful things to regular folk who did
nothing but exist. And this is the kind of
stability when you're like, well, what is what right?
Does someone like Aegon have to attack all these Lords?
And as well he's the Lords are the ones suffering.
But in the long term, the peasants benefit greatly from
this kind of stability. Maybe the Lords don't like it
that much, but let's not. But there's a lot more peasants
than there are Lords. A lot more lives are being kept
peaceful because someone was strong enough to stop the
violence with violence. But that's the way of the world.
The storm lands held the river lands for about as long as the
Targaryens will end up holding it.
About 300 years. That's about a long before the
war 5 kings starts and things are still happening now in the
books. We don't know what we don't.
We're not at a point where we can say how it's going to be.
And the entire 7 kingdoms went to a descendant of Ireland the
3rd, right and Robert Baratheon. So it also kind of came back
around that way because Robert is a descendant of this storm
king. Very distant relative, but
definitely a relative. So that's pretty neat.
Let's go ahead and take our mid roll break here.
And I want to remind you all that every Friday I'm playing
Crusader Kings 3 for A Song of Ice and Fire.
It's a really, really awesome mod developed for that game and
the graphics are fantastic. There's a group of us that hang
out every Friday at six and while I'm making decisions for
whatever house I'm playing right now I'm Ober and Dane or no I'm
sorry. Ober and Dane was killed in
attorney accident which was very fitting because he was he was a
good attorneys but he was also a cheater.
He cheat. He was a good fighter who
cheated a lot. So we made him a good attorney
night. He was like the snail from from
the the mystery night. He was a good jouster but also
cheated and knew what to do like a good at both of those things
this this guy was that. So our thinking is maybe someone
had him killed and made it look like an accident.
We were a victim of our own lifestyle.
But we're we're working on our our new son is a guy named
Gaines Dane and he's a he's he's huge like the size of Gregor.
But we're teaching him to be a good kid and hopefully he'll
wheel dawn one day. So that's the kind of fun stuff
we're doing. It's a really great game.
Dynasties, politics, intrigue, random events, tournaments,
weddings, it's it's a lot of fun role-playing but with the with
the computer handling so many things at once, math and like
the the money and the taxes and it's it's really overwhelming
and awesome. It's comparable to civilization,
right? That fair it's it's more drilled
down. You are playing individuals but
you have this large time scale but it's not quite the grand
scale of of Civ. Like you play years in a session
rather than maybe hundreds of years in a session but you but
when you finish a long campaign you may have ended up playing
hundreds of years. Civ.
You end up playing thousands of years usually But yeah yeah
there's some similar like you're not like you're not doing like
founding a lot of cities and advancing technology a whole lot
but you are making small advances in technology like
better windmills but you're not like inventing electricity you
know you're not going from from stone tools to nuclear power
throughout the game technology stays about the same.
Also want to let people know that if you listen to the
Patreon listen to our episodes on Patreon.
Spotify and Patron have created a a bit of a merger.
They you can now listen to the Patreon only feed on Spotify,
which is better because Spotify has a better player than Patreon
does, which makes sense. They're in the business of
playing audio things, their music and audio that's their
central business obviously. Whereas Patreon is main business
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So it's a lot easier to look through and scroll through and
all that. So if you want to get if you're
already on Patreon and want to be scrolling and getting the
episodes off of Spotify, let us know and we'll show you how to
do that Westeros history@gmail.com For any
questions related to that or just anything else you want to
hit us up for. Question from Dornish Dame.
If the Teagues were establishing a bunch of sceptres at this
time, could the quiet aisle date back to this period?
Oh, nice call. Yeah, I would have to look
deeper to see if the quiet aisle, if there's any clues in
those chapters that indicate how long the quiet aisle has been
there. I do recall it was founded by a
quiet guy, like a particular man started that way and then it
continued that way, if I remember correctly.
So yeah, it could be because the, if you all remember the
where the Trident empties out into the Bay there, that's where
the quiet aisle is. It's like right there offshore
where the river empties out in the sea.
So it is. It's kind of isolated but but
also not so. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I like that idea quite a bit. Fits very well.
All right, now let's get back to our history jump now we're 300
years ahead. We're at the end of the rain of
the storm kings. As we transition to the horror
dynasty, which will then, yeah, I know it's always weird saying
that the horror dynasty, which will then get into lead us back
into current times, meaning a gun's conquest current times.
It seems likely that the Blackwoods continued to benefit
from their relationship to the Storm Kings.
After all, they had that double merit.
So even though they didn't become kings, they were married
to the kings. Because when the River lands
change hands 300 years later, the Blackwoods were in the
center of it yet again, but not in a good way.
It started with hair in the Black's grandfather quote.
When Storms ends, Grasp Upon the River Lands was finally broken.
It was no River Lord who broke it, but a rival conqueror from
beyond the lands of the Trident. Harwin whore called the Hard
Hand King of the Iron Islands. Crossing Ironman's Bay with 100
long ships, Harwin's force landed 40 leagues South of
Seaguard and marched inland to the Blue Fork, carrying their
ships with them on their shoulders in a feat the singers
of the Isles still celebrate. Boy, it's hard to say.
Storms ends grasp. A couple tongue twisters in that
passage. Almost made it.
So that is a thing that's happened in real life.
There are some real life Viking stories about that.
There was an example of that portrayed on the show Vikings of
carrying ships over land and that was based on some real
incidents that have happened. Long ships are light enough for
that, and it's part of why they're light enough for that is
well, you get to do tricky things like carrying them over
land and then drop them in the river and sail down the river.
So like it would be 100 years later.
The river Lords were not eager to stand for their their current
foreign ruler, the Storm King, at this point.
Since it's 300 years later, it's no longer Arlen.
It's Eric, though. He wasn't even aware of the
invasion at this point. Like Harwin, Hardhand snuck in
with these hundred long trips. Not only did they sneak by sea
guard, apparently they started wreaking havoc and taking
castles before Eric even heard about it.
The Tully's actually abandoned river run, which is kind of wild
considering how defensible it is.
Maybe it's less defensible against dudes with portable long
ships. I don't know.
Maybe the river having the water around it isn't as quite as
useful. I still think that would be
pretty effective because they have like catapults and stuff
like, but I don't know, I'm not sure.
Anyway, they marched to Raventry Hall, where apparently a lot of
the River lands Lords were gathering that, and again, the
Blackwoods were prominent enough to beat the spot where everyone
was gathering. At least a substantial number of
them were gathering because it wasn't all of them.
For example, the brackens didn't gather.
They didn't come hang out with the Blackwoods to to fight back
against the river Lords. And who did they?
Who was ruling Blackwood Hall at this time?
A certain Lady Agnes. Oh, so they wouldn't make a
woman queen, but they were totally willing to follow her in
war. I see.
I mean, this is 300 years later, but still, it's like, okay,
guys. But again, as we said, it wasn't
just about her being a woman. There was the political
situation to consider. Still, it's a little ironic.
I can't help but notice that. So the Blackwoods were the
leaders of those willing to fight the Ironborn.
That's another thing of like, hey, we're the good guys.
We're leading us in a good way. Like we're leading against the
foreign invader. However, the Harwin attacked
them and maybe is had been planned.
Maybe the Brackens just took the initiative but they attacked the
River Lords from behind and helped Harwin.
Like how does this help you engender loyalty amongst your
fellow river Lords when you side with the Ironborn?
And it was effective, though it did win the battle easily.
And again, the River lands didn't fully unite against an
invasion because. Of their past.
Of not. Not.
In this case it was not wanting to defend their Storm King and
not wanting to work with certain other allies that were rising
against Hardhand here. But you really got to have your
head up your butt to think the Iron Born are preferable.
I mean, it's not like Harwin Hardhand was an unknown quantity
at this point too. He had a reputation by then.
Either way Lothar, this Lothar Bracken guy, he was Lord of the
Brackens that that made this decision to attack his fellow
river Lords from behind. And they may have thought that
this was just a Raider. Maybe that was it.
They didn't think this guy was coming to stay cuz the iron bar
never come to stay. They never had really before.
It had been a long time since they had so another fatal error,
another fatal calculation. Cuz he did stay, you know?
And maybe the Brackens thought that they could leverage the
Ironborn to become kings. Like, hey, I helped you in this
battle, surely you aren't going to be king of the Riverlands.
Make me king of the Riverlands. I'll be a good ally to you.
We can be pals and Harwin's like.
Sure, bro, that's what we'll do. It's a bad plan, right?
Bad plan on whoever supported the neighbors too.
But as you point out, Sean, there's other examples of people
making hella bad decisions in war, both within this story and
just in the real world. Yeah, Nina points out.
It seems like a bad plan. But hey, you know, Rob misjudged
the Ironborn. Also, he's the exact thing he
would get their support. But my counter to that as well,
Rob had his head up his butt too.
Yeah, so he did have his. Yeah, so it's exactly right.
My point. You have to have your head up
your butt to trust the Ironborn. And they both trusted the
Ironborn. And the result was fairly
predictable. Like, Rob shouldn't have even
trusted himself, right? Yeah, you know, Rob, obviously,
as Nina points out, Rob was is no dummy.
He made a lot of extremely clever decisions.
This was not one of them, however.
But he's also immature. He's inexperienced.
Writing the Ironborn and saying, hey, let's let's team up against
the West was not. In theory it's a good idea, but
in reality he's that naive part was the personality fail and
Greyjoy and who he has grudges against and and how stubborn he.
I'm talking more about the idea that he didn't live up to his
obligation to this marriage. Oh, that's true.
Sure. I mean everything but but like
if you're like like I don't know, those were his father
tried to teach him. You know, he maybe did or didn't
get a lot of lessons on you know diplomacy and military strategy.
It seemed like he either had some innate ability or or go.
Wrote Ned did teach him well or something.
Yeah, but Ned also would have told him to stick to his word
that his honor is important and all these other things.
Like, I'm a teenager in love. Who cares about all that?
And Ned did warn about the Iron War.
Ned, Warren, Catlin, about the Ironborn and about Rob.
He's like, keep thee on close, you know?
And then like, whoops, send him back to the Iron Islands.
Whoops, that was. That's not keeping him close.
But he didn't tell Rob to do that.
He also never didn't foresee Rob becoming a king or taking over
any of that stuff. It's like Rob's 14.
What are you talking about? So or Rob not living up to his
marriage obligations, Right. So, yeah, Rob.
She's integral to the war plan. And that's the same with Danny
and John. They make a lot of brand, they
make a lot of really smart decisions, but they also do
some, like, really naive things that probably only a young
person would do. Like that kind.
Of they're most, like, real people.
My God, you're right. What the heck?
So this was, yeah, so maybe the horror seemed like the lesser of
two evils, because the Duran didn't said had been held for
300 years. They tried to overthrow the
Duran so many times as it says, a rebellion roughly once per
generation. All failure.
So maybe that's 300 years of desperately trying to finally
get rid of the storm Kings led them to think that this was
finally the answer. And of course it was way worse,
because the Ironborn rulers were way worse.
And here's how it went After the battle was over and Lady Agnes
was captured and the the Blackwoods and their allies were
defeated, she was brought before King Harwin.
Lady Agnes herself and two of her sons were captured and
delivered to King Harwin, who forced the mother to watch as he
strangled her boys with his bare hands.
Yet Lady Agnes did not weep. If the tales are true, I have
other sons, she told the King of the Iron Isles.
Raven Tree shall endure long after you and yours are cast
down and destroyed. Your line shall end in Blood and
Fire. When we first read The World
Advice and Fire, that line was pretty easy to overlook.
Yeah, even the even the sort. Even the book itself suggests
that that was probably a later invention, like added on for
just to make the history book seem cooler, which is a fun
thing for the author to include in the book that he's writing.
He's like, I only added this for to seem cooler.
But on retrospect, in retrospect, now that we know
that Aegon's dream was a real thing that George stands by, it
at least becomes feasible. It's still kind of weird like
well, when did she does she have this dream?
Like is that why she stood up to Heron in the 1st place because
she'd, like got a vision from the wherewood or she just as a
dreamer? I mean she's worshipper of the
old gods. It's certainly possible she has
green dreams or something like that.
Yeah, it you can't throw it out now, it's absolutely possible
the sources would just discard it no matter what, even it was
real because they wouldn't be able to verify that.
It would sound like nonsense. But now we have potential
corroboration, so we definitely can't throw it out.
We obviously can't corroborate it ourselves either, but.
Yeah, you can imagine her being about right about a bunch of
other things too, which might be why so many people were willing
to follow. Very good call.
Yes, that makes a lot of sense. If she had predicted some other
things or had some accurate dreams, they would be willing to
follow her. Yeah, and maybe she just didn't
have a dream about the brackens. That's more of a you should have
seen that one coming. The brackens are being the
brackens. Y'all.
And George has talked about borrowing this story, the Agnes
Blackwood line, from a popular and probably apocryphal anecdote
told about William Marshall, Catherine Svorza, and, as George
cheerfully put it, six different men and at least two women.
The fact that George talks about it being a story that was
probably made-up but so entertaining nevertheless makes
me think he was probably doing the same here.
Not really trying to make a supernatural, prophetic point,
just embellishing the historical chronicle with added flair for
one of his favorite houses. Nina says the Blackwoods are
clearly one of his favorite houses.
You know, it's hard to disagree with that.
It does seem like one of his favorite houses.
But still, I like the idea that maybe it's not entirely made-up.
It probably is. But we have to consider the
possibility that people were having these dreams.
I mean, the idea of dreaming about the eventual Others is
really old. It's certainly not the timeline
like it being this long ago. Certainly that doesn't throw us
off. That's not an argument against
it because this is something that's like the Prince that was
promised or as or high. It's a super, super ancient
thing. It it predates, it might predate
the Seven Kingdom. I mean, it might predate like
the first man in Westeros. It certainly predates the
Andalls in Westeros. I would think so.
There's a lot of potentials. Or if you can see the future in
dreams, then why not this one? Yeah, and well, yeah, could be,
could be. Let us know what you think about
the Agnes Black. Agnes Blackwoods almost called
Agnes black fire. Agnes Blackwood's words here.
Whether you think there's a chance that this was a real
dream or if any other details you might want to add to the
Knicks, maybe we'll bring them up in a future episode.
So after the defeat of the Blackwood and Tully host Storm
King Eric arrived with his host to try to defeat the Ironborn
invader and other Riverlands houses followed the Bracken's
foolishness. They went so far as to side with
Harwin against Arick. Now we we would have seen this
coming, of course, because as we've said, they've didn't see
the danger and supporting Harwin.
But it continued in in these ways like this, despite having
more men. King Arks were in sorry shape by
the time it came to battle because the River land River
Lords did did what Tywin did. They burned their own lands,
despoiled their own wells, and denied the invading army food
and fodder. Meanwhile, they were apparently
happy to provide the Ironborn with food and fodder.
Woo. This is just so, so backfireish
because. But Aric didn't back down.
He's like, it doesn't. I don't care that we don't have
food. Let's keep going.
I'm not going to lose this land that my family has had for 300
years. Shades of Go ahead.
This is a fine line between backfire and black fire.
It really is 1 fine little L Yes, you're right one little L
So he he should have backed down but didn't.
And when he finally came to cross swords with Harwin and he
lost many men and two of his brothers although not himself,
he escaped back to the storm lands.
This is when Lord Bracken was maybe expecting to get the
crown, but of course King Harwin kept it and without looking for
alternatives first, Harwin didn't even go through the
motions of well, who else could I put?
Maybe I could put this guy in charge.
Now he just straight went straight to taking it.
There was no let's see who you guys might prefer to have.
Let's let's do it right. None of this.
None of the things that Arlen the Third did.
It was just, yeah, straight from the battle of 6 Kings AK the
Battle of the Cleavage to figuring things out here.
It was straight from battle to I'm king now of your of the
river lands. The sources doubt that Bracken
expected this. Which of course, like, yeah, why
would he expect that? Why would he expect an Ironborn
to hand him a crown? On the other hand, what did he
expect? On the other hand, we've seen
lots of people make big mistakes, lots of ruling with
their heads up their butt. So maybe this is just another
case of head up butt. I don't know.
It's just like it's hard to see Lord Bracken's plan here.
Like, well, did he? Because it's it's like, yeah,
common sense would dictate that the Ironborn would not just hand
this over. But what outcome did he expect
then? If he's not thinking that, it's
hard to see any alternative. So I don't know.
But also, Nina points out that we're relying on records at
Stonehedge, but as part of Harwin's punishment to Lord
Bracken, he sacked Stonehedge. So maybe the records were lost.
I mean, I don't know that they wouldn't have taken the papers
because they wouldn't have seen it as valuable, but they might
have burned them. So it's a big mess.
By the way, this is all happening right at the beginning
of the Century of Blood. So kind of a neat thing is that
the Doom had been fairly recent, so the whole world is in a weird
state right now where the entire Valyrian Freehold is gone.
So it's a time of kingdoms changing.
Maybe in some ways the entire world is seeing how things are
different. Like, the whole world is
undergoing dramatic growing pains and changes and the most
powerful empire that's ever existed is gone.
Now the Free Cities are in disarray.
The storm lands would feel a lot of that because the the Free
Cities would be a lot of their trading partners.
They're really close, right? That's that's proximity wise.
The Narrow Sea, well, the Narrow Sea is narrow.
It's not a great distance and there's no King's Landing, of
course. So yeah, it's all very
interesting to consider the global politics in this
scenario, even as we're pretty contained to Westeros still.
The the vibe, the things people were thinking about, like the
attitudes of, wow, if if the Valyrians can fall, then anyone
can fall. And of course, the Targaryens
would have just moved to Dragonstone.
So some people in Westeros would be like, what are they doing?
You know, what's their deal? You know, there's Dragons just
offshore there now, like, what's that all about?
So just things were different in Westeros, you know.
I don't know if that would how much that would register for
like the common folk, but for a lot of people like the world is
changing, you know, I wonder and I wonder if that like affects
people's dreams, like if magic had changed and all like malaria
being destroyed might affect the way the the magic currents of
the world work, which might affect the world of dreams and
all that. I don't know.
The American Revolution had a bit of a ripple effect, right?
The French Revolution came soon after.
And, you know, because mentalities about what and how
government should work started to change, I can.
I have an instinct to think I have.
People in Westeros don't even know what the heck is going on
in Valaria, but but that would have been big enough of an event
that it it may have rippled through the rumor channels and
mentalities of leaders and everything.
Yeah, big time. A big time of change.
Not just things happening in Essos, but here in Westeros as
well. So or or maybe framing it the
other way, it makes more sense given where our focus is.
But either way, so the Hore dynasty established and two more
attempts were made by Arak. So Lothar Bracken tried to fight
Harwin and no one supported him because he was a backstabbing
jerk. And that's, that's the that's
what caused Stonehedge to get sacked in response.
And so yeah, Arak tried twice and lost both times.
He didn't. He didn't die either time.
He managed to survive. His eldest son, Arlen the 5th,
also tried and did die in the attempt.
This was probably past the time of Harwin.
This was probably Halleckhore hiring the Black's father and
Arlen the 5th is Argalac the the Argon's father, right?
So Eric, the one who lost the storm, lost the river lands is
the grandfather of Argalac the arrogant.
So you can see why part of why Argalac was, like, a little
weird about those lands. Because they had, they had been
his family's only 100 years prior.
Maybe even a little less. So the same lens that he tried
to partly give as dowry to Agon that he didn't have the power to
give because they were our herons.
It might have been a little, like, stubborn as well.
Yeah, but. But they were ours.
They should be ours. You know, we had them recently.
I still think of them as ours, you know.
And so when we get to the time of Agon's conquest and the fact
that Argalek is now on his back feet, he's healed.
At this point, he can't. He's the storm lands are in no
position to be invading the river lands at that point.
They had been for quite a while because as we saw, there had
been all these attempts to retake them, but by our Galax
time there hadn't. At least maybe not.
Maybe early in our Galax reign he did try that.
It's possible that it's not because our Galac had fought a
lot of battles. He was known to be a great
warrior. He had very experienced in
battle. Surely some of those battles
were against Heron, right? Or, or maybe even in italic.
Because, you know, maybe when maybe their lives overlapped
like that. Now maybe these weren't wars of
conquest, or maybe they were small wars of like, border
disputes, like who controls this part of this land that's right
on the border between the two kingdoms, That kind of thing,
rather than fullblown conquest attempts of the entire thing.
Anyway, that is all really good dots to connect to where we've
been and where we're still going, because the River Lands
is still going to have its these attitudes and a lot of this
history that fuels a lot of their actions later.
So let's get into this last section for today, the New River
Lands. It's almost certainly the
Kingdom with the most houses that have ever worn the A crown
right? The most number of kings.
Now maybe that's different if you go back way, way, way far to
the time of 1000 kings or 100 kingdoms or whatever.
But in terms of like the last few thousand years or maybe even
last 2000, whatever, there's very few realms that can say
that. If if it all, I would still bet
on the Riverlands. I haven't counted because I
don't know. I don't know if there is a
count, but it's not like the reach where just one house has
just had this superior castle and bloodline for so long that
allows them to just trump everyone else's claims
constantly. Or the West, where one house
just has a superior castle, also even more superior in some ways
because it's like so hard to take casually rock away unless
you're land the clever. But yeah, it's only been done
once. That's how hard it is to take it
away And an unassailable supply of wealth on top of that.
So like, certain houses are just, well more positioned to
dominate. That's what we said.
No house in the Riverlands has ever had that level of just
we're so much more powerful than everybody else that everyone
else is going to bend the knee to us because of that.
There just has never been that sort of presence in the
Riverlands. It's always been more of a
rotating wheel, a spinning wheel of, you know options.
Heron almost accomplished it by and Heron Hall was a way to do
that. And instead of a place to unrule
the unruly though, Heron Hall became a warning.
Get along or else. But if you do things will go
genuinely well. And Agon kind of showed that
Riverlands is had lots of great centuries or decades, couple of
great centuries under under the Iron Throne.
So the reason the Tully loyalty lasts so long is because it it
really did happen. It really did work.
There really was the stability that no one else ever finally
brought them and the grudges were out of the out of play,
right. That's another huge thing.
If the Blackwoods become King of the Riverlands, the Brackens are
going to be mad, the Brackens become King of the Riverlands.
The Blackwoods will be mad if the Tully's become well, They
never were kings of the Riverlands, but when they were
appointed overlord, people were upset because, well, it's not
them, it's they all hate each other.
So the grudge is removed from the equation.
With Agon in there. They don't have a longstanding
hate of the Targaryens, or of the Valyrians, or Dragonstone,
or the Lords of the Narrow Sea, or anything really associated
with them. They don't hate.
They haven't had a long hatred of Dragons.
They do really hate the Ironborn even more than they ever have
because they've been ruled by them for 100 years and before
that they were ruled by the Storm Kings for 300 years.
So finally this guy comes along and, well, they're they're
probably a little wary, like are we really going to be free under
this dragon king who just destroyed this castle with his
dragon? Is it really going to be like
that or are we just going to expect are we just trading one
awful king for another? I suspect some of them took the
measure of Agon and we're like, well, this is we don't know what
he's all about yet we we haven't.
His personality is kind of hidden, but he's clearly no
Heron. He's clearly no Harwin hardhand.
He's clearly no argalacty arrogance.
So as there was optimism amongst the common folk of the
Blackwater when they cheered for Aegon's banner, which may have
been, you know, embellished a little bit, but at the time we
said no, they might, but they might really.
There might really be some enthusiasm, some genuine
enthusiasm for someone that genuinely looks strong enough to
keep the peace. That same attitude might be
here. Like, yeah, that guy burned this
castle. He beat hair in the black alone.
One guy on one dragon like this really might work.
Y'all. It might finally be a strong
enough ruler to keep the peace. So some some folks might have
really had that optimism. And that might be why the
tullies were, like, really bought in right away, of course,
partly because they were put at the top and they wanted to keep
that. But But it might not have been
cynical. It might have been really.
No, this might really work. Think two of people who might
have still been on the fence as this is playing out, but then
they see the veil joins Winterfeld.
Cassly Rock join. Like, all right, all right, you
know it's not. We're not these weird crazy ones
for going along with him. Everyone's buying into it.
Yeah. And that's a great point to to
pull out, Sean, because you're right, like 20 more years go by.
Not even 20, like two more years go by or one more year goes by
once the conquest is complete. And that's a totally different
picture than it is now, because they might be still thinking
well. He's going to go on and fight
these other castles, these other Lords of the Great Lords.
And if you saw what he just did to Heron Hall, you might be
confident. But you can still see how, like
no sure thing. He could get assassinated.
He could just choke on a clam the next day.
Why don't I pick clam out of all things oyster?
Stick it with seafood, stick with mollusks here.
Some mollusk could murder this king tomorrow and.
You know the way it always goes? Yeah.
And again, that's the fear. Like, yes, he looks really
strong and powerful, but he doesn't have any kids.
So there's still the risk of it. Just, yes, we switched to him
and he dies and he's got no errors.
And what next? Like, does it all just go into
chaos immediately after a couple of years?
So there was there. You can see there's both reasons
for optimism and some real big risks.
I I still think the optimism is greater because another thing it
would have been in a very short term, they legitimately could
have expected, was it all right, he's conquered the river lands,
we've sworn fealty to him, but he's going on to conquer these
other lands, so he's probably going to take all our soldiers,
he's going to take all our sons. And March them off to the West.
And man, they're all going to die out there.
Like, no, none of them died out there, right?
Hardly any what may like some. But they they didn't have to
sacrifice all their troops. That may be here and there, but
it wasn't like the Riverlands were ravaged for the sake of
Aegon's conquest, right? Right.
That's true. They were preserved.
Yeah, right. That's true.
You're right.
That's a really good point. Like, he they would probably
kind of amazed by that. Kind of gobsmacked by We just
switched kings, and the only ones that died were inside that
castle. You know, for the most part,
besides like this two little skirmishes.
But that's still like they would be able to brush that off pretty
lightly, given how much death usually happens when there's a.
How much death? There's usually been conquest
within the Riverland. He's conquesting the whole
continent and it was less death way by far, Yeah.
So they've never seen it. It's a great point.
They've never seen anything like this, especially the Riverlands,
who are just so used to just these just brutal, bloody,
muddy, just endless struggles. They're like, this is, this is
totally different. We've never seen anything like
this. So, yeah.
Yeah. I kind of see where you're
coming from that there might be a lot more optimism than I might
think. Maybe not immediately, but soon
after that. I can imagine in the days, weeks
following here in Hall, there's still might have been a lot of
uneasiness and expectation for a lot more death and war to come,
but a year later they're feeling good about things.
You know, it's true. Yeah.
It it went well. I mean, yeah, like like 10 years
in especially like, yeah, this is, this was a good call because
Agon's rain was going pretty smoothly other than what was
going in a Dorn, which, you know some river Landers probably went
to Dorn and died there. But mostly it was the Dragons
just flying around burning castles and not getting the
submissions they wanted. And it was the Reach.
You gave up more soldiers, right?
The reach was. The you're totally right.
The reach is the the primary antibeneficiary of of sufferer
of those losses. Yeah.
Tully loyalty would stay as I
said they would stay strong all the way up until the time of
hoster and that's because of Aries's actions.
But but a little before that, there were some problems too.
It wasn't just Aries. Aries was like the last straw.
There was almost Tully queen. There was Celia Tully was almost
queen. But some things happened and we
described what happened in the Blackfish episode, and that's as
partly, and it was when those when Hoster and black hoster and
Blackfish were young when this happened.
So the getting denied a Tully Queen may have been when when
Hoster and Blackfish were boys, may have sat wrong with them at
a time when they're very impressionable, and that may
have helped make the decision to turn on the Targaryens as adults
a lot easier. Anyway, let's move past that
with those things in mind about the River Lords, their long
history trading one conqueror for another.
Let's consider the decision to name Lord Edmund Tully as Lord
Paramount of the River Lands. In light of how hard it had been
for Revelins to ever have stability.
Right here we have something new again with this new world
picture here, Lord Paramount. That's a new title.
No one had ever been a Lord Paramount before, and it's an
interesting title because Lord Paramount is seems to have
mostly been granted to Lords who hadn't been kings in the past.
Lord Stark was not named Lord Paramount of the North.
He's just Warden of the North and Lord of the North and Lord
of Winterfell. But Edmond was Lord Paramount of
the Trident and Tyrell Harlan Tyrell was Lord Paramount of the
Mander and then eventually Lord Paramount of the Reach.
He his house hadn't been kings either.
Now I guess maybe the, so it's kind of an interesting little
political sub discussion here but it was a way to maybe give
Edmond additional honor. You know a new title that gives
him some additional prestige and designating him is in charge of
the Riverlands but not king of the Riverlands.
So it's another way to kind of it's like a little softer.
It's like yeah he's in charge of y'all, he's not your king.
You don't have to kneel to him, but you do have to you know take
orders from him, especially in war and and he's first amongst
you, that kind of thing. So it's not quite it's not as
their pride is not quite as tested by these things they
don't have to kneel to him. That's a pretty big deal.
You know, it might seem kind of small in the scheme of things,
but it's it's not. I hadn't thought about this too
much till you just started talking about it, but it's I I
wonder if as much as anything, what might can make it an easier
pill for the subjects to follow. Is it?
I think it's a responsibility that he has at least as much as
a power that he has. Yeah, that's a great point.
Especially when you make a parallel to like Warden of the
North, like, OK, you are supposed to take care of the
North, that's your job. As one of my Lords in the Seven
Kingdoms, I wonder if paramount. There's already a Warden of the
North and East and Western where So what do we do about these
people in the middle? Well, they're paramount.
They're responsible for the people in their lands.
And so with that comes a certain amount of power.
But it might make the people in those lands feel happier about
paying homage or taxes or whatever else to them when they
recognize that they have a responsibility to them.
That's a great point. Like kings should have a
response, but the queen should have a response.
But they definitely don't always.
It's not like required of them whereas this Aegon requires that
he take these. Responsibility, Aegon, is
establishing this requirement as the Lord, Yes.
So that that is a very good point, Sean.
And it speaks to the way these Lords think, because pride is
such a big deal to them. It's not just the not kneeling,
but it's yes, this guy is above us, he's in charge, but he has
responsibilities. He has to work for us.
It's sort of like an elected official.
Whereas like, yes, this guy's got pat like the mayor, The
mayor of our town has power over us, but he has to run the town.
That power to help us, or he won't have that job, but next
time around or she or if they really abuse it, they may end up
in jail, which. They may end up getting stabbed
in the back by Jamie Lamson. That is how the mayor of of
Roswell, GA was last. Yes, there was the mayor's guard
turned on them in front of the Asphalt Throne.
So, and of course I wanted in terms of Aegon's decision, like
what was he thinking? We talked about how yeah, it it
made sense to reward the person that first came to him.
The one that first turned on Heron is the one that got the
biggest reward. That's the lesson.
That's the message he's sending to the other kingdoms.
Turn on your current king for me.
You'll get the biggest rewards. The ones who come later will
also get rewarded, but it's a lesser reward.
So come now you know. Save now, be the first five.
Get the 1st 5 Lords to join Aegon.
Get this commemorative Targaryen pin.
So the and and it's. It's true because when Edmond
Tully turned on Heron the quote even said it was like they
didn't use the serum domino effect but it was the tide turn,
like then it was Blackwood like everyone came.
It was a domino effect. Even though they didn't use that
that term on Aegon side, he would love to have Morse domino
falling events of this type, like where a couple of
defections of key Lords leads to far more because again he wants
to rule them not kill them. So the the bloodlessly the more
bloodless the better. And this is again why he went so
so big with the example of Heron to to set this up and to maybe
not have to do less more killing later.
Edmond Tully, as much of Heron is an example.
Edmond Tully is the reverse example.
This is what Heron is. What happens if you stand
against Egg on Edmond is what happens when you take his side.
It's like the carrot in a stick. Yes, the ultimate carrot for
Edmond. The ultimate stick for Heron.
And their names rhyme make an big example of what happens to
the worst foes. And in a great, like generous
example of what happened to the best allies.
Again, if we if I again lean into Meg or he totally didn't
get this Meg or totally didn't understand this.
And it's when you lay it out like this, it totally makes
sense. It's like, Oh yeah, of course
that's intuitive. It makes sense.
But Meg or no, he just all sticks.
No carrots for Meg, or the only carrots for Meg or came like,
and very rare opportunities like when his wives were pregnant, he
got really happy and then they gave birth to monstrosities.
And he wasn't. That's what he gets for being
happy. Oops, yeah, And Nina says it's
an encouragement to everyone else in Westeros.
It's still very early in the conquest.
Like this is Aegon's, the first domino in terms of the the the
larger dominoes meaning the kingdoms rather than the smaller
dominoes of the river Lords within.
Yeah. So no one else in Westeros would
have really had this strong idea of the Targaryens.
They were forming an idea of them.
They would have had an idea of them living on Dragons son and
all that. Like these weird former
Valyrians living on their island with their Dragons.
Like what are they doing there But now But they didn't have an
idea of them as conqueror. This is this is looking at them
in a whole new light. In some ways it would be like of
course they're doing this. They're descendants of the
Valyrian freehold which conquered you know half the
world. So it makes sense that these
these guys would do that, but that's very specific and vague
or very unspecific and vague thing to believe about a family
here. It is actually coming.
And yeah, Aegon wasn't just burning everything to the
ground. He was building a new feudal
structure. He was in creating new titles.
He'd already created the small council.
Now he's creating Lords Paramount.
Pretty soon he's going to start making Wardens.
Yeah, so it's it's did. He build the the King's room.
No, that was your Harry's Okay. Yeah, there were roads, but they
were just the places people traveled and they had been, you
know, they had become roads because they were traveled.
They weren't paved. But he did build King's Landing.
Yeah. And I imagine here and there at
least, maybe nothing is extravagant or obvious, but I
bet he's building infrastructure.
Yeah, some ways, yeah, certainly more of that came later.
But yes, definitely there was some he did really.
He was 35 years so and. He was preserving
infrastructure, yes, Yes, He was preserving, yes.
He was trying not to destroy too much of what was there.
Absolutely. Surely several River Lords
regretted not being the first. Like, oh man, if we had turned
first, we could be Lord Paramount, could have been,
could have been me instead of Lord Edmond.
And he may have been aware if Agon was really on top of his
game, which it seems like he probably was.
He may have been aware of how much the river lands had been a
place of chaos and of constantly throwing off rulers.
And he knew that going in and was like, I'm going to make sure
to do this the right way, in a way that will not inflame these
old grievances. He might tread carefully while
also projecting this extreme confidence and power.
Nina's flat out says, Calling the tullies, making the tullies
the new overlords, the Riverlands was political genius.
By raising them to paramount status, Aegon demonstrated that
he would not be another Arlen the Third or Harwin horror,
scooping up the Riverlands and stuffing the region in his own
pocket. He would give the river Lords a
sense of independence, at least in the context of his own feudal
realm. They would be ruled not by some
foreign king and Storm Zander Orkmont, but from the heart of
the River Lands itself and from a family with ancient standing
in the region. One that had handled themselves
pretty well. Like they were at the forefront
of a lot of these efforts to throw out unworthy kings.
And they were at the front of this effort to support one that
seemed worthy. So it was an incredibly powerful
way to secure buy in to the brand new regime the Targaryens
were creating. Aegon was openly stating his
intention to let the River Lands govern itself, something none of
their previous conquerors have been willing to do.
So yeah, again, that's the whole responsibility versus rule
versus this is mine versus I'm gonna manage this well, you
know, like a leader versus a tyrant, that kind of thing.
Or even rather than. I'm gonna manage this well.
We're gonna manage this well, Yes.
And he would probably be careful
to phrase things a certain way. He would be diplomatic about it,
knowing the the powder keg that he's dealing with.
And he balanced power pretty well in a way that, yeah, the
tallies had never been king, so it would be harder for them to
get support to against the Targaryens.
Not only are they did they get their power from the Targaryens.
The power kind of depends on the Targaryens.
It's harder for them to go against them, but they don't
have this longstanding pride or or subservience from other
houses that have followed them into battle before.
Kind of like the Starks, yes, Right, the.
Starks wasn't that hard for the Starks to get all their
bannermen to rally with them against the Targaryens because
they were sort of established beyond the Targaryens, yes, but
the toll isn't quite have that angle.
So they're not motivated to go against Targaryens because the
Targaryens are their friends and gave them the power, and they
have less ability to go against them because they can't.
All these other people are. Begrudgingly accepting them in
the 1st place, You know that's something that Agon or any
conquer cannot replicate. You can't go in and beat the
Gardeners and immediately get the same level of loyalty from
houses that have followed the Gardeners for 8000 years.
You can prove you're stronger than them.
That does not going to make them love you or be willing to go the
extra mile for you. Because the gardeners, another
example, they were willing to face this guy, this Agon and his
sisters because the Gardeners have been their kings for so
long and that's who they followed.
Yeah, Aegon wants to control the people that have that control,
not destroy that, because then that you get to he gets to
benefit from that loyalty, using the Gardeners as a conduit.
Like he may have wanted to destroy the Gardeners because
they were too powerful, but he might have preferred to keep
them in place to make ruling the reach easier.
On the other hand, it creates the potential that they can use
that support against you. Whereas in the case of the
Tullys or the Tyrells, no, they don't have that 8000 years of
loyalty built up where people will be like we want a native
ruler that we followed before that just doesn't exist.
With the Tullys, they're proud, but not that proud.
And with Heron Hall's burning a few other things there, we
discussed the value of the lesson and the symbolism last
time. But there's a few other
intriguing decisions to be made during the aftermath.
Even though Heron was gone and the castle was badly damaged, it
was still quite functional. That meant possible risk.
It's only two weeks ride from King's Landing, his new capital.
So like, yeah, it's a little might be a little bit of a risk
for himself or his descendants. Maybe not so much him, but his
descendants. If someone if Heron Hall's a big
powerful seat, then it could challenge his powerful seat
close by. Apparently he judged the risk
worthwhile, or else he might have declined to allow anyone to
live there. Like he could have easily made
the castle indefensible with a little more work, like just take
down part of the walls and so there's a huge gap in the walls.
It's like make it less defensible.
Like he didn't destroy the walls, he melted the towers.
But they're still standing, right?
It's still a castle that still works that way.
So does the basic things a castle can do.
Keep people in and out. It has gates and doors and
things like that. Those all still work.
The walls are still high. Right, he people and supplies,
if you will. It's got, you know, farmland
surrounding it and storage rooms for grain and you know, armories
for soldiers and everything. So.
So if he wanted to reduce its effectiveness as a fortress, it
would have been pretty easy. It was ordered that done and it
would have been done. But he decided to leave it the
way it was and reappointed. Which something we'll come to in
a minute. Maybe he decided to curse it.
That's where the curse came
from. Aegon put it on there.
No one knew about that. He sent.
He sent Vasenia in there with some with a spell book and was
like, hey, go. Ahead, it took a while to curse
the whole place. One tower at a time.
So what happened later, after Robert Rebellion was the same
thing was happening. If you take enough land away
from Heron Hall, take enough of its supporting lands away from
it, it becomes a white elephant. It can't support itself.
And then then it's not a threat. It's like, well, they're too
busy with upkeep to mount to a rebellion that I'd say Robert
did that, but really it was probably John Aaron that did
that. It was under Robert's reign that
that happened, so. If Robert did that, he did that
on accident. Yeah, he may have.
Yeah, you did it because little fear convinced him or something.
I don't know. It's it's like house poor.
It's the modern equivalent of being house poor.
You may you force the Lord of Aaron Hall to be house poor by
reducing their incomes to the point where they can't afford
the upkeep of the place. I mean, house poor.
If you're not familiar with that term, it's it's You own a house
that you can't really afford. It's not uncommon.
Yeah, I've thought about that a lot.
If someone just gave me a 20 dollar, $20 million mansion,
like I can't afford the heating bill, the taxes, the, you know,
the, I'm sure something like that comes with gardeners and
all sorts of infrastructure. And same thing with Heron Hall.
You'd have all sorts of you could, you could have it, but
you couldn't fully man it. Littlefinger literally says that
about the heating bill. To rent it out, Sean, I think
you'd be your best by either just immediately resell it or
you do like. Airbnb.
It would be a huge hassle for you.
Airbnb in Westeros is HEIR. It's Airbnb.
Yeah, Littlefinger, you literally pointed out about that
to Santa. Like the cost of heating hair
and hall is absurd, like just the amount of firewood you need
to heat that place. Like the ceilings are so
freaking high. Like that's.
You know, I never thought of this parallel, but that's what's
happening at the Wall in the north, right?
There's well, just shut those towers down.
We don't have enough people or resources to keep that going.
And the Erie, They shut down the Erie because it gets too cold in
the winter. They just, it's like it's a
summer, it's a summer home. Imagine that being a summer
home. That fancy one of the fanciest
places in the world. Yep, and Lord Edmond is going to
prove to be pretty competent. Not only is he a good choice
politically and to send a message to other Lords about
rewards and and coming over to Egon side, but apparently he's
just a pretty competent guy. After Lord Oris's tenure as
Hand, Edmond will be the next one.
So that's that's pretty interesting.
So he's going to be hand to the King.
So this this relationship is going to end up paying dividends
for both of them, although Edmond won't actually be hand to
the King for a long time, but we'll get to that later when the
time comes. Okay, Our last small section
today is the new house in Heron Hall.
One thing that distinguished the Ironborn conquerors from the
Storm Kings and even the Targaryens is that they were the
only ones who intended to make it their capital.
Yes. The River lands were ruled from
the Storm Lands in the time of Arrick and Arlen and all their
descendants. And Harwin didn't make the give
the River lands, you know much pride or or basically made it
his. But he did intend to really make
it his. He intended to move his seat of
power from the Iron Islands to there because it's, you know,
it's hard to rule from the islands which is a gun would
agree like yes. That's why we didn't put our
capital at Dragonstone. Yes, it's a similar kind of
problem. So he wanted to Harwin, and his
father and grandfather moved. Their seat of power from the
Iron Island to the River Lands. Halleck ruled from Fair Market,
which is kind of like Agon would have been kind of like if Agon
had just continued to rule from the Agon Fort instead of
expanding it. Maybe he intended to make
Herron's Town, which became Herron's Harrington.
And now that Herron's Town, which is made by Herron and
would have, maybe he would have intended to make it a King's
Landing size city. It was small.
It never got going, but that may have been his intent for the
long term, to really localize and centralize power in the
middle of the Riverlands, which makes sense.
Like Heron, that's actually smart.
As awful as he was, this was a good idea, but of course Aegon
destroyed it. Heron also, it's intended to
extend his realm beyond the Riverlands, which is why we
brought up the danger of having Heron Hall so close to King's
Landing. This is would have been an enemy
capital designed net for conquest.
This was a castle built to maintain future conquests that
never did take place. No matter how far he expanded,
Heron Hall would have remained his capital I would think.
Unless one of his descendants was like this.
Castle's dumb and said this is too expensive and my grand my
great great great grandfather was an idiot for making this
castle. It's too expensive either.
Although I don't think that's how it would have played out,
for what it's maybe not worth is, I think that.
That would have been justification for raiding more
lands and pillaging more value to pay for us is in order.
Yeah. Yep, so.
Just they never would have decided it's too expensive.
They just would have attacked more places to get to reap their
resources to maintain the expense to the point of reaching
ranging far and wide. It may have, may have, may have
come to the point where he was constantly sending his ships out
of of Westeros, just raiding Esos and maybe Sothorios for for
supplies. Because the Westerosi would be
like stop doing it to us. You're a big powerful king.
Go go overseas to do that. You know that's any better, but
it's better for them. So the longer noticed that the
the horrors I said they were making it their base, but they
were only in the River Lands for maybe a little more than two
generations. But two to three kings, at least
that's how you know. Depends on exactly what their
presence counts as. Certainly Heron was there for
multiple generations just building Heron Hall, but still
the the full transition of power wasn't complete, right?
There would have been more of a like a partly ruling back from
Orcamont, partly ruling from the Riverlands until the castle was
built, and it's it's not a certain thing.
So another example of a gun rewarding service came shortly
after he didn't give Heron Hall to a River Lord, which he might
have done, but he decided to give it to someone that he could
maybe more directly count on. Something more from someone more
familiar to him. Who is Quentin Coharis now?
Quentin Coharis? He did the right thing, or like
the politically expedient thing, he didn't make Quentin Coharis
Lord of the Riverlands. If that would have just been a
foreign ruler, even though he would have been king, it still
would have been a person that has no idea about this place,
has no back back story or history, no experience with the
Riverlands. Just wouldn't make much sense.
So Quentin Coharis had to be subject to Lord Tully like the
rest. Quentin Coheris was the master
at arms at the Red Keep. So he may have been the guy that
taught Aegon's father, and we believe he was an older man
because he had a grandchild at this point.
And the fact that grandson's going to inherit here and all
but he so that implies a certain level of closeness to Aegon and
and Auris as well. The guy who could give them or
one of the few people that could tell them what to do growing up,
like no, swing the sword, swing it harder.
You saw how like Kristen Cole and and Harwin strong, it's a
little different when you're training the the Princess, you
can actually, you have a different level of authority
over them because they have to listen to you because you're
teaching them how to fight and things like that.
So it's one of the few people that would have told Agon what
to do growing up. And so maybe it puts him in an
interesting position. I think I've talked a little
about this before, but I need to rehash it to show why this
reward is important and why this this transition is important.
And what makes sense for him to have gotten this reward?
Yes, yes, it's like them, his master at arms.
Like that's quite a promotion. Funny too, that he's not the
only master at arms to to get handed over hair and all.
One of Egg on the unworthy is going to have.
Part of the curse, Yeah, Yeah, right.
Just how it goes. Right.
So Nina made-up some house words for House Co Harris because they
don't have any. And it's blood for blood.
Good fitting for that. That's a it's a nice phrase.
And look at that. Sigil 4 skulls with those
flames. You wonder what those four
skulls indicate if it's just four skulls, because quartering
Shields is like a normal thing to do.
But one theory is that those represent aegons for herons. 4
dead sons that maybe have burned there, or two of them burned in
the ships, and two of them. And we don't even know he did.
He had four. He had at least four.
He may have had more than four. So this is clever as well.
Let me read what Nina wrote about it.
Aegon also cleverly handled the incorporation of Heron Hall into
his Virgin and Kingdom by giving the castle to his longtime
supporter and fellow Valyrian expatriate Quentin Coharis.
Aegon both installed a loyal Lieutenant in the area and
removed the taint of the horse from the geopolitical map.
Heron Hall would be neither a site of pilgrimage for
discontented ironborn nor an albatross around the neck of any
of the native river Lord families forced to rebuild it,
staff it, heat it, do all those other things.
It's expensive 2. By making the Coors is subject
to River Run, Agon removed any sense of royal dominance from
Heron Halls, a castle. It's now subject to a much
smaller castle. So it's no longer the seed of
kings, even though Tywin will call it that later when he's
upset. And how it was given to Jano
Slint. He's offended that Jano Slint
got is like, that's a butcher. You can't give the seed of kings
to a butcher. Tywin's like noble mind was just
so offended by that his his personalities couldn't handle
such an up jump. Such a large jumping up of
status like this shouldn't happen.
Even he understood how crappy Channos was.
So the Coheris is could could be trusted to ensure that this huge
castle remain loyal to the crown, and would quietly remind
the Tullys that you know if there's at least one castle, a
big one in the river lands that would definitely side with the
Targaryens. That if anything went wrong,
this is someone in their midst that would not be on their side,
Someone that would support the royal side.
And to that end, geographically located well, right, yes, yes.
It's on their end towards so it would be much easier for them to
move from Kings Laney. To Heron Hall, then to the rest
of the Riverlands, rather than that being a barrier to the rest
of Riverland. So the Riverlands moving to
there and then launching out towards King's Landing.
So that's very key geographically.
Sean has a fun note here that says what happened to the
Coharises and then and then a second note under it says, oh
sheesh. So yeah, we'll get to that.
It happens during the reign of Anies, so the next king.
But yeah, we've got a little 30 more years to get to before the
end of the Coharises. But yeah, it's not a it's not a
happy tail. We also don't know what Castle,
how strong held at this point. It's a it's an enduring mystery
what Castle did how strong rule. Whatever it is, it might not be
there anymore because well, they're not there anymore.
But they existed and were prominent prior to this and then
eventually they got Aaron Hall. So we're not really there's
something missing here in the history.
Nina thinks they're they're they're sigil, which is the 3/4
of the Trident. Well, three colors, which are
the three forks of the Trident, reflects the idea that they're
somewhere near the the front. Like where before the Trident
forks away, something near the where the branches joined
together and strong could refer to the current, where the
current would be the strongest, where it flows out into the into
the Bay, into the ocean. But it's still that's that's a
good guess. But it is a guess.
This also may have been when he defined what was Riverlands and
what was crown lands when he drew those borders, or around
this time. If he didn't do that, that do it
and do it now. He did it shortly after the
conquest, I assume because Maiden Pool we we pointed out
that Maiden Pool was claimed by Heron.
Well it was ruled by Heron, but it had formerly been part of the
Riverlands, but it's kind of on the border.
So they could have gone either way.
But Maiden Pool is definitely in the Riverlands, was then is now,
and yeah, and it's basically the border.
What would be Stormlands versus the Crownlands because the
Crownlands hadn't been defined. So not only did the Riverlands
border had to be defined, but sort of the Stormlands border
and the Stormlands still hasn't been settled at this point.
This is how fast it happened that Auris and Rainey's went S
to confront Argalac the Arrogant.
At the same time Agon went to confront Heron and our Galac has
already learned what happened to Heron before he comes to grips
with Oris and Rainey's. That's how fast it happens.
So he's able to learn what happened to Heron and it affects
his strategy in terms of his battle disposition.
So. So that's one reason to think
that maybe some of this was handled later because the border
with the storm land couldn't be fixed yet until that whole that
war, that part of the war was was was done.
We will detail that in our episode on the battle of the
last storm which is going to be a patrons bonus episode with
guest Jim Mcgeehan, something like a lawyer, our resident
battle expert. Yeah, Okay.
So we're, we have a section on the new Iron Islands.
We're going to get to it another time.
How they're reformed where we probably won't get to that next
time. I think we're going to pivot to
Vasenia and the Veil, which we can do very alliteratively.
Vasenia and Vegar invade the veil or maybe versus the veil.
I'll work on that working title. Yeah, Sean, people are
requesting a cat. The chat requests a cat.
Now is the time, All right, now is the time.
In the meantime, I will get into the outro, because there wasn't
centuries, if not eons of bad blood between the River Lords
and the Targaryens as there was between themselves and their
neighbors. Targaryen rule was almost
certainly a fantastic development for the common folk.
Finally someone that would keep them in line, and finally
someone strong enough to keep the river Lords from killing
each other. Which meant, yes, common folk
could farm and hang out and do their thing without as much risk
of being murdered suddenly or called into a war.
If we look far forward, that seems to stick it.
It held for quite a while. The Riverlands does unite for
King Rob, right? They they're actually more
united than they ever were, partly because they got to be at
peace with each other for several centuries.
That really undid a lot of this longstanding grudge bearing that
was the norm in the Riverlands. Like when Rob Rose Bracken and
Blackwood both supported him. That's something that even
Katlin notes at the time. Even if she's disappointed that
this is happening, she doesn't want them to name him King.
She's smart enough to see that this isn't going to end well,
even Despite that she happens to take note of Bracken and
Blackwood rising together. Look man, I really have no
choice, no chance in stopping this if even Bracken and
Blackwood are united on it. But I think part of that unity
comes from the conquest being united and no longer being left
to their own devices, which inevitably leads to them
fighting a forced peace kept things enabled, a better future
and more unity When things changed.
Kitty has arrived. This is yet another reason to
watch our episodes, or at least flip on the video when there's
something worth seeing. Shawn and I might not be worth
seeing, but this cat is, yeah. She is.
She's the biggest of the three. Yeah.
Is that Korra? No, that's not Korra.
This is tough. Sorry.
Yeah, I couldn't see. Yeah, they look kind of similar.
Compare them to. I don't know.
A year ago when Sean started showing his kittens off.
Yeah, yeah, I know. People are requesting like, Ziz
needs a cat too. And I'm like, I don't wanna wake
up our cats. I have Xerxes sleeping next to
me and I don't. That feels so bad to wake him
up. Yeah.
Maybe next time we can try to make that more of a regular
thing. Now that we're trying to be
visual more often. Maybe the cat we're.
Trying to bring a cat? We'll be seen.
She was just sitting right outside the door and then
scampered off when I tried to pick her up.
Our trivia question. Who was the first one to say
blood and fire To say blood and fire out loud?
Anyone have any? Were there any guesses?
The answer is OSHA of all people.
So yes, OSHA. Nice.
It is OSHA. We'll also guest called Rogo and
Danny, and I think those were the main guesses right on.
And yeah, it's OSHA, and it comes during the discussion on
the comet. Bran asks OSHA what she thinks
of what Maestra Lewin said about the comet, and she kind of
scoffs and is like, it means blood and fire, boy, and none of
it good. You know, like, well, I think we
already knew it wasn't good when you said blood and fire.
But she wanted to reemphasize Ashea is bringing me a feline
delivery. We've got a little Casanova
coming in, and not that little, really, but he's little for a
little for a being large for a cat.
I don't know. Look at this boy.
He's a good boy. Yes, Casanova.
So yeah, the answer was OSHA. And we'll have another trivia
question for you next week. We'll pick off with Visenia and
Vegar and the veil and that invasion and all the things that
involves whether V words gonna sneak in there.
We'll have a bunch of trivia questions for you a few days
after that. That's true.
Think about that. Remember that I mentioned it?
Discord, September 26th. So that is not our we will have
one more stream before then, so we'll have one more time to
remind you. But yeah, trivia.
We've done Jackbox games the last few times.
This time we're gonna do Trivia, A Song of Ice and Fire, House of
Dragon, Game of Thrones, all that written by me.
So that'll be a lot of fun. Jeopardy style.
And you'll use a website. It's sort of Jeopardy style.
Like the question comes up and everyone gets to answer not just
the person who's on the clock, but.
You're. Yeah.
So you get the points for answering right or not.
I also wanted to throw out that last week or no.
When was that? Was it last week?
Yeah, last Monday I did a stream with Alt Shift X.
People said they liked it a lot in the chat.
Just now I brought it up here. Cool.
Yeah. So we did a stream with Alt
Shift X, The influences of Dune on Game, The influences of Dune
on Game of Thrones, and A Song of Ice and Fire.
Rather, we compared Frank Herbert and George R Martin as
authors, compared their career arcs, things that were going on
in their childhoods during their lives, and then just more nitty
gritty in terms of character comparisons, Paul and Danny and
Jon Snow, and just comparing like Dragons to sandworms and
the the power of of prophecy and things like that.
There's a lot of comparisons. It's a three and a half hour
live stream over on all Shift X's channel.
So yeah, check that out if you're so inclined.
We had a lot of fun. He's always great to chat with
a. Link in the chat right now.
Thanks as well to anyone who supports us on Patreon.
We very much rely on your support.
Our sponsors and other income is very inconsistent.
The thing that we certainly get the most from is y'all and that
needs to continue for us to continue.
So we appreciate those who do support us, and if you were
thinking about it, well, we sure could use the help.
Our cats depend on you for your support.
Now that's talking on those heartstrings, yeah.
Very true. Like in general cats cost money,
but Sean particularly has like they have a special needs a.
Special needs cat. That's the best term for they
need special medication, like Sean actually have all the
people. Yeah.
I can make that if Sean wants to.
They have to like, have a special special.
Care taken of the cats, It's a big hassle actually.
It's very sweet of Sean and kidney medication, right?
Yeah, Liver. Liver, yeah.
Internal functions. She's the cutest little cat, and
I feel so bad every time I have to give her the medicine.
She's so trusting and I'm like, take this medicine.
Yeah, I bonded with it, actually, though I really do
think that it's caused me to bond with her more than I would.
Thanks as well to Nina for her excellent notes, a lot of great
ones today, as usual, good insights on marriages and
political scenarios and what these different kings and Queens
and Lord might be thinking. It's such a big, big ball of wax
when you're dealing with unknowns, and I like to think
I'm pretty imaginative, but with Nina's help, it just fills
things out so much more. So I really appreciate that.
She's a big part of what we do. Thanks as well to Joey, Jesse
Bran and Michael Clarfeld for the music and video intro and
maps and all the great things that make our show more visual
and more musical. So excellent.
It makes us feel like like we're some kind of big studio, even
though there's only a few of us. We're some big production.
Nope. There's just a few of us with
laptops and cameras and a big old ring light and obsessive
ideas about our favorite book and show series.
We'll be back next week with more my friends shout out to
y'all shout out to as well. Last but not least, our good
friend of engineer. You know what to do.
Until next time, my friends and fellow W Oriens Velar Reedus.