The exit of Egg on the Conqueror and most of his remaining
soldiers from the army that he brought into Dorne triggered the
defenestration of Sunspear which featured all of the Targaryen
garrisons becoming no more. They were all slaughtered, and
the non Dornish Lords who were appointed to administer and rule
the subjected territory were treated much the same, with a
little extra torture sprinkled in before their lives were
ended. Unsurprisingly this was not the
end of the violence, though it never did return to the sort of
standard war of armies and sieges and such.
It was more of a war of shadows, a war of constant dragon fire
Raining down despite the war of Shadows was kind of an unusual
variation on on this type of war.
Sean last time mentioned Vietnam and Afghanistan, and that's
very, very appropriate. As a parallel, the destruction
of many Dornish castles, structures, fields was a
constant thing, though maybe not that many Dornish people.
The Dornish people were pretty good at staying alive, despite
all of this Hellfire and starvation and destruction being
rained on them on them. From there it got worse though.
Bounties and assassinations, maimings, other atrocities each
year seemingly worse than the last.
Yet with the passage of time, it seemed clear that very little
that either side did seemed to move the needle towards an end.
And though Dorne as a whole suffered mightily, arguably the
Targaryens lost more in terms of power and prestige.
Isn't that often the case with war, though?
Nobody wins, everybody loses. This one is a particularly bad
good, no bad example of well, OK, strong example, powerful
example, tragic example. Yes, the first Dornish War.
The second-half of it has all that and more on this episode of
History of Westeros podcast. Hello and welcome, everybody.
We're back with another episode of Valarri, Redis for Fire and
Blood here on HOW Pod. Every Monday or every Sunday
rather, we do a live stream. Well, almost every Sunday.
When we do live streams, they tend to be on Sundays.
The difference of course, comes during TV seasons, which is
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But yeah, every video is done on YouTube and then you can find it
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So a cleaner copy is up on Spotify and anywhere you find
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Is there anywhere you can find a dirtier?
Yes, the NSFW versions of History Westeros podcast are
available. Mr. Westeros at night.
Like, honestly, that's the live version that you're tuning into
right now. That's true I.
Should edit this out of the podcast version and you only
hear it if you were here live. Every once in a while, there's
like a nip slip here. It just pops right out of my
Kingsguard T-shirt here, as you know, I don't know how that
would actually happen. Like, how is a nipple going to
escape this? Sean, you got a boy's shirt on.
That's also very strong way to protect your your innards.
Yeah, you know, I I thought to wear this shirt because it's
kind of a a bloody, violent show about how ambition and revenge
can bring out the worst in US, featuring characters as
superpowers. That's in parallel to this.
That's a good point, yeah. And I've got the Kingsguard
shirt on, because this is the formation of the Kingsguard
happens during this episode. Even though we're not going to
focus on that, it does happen. We're going to mention it so.
There's also another layer This is this is this is a boy, sure,
but it's a mash up with the gorillas and a lot of gorilla
warfare is featured here. OK.
Yes, yes, the the the different types of gorilla in play there,
that's cool. That's neat.
Well, starting this week, by the time you are hearing this, it
may have already started is our Patrons topics moot where those
of you who are subscribed to us on Patreon can vote on a whole
bevy of topics that will be dropping over the course of the
next month or so. And those topics will be come
episodes during the year. The dates will be TBD, but those
episodes will be made and it is the first of what will be a
yearly thing. I expect we'll expand on it next
year after we've had one in the books and kind of get a feel for
how we want to do it, get some new ideas and and kind of flesh
it out a bit more. So it should be pretty fun.
So you can all participate in the very first topic Smoot, by
joining us on patreonpatreon.com/history of
Westeros and a shout out to our good friend Nina.
She gave us a lot of excellent notes for today.
Her blog is at Good Queen Alley with 1l.tumblr.com.
The latest blog post she's got up there is a question on what
were the best times of the Targaryen, Like what were the
golden ages of Targaryen rule? A straightforward answer is
Jaharis, but there's other answers and Nina goes into
detail as to why Jaharis is thought of the way he is.
It's not just a yes him. Well, there's some nice detailed
explanations there. I recommend it if you have
questions for us. Like I said, that question came
from one of Nina's readers. If you have questions for us,
you can post them live and Ashea will hopefully see it.
She can't see every comment. She's doing a lot back there,
but if she sees it and it's a good question, we will answer it
live. If your question is missed or
you want to be sure we see it, send it directly to us at
westeroshistory@gmail.com or contact us through Patreon or
one of the other sites that you're linked to us on trivia
question for today. The answer will be at the end,
but it's also during the episode.
I will slyly or not so slyly give you the clue to what this
I'll give you the answer to this question during the episode if
you are attentive enough to hear it.
Or maybe you already know what title Created by Aegon the
Conqueror was only held by one man ever.
And bonus if you can name who that person was.
The answer to this was actually last in the last episode as
well, but it's going to be repeated in this one.
I was proud of myself for knowing the answer to this
question. Nice.
Good job, Sean. There we go.
You're becoming less unsullied all the time.
Every day that goes by, you are slightly less unsullied.
So I actually, in the intro called it the second-half.
I stylishly called it that. But really, it's not really the
second-half, the 2nd portion, because the first part of the
war was two or three years, and that's what we covered last
time. This is more like 6 or seven
years, maybe even 8. So it is a longer period of time
and a more brutal period of time in a lot of ways, though
certainly the last one was pretty darn brutal as well.
You got people trapped in rock slides, burned alive,
disappearing in deserts of exposure and thirst.
Yeah, none of it's very pleasant, but it's all it's all
not real. So here's a passage that best
defines this episode. Quote.
Aegon Targaryen was not a man to accept defeat.
The war would drag on for another seven years, though.
After six AC, the fighting degenerated into an endless
bloody series of atrocities, raids and retaliations, broken
up by long periods of inactivity, a dozen short
truces, and numerous murders and assassinations.
We read that quote last time, but it really bears repeating
because it really sets up what's coming here and we have to sort
of imagine what some of these things are like.
We don't know when any of these dozen short truces are.
None of them are specified for us.
We don't know what these long periods of inactivity are that
we can kind of imagine them. Maybe Winter helped with that,
or even though it was not full blown Winter and Dawn, it's
still that would maybe slow things down.
At least it's a reasonable guess.
What do you think, Sean? Yeah, I agree.
There's a lot left interpretation there, like a
short truce might be one day, you know, like, and a dozen
could be a number thrown out there just to represent, you
know, several. Kind of how they say 1000 years
ago, yeah, a dozen or so, yeah. It's not a specific number.
And some of the truces, I wonder, could have been maybe
more or less local, you know, like maybe this group or this
region or this battle was put on hold for a day.
Sure, that makes sense. But, and maybe sometimes Aegon
or some other leader might have said Okay, you know, we're going
to hold off for the next three months.
But that doesn't mean individual people down in the ground didn't
still like, exact their revenge. You know, modern day equivalent
of throwing Molotov cocktail across a wall or something, You
know? Yep.
Good point. Good point.
Yeah, so Fireblood summarizes a lot of the war, naming major
events from each year, but otherwise it leaves a lot
unspecified, which is not a big deal for us.
There's enough there for us to go into sandbox mode.
It's a good excuse for that. We like sandbox mode and Doran
is already a natural sandbox, so that kind of works anyway.
And Nina adds that it makes the most sense for a historian with
the conceit of Gildane because, well, there weren't a lot of
traditional pitch battles the even the way West Dorian,
Westeros history, Westerosi historians would write.
History is challenged by this because they would have had a
way of writing about war that's just very tilted towards what
Westeros war normally looks like.
And this is not what Westerosi war normally looks like.
So they might not have. I might have missed some of the
nuance, like they weren't necessarily prepared to
accurately record it in a way that maybe, well, I'm I'm more
modern, like a real world historian might have some of
that experience from having read about these cases elsewhere.
But a Gil Dain or something? Well, they would have read about
other conflicts between the Reach and Dorne or the Storm
Lands and Dorne, but nothing. None of those conflicts probably
were ever anything like this. Certainly didn't have Dragons
before involved, certainly didn't have an attempt to
conquer Dorne. That had never happened from
like, I don't think the Stormlands ever tried to
completely conquer Dorne. I don't think the Reach ever
tried to completely. If they did, they never got
anywhere close to it. So if that would be the
difference, if not both of those things.
So yeah, very different. They don't have like a lot of
precedent to draw on in terms of like experience or past writings
to give themselves a leg up or a head start or some additional
understanding. It might have even taken a
certain passage of time to have the perspective to consider it a
war or having all been a war continuously, like I just
imagine like in the middle of the 100 years war, like even 80
years in, they probably weren't calling it the 80 years war, the
fact that we had Africa. Still 80 years?
Jeez, yeah. And partly because it wasn't
continuous, right? There were breaks and it was
happening between different factions over a large region,
you know, similar to this and and another thing too, like, you
know, the world has gone through different phases and styles of
warfare or whatever. But a lot of European history,
at least battles are a little more organized, right The there
the armies would agree on it and place.
It in a weird. And sometimes spectators would
come to observe it, you know, and like.
But this sort of guerrilla warfare might have been thought
of as like, you know, unfair. Or they're cheating, or they're
not following the rules. And maybe it's not really even
war. They're just like bandits or
criminals or you. Know, and this is probably where
a lot of that and reputation comes from.
Like we see at the beginning of A Song of Ice of Fire, the
Dornish have a reputation for like different styles of war.
They get accused of poisonings, which you don't really see that
very often. Like dornes don't actually seem
to use poison any more than anybody else.
I mean, they do use it, but like I said, it doesn't seem to be
like an epidemic or anything, you know?
And it's a little different from the Targaryen side too, this
sort of Total War that they're exactly right.
Dragons just burning towns down and stuff that's not normal in
Westerosi warfare, and probably not a lot of planet toasts in
general it. Probably was during the
freehold, like we saw them do that to the roinar, but still
that doesn't make it like normal.
I mean, it may have been a part of history, but even they
probably didn't just blow up every city because they want,
they wanted to conquer too. Like they usually are,
subjecting people to their rule, not just annihilating them
entirely, though there are exceptions.
If it comes to bend the knee or die, they're going to choose.
They're going to kill you rather than give up their supremacy,
and we'll see that. The real world Genghis Khan
just, you know, slaughtered every man, woman, cow, goat,
dog. You surrender.
Immediately or it sounds, yeah, you you get very little.
But that total warfare, and it's not like all Europe was like,
oh, I guess that's how we'll do it now, you know, even when we
get to like the American Civil War was still more like let's
meet Tuesday morning and I am and fight at this point, these
soldiers. And there was still less rule of
warfare going on. So I think that's an important
thing. And it's also true as well that
maybe just this, for whatever reason, the sources are actually
a little stronger. Like we know there's a Conquest
of Dorm book written by Darren the 1st and it's very detailed.
We don't have it. We don't have a copy of it but
it exists and we don't know like is there a book on the the first
Dornish war? I mean there probably is but we
have it hasn't been referred to. You know it'd be kind of weird
if there wasn't any book on that in world considering such a
major long term event. But it isn't actually like
mentioned to reference. So maybe there's just yeah maybe
this is like a little bit of a a missing piece in in Westeros
history itself. I mean, there's plenty of
examples in the real world of periods of time where we just
don't have good sources. So it it's a huge story though,
and it it it sounds really big. And that's part of why I I harp
on this. There's a lot of room for
interpretation, a lot of room for missing events, a lot of
room for expansion of this story.
Someday maybe it'll be ATV show, maybe they'll be additional
material written in here. There's a lot of stuff that
could be added, a lot of pathos, a lot of characters and how they
feel about it. All that that's where there's a
lot of room for expanding Aegon the Conquers personality is a
pretty obvious one, but there's so many other people in here.
There's so many other characters and that could be added and some
that we know that we just need to be fleshed out.
Like the Widow Lover and Princess Miria and Vasenia and
Rainey's and and this various Lords of the Hell Hold that are
going to have a lot of things go wrong for them after their their
victory there in 10 AC that we're going to get to today.
You know, I can't believe I didn't think to to ask or
research this before. What was Princess Maria's family
like? Did she?
She was really old. Did she have grandchildren?
Great grandchildren. She had all that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's going to be a big part of
next episode actually next week or the week after because we
will be discussing her family sort of takes a different tack
than she does. And yeah, yeah, right.
So it's that's going to be that's going to be interesting.
But she is a Martell. So yeah, her we don't know like
if she had brothers or sisters and she probably outlived them
even if she did, because she lived to be in the mid 90s or
something and few real world people live that long, let alone
in Westeros so. I'm just imagining the drama
that could be covered if there was ATV show just about this.
Absolutely they would. They would flesh that family
out. They have some names already,
but they would, they would want to add a few more cousins here
and there probably. And yeah, it would be very
interesting I think a lot more interesting I think than the
conquest itself which I think is pretty interesting too.
But it would it's not interesting in terms of you know
who's going to win or well that was close, you know, not stuff
like that. It would be the the, the
character stories that would be written into that.
Nina also writes to the extent George wants to compare the
first Dornish War to the 100 Years War which was Sean, you
mentioned the 80 Years War, it's like that similar vibes there.
And again, this was a a point she made last week about how 11
similarity was that the the monarchs of England called
themselves Kings of France like the year 1800.
And this is kind of similar in that Agon was calling himself
king of the Roinar before, I mean before this war even
started. He was calling himself king of
the Roinar, let alone before he rainies went there to demand a
surrender. That never happened.
So yeah, But again, we're not just focused on the war.
There's certain subtopics that we'll save for later 'cause
they're too big. But there's a lot of things that
happen here in timeline order that kind of get breezed over in
the book that we want to draw connections to.
Like, it hardly mentions fireblood, barely mentions the
fact that Anis and Megor were born during this war.
It just brings that up later. It's like, by the way, in the
year 7, Anis was born and it's like, wait, that was during the
Dornish War. Wouldn't he have been like a
target of a sat Like that Should change.
That should matter. And so I want to draw some of
that out because I think it's lacking in the book and it it
makes sense to discuss some of those things.
And well, that's what we do here.
We read between the lines and if there's not as much to read
between the lines, we add it. We do our best with that.
So let's continue with the defenestration of Sunspear to
lead ourselves into the newer events.
Balon Greyjoy of all people. Why am I talking about him?
Well, he once pointed out that if you bend the knee, you can
later rise again and strike. Right?
It's you. No one ever died from bending
the knees. Basically what he said it was
like, that's a pretty good point, Bailon.
It's a good ego free, like good way to, you know, get rid of
some pride and and make some sense.
I don't obviously agree with him on his greater point, but yes,
forget your pride. Stark wishes that he was more
correct. Yeah, good point, Good point.
Yeah. So, and Doran did that basically
without the bending the knee part.
They're just like, we're just going to hide and we will rise
again later though. And they waited for him to leave
like the moment he left. And they had reason to believe
that would happen. It wasn't a stroke of luck, of
course. Aegon the Conqueror is not just
going to stay in Dorne the rest of his life.
He's got a new Kingdom to run. He's got a throne, that weird
ass throne he's making up there. He's clearly going to go sit on
that and not stay down here. He had a lot, a lot to do up
there, so it was reasonable expectation that he would leave,
and they may have considered it. A stroke of luck.
However, how poorly he handled the conquest of Dorne.
His policy of dominance through pure martial power was not
working, and he didn't adapt to that at all.
He just kept attacking and destroying things and they kept
not surrendering and it just, well, it was very Sisyphean like
he it was clearly that wasn't going to work.
But he kept trying and one thing he didn't adapt to sticking with
this topic of Greyjoys, sort of is even after it became clear
that he couldn't hold door and he still didn't start to use
ships and navies, he still didn't adapt to bring that in.
And I know I've mentioned this before, but it's kind of maybe
shows his stubbornness. Maybe his initial plan was
really strong, but he was slow to make changes when the initial
plan started to fail. And I buy slow.
I mean years and years and years of doing the same thing over and
over and not working. I wanna give Aegon maybe a
little more credit because he suddenly has a lot more to deal
with right now. So a he might be spending more
attention on trying to work out trade deals and keep peace
between the new Lords and all this other stuff.
And additionally, it's not crazy to think that this would work
like a war of attrition is a thing and he has the huge
advantage when it comes to that. I I can see why it made it taken
a year or two or three years for him to to shift gears but well,
he he didn't after that, so that's a mistake.
Exactly. He never did shift gears.
And you're right. Like if he's trying to deny them
resources like ships, that's a pretty obvious way to do that,
like deny them trade. And that is eventually what
happened. But it wasn't because he denied
the trade, it's because there was nothing left to trade with.
There was just. So the quote that's going to
come later is that Doran was effectively a smoking ruin.
Like there's nothing to blockade like what ships are going in and
out like. So it was done.
It was accomplished a different way, but he could have maybe
done that sooner. Or anyway destroying that the
Plankey town, which is something we discussed last time, they
would have eventually cleared that out and fixed it, but they
could, they wouldn't have had an opportunity.
If they're just worried that at any minute a dragon could return
and just blow it all up again, what's the point of rebuilding
something that could easily be taken down and not until the war
is over would they? Would it make much sense to do
that? If Aegon did start to alter his
plans, if we're selling short his flexibility, a clue to that
might be how much he listened to the maesters.
Recall that he created the office of Grand Maester and he
did it in the Year 5 AC, which is pretty much like right after
this war started but or started to become take shape but before
Rainey's came and burned the plankey town.
And this first Grand Maester was Olidar, who had been the arch
maester of history. So when we talked before about
historical precedent and looking at past wars with Dorne for
ideas, for strategies, for things that worked, for details
on how to deal with the desert, well, he maybe didn't have much
to provide there, and maybe Aegon didn't listen to him.
In any case, the guy didn't live very long, so it may have just
been that might have been the simplest answer of all.
He didn't have, didn't listen to the man because the man was only
in office for a year or so, actually less than a year.
He was replaced by a man named Leonce, who was the archmaster
of either money or numbers, 'cause we don't know the
difference. Like there's a red gold
archmaster and a yellow gold archmaster, We don't actually
know which is which. One of them is money, one of
them is just numbers, so they're kind of related.
Either way, this guy was probably very important in
setting up new economic policies or advising Aegon on things like
taxation and things like that. So it's a pretty important role
in an in a new economy, in a new country, a new region, all that
stuff. And this guy would have worked
with Crispy and Celtagar, the first Master of coin, who we
talked about in our House Celtagar episode last year.
Of course, the Grand Maester office still exists, but one
that doesn't is the Warden of Sands, and that it would have
been interesting if there had been a Warden of Saint of that.
It's stuck 'cause he's like, well, Warden of the North, Ward
of the South, Warden of the east, Ward of the West.
Oh wait, we need another one. Warden of the sands.
I don't know call it that yeah. Warden of the sandbox in our
case. So yeah that was that Lord John
Rosby fellow who only one to ever hold that title.
So Castella he was Castellan of Sunspeer which is for a very
short time before they murdered him and that's the one who Maria
pushed out the window herself. Very symbolic we we mentioned
that last time So it it's a little different right.
You you kind of have to have this was more of a like
occupying force warden rather than a you're the guy that is in
charge if there's an outside attack.
So it's kind of it is a little different in its conceit.
In time that might have evolved, yes.
But yes, they didn't have time for.
That never. Yeah, exactly.
And by the time Egon gets back to King's Landing, he's left.
He leaves Dorn. The defenestration of Sunspear
happens. We don't know when he hears
about it. Maybe there's some messengers
that arrive on the road. They're like, Oh my gosh, King,
look what's happened. Maybe he doesn't get the the
most of the news until he actually arrives back home.
We don't know if he marched with the army or if he just flew back
on Valerian to get there quickly.
If he did, he's certainly not getting any news.
On the meantime, Ravens don't fly to airborne Dragons to
deliver messages. I I don't know that I needed to
clarify that, but it's kind of funny to picture that, right?
So he would have. It's quite possible he had no
idea until getting back to King's Landing what happened to
Lord Orius. He's like where what happened to
Lord Orius's army? Like it totally vanished.
We never saw them. We never heard of them.
He might finally find that out. When?
I don't know. There's maybe some ransom
demands or someone maybe taunting from the widow lover,
the the Lord Will guy. He seems like he might be
willing to do something like that and that's a big deal.
Like Oris is like the 4th ranked guy in the whole Kingdom.
You got Aegon, Vesenia, Raines and then him, right?
There's no heirs yet. Who would it be?
Like their Lord Valerian isn't that powerful at this point.
I I Oris is their blood relation.
He's like their bastard half brother so he's got to be next
in line and and then that just that includes like the throne.
Like if something weird were to happen.
Vesenia, Raines, and Aegon are all killed.
He would have the best claim to the crown.
So having him is a really powerful hostage, a really
powerful man. So he's the most elevated and
connected man in the kingdoms that doesn't have a dragon.
And at this point, again, this is the year 6.
Still, no Anis is going to be born the next year.
So there this is like possibly even the guy that some might
consider the heir. It's unclear at this point who
would have been the heir, but he's probably the best claim.
You know, it's hard to see who it could have been.
So that's a really big hostage, a really big deal.
And it might slow Aegon's response down.
He's like, well, if I launch into Total War again right away,
are you just, are they just going to execute him?
The answer is no. But it had to be on his mind.
So, yeah, OK, so the Year 6 AC, let's go there.
Remember last time we discussed a lot about weather?
That's another thing that's not super clarified in Fire and
Blood, but we can figure out a lot because we knew there was
two straight years of autumn and there's no mention of a or not
two straight years, but it entered its second year.
We don't know if it went two full years, you know?
Anyway, maybe an unnecessary clarification, but we're very
detailed here at History of Westeros podcast.
Winter had almost certainly come by 6 AC if there had been nearly
two years of Autumn in four and five AC, right?
That's a pretty safe assumption, I think.
And there's not some mentioned later on of winter suddenly
coming. Right.
Yeah. So the defenestration happened
late 5 AC is kind of our guess. The text says that the next
phase of the war began in six AC.
So that all that all adds up. It's not important to just like
completely pinpoint that, but the weather part is what I care
about here. Even in much warmer Dorn.
It's a bad time to raise armies to begin a campaign that
involves significant manpower and not like, not to mention how
badly the less that armies found it.
Like, remember, more than half of the soldiers Aegon raised
died and during the actual war part, and then a whole chunk
more died when all the garrisons were slaughtered.
So you got a lot of soldiers that are like, yeah, I do not
want to go back there. Morale would be real low, yeah.
I was going to say not only do you have that many less
soldiers, but you're it's that more difficult to get any more
soldiers, Yeah. Yeah, and harder to feed them.
Yeah. So the timing is bad.
So it's kind of a maybe a a respite for Dorne timing.
A lot of things worked out pretty well for them timing wise
and they get some credit for maybe building their strategy
around it. And after a long autumn we would
expect a longer winner. That's just that's how it works,
right? The longer the autumn, the
longer the winner, which of course will also mean a longer
summer following that winner, which this war is long enough
that we need to factor that in too.
It's going to explain, help us explain a lot.
Even if we don't have exact precise dates for when the
seasons changed, though we know things escalated.
This may have been one of those periods of relative inactivity.
Not a truce necessarily, but one of those implied like stuff just
didn't happen for a while, the outside of winter that makes a
lot of sense for that. Or the Targaryens thinking they
had things settled only for this uprising to happen and them
struggling to find a way to respond immediately.
Well, we can't just March down there again.
So what do we do? I don't know.
Let's talk about it. Well, there you go.
Period of inactivity, boom. Pretty straightforward.
But perhaps they just had. Maybe they just knew they had to
wait. They probably, maybe they were
like, well they got us well, but we're going to come back, we're
going to be prepared next time. So it's like an extension of the
Dragons interim. In essence, they wanted to get
back at Dorne. They were itching to finish what
they started, but the timing was terrible.
Establishing new laws and traditions and all that other
stuff. They still got others.
Like we said, there's other things to do.
Dorne is not the only concern here.
You got to pay attention to the other six kingdoms, or however
you count them, 678, whatever the number is.
It's another example of something that I can imagine
that the details and drama of playing out on a show that
featured all this. There might be times where just
to save face or to present the people with a victory of sorts,
when you know you can't attack anyway, but you can pitch it
like they're too scared of us and they offered a truce.
We were like, wow, we weren't attacking anyway, But you can
make it seem like you have accomplished something by
negotiating a truce. Yeah, it's a good way to fire up
your own side, just like anything that makes your people
a little more confident. I know I've used this example
before. It's been a while though.
It's it's the wire. Slim Charles once tried to fire
up the the the gang by pointing to some guy that has been
murdered and all. The gang thought it was the
rival gang that murdered this guy.
And then then he go back and they're having a meeting amongst
the leaders and the guy's like, yeah, it wasn't them.
He's like, what wasn't them? He's like, don't tell them that.
If it's a lie, we fight on that lie.
That's better. Don't take, don't SAP their
morale if we're going to go fight them.
Don't take their morale away, even if it's dishonest.
You know, like they're about to go put their lives on the line.
You know, you want them to be confident and you know if you're
not going to call the whole thing off, don't tell them the
truth. You know, it's a similar sort of
thing here. Yeah.
Dishonesty is not the worst thing in the world.
Like, it's it's unethical. But sometimes lying is a good
thing. If it's saving lives, like
there's no question lying is a good thing.
Lying in of itself, I don't think is wrong.
Using a lie to deny someone their rights.
Yeah, OK, that's. Yeah, yeah.
And and other examples too. But yeah, just in a vacuum, not
all lies or evil or unethical or what have you.
This is one of those times, I suppose, especially if you're on
the Dornish side and you're fighting for your country,
fighting for, you know, your your countrymen or your your
lives, etcetera. Well, it's a few lies and and
mixed into that when when your lives are on the line, right?
Like. Especially given all the other
atrocities. Yeah, a lie doesn't even come
close, unless that lie is one of the things that led to some of
those atrocities. But in most cases, it's not.
It's just a There's another raindrop in the storm here,
right? Does this barrel of wine that
I'm going to share with my whole household have poison in it?
No, no, that's the that's the bad lie.
And there is a poison barrel of wine later in the story too.
I like that good example good, said Sean.
So the Lord Oris and hostages situation does have a resolution
the following year in seven AC. And still things probably
haven't kicked into full second phase of the war yet.
I still. I feel like we're still in the
interim where things are picking up, but there still hasn't been
a second army sent down. There never will be.
The Dragons haven't returned yet.
We haven't seen, like, the assassinations really kick into
gear yet. So I feel like this is still
part of that inactivity where people are preparing, they're
thinking about what might come next, but people aren't actually
actively stabbing each other to death in Dorne or otherwise
fighting. So the ransom happens, Lord Oris
and his other Knights, some of whom were the ones who were
important enough to leave alive a ransom by Lord Will the widow
lover. And we get an idea maybe why it
took so long. The ransom was huge.
It's it's a casually dropped number.
Their weight in gold, that's a staggering sum.
How much is I'm about 160 lbs a 160 lbs of gold.
If I'm a knight I weigh more than that, probably cause I've
been training in in, in, in armor my whole life.
I probably have way more muscle. I'm probably like 180 or maybe
190 and there's certainly people larger than me, the 200
pounders. I'm not a very big man.
A lot of these guys would be big or he's himself is a huge man.
Most likely like a 240 pounder or something like that 6 foot 4,
something big like that. And this is where it's kind of
funny, the way you can game things like this.
The not funny part is that after the ransom was agreed to, the
wills chop their hands off so that they could never raise
swords against Dorne again, which is like, Ouch, but kind of
get it. Like these were invaders and if
you let them go, they're definitely going to come back.
They are going to come like it's a it's like a guarantee that
most of these warriors, including Ori's, would come back
to fight in Dorne if they weren't.
It's kind of it's definitely a violation of the implied code of
conduct when dealing with hostages.
But I kind of get it, you know? Not that I approve, but I I'm
like I don't know I it's hard to like say it's.
It's hardcore, right? It may be immoral, but it makes
sense. Yeah, It's not just cruelty for
cruelty's sake. It's not just, oh, we want to
We're going to get one over on these ancient enemies of ours
like, ha, those stupid storm Landers we show them, you know?
They're gonna give us five more pounds of gold than they should
have, yeah. Yeah, they weighed them and then
cut their hands. Might be too much I.
Don't know if Yeah. Does it have its gauntlet on
when you cut it? Yeah, that's And that's how this
gets gained. We saw Ruth Bolton game that,
like, Lord Walter phrase like you can.
Now I'll give you a bride price in silver.
She's like, well, I'll take your largest daughter, then I'll
choose fat Walda. So we're like the the wills,
like feeding the prisoners extra food.
Like, why are they giving us so much food like so Then if that
happens, they might figure that out.
They're like, Oh my, you know what?
I figured it out, Yo, they're going to weigh us and give us
ransom in in there. That's why they're fattening us
up. It's our weight in gold or
silver or something. So then they're like, what are
they doing? Like push ups when the guards
aren't watching to like lose that weight?
Like I'm going to enjoy this food, but I'm going to lose
those calories. I'm not going to, I'm not going
to make the crown pay that much for my ransom.
One handed push ups. Yes.
Yikes. That's dark.
And remember, House Will already has this reputation.
This is the same house that took Prince Amon the Dragon Knight
captive and hung him over a cage over a pit of Vipers.
Baylor. The Blessed going to rescue him
and getting bitten and them laughing about it and all that.
This is the same house. They have a reputation.
Of course, that hasn't happened yet, this this timeline.
But it's going to. And you know that when that does
happen with Prince Amy and the Bail of the Blessed, they're
remembering this. The the will Lord Will the widow
lover is still known. He's still infamous in parts for
an event that we're going to get to later here in the timeline.
So yeah, they remember. You know, another piece of this
that I wonder about is delivering that gold.
Think what an effort that would have been like gathering it and
then like protecting it along the way.
You would have needed. A good point.
Right. Like there's a lot of motivation
for someone to attack that convoys.
Yeah, I like the loot train battle in a Game of Thrones TV
show with of course, no Dragons would have been attacking that
cause the Dragons would be the ones collecting it.
But still, you're right, that's a massive amount of gold going a
long distance. Yeah, I wonder if they use
Dragons to escort it. I didn't even think of that.
Maybe, Yeah, maybe that's that's that's a low pride endeavour for
a dragon rider, but it might be what was necessary.
It'd be a dangerous hand off too, especially if the Dragons
did fall. Like, here's the gold, here's
the prisoners. OK, now burn up all the people
that have the gold. Like, yeah, right, that might
have been part of the condition. Like, no Dragon, this site.
We're not handing them over. Which might might, they might be
wary of. Well, why are they doing that?
Is that Are they going to do a surprise attack?
Like what? Yeah, like, I wouldn't trust the
Will. And if I was the Will, I
wouldn't trust the Targaryen. So yeah, you just got this, this
lack of trust on both sides and you can understand why.
By the way, the the Will Sigil is the the Black Adder.
Black Adder biting a foot, coiled around a foot is might
just be a reference to Black Adder, the Rowan Atkinson show,
the Medieval historical comedy. But Nina points out, it might
also be a little bit of a biblical thing.
It's also not really that comedic so.
Yeah, this isn't funny. Black.
Matters reference to make George.
It's like, by the way, it's not hilarious.
All those hands chopped off and poisonings and snakes and yeah,
that's hilarious. Reminds me of that comic.
So did this escalate things or was it just so escalated that it
just like you can't escalate any more than things already were?
I would say it probably did because you can escalate things
more as we're going to see because things do escalate more
like this is this is bad maybe. This didn't, but it did get
escalated. Yeah, maybe this, yeah, Nina
says. Well, it certainly didn't help
de escalate. Yes, that's that's clear.
There was definitely anger in the storm lands, probably anger
at the Red Keep, and Ori's breathing himself was
permanently pissed. I mean, I understandably they
crippled him like that's his his.
A lot of his identity was wrapped up in his sword arm and
they took it so. The the prisoner exchange for
money itself might have de escalated things, but when you
get the prisoners and her hands are removed that's that's the
thing that would if anything escalated.
It wasn't a surprise to them when they got to prison like
they would have prepped. They would have told them before
the transfer, right? Oh, don't.
They didn't. Oh, OK, they just found out when
they got him. It says it was revealed, yeah.
The way it's written, it sounds like they didn't know that was
coming. This might be a a bit of a nod
or an insult or a needling of the Storm Landers because of
what Argalac did to Aegon's envoy when he was like, hey, you
know, marry my dog, you know, No, I'll marry.
You can marry my Mary Orice himself, the man whose hand was
cut off. Right.
And was like, well, that's what you did.
That's what the Stormlanders did to to Aegon.
So it's kind of like, Yep, little bit of it's not payback,
but it's, you know, more of the same.
So that's quite a thing. Yeah.
And Orice became obsessed with revenge and quit has hand like
he's basically not long after getting back.
Or maybe immediately. He may have already decided to
quit when he was maimed before the the he returned to King's
land. He may have already decided to
quit, but or maybe he'd been pondering it or something like
that. Either way, he was gone.
Out of the picture, at least for now.
He's not. His career isn't over.
We will be returning to him, but he is no longer a participant in
the first Dornish War. Cutting the hands off reminds me
of something else that happened under the democracy of Athens in
in the time of the Peloponnesian War or just around that era.
They defeated the island nation of Aegina, and the quote is so
that he might forever after be disabled from holding a spear,
yet might handle an oar. They didn't cut their hands off,
they cut their thumb off their thumbs.
He could still pull an oar because Aegina was a island
nation that was sometimes under the auspices of of Athens.
They were sometimes like a subject and at this point they
were at war. And yeah, so well, you can still
do trade and have have a living, but you're not going to fight us
with the with that hand. So it was kind of, yeah, it's
kind of a similar vibe, something that really happened,
I guess that would have been around the year like 43420 BC,
something like that. The replacement for Lord Oris
was Lord Edmund Tully. He's a new Hand of the King.
He was. He's the paramount, Lord
Paramount of the Trident. The same guy who was the 1st to
turn on Hair in the Black in favor of Aegon.
So Aegon again rewards him for his service.
Apparently it had been going well and the man ascended to
even higher honors. So yeah, whether the Widow lover
made things worse or not, Aegon's response was certainly
also not like a DE escalation. It was just more and more.
He went and burned everything the wills owned that he could
get his dragon flame on, but that was not super effective.
Like yes, he gave the Harrenhal treatment to their watchtowers
and their castle and farms and fields and stuff, but they hid
in their caves with their big piles of gold.
How do you sleep at night on top of a huge pile of money?
I don't know about the surrounded by many beautiful
ladies part, but maybe that part too.
So yeah, that's a pretty big deal and and so we're in the
year 7 AC now and there's an interesting factor to consider
as I said that Oris may have been the de facto heir.
There's no indication he would have ever superseded the Dragon
Rider. But now we have a son born to to
Raines and Aegon and we're not sure when this child was born.
The child could have easily been born after the Ransom, but the
pregnancy, we got nine months of pregnancy that gets noticed at
some point. So it's probably she was
probably pregnant before the ransom was finished, which?
Is an interesting spot to be in there.
Like they know a kids coming, they don't know the gender but
it's an heir. Even if it's a girl, it's an
heir because it's a child of the of the Princess or the Queens
and and the king or one queen and the king.
So we always have to consider that when a child is born, don't
forget that there would have been months of a child's coming.
We know a child is coming, there's a pregnancy.
This is happening. Rainey's was still was probably
flying meraxes and burning castles while she was pregnant,
which little extra risk, but maybe not a whole lot extra
risk. More than she might have thought
though given what happens in a few years.
So. But there was negativity about
this kid and you wonder if like Dornish agents were maybe
pushing this angle a little bit. Start a little turmoil.
Cause a little rumor in the in the royal household that could
be to their benefit to cause a little rift.
Or just maybe any sort of scandal in the royal family
might affect the war in a positive way for Dorne.
The rumor being that Anis was maybe not aegons, Raines was
noted to surround herself with young handsome men, and Anis was
weak and sickly and shy. Which isn't much a piece of
evidence, but Aegon being so manly and strong that people
took that as evidence or quote UN quote evidence.
I'm using the finger quotes right now and I say evidence.
Regardless of the truth. The rumors were real.
They real. Those really happened and that
mattered. Apparently it didn't go too far
and the tide started to turn. And as far as Amy's strength,
his boldness of character, because the dragon Quicksilver
was hatched, or maybe around this time, I'm guessing a
little, a little before, maybe in the year 6 or even 5, but
still referred to as a hatchling, so it's probably
still pretty darn young. I don't know when the dragon
ceases to be a hatchling. I'm not sure what the timeline
on dragon growth is. You know, like a kitten.
Apparently cat is no longer a kitten after one year.
I don't know what that I I don't know that for pretty much any
other species, even dogs. Our cats, on the other hand, are
still kittens to this day. Yes.
Eleven years later, 10 years later, they are kittens.
That's right. That's right.
Kitten you you do call Koja kitten.
I do I. Do one of them is his kitten to
Aziz. Valerian is still a hatchling.
It's Aegon. Oh, look at the cute little
murder bomber. You know, look at the cute
little nuclear bomber. It's tempting to see Quicksilver
as a spawn of Meraxis, since Quicksilver is probably silver.
Given the name, we don't actually know for sure.
It's pretty safe. Guess.
And Meraxis is silver with golden eyes.
So yeah, that's pretty cool. We don't know where the timeline
is for Annie's either, do we? We don't know, like, quite his
age. I'm just thinking about the idea
it might be a hard rumor to battle for the three-year old.
The the three-year old is shy, yeah, and weak.
Well, all three-year olds are weak.
And how do you define shy at age 3 like?
Yeah, some. Some little babies are like, you
know, go towards the big animal and some are just scared of
everything. I don't know, there's something.
But that apparently that changed pretty quickly once Quicksilver
bonded with Annies and vice versa.
Annies apparently showed more baby versions of bravery.
Whatever. Whatever that actually means,
using Sean's point there. And that also for some reason
since the rumors of paternity were somewhat wrapped up in his
sickliness and weakness. Once his sickliness and weakness
started to pass, that also tampered down the rumors of his
his parentage. Which I've always found these
rumors a little fascinating because there's also some maybe
some rumors around Megor and Descena, but there's definitely
nothing certain here. But it would be interesting to
find out that Egg on the Conqueror was sterile and he
never actually had any children and that both of these heirs
were not of his body. But they are Targaryen.
They definitely came from Raney's and Vicenia.
There's no, there's no getting around that fact.
It's like it's like the Tyrion Targaryen theory, like no matter
who his father is, his mom's Joanna.
That's a Lannister, you know? Yeah.
So. Barring time travel.
Barring time travel, yes, the Tyrion time travelling fetus
theory. Aside.
We can't forget such luminary ideas, and in our fandom we'd be
remiss to just dismiss that one out of hand.
I mean, man, time travelling feti are a real thing.
Is that how you say plural of fetus feti?
I don't know. It is now.
It's how we say it. Yes, Feti.
I want to find more opportunities to use that word.
Feti sounds sort of it's very Roman, yes, Feti the no.
So now you notice that this this bonding with Quicksilver came
after hatching, which reminds us that the dragon egg in the
cradle tradition was not a thing.
Yet that came later, which is one of the reasons we can be
pretty sure it wasn't a thing in Valyria either, unless it was a
rediscovered tradition. A Re you know, something was
reimplemented, but it doesn't seem to be because it it looks
like it began with Reyna, as in first born of King Ainis and,
well, Prince Ainis at the time, and Princess Alyssa, eventually
Queen King Ainis and Queen Alyssa, so they're first born,
was the one that apparently started this.
Gay Raina. What's that Gay Raina?
Here, I just want to make it shorter for any of you were
like, wait, which Raina Gay Raina?
Yeah, there's there's several Rainas it is hard to keep track
of. Not as many Rainas as there are
Aegons, but there's less written about the Rainas, so we have to
give them nicknames. They don't have numbers.
Aegons all have numbers. And maybe This is why her own
father became stronger thanks to bonding with his dragon, right?
Like he if the closeness, if maybe, maybe it's a little magic
involved in there. The egg in the cradle might
start that process earlier. If it's magical, then who knows
what's happening. And even more obvious
association with eggs and cradles is Daenerys.
Like it wasn't her cradle, but those eggs were like speaking to
her. She was like bonding with them
in her dream. Talk about getting stronger.
Those eggs were a crucial like item, a focal point for her,
growing into the character that she became later.
The hatching was a big leap forward in that because it
proved a lot that was going on in your head was actually quite
real. But she got strength from those
eggs she would like when she felt weak, she'd like, I want to
hold one of those eggs, you know?
And I feel like this is a pretty strong clue to maybe what was
happening on maybe a smaller scale.
Maybe the vibes were there. Maybe it wasn't intense.
Maybe they weren't having these, like, overwhelming dreams every
night like Danny was, but they might have been having, you
know, a little something, something in there at night.
You know, some feelings some some visions.
But milder types, You know, regardless of that going
forward, things had changed without any military objectives
being achieved by either side, right?
We've got the royal house having at least one new dragon to
probably more like that's not mentioned, but Dragons are
hatching. Quicksilver wasn't the only one
to hatch. There's there's the cannibal
might exist by now. Vermathore might have hatched by
now, some of these other Dragons that matters.
Like that's just even as there aren't a lot of Targaryen
children, there's more Targaryen Dragons hatching, which for
whatever reason had been at an ebb.
For some reason there weren't as many Dragons.
But now the Royal House's hatchery was.
More is going on. We don't know why.
Maybe that's another topic for another day, but that just shows
the growing strength of of this new Iron Throne.
More Dragons is gonna These Dragons will be ridden, you
know, if and if not by anies, then by more children that are
coming. And that perhaps makes him a
target. We haven't gotten to the stage
of the war when the assassinations become common,
but we're about to in the second-half, and you got to
think if you're willing to chop hands off.
If you're willing to kill anyone that's coming for you, you're
probably willing to to kill the ones who will be doing that to
you 30 years in the future, which is what will happen if you
allow Annies to become an adult. Or from their perspective,
that's actually not how Annies is going to operate.
But they have no reason to believe otherwise.
You know, something else just occurred to me.
We haven't thought about this in a while, but this sort of new
revelation that we have about this prophecy that Aegon knew
about that, maybe that's part of why he didn't make adjustments
in Dorne. He just knew they were going to
win. He may have had some, you know,
misinterpreted vision, but some vision that Dorne would be part
of the Seven Kingdoms and that he might have thought that he
was going to do it and that what he was doing was working because
he had this vision. He didn't realize how long it
was going to be. The drags won't be involved.
And so on. Right on.
Over two months of drinking Magic Mind now and I think I can
give a little bit of personal experience that's slightly long
term at least approaching longer term because that is one of the
ideas is that it's some of the ingredients in Magic Mind don't
work immediately. They need to build up within
your system. There's a lot of other
ingredients out there that work like that, a lot of other things
for your mind especially. So I think I'm noticing it, you
know, more with two months in and I've got more energy.
I was very productive this last week.
It's always a little bit of a struggle up and down for me.
Sometimes I'm really productive, sometimes I'm not trying to get
a little more balanced there. And so far this year I feel like
it's been better and maybe that's partly attributed to
Magic mind. What about you, Sean?
Well, I had a little break. I ran out and ordered more.
But I will say overall, I feel like I think I mentioned this
before. I don't feel like I get as tired
as quick at the gym and I don't even know if that's like one of
the perks that they advertised. Maybe it's a coincidence, but
I'd still get sore the next day. But I don't feel like I I get
quite as worn out in the moment at the gym, so I think that's a
positive. And I haven't been tracking it
scientifically, but anecdotally I I must be drinking less
caffeine because I just know I'm not throwing as much recycling.
I know as many like cans in the bin when I recycle, so I'm
pretty sure I'm drinking less sodas.
Ha ha. It's a funny clue.
That's cool. I like that.
Yeah, I really appreciate that. It's an interesting way to to
track your your soda intake, but that seems to it seems to work
like you would really notice that I could.
I could. I totally get that they extend
ended their January sale to February 10th.
So if you're hearing this before February 10th 2024, you can
still gear up to crush your resolutions.
One month for free is what you get if you subscribe for three
months. If you go to magicmind.com/jan
Westeros, and if you enter the discount code Westeros 20,
that's an extra 20% off which gets you to around 75% off
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That's magicmind.com/jan Westeros.
If you happen to hear this after February 10th, you should still
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20 should still work. We highly encourage it.
Either way, it's working for us. Additional productivity?
Get on that magic mind, Dornish James says.
We also think of the Wars of the Roses taking place from 1455 to
1485, but there were long periods in that time without any
battles in one side or the other, plotting in exile.
Perfect example. Very perfect example.
Yeah, it wasn't 30 years of armies and battles and sieges.
There were long periods of other things like plotting an exile,
whether it's recouping your strength or petitioning other
kings around Europe to take up their 'cause.
These things take time travel, etcetera.
I mean, just getting from place to place is slower in those
times then it is now. They're not having phone calls.
They got to send letters back and forth.
Just that takes months. You know, just everything is
slower and they can't act and they can't be active in winter,
etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, lots of things like that.
Jordan's team also says Quicksilver's role in making
Amy's appear stronger has an interesting parallel in brand
apparently getting stronger during his coma when he could
hear the wolves sing. That's a very good catch.
I like that. Yeah, a lot of these sort of
animal bonding with supernatural elements are written similarly
to enjoy, at least in that regard.
Like, we have no indication that there's a communication bond
between Dragons and riders, other than maybe some emotional
flashes here back and forth. Like maybe the same kind of
things that a dog can interpret from their owner.
Not like a skin changer where they're like seeing through each
other's eyes. That's definitely a different
level, but there are similarities and this whole
getting stronger thing, that's a that's a good catch.
Because yeah, Bran was getting stronger, notably when he could
hear the wolves singing. And that may may be magical, it
may just be like very human, just as the sound of the wolves
is like brings him back to to who he is.
It helps him draw him out of his coma and brings him back to the
real world, for example. I don't know if his anecdote is
true, but I just happened to see it this morning.
The guy who was the original voice of Bugs Bunny once slipped
into a coma and the doctor actually got him out of the coma
in part by saying what's up doc to him?
And he would lapse into his Bugs Bunny voice in a coma and that
helped bring him out of it. The brain is weird, y'all and we
don't understand it very well, So that stuff applies even to
fictional brains if you have a author who writes authentically
and George does in most ways. Austin Flowers also writes 160
lbs of gold is $4 million in today's market.
That's a lot of money, but I don't know if we should go buy
today's market. It's just a it's a good, like,
way to find our bearing. I think it's more than that.
I someone can do the math, but I think an ounce of gold right now
is like $2000, which means a pound of gold is. 16. 30,000
dollars, 30,000 * 106, I don't know if I'm doing that math or
not, right? But I think it's like a billion.
I think it's like a billion. Well, it's a lot of money and
the value of gold is different in Westeros anyway.
But yeah, it's a it's a huge amount.
So and and George is that's not one of George's strengths is, is
consistency with currency value. So we would probably not get to
a super strong answer if we went any deeper and I'm not sure we
could. Anyway, let's move to the year 8
AC. We're told 8 AC was a very dry
season, very dry year. And that aligns with what we've
been saying about the winters because in case you didn't know,
the driest season is winter. Winter is dry, drier and dawn.
It's bad. It's bad to be drier in Dorne,
but the enemy armies weren't there.
The Dornish kind of know how to handle that, I guess, and it
wasn't just like that in Dorne quote.
In eight ACA very dry year, Dornish Raiders crossed the Sea
of Dorne on ships provided by a pirate king from the Step
Stones, attacking half a dozen towns and villages along the
South Shore of Cape Rath and setting fires that spread
through half the rainwood fire for fire.
Princess Miria is reported to have said this was not something
the Targaryens would allow to go unanswered.
Kind of a ridiculous thing to say, right?
Like that last sentence. It's like unanswered.
This is like year four of this war now or Year 3.
Like you're attacking each other.
I mean, that's what you do in a war.
Unanswered. I mean, yeah.
Oh, we'll just let that one go. Well, of course.
Like you're already in a war, I mean.
Like this was an answer to something the Targaryen did in
the 1st place. Second of all, what are there
some other things that they did let go unanswered?
Like what? Exactly is the question here.
If this needs to go unanswered, what is the question here?
I guess this is being written. I don't know that it's very pro
target, you know? Yeah, so.
But, and it's I, I so I say it's silly, but it's also authentic.
Like this is often how history is written.
It's like, well, of course the Targagons would have an answer
to that. Well, yeah, they started it.
I mean, I I just think it's funny to to act like
provocations even really matter at this point.
Like, oh, you provoked us. Like what?
I don't think so. I think they're the provocations
we've wore past the provocations point here.
We're we're well into it, you know.
You know, I wonder again. It's something we don't quite
know, but maybe this is something that happened after an
extended. Truce.
Right. Maybe enough time had passed
without something significant happening that this is like, all
right, that's over. We're back at it, You.
Know and it's and it is an escalation in the sense that, oh
you're going to you're going to blow up and torch all our
villages and castles and fields and we can do that to you too.
That's kind of why I called this episode Doran strikes back,
because they accomplished quite a bit considering how much
devastation they face. They are able to attack
Westeros. They're able to assassinate
people and they're able to not give up.
Oh, I thought you were going to talk about all the backs they
were hitting. They strike somebody backs.
I've been waiting. For that to come up.
Yeah, Sir, mix a lot just got back and they.
Strike it, you know and. They brought Sir Mix a lot into
this war and and Darth Vader and yeah this war's getting I told
you all this war gets crazy we got Darth Vader and and Sir Mix
a lot I. Wanted to bring up something
about the the weather, about winter, you know, and how it
would affect water, among other things, even if it wasn't like a
freezing cold winter and dorn. But one effect, you know, 'cause
sometimes you only need a few degrees to change to get above
or below freezing temperatures, right?
And maybe in the middle of the 90° Dornish desert doesn't
matter. But here in Denver and a lot of
the the West, the water comes from snow melt in the mountains
that flows down rivers into reservoirs and such.
And so if in the mountains it stays winter enough for the snow
to not melt, that means water is drying up everywhere else.
Which is why it's dry. Yeah, you're right.
That's part of why makes it dry. It's not that the water isn't
there, it's that it's frozen a lot.
Well, in some cases that makes a lot of sense.
Yeah. And so it's probably still
miserably hot in the desert, but there's less water in the wells
or in the streams that there would be from melting in the
mountains. And so it's you're still kind of
getting hit by the the heat of the desert, but the effects of
the weather and something again, the Dornish would be much more
aware and prepared for than the any kind of attempted invading
armies. Which is why they probably felt
reasonably confident that armies might not March on them again.
They they were probably also confident that the Dragons would
return, and they'd be right about that.
I mean obviously Valerian had already returned to torch the
wills lands after the the cutting off of the hands, but
they all surely knew more Dragons were coming as long as
this war continued. And the big change here too is
Aegon is no longer the guy who can claim to just be taking on
leaders and sort of the peasantry are mostly being left
alone. This war has escalated to the
point where lots of villages are getting burned and now we've got
villages in his king, his portion of the Kingdom getting
burned too as retaliation. So lots of just completely
innocent people getting killed. People who aren't combatants.
Like you could argue that certain people forced to fight
in the army shouldn't have been, but these people aren't even
lifting A spear. These are just completely
innocent individuals and people who probably already hate
Dornishman because they've been raided and they're like their
families have been raided by the Dornish in the past.
But also, it's pirate king. These ships came from some
pirate king. This is a very underrated little
aspect here. Like that, Dornish have got
allies, and they're not explicitly mentioned as such,
But a pirate king from the Step stones.
We've all heard about pirate kings from the Step.
This happened a lot of different times.
Where did the money come from? Well, my theory is pretty
straightforward. It came from those ransoms,
right? Like they got a big pile of
money, and they surely have other money too.
But that is a very big, big, obvious potentially potential
source for that cash. That's another thing I wondered
about the details and the story behind where they asking for
that ransom because they knew they needed the money to hire
pirates. Or once they got the ransom,
they're like, oh, now we can hire pirates?
Or maybe the pirates, like, hey, those Dorners just got a big
ransom. Maybe we can go offer our
services. Like what?
What? I like that last idea.
Like, you know, they're flush now.
It will help and the and the target.
And like if you're a pirate king, you're anti Targaryen.
Probably. You don't like Dragons.
You don't want them coming for you either.
You're the friend. Enemy of my enemy is my friend
kind of situation. The century of blood.
Let's forget, let's not remember, let's not forget.
Century blood isn't that far in the past at this point.
And it's not like there's some arbitrary end to the century of
blood. Like, oh, it's been 100 years.
Well, that's the century. It's over now.
It's the century of water. I don't know.
Century of fire, Blood and fire. There you go.
Yeah, that's another thing that would have taken perspective of
time to look back and realize, oh, that was 100 years of
terribleness. Whether it's 98 years or 107
years, it'll just be called a century as more time passes.
Yeah, and because there's no definitive beginning in it.
Well, there is a definitive beginning, the Doom, but there's
no definitive ending. And the point being the effects
of the Doom even 100 years later still being felt.
They're still burgeoning kingdoms.
The power vacuum is still being filled.
It was a big big big power vacuum to fill the fall of
Valyria and it happened so suddenly so lots of leaders and
and governments are still establishing themselves even 100
years later. There's all this turmoil and
tumult and chaos that takes a while to that's why it was a
whole century. So yeah, it isn't just
everything isn't just all nice and clean and and organized now.
So lots of people probably didn't want, didn't like this
new situation of the Iron Throne like these Targaryens like we
just got done with dragon Lords and now there's a whole new
royal family on a much larger landmass like look ahead, think
ahead. If you're an associate person,
you're like what's that going to look like in 40 years?
Are there going to be 20 drag. Well, yeah that's kind of that
is kind of what happened. There's going to be, maybe,
maybe took a little longer than that, but that is eventually
what the what it looked like a a very powerful royal family with
a ton of Dragons that could theoretically be a threat to
people in Essos, especially the the Free Cities, the ones who
were ruled by Valyria before. You know, they know what that's
all about. The Volunteers tried to conquer
them right during the Century of Blood and the Volunteers didn't
have Dragons. And part of the reason the
Volunteers lost was Aegon attacked them.
So they're like, yeah, all these things are like kind of scary,
like we don't want to. So you can see why a pirate king
or several would want to help the Dornish in this struggle.
Like, yeah, we don't want the Targaryen to get more powerful.
We don't want them having all of Westeros.
We don't want them coming for us either.
But better to help our enemies deal with them rather than face
them, you know, head on ourselves.
So yeah, this raiding it would have been really brutal.
It would have been really nasty setting fires.
There would have been all sorts of assaults and depravities and
atrocities. And in some ways it would have
been worse than just straight up dragon fire.
Because you don't have, like, when people are involved in
raids, you have things like sexual assault and and much more
like personal levels of violence.
If you can hide from the dragon flame, you'll make it.
But it's when there's like 100 dudes running around trying to
grab you and do awful things that's a different sort of
different sort of horror. I think I'd rather face the
dragon, actually. I'd definitely rather face the
dragon if I was a woman. It wouldn't even.
It wouldn't even be close. I was going to say that and we
were talking about how the it's so horrible what's coming up and
like, well, what happened already was horrible too.
But it is a little bit more, I don't know, easier to swallow
when a bunch of people in the army get killed, right, because,
well, they're in the army. What do you think was going to
happen now? Maybe they didn't have a choice
about being in the army. It's so sad, the families that
were left behind everything. But as you said that now we're
targeting just innocent people who aren't, who didn't have
anything to do with this choice to go to war, don't have any
control over or resources for their defenses or ability to
affect it. They're just going about their
lives and suddenly being attacked and raped and murdered
and terrorized. It's not even a military target
like this isn't this doesn't help the war at all.
It only makes people matter. It only is like we got them
makes them feel better about like we got one.
You know we did something to them after what they did to us.
Yeah. It's not military help.
It doesn't do any good in terms of the war.
So like as much as I'm, I tend to side with Dorne because
they're the the ones being invaded.
I don't know. This is not good.
This is not justified. Nina wonders if this one of
these towns, one of these many towns that was destroyed or
raided was the Weeping town. Weeping Town becomes famous when
Daron the 1st is assassinated and his body lies in state there
for a few days and then acquires that name.
But it didn't have a name at the time like well, it probably did
to the locals, but not a name that would show up on maps or
anything very rare as a small place like that become famous.
And it did for a very specific reason.
You know 150 British years later and and this this idea of pirate
kings, if this pirate king is just casually mentioned is
helping the Dornish well what what other allies did they have?
Did they get like maybe some secret aid like maybe the
volunteers or the Lyseni sent them some gold on the fly?
Like we can't send you any soldiers.
We don't want the the Targaryen to know, but we do want you all
to win. So we'll send you secret supply,
we'll send you some shipments or whatever.
But even that eventually would be difficult to do because like
where are you, where are those boats going to land?
How are you literally, how do you ship goods to rebels hiding
in deep desert caves? Like how do you, how do you
supply them that assistance in the 1st place?
So this is one of the logistical issues with being a guerrilla
forces, even your allies don't know where you are to give you
stuff like it's like Yikes, like you're so well hidden that even
your friends don't know where you are.
And of course the Pirates of the step stones at this point, who
knows how powerful they were. They might have been quite
powerful. It's not something mentioned a
lot. They weren't a big part of what
was going on in Westeros cause well, they don't want to mess
with the Dragons. They don't want to like ships.
As we've said many times, ships don't do so well.
Ships are even more vulnerable than people when it comes to
Dragons. So this was the start though
this, this counter invasion of sorts, even though it was mostly
a raid is escalated the following year.
Let's go to the year 9 AC. Another big big year.
A very eventful Dornish counter. Invasions take a new form rather
than raiding. We got full blown armies.
Lord Fowler leads an army of out of Skyreach and takes night
song. Joffrey Dane.
Sir Joffrey Dane leads an army through secret passes in the Red
Mountains to emerge near the near Old Town and starts
ravaging the territory there. Sean, does this tell you that
it's no longer winter? Possibly, yeah.
I guess it might be the fact that they've gotten the
resources together to mobilize an army and attack with it that
a harvest may have come, you know.
Yeah, No. Still, I want to say not
necessarily because it was a lot of money for net ransom that
might have given enough money to just buy food from elsewhere to
maybe even hire mercenaries or buy whatever equipment and ships
and everything else so. Yeah, we don't know that the
will would have shared that when fault with his fellow Lords, but
it would make sense for him to do that if he's if it would make
such a difference in the war. Like what good is a pile of gold
to the war effort? You need to be spending that,
you know. Yeah, he's not.
Can't feed your people gold. You can't equip your soldiers
with gold. He can't go out and use it.
He's gonna go partying like he's a wanted man, basically.
Not that he even is interested in that, necessarily, but so
yeah, that's money for the war. Yeah, it's entirely possible he
spread it around. It's entirely possible he funded
some of these other efforts. Or helped at least.
Especially given the nature of the Dornish.
What's the word I'm looking for? Camaraderie.
You know, they're all in this together.
Like it. It doesn't seem like any peoples
or regions are like we're out. This is too much.
They all keep being on board. So now the Lord Edmund Tully, we
said he had become hand in AC-7 after the resignation of Lord
Orius. Well, he didn't last very long.
His wife died in childbirth and he he resigned his his position.
Now I wonder, reading between the lines here, was this an
excuse? Was he just like the war is
escalating? I don't want to be, I don't want
to be. I don't want to be a part of
this anymore. Atrocities are being committed.
This is no longer an honorable situation.
He doesn't want to say that to the King's face.
So he's just like, my wife died. I got to go.
You know, Of course it's entirely possible that his
wife's death legitimately shattered him.
That's entirely possible. You know, that's entirely
possible. And of course, obviously her
life was the one that was truly shattered by her death.
But he may have truly like, you never know what these political
marriages like. Was she?
Was he where they actually love? Who knows?
We don't know much about Edmund. We don't even know Lady Tully's
name. So who knows Which is true?
But it would be a very good excuse if you wanted to leave,
if you wanted to bail on his position because of the way
things were going, is a very good excuse.
All the assassinations that started happening are going to.
It's going to start to pick up soon.
If it may be already dead, he might not want to be in that
particular crosshair. He's like, yeah, I'm a target.
I'm the hand of the king. Look what happened to the last
one. You know, I don't want to.
I don't want to be around for that.
But this is the man who turned on Hair in the Black.
That was pretty brave. So I'm not sure we can pin him
as someone that's going to run away at the barest threat of
assassination. So there's a lot of unknowns
here, which is a goes to show, there's a lot of interesting
possibilities here. This character, if he was ever
fleshed out more, well, these are the kind of decisions that
George or whatever writers would have to make, and they've got a
lot to work with. And again, there might be a
parallel to Ned Stark. Like, maybe he's brave enough to
face assassination, but he might realize his family's in danger,
right? His loved ones might get
assassinated. Like I'm out.
Yeah, so that's a pretty big deal.
Now, another possibility is we we have to keep in in mind here
is the timing. A lot of times we were told
several things happened in this year, but we don't know in what
order they happen and that really, really matters.
For example, when was Amis born? If Amis was born before the
ransom of Lord Oris or after, it might affect how much they were
willing to pay, right? If they knew they had a boy,
they're like, all right, well, we can maybe we don't pay quite
as much, you know. Or or if the kid is, you know,
they had less negotiating levels.
Well, we don't need auras anymore.
We got this Francinis now, like, you know that that's got that
takes 20% off the top right there, you know.
But if he hadn't been born yet, who knows, you know?
And it does seem like a cold calculation.
But the fact is, someone's got to make that calculation.
Like someone has to decide how much do we have, how much can we
afford? What value do we get from him?
You know, some people maybe are purely working off emotion, but
someone on there is crunching some numbers, you know?
That's what actuaries do, right? They put the value someone's got
to calculate what life insurance as well of course someone's got
to calculate like how much these premiums cost and that that math
has to be crunched by somebody. Yeah, a similar kind of thing
here in a in a much different auspices, much different
scenario. But you're still calculating the
value of a life which is awkward to say the least but has to be
done sometimes. And yeah, and there's also the
factor of of what I what I was building up to rather is the
death of Rainey's. If Lord Tully resigned before
the death of Rainey, that's one thing.
But if you resigned after, well, then that's that's very telling
because he's like, oh boy, I can tell this is going to get so
much worse this the escalations are going to escalate, even the
escalation, even the worst escalations will be escalated
upon once that happens. So that's where I think the big
unknown is what happened first, let's discuss the following year
was perhaps marked by perhaps the most significant deaths of
the war. And though we're not sure what
part of the year it happened in, it's it's so important that
we'll start with it. So I think this happened after
Lord Tully's resignation because it seems to be that happened in
year nine and this happened in year 10.
But these things are all kind of loose.
And of course, I'm referring to what happened over the Deep
Sands, the death of Rainice quote.
The Targaryen Dragons, bred and trained to battle, had flown
through storms of Spears and arrows on many occasions and
suffered little harm. The scales of a full grown
dragon were harder than steel, and even those arrows that
struck home seldom penetrated enough to do more than enraged
the great beasts. But as meraxes banked above the
hell hold, a defender atop the castle's highest tower triggered
a scorpion and a yard long iron bolt caught the Queen's dragon
in the right eye. Meraxes did not die at once, but
came crashing to earth in mortal agony, destroying the tower and
a large section of the Hellholtz curtain wall in her death
throes. Whether Rainey's Targaryen
outlived her dragon remains a matter of dispute.
We will discuss whether or not she lived in the next episode
when we're discussing the piece and the letter, because those
things all very much wrap together.
But just imagine, this is one of those moments like we had last
episode, where I really want to try to imagine what it was like.
As uncomfortable as it is because it's it's like so
violent, but it's also just so epic and crazy.
I want to put put yourself in both Rainy's place where you're
just super confident. This is never not work and all
of a sudden, Oh my God, and it's just over in a few seconds
probably unless she lived. Which again, we'll discuss that
later. As for the Defenders, though,
like, which person? And it might have been a woman,
I say person because at this stage of the war, like, first of
all, you're talking about soldiers and Westeros.
Yeah, it's usually a safe assumption that it's a man.
But in Dorne, you can't be as sure.
And in a war that's lasted this long, you can be even less sure.
Like, the more men are killed in war, the more women are pressed
into battle. Like, look at Bear Island.
The women are like, it's a normal thing for them to fight
there because it's such a normal thing for them to have to fight.
They're pressed into combat because the needs are the need.
Is that great? Right.
I could totally assume that here, especially for something
that maybe doesn't require great strength, like you got to lay a
lever. You're pulling a lever on the
Scorpion Bowl that doesn't necessarily require some massive
upper body strength. All it requires is that you're
not, like, going to panic. And if you're, you know, plenty
of people can handle that, plenty of women can handle that,
right? And this, we don't know who this
person was. Maybe that's a good thing for
them because they would have been targeted for retaliation.
Maybe they died in the crash of the dragon, maybe he's like the
wall. Maybe the dragon hit the near
where the bolt came from and and the person was killed in the
fall. So we have no idea who this
person was. This this person is probably
semi legendary but anonymous perhaps to save their life.
And their family's lives. The way this is going, Yeah.
Good. Point.
Good point. Yeah, So yeah, definitely.
Guilt by association is a thing. Guilt in in quotes here.
So it's a huge deal. It isn't just the death of
Moraxis, who's a powerful weapon for the Targaryen.
It isn't just the death of Rainey's, who's one of the
Queens and the mother of the only heir right now.
This shoots down, literally, the notion that these Dragons are
invincible, that they're invulnerable.
Dorne again, embarrassed to the rest of the Seven Kingdoms,
doing something, succeeding in something where the all else had
failed. They didn't even come close to
stopping the Dragons in the earlier part of conquest.
But now we have not just stopping one killing one, taking
out their rider. Dead or not, she's at least
captured. So that's a huge deal.
Like, think again. I use Greek history as an
example. The Spartans and their
unbeatable infantry no one could beat.
They were everyone's afraid of them because it had been like
100 years since they had been beaten in a land battle.
And when they finally were beaten in a land battle, it was
like everyone realized that oh, the mystique was gone.
It's like, oh actually they can be beaten.
Similar thing here is like actually the Dragons can be
beaten. It just goes to show we held
out. We were brave, we didn't give
up. We got to win.
We got a big win that it's just a massive blow to the Targaryen
because they think, oh, we're eventually we're going to wear
them down. Doesn't look like it now, does
it? Like, well, maybe they're going
to wear you down, right? If they can take out a dragon.
Not only are you less able to wear them down because you're
have one less dragon, but now their morale has improved and
your morale is hurt on so many levels, yeah.
And now it becomes personal too, right?
Which it already should have been.
It was already personal in the 1st place to some many so many
people, but now it's personal to the Targaryens.
I was going to say too on that note, thinking about the idea of
women being pressed into battle, Some of them might have wanted
to get into battle to avenge their husbands and their sons
and everyone that had been killed.
So we've been ready for it. Yeah.
Yeah, maybe this. Maybe the person that shot down
Miraxis was one such person. It's likely it's it's a
guarantee that the person who shot down Miraxi's new people
had lost friends and family in the war.
Like how could they not? Like the whole country was years
into this conflict and the Dragons had come several times.
So really interesting, really big, really huge moment.
A big win for the Dornish and Nina wonders whether they left
the wall kind of half destroyed as a monument to that.
The bones are still there. The sun bleached bones of
Miraxis are still there. That talk about a symbol.
The skull isn't. The skull will be returned and
we know that like we see the skull in the in the basement.
Yeah, I'm kind of surprised no one ever, like, came in and
like, let me just take a little, a little bit of this bone and
make myself a weapon. Like, I'm surprised it hasn't
been. Harvested.
Maybe a little bit that happened.
Maybe a little bit. Maybe like a few people might be
and there. Might be like respectful,
honorable and not and and be know that they'll be sorely
punished if they're caught or something like that.
But I could also see the someone, an uller or someone at
the hill will be like, this is the Lord.
I am the Lord. I want a cool weapon.
Let's do that. Like I could see that.
I totally agree I I head cannon now the the the Lord Uller has
the hilt of his sword is made from dragon.
Bone. Yeah.
I'm like, who's just, so why would you not do that?
I I don't know. Like, I can't imagine having
that much. Like that's a lot.
A huge skeleton. That's a lot.
Gigantic. Yeah.
Miraculous was huge. I could think of one potential
why you might not. It might get associated with
some sort of curse or something like that.
Yeah, yeah, I know that's true. But I still think it would take
time for that course to come about.
So at first, I can imagine scavengers of those in power did
get some pieces of it for a trophy or a tool or whatever.
But I can imagine eventually they realized, wait a minute,
wait a minute, cut this out. We want this to stand as a
monument, you know? Yeah.
I can see that which is which is what Nina was getting at with
maybe leaving the wall in the place or just building a new
wall around it and just leaving the destroyed section and still
having it closed off elsewhere like.
Do you think there's a difference in any of the parts
of the bone of a dragon in terms of efficacy?
Maybe, like, I don't know how you, like, turn a giant rib cage
bone into a handle. You know, like, that's just such
a huge thing. You know, Like, I could see the
rib cage still being there, but maybe, like, bits of the tail or
little finger bone or plow, little digits of little
knuckles, things like that could be used.
I don't know. Yeah, I know very little about
bones. Like stone or something, I bet.
I bet one rib could be mini handles.
Yeah, yeah. If you got to somehow break it
apart, you know with Valyrian, steel, Diamond Diamond, chisel
away those bones. Yeah.
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It's all great. So the next section here in our
episode is called The Dragon's Wrath, and it begins with a
quote. The next two years were the
years of the Dragon's wrath. Every castle in Doran was burned
thrice over as Valerian and Veigar returned time and time
again. The sands around the Hell Hold
were fused into glass in places, so hot was Valerian's fiery
breath. The Dornish Lords were forced
into hiding, but even that did not buy them safety.
Lord Fowler, Lord Vaith, Ladytalland and four successive
Lords of the Hell Hold were murdered, one after the other,
for the Iron Throne had offered a Lord's ransom in gold for the
head of any Dornish Lord. Only two of the killers lived to
collect their rewards, however, and the Dornish men took their
reprisals, repaying blood with blood.
Lord Connington of Griffin's Roost was killed whilst hunting
Lord Mertens of Mistwood. Poisoned with his whole
household by a cask of Dornish wine, Lord fell smothered in a
brothel in King's Landing. Smothered by what?
A pillow? I don't know.
He got really drunk and. Then they I like to think it's
more pleasant. Yes, he was smothered by boobies
for episode after episode. I've been hammering away at the
way Aegon presents himself like his persona, his like.
I dominate. I meet you head on.
I win. There's no doubt.
Who's stronger. Straightforward victories is the
name of the game for him. No question about cleverness, no
cunning, just who's the strongest without leaving doubt.
But here that's gone. Like burning castles for no
purpose was is one thing That was a bit of an escalation.
But now you're just out here murdering people,
assassinations. This is completely different.
This is not the Aegon that arguably did a good thing by
uniting the Seven Kingdoms. That man, He killed a lot of
people, but you could at least argue that he prevented a lot of
death in the future because constant war was a thing between
all these kingdoms. He stopped King Heron.
He stopped some of these other guys who would constantly fight
each other. Although it's ethically
questionable to start wars to save lives in the future, you
can make that argument here that he saved lives in the long run.
You cannot make that argument about how he handled Dorne.
This is just evil, I think. I don't think you can say good
things about this. He's not doing it.
There's no. It's really hard to make the
greater good argument here. There the argument does exist,
even if it's a little statue for the rest of the Seven Kingdoms.
And even if you throw in the prophecy of saving the Seven
Kingdoms from the others in the future, I don't think this is.
You still can't really justify that.
It's a pretty. Cool sick move is a revenge
though, as far as these things go.
Like your your love, your wife and her dragon, or killed or
kept held hostage, you know, whatever.
But regardless, you're big, mad and you want to show your your
roads. I I'm, I it's effective.
Just be like I have lots of money.
This is what you get when I'm actually mad at you.
What you faced before was me trying to just like, bring you
into the realm. I don't know, like, I agree with
you, it's evil and all that. But like he was mad, he was.
Truly mad. Oh, I was holding back before.
He's like, this is what I can now.
I'll show you what I'm really capable of.
Yeah. Yeah, it speaks to how much he
cared that he he. I mean, both about Rainey's
herself and I'm sure about Meraki's.
About the dragon, their power, or the humiliation aspect, yeah.
He loved her like, you're right. Like he loved Rainey's.
It seems pretty clear. Like as much as he it's hard to
maybe understand what love means to a person like that.
But he. I mean, he loved.
That was his sister and his wife.
I mean, like he knew her since there, that's.
Hard to understand. Too.
Yeah, that's hard to understand. But he's known her in his entire
life, you know? Yeah, yeah, he's like a year and
a half older than her, two years older than her.
They were a very tight knit group even and he obviously
favored her over Vicinia and personality wise and in bed
wise, which those are probably very related.
How? Depressed.
The other Dragons are too, probably by this loss, like
Keenan or whatever, from Raxi's upset.
Yeah, and probably, if we're right, that Dragon's emotions
and the the emotions of the Targaryen's feedback and forth.
Delerion would have been ornery. Yeah, And it would have been
Egon, more ornery, vice versa. They would have had like a
vicious, you know, the. Trickle down effect at court.
Yeah. No, don't get on.
Don't, don't, don't say, don't get on his bad side today or the
next year or two. You know, he's Aegon's real,
really, really mad. Like we.
We want to understand or justify this, but in the end, he's just
going through what thousands and thousands of other people went
through too. They just don't have his
privilege. They just don't have the ability
to exact this revenge. They would have.
They would have I, I do a lot of them would have not all of them.
Lots of them would have been like stop it.
Lots of them would have taken the Ilaria sand route of it all.
And I'm like, where where does this stop?
Where does this end? Like it ends with me.
This is at the heart of why real world governments don't want
their citizens owning massive weapons of destruction.
Because just any random person could get really mad and just,
yeah, 'cause massive devastation, yeah.
Just a little bit of devastation, which also sucks,
but at least it's manageable. Yeah, just imagine if everyone
had a dragon and. Yeah, I mean, you can cause a
lot of damage with your knife if you go out of.
Your car? Yeah.
I mean. You can't.
You can go out with a car and you can cause a lot of damage,
but you could cause more if you had a plane and you flew it.
In even a little prop plane can do a lot of damage, it's true.
And some of those things we mentioned too, though at least
they have all these other values, right?
Like it's. I can't tell.
I tell you how much I just, I dream of a world where the
Dragons get used to, like haul equipment and transport people
back and forth. Just use for productive,
innovative things instead of just weapons of war anyway.
I would actually love it if anyone knows any fantasy series,
books or games. Or, well, that's a thing.
Yeah, I would like to know about Dragons is like long haulers is
like as Yeah, I would like to. I'm sure that it exists in some
franchise, so please let us know.
Clearing paths for roads. Yeah, doing like productive and
like BE he's been used for industrial.
Work they can, he just. Picture a dragon with a hard hat
and some coveralls. Caution Dragon.
Yeah, cat calling. The women that walk by.
Driving calling. A Lord.
So we've already established earlier in this episode that a
Lord's ransom in gold is a pretty huge amount.
If it's weight or weight based or not.
It's a lot of money, right? 4 Lords of the Hellhole, The
sight of Raines's death. That's crazy, right?
Four in a row were murdered. And what were the payouts for
this? What were the ransoms for?
For these? What were the bounties on these
Lords like? Well, this much for a Fowler,
this much for a Martel, even more for a for for an Uller,
'cause they're the that's the house that killed Rainey.
So that's why four and I I kind of suspect the the rate was
higher for Ullers cause four in a row were killed.
Like that's wild. Like how do they keep getting
them? Like where's your guards, man?
Do you like I guess the money was just that tempting or these
were these non Dornish people that somehow snuck in there and
were able to pull this off or were these Dornish men turning
against their own for this huge amounts of money that they were
being given. I mean, you can't always tell
who's Dornish and who isn't, but you often can.
So this is where I wonder, like appearances and where they're
like, did racism and prejudice start 'cause we're like we can't
trust anyone who's not Dornish, or maybe we can't even trust
other Dornish. If I mean 4 Lords of the hell
Holden succession murdered. Like, we're not talking about a
very long period of time here. This is like within a year or
two or three, I guess four at most.
That's that's crazy, right? You know another thought in this
in this realm, is it once Aegon is maybe making it personal and
assassinating people whatever, Like what do you think
individual Lords might do? That's making it personal too.
Yeah, even. War.
Yeah, like they might have also wanted to go assassinate
somebody for revenge, but some code held them back.
Or but not well, the kings doing it.
I'm doing like some of these assassination might not have
been Aegon, it might have just been individual Lords of
different castles or realms that have been attacked by the
Dornish. Vice versa.
That's a great point because that's what I was saying.
It's like, well, Aegon was conducting himself honorably as
a conqueror, you know, none of this.
But now he's not. Arguably easier to argue that
he's not than than he wasn't before.
But yeah, the gloves are off kind of thing like well, if he's
not going to duck himself honorably, then we're not
either. Like yeah, we have to sink to
his level. And it worked like there was
murders on both sides. You see Lord Connington murdered
in while hunting. Like I'm very curious to know
about the circumstances. Lord Merton's like this his
whole household poisoned by a cast of Dornish wine.
I bet that stopped trade of Dornish wine.
People are like, I'm not touching that, you know, no
Dornish wine for a while. It was a while before anyone.
But why do people hiring food tasters and things like that?
You just the anxiety, the paranoia that just anyone could
murder you because the price on your head is so high.
Like how do you live like that? And this is going to be true for
Stormlands Lords, Richman Lords and Dornish Lords.
Probably less so for the farther N you go.
They're not so worried, like Lannister Lords or western
Lords. They're not worried Northern
Lords are ignorant. A lot of this is even happening
so. A lot of this activity on both
sides is what we would define today as terrorism, you know?
Yeah. Oh yeah, you're totally right.
Yeah. This.
I mean, and it's you can see why this is terrifying.
Like how? How do you live?
With people are suddenly afraid to, you know, go out in the
woods or eat their food or drink their drink, you know?
In their own home. Lifetime activities, even of
relatively innocent people, are suddenly now in jeopardy soon.
I don't know wait to the end to bring up this comment from
Dornish name. I wonder if there were any
murderers that were blamed on this conflict that actually had
nothing to do with it. Yeah, like, I just hate that
guy. And was.
Like, yeah, I just hated that. Guy did that.
I love that idea. Yeah, like.
And that brings me to another point.
Like the Targaryens are offering these huge ransoms for like any
Dornish Lord, and maybe more for an uller, maybe more for a
Martel. I don't know.
But were the Dornish assassins getting paid for their kills the
same way? Like, did the Dornish Lords put
bounties on? Like did they have as much money
to offer the Will? Might, but I don't know if they
had the same level of cash these are.
These might be more like loyalty murders rather than I'm getting
paid. If the Adornish assassins were
getting paid for their kills, I suspect it was less money 'cause
I don't think Doran had as much money to give unless you're the
will. It might have been water
rations. Murders, yeah.
You kill this man, you. Go.
We just need water. Gallons of water. 3 gallons.
Oh my God, that's so much. Never mind that they don't have
gallons, but they surely have some unit of measure.
And this mention of in the quote of how the sands around the
Hellholt were fused into glass, that is perhaps a reference to
the nuclear testing which would be fresher on people's minds
given the movie Oppenheimer, which I haven't myself seen.
But I know that is the Trinity atomic bomb testing.
There was glass in the sand after that was super heat.
So Dragon tells you a little bit how hot dragon fire is.
It's up there can make the the sands turn to glass.
That's crazy to think about. Does anyone have dragon glass?
Sand. Dragon glass?
What do you call that? Dragon sand some.
Some haulers might have cracked some pieces off and put little
panes of glass in there. Can you get the nuclear?
Can you get the trinitite that substance sand became in the
area? One is.
Nuclear glass. Yeah, yeah.
Can you get that one now? Two, could you get it at a
certain point when it was not contaminated or something?
Like maybe you couldn't get it five years later, but maybe now
is it? Radioactive.
I don't. Know.
Yeah, I don't know if we can get trinitite, but that's what it's.
Called I I don't, I don't know the answer to that.
That's very interesting. So continuing, and this is the
year 10 AC, each Dorn is castle burned at least once by Veigar
or Valerian except Sunspear. So this is another strategy they
were going for. They were apparently trying to
turn the Dornish against Sunspear to make to to get
people to believe that Sunspear cut a side deal to avoid burning
while letting their rest of the countrymen take this suffering
on them. It didn't work.
They they didn't Dornish didn't fall for that.
They're like they were two united.
They were like, yeah, that's not.
Maria didn't turn against us. It wasn't.
I don't think this was a very good try.
And the reason it's a rumor is because it's not proven.
But they're fire and blood goes into detail about finding
letters that seems to prove this.
I'm like it seems like it definitely happened.
It just wasn't a very good plan. There could have been another
variable too. Maybe there were a lot of
scorpions around Sunspear, you know, they maybe had better
defenses of all sorts. That might have been like not
only is there some strategic value to not attacking him, that
maybe it'll turn the rest of the country against him, but also
they're more difficult to attack.
They're farther away. They might have had more defense
and resources. Yeah, and there was the mention
last episode about the rumor that they had sent away for to
lease for some sort of anti dragon year, which ironically
that happened to the Hell Hold instead.
And it wasn't any it was just a Scorpion bolt, which is already
sort of a standard issue thing, which might have been, there
might have been an uptick in in need for those, given that's one
of the few things that can hope to hurt a dragon.
Let's say yes, you can definitely purchase Trinitite.
You can. So is it not radioactive?
Yeah, it's not. I mean, it's not radioactive,
but it's it's very limited for obvious reasons.
There's not a lot of it. There's ways.
They prove it on the desert. There'll be plenty.
You mean you can test it for authenticity and stuff using
spectrographs? And I don't know, you buy very
small samples, so yeah. Anyways, it's a risky thing to
deal with, apparently. All right, well, the the
escalations continued to escalate.
The retaliatory murders continued.
They kept targeting Lords of the Stormlands and the Reach, but
they also aimed higher. Quote The king was attacked
thrice and would have fallen on two of those occasions but for
his guards, Queen Vicinia was set upon one night in King's
Landing. Two of her escorts were slain
before Vicinia herself cut down the last attacker with dark
sister. Remember that we're still early
in King's Landing's development, and there's no Red Keep, so
defense and security of the Royals is not what it is now.
It's again is a point about Anis, right?
I would, if I were a dragon rider, sleep in a room with one
door and my dragon sleeping in front of that door with it
pressed against it. So there's no way in.
Now that would be a problem if the dragon died and it's sleep,
I would be trapped in there. But you know still that's what I
would do if this was the state of affairs with assassins going
everywhere. I'm not as brave as as Aegon and
Vicinian Rainey's though. So hey, let's also check in with
King's Landing and see that it's grown.
It's it's rapid growth has continued.
It's only 10 AC, and it's already as big as Gull Town or
White Harbor. Technically it's about 12 years
old or 11 years old, because remember it, it started to
become a thing before the 2nd coronation, which is what 10 AC
refers to. But we're we're only adding an
extra year, year and a half there.
That's still like a an astonishingly large place in
such a short period of time. Not unrealistic, but way faster
than anyone probably expected it.
And the problem there and and there's a lot of things we can
say about the growth of King's Landing.
But if we're sticking to the topic of assassinations, a big
new ungoverned, unmanaged sprawl of a city that's like they're
struggling to keep up with its growth, there's tons of places
to hide and plan, like some hitman or whatever.
There's this. Be really easy for them to evade
authorities and blend. Almost everyone is new in town,
so it's easier to find someone that can't be recognized or
who's willing to do something or whatever.
I want to say this. This is a minor tangent, but a
couple things I want to say. One is that the population will
be even more explosive soon, because people will start having
kids like almost all the population there has come there
from elsewhere. But now that population will
start to have will create new generations.
New people will still keep coming from other places.
But the other thing is certainly it was, you know, less stable
than than most other cities. But I seem to remember way back
thinking about the idea that Aegon, when he was traveling
around before he even declared war or whatever, was probably
learning about how to build a city.
He's probably learning about infrastructure and such that
cities would need because he had this idea in his mind of
creating what came to be King's Landing.
I bet he had some some groundwork set up, especially
again because we know he brought in words from all the other
families. I bet there was a lot of
planning ahead of time for this city's growth.
It probably wasn't complete chaos, even though it wasn't
completely stable either. It wasn't planned like, it
wasn't like, you know, it wasn't like a city that they're like,
OK, this is streets are built on a grid.
Yeah, it was just people just build stuff where they want to.
Like I'm going to build a house right here and no one's.
There's no zoning or anything like.
That, well, that's what I'm saying.
I wonder if there was some zoning, if there was a great.
There might have been something. Had done some research ahead of
time. The text kind of where.
The case not happened to build a city.
The text kind of says no to that like kind of just things kind of
just happened things just kind of.
I mean it's not super specific there.
There might have been some planning like certain areas may
have been designated. Well, no one can build here
except the king. I I I'm sure things like that
happened, but it sounds like a lot of it was pretty haphazard
either way. It wasn't.
It was a thing regardless, like lots of a fast growing city that
they probably didn't plan to grow this quickly.
And yeah, lots of danger inherent to that.
Lots of management, lots of time needs to be spent like managing
all that. A lot of that would have been on
Vicenia and the small council. Even if it was well planned and
orchestrated, they probably didn't account for the fact they
would still be at war with Dorn and the dorm of assassinating
people and poisoning people and all this other stuff.
Yeah. So Vicenya also takes to
sleeping in armor. She's sleeping in her armor,
which is interesting because of right around this time, she's
pregnant. A little bit harder to sleep in
armor when you're pregnant. It's a little harder to sleep in
general when you're pregnant, so she was toughing it out quite a
bit. All the more important to sleep
in the armor when she's pregnant, though.
Yep, all the more need for the breastplate or the stomach
stretcher for that to fit. But you know she's got The
Smiths for that. You know she can, she can handle
it. So she twice fought off Dornish
attackers that came for her brother and fought off some that
came for her, maybe while pregnant.
You know, we got that same math when we're considering when a
nice was actually conceived versus when he was actually
born. Megor was born in the year 10,
so she was pregnant early year 10 or late year nine or
something like that mid year nine.
So by the time this is happening, she's pregnant.
She's been pregnant for a bit, and that might help explain
something that was probably necessary anyway.
The formation of the Kingsguard that happened in the year 10 AC.
Right around the time Mega was born.
Very interesting to consider. Now Vicenia is saying, you got
it. You know your guards are slow,
you need more work, you need to be protected.
I'm cutting you in the face to prove this.
We've talked about that before. Aegon finally agreed.
And Vicenia got it right. She said he's like, well, OK,
then we'll we'll have a tournament and the best warriors
will become the first king of art.
She's like, no, you dummy. It's not about being the best
warrior. It's about loyalty.
Who will give their life for you.
That's what we want. That matters more than skill.
Of course you don't want unskilled, you know, kamikaze
Drone guards. But you, that's the number one
is loyalty. Secondary is how good of a
fighter they are. She's so right about that.
And it's interesting that someone like Jahari's got that
wrong. He was like, let's have a
tournament. John Connington doesn't like
Duck in Aegon the 6th Kingsguard because he doesn't think he's a
good enough fighter. But Aegon's like Duck will die.
For me, that matters more. So this young Aegon, he gets it.
He understands the point of the Kingsguard better than almost
everyone who came in between him and Visenya, even though he's
actually probably not part of their dynasty.
Maybe he is. We'll count it for black fire
purposes. He's a He's a relative of
Asenia, most likely. I could see lighting one or two
people on the Kingsguard based on skill 'cause it won some
tournament or something. Yeah, but not all of them.
Not the commander. Not the commander, Yes.
Well said. Yeah, maybe one or two just to
That way the IT raises the overall profile.
Oh, that guy's a member of that squad.
And maybe their their loyalty maybe makes him a little more
loyal. As well.
And that and the skilled ones might bring up the skill level,
the other loyal ones too, right? Someone to train with who's so
much so expert. Or whatever.
And again, earlier I brought up how there wasn't much talk of
poison, how Dornish are known for poison, and I don't think
that's entirely deserved. It's not that they don't use
poison or the Red Viper certainly did many times, but
he's just one guy, right? If you're going to try to murder
Aegon, Vicenya, or these children, these royal children,
don't you think that maybe poison would have been one of
their? There's no word about it at all,
no, no mention of poison limits. Maybe that's just 'cause they
never struck blows that would have allowed the poison to work,
but you think you would have mentioned it if they attacked
with poison blades? And that just makes them sound
like they avoided greater danger.
That just makes them sound tougher.
Maybe. I mean, maybe they.
Whether true or not, the Dornish were party to the idea that
Valyrians, Valyre or Targaryens were immune to more poisons and
they're like not worth, not worth our effort.
What? Again, it doesn't have to be
accurate. Right.
Yeah, we know that's not true, but they may have believed it
true. Yeah, if they thought, if they,
if they felt. That's interesting propaganda.
Definitely hadn't thought of that.
That's a very interesting point. Either way though, the birth of
Megor in this year, it's a it's another twist because we don't
know when in the year it happened.
And that would affect things like another child born would
show that Vicena's even more concerned with security.
She would be concerned anyway. And again she would have been
pregnant during some of these attacks and before them, so they
she'd be that would be on her mind like OK, my child is in
danger Now. I'm not saying she didn't care
about 3 year old Amy's, I'm I'm pretty sure she did, regardless
of what happens later. I think she wasn't murderous
towards her own family, I think that's pretty safe to say.
Still, she's going to care about her own child more than her
sister's child, even if she's extremely fond of and loves baby
annies. This is the child of her body,
and she's probably going to care about him more.
She might even care more about her sister's child more now that
she has her own. Maybe she yeah.
And the bond and importance even more so I.
Tell you that was one of the times where you saying a nice
how you say it was very important.
In that sentence, she loves baby Amy.
Gosh, sorry. It's just OK.
I had last night. I was trying to come up with a
title for the Reign when we get to Amy's reign and I'm like, Amy
says Mess or something like the Mess.
Left by. No.
You won't let me name it. That will.
You I get. Yeah, sometimes I get.
We get people in our comments, like, why don't you say it like
Eris instead of Aries? And it's because of Amy, because
we don't want to say anus constantly.
Yes, that's. Why?
That's why. Other targary names are
pronounced a certain way to avoid saying anus.
Yeah, OK. Anyways, it all.
Comes back to anus everything, all of it is built around that,
so she'd be even more concerned with security.
Could easily see why that would matter to her more.
It would already have been important.
But how this escalates it, she's like, OK now.
I'm also concerned with my child's life and it may have
Also, Nina points out, may have also maybe made her feel more a
part of the dynasty, like she was already maybe like the third
wheel in some ways by being the one that Aegon Aegon favored.
Her sister. Her sister, on the other hand,
Rainey's past. So is Aegon now spending all
those nights he spent with Rainey's with Fessenia?
Is it like, are they together every night now?
Just about since she's gone, or is it?
He's still kind of like I would. Guess no.
I would guess no. He didn't like her as much, but
he still. And now there's a second baby.
There's less need to father other children.
There's an error and a spare. That's my other question.
I mean, he was with Rainey's like more than Fessenia, right?
But like, how many nights did they just spend alone?
The. Other question like maybe he
still spends those nights alone that he would have, but there is
more time with Vicenia because he still wants to, you know?
Yeah, another topic that is like the Kingsguard is one that we
will fully flesh out another time.
Not just is Vicenia herself, not just her, but her rumors of her
use of magic. Now this is one of those things
where she would not tamp down any rumors that result in her
seeming more scary, more intimidating because she liked
to rule by fear. Fear like it's it's clear by how
she advises Megor later that she's very pro fear as a means
of control, whereas maybe her brother and sister were less
about that. They used it, but not to the
extent that Vicenia seemed to rely on.
And yeah, so they might have felt the duty to have more
children with Rainey's out of Rainey's dead and and they got
one, certainly. Who?
Boy, did they get one Meg or Woo they might have.
Yeah, that's not exactly what they aimed for, I suppose.
But they're also still in between just burning all the
castles and Dorne. Like taking turns flying down
there, burning a bunch of castles while maybe one of them
is ruling while the other flies down there to torch some castles
and they take places or switch places and go back.
So what is this like? Burn a castle, check for
surrender, burn a castle, check for surrender.
And their plan is to repeat until it just ends.
Well, it it didn't. At least not because of that.
That's not what caused it to end.
The the go until it's sort of ends planned did not pan out.
And meanwhile the murders are still playing out.
We got another year, the year 11 AC.
Just more people getting murdered, more people living in
fear. The anxiety of that building, it
it it's snowballs or sandballs, to use a Dornish term, I don't
know. They're living in fear.
And these Lords can't govern their people properly.
And what are they governing? Their lands are devastated.
Their people are in hiding. You're dead again.
Like, how do you govern from a cave?
What? Who are you?
What are you administering? What orders are you giving to?
What farms are you telling to send?
The farms are devastated. There's no one.
There's less governing to do. Fear is that he did want to rule
Dorn. And if he burns down their prize
city and the rest of the country is already a blasted landscape,
like, what's the point of even capturing?
Where are you going to surrender?
Yeah. Where are we going to rule from
afterwards? That's a that's a good point.
Yeah. You can't destroy.
They just turned the entire country into nothing, which is
close to what he ended up doing anyway.
But yeah, like he may not have expected he he probably thought
they'd give up sooner than this. He was wrong, but he was
certainly yeah. And here's another interesting
point talking about assassinations and poisoning,
There's. No evidence to faceless men were
ever used. Which which kind of makes sense
given their fees are are are scale rather than a flat amount.
Like, yeah, you have to pay 80% of your wealth.
Well, it's like, I mean they would they would ask for a
dragon, right? Yeah, they might.
Well, the Targaryens. I don't think the Faceless Men
would. Probably never.
They would not even accept it, But the Dornish.
Yeah, I just don't know if I feel like they.
Would for I feel like. The Faceless Men would be likely
to accept. A discount from the Dornish, in
fact, 'cause they are, they're, you know, they were aligned.
In some ways they'd be like, yeah, but apparently it
happened, apparently didn't happen.
They may have threatened to do it, though, as something we'll
talk about next. Episode.
But as far as we know, they didn't actually do it.
There's no evidence it is once again something that could have
been done on a more individual level.
Individual Dornish Lords or people who weren't necessarily
even Lords, just a, you know, a farmer whose son was killed.
I'm getting a faceless man and he could have given up 80% of
his wealth and history would never know about it.
That's true. Still could have gotten some,
some key Lord on the other side murdered.
Yeah, it just wasn't Aegon or or the same, but it could have been
Lord. Maybe Lord Connington, that one
who he was killed. Maybe.
Probably not one of those, Lord Hellhole like we said, because
it's probably not the Faceless Man probably weren't doing
murders on behalf of of the Targaryens or their allies.
But it's still a consideration and it's interesting to mention
like there's there's always things that a big part of what
we do on the show is just to bring up things that aren't
mentioned that that maybe should have been mentioned or at least
we should wonder about. So the year 12 AC, this is
basically the last year we're going to discuss today.
We're going to basically barely touch on year 13.
That's when things end. Things couldn't get much worse
in Dorne. I'm calling this section still
unbowed, unbent. Maybe a little broken though,
but they still hadn't given up quote.
By then, Dorne was a smoking desert beset by.
Famine, plague, and blight. A blasted land, traders from the
Free Cities called it. Yet House Martel still remained
unbowed, unbent, unbroken as their words avowed. 1 Dornish
knight, brought before Queen Vicenia as a captive, insisted
that Miriam Martel would sooner see her people dead than slaves
to House Targaryen. Vicenia replied that she and her
brother would be glad to oblige the Princess.
The gloves are really off there now.
That's just pretty underrated statement there.
Huh, Sean, That is just. That's just that's pretty evil.
And the unfortunate thing is that there's the third option.
Right. Why can't you be allies with the
target? Now I understand the answer why
you can't at this point especially, but she approached
it from the get go that we're either free or slaves.
Well, is there something in the middle before you let all your
people have their lands and homes and lives destroyed?
It's a big leap from free to slave.
Like, there's definitely some in between there.
The Targaryen, like you said, the Targaryen are just so
invested now, like they they've gone.
This far, they can't just. Back down based on their views
of what makes what would allow them to hold power.
And if they lose here, they lose in Dorne.
And that to them. In their minds, that gives
license to the other kingdoms to challenge their rule as well.
Like, well, you weren't strong enough to defeat Dorne.
Even with all of the power of all the kingdoms behind you,
it's a big loss. They don't want to take that
loss. They don't want that on their
rap sheet. It already looks bad though,
because they haven't been able to win.
Even if they don't lose, they haven't won.
And what are they going to do? What's left for the Dragons to
destroy? What strategy is going to change
things? Like what can they?
Destroying everything didn't work.
They didn't surrender. When it says Dorn is a smoking
desert beset by famine, plague and blight there.
If that's not going to get them to give up, then what?
What's left to Torch to make them go Now we'll give up.
You destroyed the last tree. You know like what the hell?
It's clearly they're not going to give up.
Given what you're doing isn't going to work.
The Dornish are fighting for freedom and homeland and and and
revenge and all that. And despite all this
devastation, despite how much damage been inflicted on Dorne,
Dorne's still very capable of causing great harm outside of
their own borders. Quote The most infamous act of
that bloody age occurred in 12 AC When Will.
Of Will, the widow lover arrived uninvited at the wedding of Sir
John Catherine, heir to Fontaine, to Alice Oakhart,
daughter to the Lord of Old Oak, admitted through a posturing
gate by a treacherous servant. The attackers slew Lord Oakhart
and most of the wedding guests, then made the bride look on as
they gelded her husband. From there it gets worse.
I didn't make Sean, read the worst part of the quote.
They assault the women. And sell them all into slavery.
And remember, folks, selling people into slavery ain't normal
in Westeros. So this is another escalation
here. And this is a yet more evidence
that the Darnish were working with certain elements in Essos.
They sold those people into slavery, not for the cruelty,
but for more money to fund the war effort, most likely, or
maybe both. They certainly wanted the money,
and this was maybe sold to that pirate king, or using him as an
intermediary or some other pirate king, or just they have
lysine slave buyers there in in Sunspear.
They're just working with these folks openly.
Who knows? But these slavers had to come
from somewhere. They're not normally there to
work with, so and that's maybe to replace some of the trade
that they lost 'cause they can't pretty much trade any other
industry, like all the other things are shut down by dragon
fire and the destruction of the plancky town.
So slavery might be one of the few things left to for some of
those merchants coming from elsewhere to be like, well, we
got no goods to buy. What about human goods?
As brutal as it is, it's a very human, like, historically
supported style escalation. This is the kind of thing that
happens. The longer conflict drags on,
the more hate is sowed. The more people are dehumanized,
the more they become willing to inflict atrocities on others.
You might OK, you might think you're probably like me.
If I did that to somebody else, I would have nightmares for the
rest of my life. If I witnessed that, I would
have nightmares for the rest of my life, let alone, you know,
having it inflicted on you. Of course that's the the even
the third option, which is the worst.
But what if you've already been in a war like this for 8 to 10
years? You're already at the point you
you're having nightmares for the rest of your life.
This is just changing the the variety of those nightmares.
Well, I'm going to have nightmares about torture and
about dragon fire and about being sleeping in caves.
All so to someone that already has acquired a lifetime of
trauma, adding a little more doesn't mean anything, or adds
very little. Like you're already kind of semi
broken, you're already accustomed, you've already
normalized something that no human should have to normalize.
And consider what the the, the mental state of a veteran in
this war, especially on the Dornish side, someone who's been
involved in this since the beginning, what they've been
through, what they've lost, what, what it must be like
inside their mind. They must be like, if you're
strong enough to hold on, if you're strong enough to keep
going, well, that's amazing. But that doesn't mean you're not
doing a lot internally to, to keep yourself going, to struggle
against that trauma, to keep moving, to not just give up.
So brutal, really nasty, very realistic when you think about
it that way. And that's what we try to do.
We try to make this, we try to make this fantasy world as
breathable as we can. And George, we have such a great
floor for that because George does such a good job.
Fontaine is not on the map. We don't actually know where it
is except that it's in the Storm lands likely on the border.
It's likely in the in the Marches.
You know, it's likely a long time enemy of the Dormers.
There's probably atrocities on both sides, maybe not quite to
this level, quite quite this brutal.
But yeah, they've raided each other in the past, but probably
not. Maybe not these individuals,
maybe, you know, maybe just their ancestors.
I can imagine the town not existing anymore.
You know, like imagine a. Large percent of the population
of the bloodline, that the resources and everything in that
town were at that wedding were stolen away.
Well, House Catherine still exists, so there is that.
But yeah, maybe their power was permanently reduced.
Because of that, we don't know how many men it was like.
On one hand, a small group would be more efficient and subtle and
and easier to to sneak in. But you need enough men to like
be able to overpower. Like the the fighters that are
at the wedding, which would be several people like most of the
men there would be trained at arms.
They might have been ready for it, but they you know, they'd
leap to action as best as they could when threatened.
So eventually Walter will will succeed the widow lover.
His this is his son. I wonder if he was part of this
raid, if he was like one of the commandos that was at his side.
The will of Will is still remembered in Fontaine and in
Old Oak to this day. Fond Old Oak is way the hell
over in the Reach. It's not particularly accessible
to the Dornish. It's very much to the northwest,
within the Reach. But yet they still remember him
because of this, because of their Their son was gelded in
front of the wedding guests and well, yeah, you don't forget
that too easily, I don't suppose.
So. I think that probably there's
still prejudice between the oak hearts and the wills.
Obviously when Aries Oak Heart was in Dorne, he was constantly
like an oak heart in Dorne. I need to be looking over my
shoulder at all times, you know? And he wasn't wrong, but he of
course missed where the real danger was coming from.
It's coming from inside your own bed.
Aries Okhart. Yes, indeed.
So quite an episode here with this, this many, this invasion
of of Fontan and this move by the will of will.
Like this is the kind of man that excels when you have a war
like this. The the guy who is the best at
escalating, the guy who's the cruellest is the the the one who
comes out on top. Like the widow lover would never
suffer any direct consequences for this now or later.
His family would. They would reap the consequences
of his actions. But that's a tale for later,
'cause it's not soon, it's more than 15 years later.
That's when he's going to die of old age, never going to be
brought to justice. But man, that's that's what
happens in real life sometimes. Sometimes the worst people get
away with things and not. And of course in Dorne he
wouldn't be viewed as a bad guy. He'd be viewed as a freedom
fighter to most as a hero. And in some ways he was.
Not for this, though not for this.
This. I don't think this helped move
the war, the needle on the war at all.
I I don't. I don't think so.
But one person who did die very shortly after this, that did
change the war. And by change it I mean end it.
The death of Miriam Martel, after all this of all things, it
was just simply old age. So somewhat anti climactic but
very realistic. She just died of old age and her
family was like, we would like to do things differently.
Her heirs had a different plan, not quite the same as stubborn,
tough, myriad. And by the way the Nina writes,
the deathbed slander against Miria's supposed sexual
activities is an obvious reference to the same equally
untrue story about Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia.
Similar tales about her told about, you know, horses and
crazy stuff like that. Yes, bestiality.
That is almost certainly not true, but does make for
scandalous rumors and the kind of stories that people still
talk about 500 years later. Also true in Westeros, although
more like 300 years later. Still quite a long time.
And yeah, so that's all that was needed.
Wild, right? Like, it wasn't Aegon doing
succeeding. It wasn't some great strategy.
It wasn't some new plan. It wasn't some opportunity that
they seized upon. It was just the leader dying of
old age. That's what changed it all.
And if you're a Targaryen, you're like, well, if that's
what it takes, that's what it takes.
If you're a Darnish person, it depends on where you're at.
If like if you wanted peace. You might be like, well I'm not
going to say this out loud, but I'm kind of glad she tied.
But if you wanted to keep going, well then you didn't want this
at all. You did not want her passing,
but you couldn't have been surprised for a 90 plus year old
person to die. And you know this was a a win,
if you will, for the people, because it at least paused the
war. The Targaryen still didn't get
dorned. It still wasn't really the goal,
right? It's just the pause and
hostilities, so and and and you know, maybe.
A little lucky on the. Part of everyone involved,
really. The the the heir to Maria didn't
want to keep going, wasn't also personally motivated to get
revenge. You know, this could have
continued to drag on easily. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
I absolutely agree. Several questions.
Here from y'all today. I'm glad to see that and we
inspired some just extra discussion in the comments
Dornishtame says do I do find it interesting with the cycle of
vengeance that the member of House all that we know best in
the main series wants to end that cycle.
Elari yes. And we did an episode on Elari
and we made we did make that point.
I also thought that was interesting she and and of
course we we theorized that was part of why that being so close
to that being at the epicenter of cycles of vengeance is where
you might find someone that has the wisdom to see the better way
to see why it should stop to to to look at it from a a higher
point of view and say when is this going to stop.
Like you are out here like Tywin died by his own son, painfully
and you want more like damn, like it's really never going to
end. If that's not enough for you,
sometimes you need that person who themselves has motivation
for revenge. To be the one to not seek it.
To get other people to fall online.
Very good point. Yeah, like if I don't want
revenge, then what do you what? Do you all on about.
You know, I'm the one who truly suffered here.
You know me, me, me. Meaning Hilario in this case was
my husband that died. My lover died.
Yes, to you, he's the Red Viper. To you he's this and that.
But he was my lover and the only person, the person who knew me
best. And I was the person who knew
him best. So I know better than you what
he wanted and what he didn't want.
Yeah, Amy Collins, Russell says. Look up the board game.
Flame Craft. Is that in reference to Dragons?
Like making things and building stuff?
Oh yeah, yeah, there's all. All the next ones are about
that. Oh cool.
We really. Inspired some?
Things with that one Wheezy Squeeze boxes the team of.
Dragons pulls the Devil God's sleigh across the sky and till
the end of the moon. Is that a game or a story?
No, it's a Chinese. I believe Chinese, but it's a
fantasy. TV show that wheezy Squeezebox
has been promoting in our chat for quite a while now.
So anyone who is in our chat has seen those words before.
But yeah, an example in there. Very good ad Z says hi all.
Great discussion as always on the subject of.
Dragons being used in other ways.
Take giants that help the children of the forest build the
wall. Yeah very good point.
That is a very good point that they were used for That or the
rumor is very strong there. I believe it.
And and we certainly wondered about like did the Dragons help
build the Valyrian dragon roads like they're so long and big.
Yeah, we've talked about things like that before.
Maybe the fused walls. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Very possible and a good parallel.
Phil H says When DHL started it said for dragon hauling
logistics, but since Dragons went extinct, they had to change
that. Nice one, Phil.
Like that. Very good.
Sean, you pulled out a few names for us here to thank some
patrons for their support. A few somewhat at random here.
Who do you got today? Yeah, one of my favorite
favorite parts of this community is these names that.
We get these mashes of people's interests into the world of
Westeros, and somewhat at random, but I've been making an
effort to get some new and some old Got Black Matos Storm Rider,
captain of the rusted hinge. By the way, I ran into Black
Matos Storm Rider at Magfest. Last week, it's our nice friend
Matt. Yeah, his name really is Matt.
Matt Mcsorley, Yeah. Another one of my favorite parts
of this community is running into the people in real life.
Recorded Cons. Jeremy Flowers, Proprietor of
the Mummer Troop, Old Town Funk. That would be my favorite mum or
troop for sure. Aileen Archer, Queen captain of
the Border Collie. You said it, right?
That is how you say her name. I said Eileen for many.
Weeks, months, years. And she corrected me one day.
You got it right on the first try.
Good job. I think it was at least probably
like so, Grant. Of Hawksite watcher of the God's
Eye Hawks site. That's cool Alder Snow Bastard
of Bear Island, known as. The Northern Fury.
As fierce as she is loyal. And finally this week we've got
Wisdom Index Bastard of Starfall.
You can find all these Patreon names, whether interpreted
correctly by me or not, at. History of westeros.com along
with everything else we mentioned throughout this
episode. If you want to find a link, if
you want to find past episodes, if you want to sign up for
something, if you want to use our affiliate links, if you want
to, you know Peru's one of our sponsors, Her history of
westeros.com. It's not fancy, but it's got
everything that you need to link to all the places that we may
have referred to. People who listen on podcasts
are going to be like, what do they mean by Aziz?
Interpreting names. Correctly, because I'm going to
cut that and now you have a reference to a thing I'm going
to cut. Aziz interpreted all the patron
names. To mean jerk.
Yeah, everybody means jerk wisdom.
That means jerk hawksite. Jerk, Bear, Island Jerk.
Archer. Queen.
Cap. Jerk.
Border collies. Those are all jerks.
That's the jerkiest dog. That's what happened.
I cut it, but now he's back doing it again, up to his old
tricks. He's.
I'm making it hard, yeah. Making Eshaya's job.
The Jerk of House Jerk. To be found at the Jerk store.
That's right. The trivia answer the question
was what title created. By Aegon was held by only one.
Person ever. That is the Warden of the Sands
held by John Rosby. Yes, he did plummet to his death
thanks to Miria and her Knights. Next time next week we'll be
discussing the the peace deal, the mystery of the letter of
Rainey's, whether Rainey's lived and all the associated stuff the
the Aegon. The letter from Dorne is one of
the most interesting and popular mysteries from this era, and I
want to devote a little extra time to it, But also setting up
some of the other things that happened around it, discussing
some of the other things that happened around that same time
in the era. And then we'll move on to the
rest of Aegon's reign and we'll go from there.
We also have some episodes that relate to ones we talked about
today. We mentioned Hilarious, and just
now we mentioned Nymeria parts one and two.
Eventually, we'll do the Part 3. That's one of the things that
might happen during the topics moot.
Nymeria 3 might get some extra steam behind it.
As a project for us to finish, we've also mentioned Dare on the
first episode. We mentioned the Doom episode,
The Century of Blood episode. We mentioned under the Dragon's
Hightower, which is where you can find more information.
A much more detailed take on the invasion in eight AC of or 9 AC
of Night song and the Invasion of Joffrey Dane around Old Town.
We go into a lot more detail about those incidents in Under
the Dragon's Hightower. Also, hardcore houses came up,
Highgarden came up. Really just a lot of stuff.
Don't forget the last Storm episode is available to patrons
and members only. There's lots of other episodes
you get by joining our Patreon our I've Lost Count.
There's so many bonus episodes you get by signing up for
Patreon, and it's such a small amount relative to how many
episodes you get. I hope you think it's a good
deal, and if so, join us on Patreon today
patreon.com/history Westeros. Another episode you can get is
the Red Kraken. Another one you can get is the
buildings of Brandon, meaning the buildings of Brandon the
Builder. That relates to our discussion
of Giants helping build the wall.
We have a whole episode on that, one that's available for patrons
and one that's just out there when Giants roamed with our good
friend Amanda, AKA Crow Food's daughter.
Thank you for those of you who attended live and made the chat
bumping. We always appreciate that.
Thanks as well to those of you who have signed up to support
us, not just on Patreon, but on Spotify.
We do have Spotify subscriptions available as well.
It doesn't quite have the functionality of Patreon.
We can't quite offer all the same things, but you get the
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If you're already subscribed to Spotify, you can just add that
on to your monthly fee and then forget about it.
So in some ways it's a little simpler than Patreon, even if it
doesn't quite have the same benefits.
But we're not in charge of how that stuff works.
We just do what we can to provide you all as many options
as possible to support the show. For other options, check out our
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Go check out Good Queen Allie with 1l.tumblr.com.
Thanks as well to Joey and Jesse and Bran and Michael Klorfeld
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So good, so helpful. Makes our show look so
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We can't pull off. We fake it with the help of
friends. Yeah, until next time, my
friends, you know what to do. We'll be back with more Valar
Reridis.