Despite his relative youth, King Baylor had ruled for 10 years.
Those who lived under his rule experienced a reign unlike any
other before or since. The unique figure in unusual
times who came to the throne in part thanks to the death of his
brother. And that brother had passed at
the age of only 18. Baylor's death remains a bit of
a mystery. In some ways, it's not
surprising. After all, the man starved
himself regularly. On the other hand, this is a man
who survived walking all the way to Dorn and back and all those
Vipers. On the other other hand, there's
a lot of reason to believe he was murdered.
That the starvation made for a convincing cover story.
And it may have been his hand who did the deed, His own uncle
Viserys who became king after him.
But why would Viserys, who ruled capably his hand for 20 ish
years, kill his nephew after so much time?
Did Viserys become ambitious later in life It's or did
Baylor's policy decisions threatened to destabilize the
realm? Was there a compelling reason
rather than ambition? Yes, there is evidence Baylor
was on a downward slope with regards to his mental health.
Some of his decisions were downright insane, and he wasn't
a fan of other religions. Now, kinslaying is one of the
worst crimes in Westeros, but if Viserys thought he was
preventing a civil war or a holy war of sorts, well, that's a lot
more interesting than regicide for reasons of personal gain.
However, Viserys is not the only possible culprit, so we'll go
over the other suspects. But this is not a whodunit
episode only, It's just part of the episode, and not just
because his death was maybe not even a murder at all.
Though 10 years is a substantial reign.
Arguably Baylor has had a bigger impact on Westeros since his
death as compared to while he was alive.
Baylor is one of the most frequently mentioned kings.
Honestly, if we counted, he might even be the most
mentioned. His influence goes well beyond
frequent name drops, though, of course.
He's the example of restraint, holiness, forbearance,
forgiveness, piety, you name it. Other related concepts included.
His legacy is of the utmost importance in the history of
Westeros, both due to scope and uniqueness.
And we get a bonus murder mystery to go along with it.
We've got all that and more on this episode of History of
Westeros Podcast. Hello and welcome back.
It's part three of our series on Baylor.
Each episode works as a stand alone.
And honestly, I think this one might be the most interesting
because of what I just said in the intro, because of the long
lasting impact that came after his life, which is what we're
focused on. And just like the other two
episodes, we've got our returning guest, Nina Krusling
to join us to discuss Baylor, our resident Baylor expert,
worldwide Baylor expert, I would say.
And we are going to have a lot of fun with this one, don't you
think? I would agree.
You know, This is why, This is
why I can only be on the show every like four years, because
what I. Have is ideas?
Turns into from 1 episode. A mega series of three episodes.
It's not a light commitment, you know.
But it's fun. I you know, to it's, it's always
fun to talk to talk Baylor so. It is indeed.
And we've got some good stuff for you all today.
I'm going to set things up. We've got some a little bit of
context and some world building and then we'll dive into the
questions, which will be a series of unleashing of Nina on
various subtopics and that's going to be a lot of fun.
So I'll, I'll set her up, she'll knock them down, and we'll see
what Baylor has for us. In Part 2, we talked about
Baylor's rule as king. For 10 years, he reigned.
He made it pretty clear he was not going to listen to anyone
but himself when it came to his decrees.
Well, According to him, he was listening to the seven.
But the seven, you know, they got a little stranger as time
went, coincidentally, as he also got stranger.
So go figure. His reign had been controversial
from the beginning because he had been doing this shaping of
the realm into what he believed the gods wanted from the moment
he took the the crown. The seven wanted him to make
peace with Thorn, so he walked all that long way to do it and
his brothers war, make peace, make good, make amends.
And the seven wanted him to keep his sisters from tempting the
men around him, including himself, so he imprisoned them.
The maiden of all these things, the burning of the books of
people like Mushroom, A Septon Barth, all these things.
Baylor may not have been wielding steel like his brother
Daron, but his will was just as iron.
He was just as determined, he was just as proud.
He had no compunctions and no self doubt.
It seems now Baylor wasn't the only figure in his government.
Even if he believed he was the agent of the Seven, he still had
helpers all 10 years of his reign.
His uncle Viserys was his Hand by 171.
That Viserys was 50 years old, however, and had been handed to
three kings in a row over the course of three or four decades.
So he has just super long term part of government and at the
top. So for any Westerosi aristocrat,
this is significant. Very few people have a career
like Viserys and that's what makes some of the questions in
this episode so very interesting.
He had both the experience of ruling and the experience in
seeing things go wrong. He had been around during the
dance, he had been around during dare on the 1st attempted
conquest of Dorin, which succeeded initially and then
collapse. So he had this has this
perspective on the long term, on war and peace, and well, he
would have opinions on what Baylor was doing and what impact
it would have on the realm in turn.
But in 171, Baylor was only 27 years old, even though that's
pretty young. That's 10 year reign, more than
double the reign of Deron, but not, of course, not nearly as
long as the 26 year reign of Aegon the Third or the 55 years
under Jaharius the First. So he had a shot at those
numbers, catching some of those records, so to speak.
But of course, he ends up well short of them given what
actually happened. So people probably looked
forward to this, this ten, 20-30 more years of his reign.
So it was very surprising, very probably very sad for a lot of
people. A lot of nobles might have
actually privately been like, whew, while a lot of commoners
in huge numbers would have wept and been upset and maybe doubted
what really happened and would have wondered and, and, and tore
their clothing and all the things that you do when you're
when you're in mourning the end of the rain.
Before we get to Baylor's death, though, let's talk about the
last year or so of his life because it includes the factors
that might have led to his potential murder.
This is when his fasting was really getting out of hand.
And though it may not have been the main trigger, it, it's hard
to be rational when you're starving.
And he wasn't the most rational guy in the 1st place.
He had visions when he fasted, and that's part of why he kept
fasting. He thought that it was bringing
him closer to the gods, and he was a man who wanted to be close
to the gods. He wanted to be holy.
So it's actually kind of logical when you look at it that way,
even though that it's also not logical at all in another
looking at it another way. So in this state of mind, he
ruled the Seven Kingdoms. So when he wasn't busy praying,
he was getting visions born of hunger.
So people had to be noticing this escalation, right.
What do you suppose, Nina, The the mood at court was after 10
years of this and and it clearly was getting worse.
And he he was clearly doing things a little weirder and and
escalating. Yeah.
What do you think? I think it's it's.
So interesting to think about this sort of last year or last
period of Baylor's life and his reign because.
To me, I have to think. That there was this sense at
core of. Unease and maybe even anxiety
about the future. And I think.
To some extent, we can compare that to the end of Viserys the
First Train, although I think in other ways the two periods were
very, very different. But what I think is so similar
between the end of Viserys the First Train and the end of
Bandler's reign is this question of a succession.
Who's going to come next when the king dies?
We see this very obviously in Viserys the first reign with the
Black and Green factions. Viserys had created a succession
conflict that he didn't want to solve.
He set up both his eldest son. And his eldest daughter to have
very colorable claims to the Iron Throne, creating the black
and green factions. And as his reign progressed and
eventually, you know, sort of came to a close, what those
factions became is not just more vehement in terms of believing
that their respective candidates were the rightful layers of the
Iron Throne, but also more violent toward each other.
And so everybody except the king himself can see there is going
to be a conflict at his death. There might even be a civil war,
which, of course, there is. At his death, neither faction is
going to step back and let the other one go.
They're going to fight over the Iron Throne.
And I think to some extent, that sort of feeling and attitude may
have been present at the end of Baylor's reign as well.
Obviously, we don't see something as formalized as the
black and green factions at the end of Baylor's reign, but I
think what his contemporaries and courtiers would have seen is
a real question over the succession and a number of
imperfect candidates. You know, Baylor had made it
very clear when he returned from Dorn.
I'm not going to have children of my body.
And unlike when Baylor himself succeeded, there were no more
brothers. There were no more sons of Aegon
the Third. Who would be the natural
successors to take over if he died childless?
And so the question remains, well, who comes next?
His closest relatives are his three sisters.
But these are not perfect candidates #1 because.
Patriarchy is going to. Patriarchy in Westeros and these
are young women, I and not just young women, you know,
objectively, but Ramiro's granddaughters again and again
and again. I mentioned we're still in the
shadow of the Dance. This is the first generation of
Targaryens that are born after the Dance.
So the idea of a woman sitting in the Iron Throne, it's a hot
button topic to say the least. It's not something that's going
to be very simply, very widely accepted.
And on top of that, what also puts these princesses at
disadvantage is that they've been quite literally imprisoned
for 10 years. Rainera at least had the
advantage of being able to go around the realm to show herself
as the Sarah's heir, to make marriage alliances for herself
and her children. These princesses can't do that.
Dana and Raina and Elena, they can't go around the realm and
say I should be Baylor's heir. They can't make marriage
alliances for themselves with powerful aristocrats.
They can't have children with powerful aristocrats who are
going to be seen as Baylor's successors.
And that puts them at a disadvantage.
They don't have that sort of popular, strong, noble support
that's going to carry them on to the iron groan if and when the
king dies. But if it's not his sisters who
succeed, well, then who should it be?
You know, we talked, I, I believe in in the second part
about maybe Baylor had looked at young Prince Daron, the son of
the eventual Igonian worthy himself, eventually Daron the
second as a future king as his possible error.
But again, I think this would have been seen as at best
imperfect. Yes, Daron is a male.
Yes, Daron is a Prince of a male lion, but he's also the son and
grandson of Princess and male Lion Princess of House
Targaryen. Is there going to be popular,
widespread support for a Prince succeeding a king when his
father and grandfather have just as good, if not better claims
than his own? Not to mention, of course,
whatever lingering Westerosi xenophobia exists against
Daron's marriage to Mariah Martel and his children that
he's starting to have with Mariah.
So again, this, this is a series of very imperfect candidates.
No one's sure exactly who's going to take over there.
There is no rule book here. And so I think that would have
been leaving the sense of unease for everyone as to, well, what's
going to happen. And there wasn't much they could
seemingly do about it. As we discussed, Baylor was
going to Baylor, and that meant, well, not caving in on any issue
he didn't want to cave in on. So for 10 years, he didn't name
a successor. There was no obvious successor,
and life carried on with this sort of anxious well, Sword of
Baylor. A weird metaphor for a guy who
didn't use swords, but the point is the same.
And This is why it's so similar to the layout for the Dance of
the Dragons, which is that there was an issue of succession and a
lot of people saw this coming. Another example is that Dana the
Defiant had a pregnancy with Aegon, who became Aegon the
Unworthy. She might have seen the writing
on the wall and known who might have been very likely to be king
in the future and thus had a child with him and was looking
ahead, thus setting up the Black Fire Rebellions.
Which is of course a great parallel to the Dance of the
Dragons. It's a big Targaryen civil war
set up by multiple branches after a failed succession. 1
pretty major difference though is what we just mentioned before
that, which was that it was kind of a surprise that Baylor died,
unlike Viserys whose health was very visibly declining slowly
and surely. And he was also much older.
So there was both health and age.
Whereas for Baylor, maybe there was some health questions
because of the way he treated himself, but the guy was only
27. So for the most part, that's a
big, big difference, right? The the the suddenness of it
versus the slow decline. Oh, absolutely.
And it's, and it's not just the suddenness, you know, one of one
of the aspects of the saris's ring you bring up, the saris was
on a decline for the better part of 10 years before his death.
He has gout, he has back problems, he has heart problems.
He can't eventually climb the steps.
Of the red. Keep climb the stairs of the
Iron Throne. At the end of his life, he can't
even get out of bed. And what this does is it informs
specifically the Green faction who is physically present with
the King and the Red Keep, that they know to start preparing,
start laying the groundwork to make sure that for them, Avon
the Elder succeeds. The moment the king dies,
Allison knows that she can put a servant in the household to
inform her, because even though she might not know the day or
hour that the King is going to die, she knows it's going to be
soon and she needs to be ready to move the moment the king
breathes his last. The problem with Baylor is
exactly what you point out. Nobody knows when Baylor is
going to die. He's only 27.
That's not old even by Westerosi standards.
And what you mentioned at the beginning, he's the son and the
grandson of kings who had fairly lengthy, well, I should say the
son of a king who had a fairly lengthy reign and the descendant
of a king who reigned for 55 years.
So. The.
Problem. But then as as you mentioned, is
Baylor's also going on these long extended fasts and what
that does is create. Two very distinct, very
disparate, and very extreme scenarios.
On the one hand, maybe Baylor doesn't go on a fast for a long
time and reigns 10/20/30 years. Or maybe Baylor goes on a fast
tomorrow and dies the next day. And how are you?
Supposed to prepare for the. Succession if you have no idea.
Which of those is more likely? You can't you, you can't do
that. Do you even know what candidates
are going to be alive when the king dies?
Do you know what aristocrats are going to be alive when the king
dies? Do you know what the moon is
going to be when the king dies? There's quite simply no way to
know. And so I think for Baylor's
courtiers, there would have been this something of a knife edge
where on the one hand, they've got a king who is becoming
increasingly erratic, increasingly impractical, but
they also have no idea, A, what's going to happen when he
died and B, when he's going to die.
So it's this, you know, as, as you point out, this what we
might call it in A, in a bad metaphor, the Valyrian sort of
Damocles that is hanging above everyone and no one knows when
it's going to drop. And this brings us to some of
the more interesting questions and concerns, which is well, the
timing actually worked out pretty well.
When he died, it didn't cause big problems, his uncle just
took over. And well, things got a lot more
interesting after that since his uncle only lived another year
and a couple months and was perhaps poisoned himself, but
that's another story. Anyway, the point is the war
didn't break out, so that's obviously a huge difference.
War would break out much later with the Blackfyre rebellions,
but that's not till another 25 years.
So these are reasonable concerns and for for people to have
anxiety about what's going to happen at court, whether Baylor
had been a good or a bad king, this is going to be a question.
So this is part of why I think it's fair to view Baylor as
Gray. Obviously there's the extremes
in his life. There's so many things he did
quite well that you want, you appreciate and respect about
him. But this is such a basic duty of
kingship, which is to make sure the succession is smooth.
It's such an obvious way for the realm to collapse in on itself
for for thousands of people to die is by having a succession
crisis. It's it's the most
straightforward thing that can go wrong really in a, in a
monarchy. And Baylor did not handle that.
So I think it's fair to criticize him for that in a very
similar way to Viserys the First, as you say.
And if, for example, Viserys the first had handled his succession
well. Well, of course, not only would
it have averted civil war, but it would erase a lot of what
otherwise was a very mediocre reign for Baylor.
It's not so simple, is it? Because this is a guy that was
so up and down, so extreme, so popular with the comments, so
unpopular with the nobility, and that's what makes him so unique
in the 1st place. So what?
What do we think his reasoning was?
Do we have any idea maybe, or any guesses as to why he didn't
name a succession? I mean, is it just because he
thought the gods would let him know someday and he too realized
how young he was and maybe wasn't worried about it?
Or any any other ideas? Honestly, I, and it, it sounds
very simple to say it, I don't think Baylor thought he was
going to die. I, I, I genuinely think that
Baylor just simply didn't think the gods were done with him,
didn't think that his work with the Seven was done.
And so why would he plan for a world where he wouldn't exist?
If he believed that he was literally the agent of the seven
on earth to do their will, there was still clearly a lot to be
done, as we're going to talk about in just a moment, as as
far as Baylor believed. So he's not working to make sure
that, oh, I need to plan for the day that I'm not here.
I think in Baylor's mind it was Oh no, no, I personally.
Still have a lot to. Do I'm not planning for the day
that someone else is taking over for that?
And this would have been easier to swallow early on because he
was even younger and even earlier in his growing erratic
behavior. This the bar chart of his
erraticism increases over time. And but as he got farther along,
he started to do at least or at least talk about things that
might have caused serious problems and not just with the
succession. For example, he came to believe
that the seven wanted him to convert all the unbelievers in
the realm. Now I think a lot of y'all
understand that there's a lot of non 7 worshippers in the realm.
There's the entirety of the north and the entirety of the
Iron Islands. Well, not the entirety, but
mostly for the, for the most part, those are realms that have
very little worship of the seven.
And there are some, of course, in the South that don't worship
the seven. The two worship the old gods or
perhaps the Drowned God here and there, and of course the
relorists here and there and the occasional other worshipper.
Now that of course is a big deal.
And it's not just a big deal because it could cause extreme
amounts of violence. I mean, we could call this
tyranny, couldn't we? I think you can.
I, I think if it's, if it's not tyranny, it is something very,
very close to tyranny. Baylor is saying I'm declaring
war on my own subjects, not because they've committed a
crime, not because they're in rebellion against me, not
because they've committed treason.
I'm going to war against my own people because they're
practicing a religion that or multiple religions that from the
earliest days of the Targaryen conquest, not to mention long
before that, they had practiced. The Targaryens had always
recognized the North and the Iron Islands in these pockets of
old gods or, you know, Drowned God worship.
Now Baylor is saying no, actually, not only am I going to
make sure that you don't do that, I'm going.
To go to war with you. And kill you until you accept
that you can't do that and. That's a real dangerous thing
for a king to do, to start a war against his own people on the
basis of religion. I, you know, there's, there's a
couple of historical examples in Westers of kings doing this.
And spoiler alert, it never went well for the kings who were
involved in this. You look at someone like
Humphrey Teague. Humphrey Teague seems to have
been a king very much in the model of Baylor.
He's a, you know, historical king of the Riverlands.
He's a very pious king, very zealous king.
And he decides. I don't want any more Old gods
worship in the Riverlands, so I'm going to stamp it out.
I'm just going to go to war to make sure that no one can
worship the Old gods. Well, what happens?
He gets a rebellion of his vassals and.
Here's what's important. It's not just the Blackwoods who
rebel against him. Obviously they have a vested
interest because they worship the Old gods.
But it's also the Tulleys and the Vances, because what I think
they recognized, and if so correctly recognized, is it the
king saying today I can go to war against you because I don't
like the way that you practice religion, means that tomorrow
the king can come up with a different kind of tyranny and
attack any of his other vassals. None of them are safe.
If the king can do this. And what happens is not just a
war that encompasses the entirety of the Riverlands, this
becomes a truly international conflict because the Durandans
invade to support the Blackwoods.
And what it leads to is the downfall of House Teague and the
elimination of the Riverlands as an independent political entity.
The Teague's fall. And the Durandan simply absorb
the Riverlands as an imperial conquest.
So yeah, bad idea. Humphrey Teague Real.
Bad idea for you to do. That and I think in a way,
although you know it, it sounds strange to say it because they
couldn't be more opposite in their, you know, relation to the
Faith. But in a way, this might not
have seemed so different from Magor.
Again, Magor's no friend to the Faith.
He basically declares war on the Faith, but what it leads to is a
war in which thousands and thousands of his subjects are
personally killed by the king for siding with the Faith.
And what happens? Does Magor eliminate the faith
in Westeros? No, not at all.
In fact, quite the opposite. Everyone abandons Magor,
everyone rallies, not just to the faith, but to Jeharis, to
his rival, to his nephew. And Magor dies alone and
friendless and is remembered as a cruel tyrant.
So the idea, the reason I bring these up, is to say the idea of
a king who decides to declare war on his people on the basis
of religion, it's not a good idea.
For Baylor, there's not good historical precedent for him to
do this. Yeah, and if you go back even
farther, it's not a good idea for humanity to go up against
the old gods. They had a a whole pact and
everything. It was a whole deal and we're
still, we're still learning things about that.
It was so long ago. So.
So this, yeah, this plan for a crusade of sorts, I guess, non
believers. Yeah, you're right.
That would have been a lot like Magor.
Instead of a war against the this faithful, it would have
began a war against the non faithful.
Either way, those are his subjects.
Like you say, that's hot. That's awful.
And this isn't that long after the dance.
We're talking 4 decades and even more recently the failure
Endorn, which that cost a lot of lives and cost a lot of goodwill
and created a lot of bad feelings and, and broken homes
and families. There weren't any more Dragons,
but you don't need Dragons to cause devastation.
You know, they, they're very helpful in that regard.
But still you can, you can do quite a lot without them.
So especially like you say, when it's a religious type war where
people get really dug in and and it's about their beliefs and and
what makes them dig in perhaps more than anything and fight to
the death more than anything. So yeah, that's a really, you
can really understand why this is the sort of thing that
someone might kill you over before you can get started.
So let's move forward to why he was not able to launch any such
war or campaign of any kind whatsoever.
And that's because, well, he wasn't around to do so.
Death. Just as Baylor was dreaming up
this crusade of sorts, dreaming quite literally perhaps, he got
a significant shock. The eventual birth of Damon
Waters, the natural child of Dana Targaryen, by a father she
refused to name, but whom the realm later learned was none
other than her cousin Aegon while he was still a Prince, led
to another fit of fasting by the king.
He had already nearly killed himself some years before when
he fasted for a moon's turn following the deaths of his
cousin Princess Nerius's twins shortly after their delivery.
This time, Baylor took it yet further, refusing anything but
water and taking only enough bread to still the cries of his
stomach. So, Nina, let's talk about why
Baylor had such an extreme reaction to the birth of young
Damon. Yeah, I think, you know, I, I
think when, when Baylor learned about this, learned about baby,
baby Damon's birth, I think he saw it as a.
Personal failure on his part, meaning on Baylor's part.
Because it was his idea. To imprison Dana and his sisters
in the made in ball and he. Did it specifically to keep them
away from men. He did not want them tempting
the men of his realm, including, obviously, Baylor himself.
And So what he's finding is Dana making what I think he would
have thought of making a mockery of that, saying no, not only am
I going to be in the Maiden Vault, but I'm actually going to
have a. Child, while I'm in the maiden
vault, I'm going to do exactly what you didn't want me to do.
I'm going to, again in Baylor's mind, use my beauty to tempt the
unknown father of this child into having this child with me
and. I don't think it.
Helped the situation, at least in Baylor's mind, that Dana was
being pretty incendiary with his name.
He was being pretty, pretty deliberate in choosing this name
for for her baby. Because what Yandel says is that
Dana specifically named her baby Damon after their paternal
grandfather, Prince Damon, because Prince Damon had been
what Yandel refers to as the wonder and terror of his age.
And I think for Baylor, that would have made the situation
just that much more embarrassing and in Baylor's mind, that much
more awful because he doesn't want to think of himself or his
era as anything similar to Damon, as, you know, someone who
not only doesn't seem to have been particularly pious, but
someone who's famous for his warmongering, famous for his
love affairs. That's not the ancestor I think
Baylor is looking to for inspirations.
The idea that his sister that he's trying to mold into piety
like himself is now looking for inspiration to this, you know,
rogue of a grandfather. I think he would have just found
that whole situation so personally humiliating and so
embarrassing that he personally needs to repent for it.
He personally needs to take that on to sort of expiate what he
saw as Dana's sin. Yeah, I agree because he did
have that, you know, it's his responsibility type attitude
about, well, everything like the soul of Westeros was his
responsibility. So any infraction like this,
especially amongst his own family, especially amongst like
you said, people he had specifically targeted for a
specific type of control that did not work.
It, it backfired spectacularly because Dana got pregnant and we
already know according to Faith doctrine, Faith of the Seven,
they don't look too kindly on women in relationships,
especially extramarital affairs. So that would be something he
also took personally, I think, right.
He would blame himself for that. And well, there's a few other,
maybe some parallels here we can discuss, aren't there?
No, absolutely. I mean, you know, I don't want
to paint, you know, a broad brush and say everyone in the
faith believes the same thing. When it comes to women in
relationships, obviously everyone is different.
But what we see very clearly with the High Sparrow, for
example, who himself very much takes Baylor as a.
Model. What the High Sparrow says to
Cersei is quite explicitly misogynistic.
It is all women are wantons at heart, and widows especially so.
They're all willing to use their beauty to tempt men.
This is what the representative of the voice of the Seven on
Earth is telling Cersei. So I think Baylor, again, we
made comparisons between the High Sparrow and Baylor before.
I think Baylor might have believed something similar.
That. You know, if women are wantons
at heart, well, this just proves it.
Look at that. I did everything in my power,
Baylor things to make sure that they couldn't do it and they did
it anyway. So it's just confirming this,
you know, idea in his mind. And again, I think that's adding
to what he what Baylor would have seen as his personal
humiliation. Dana is having a child.
Obviously she's not married to the father of this child, so.
He. Is, in Baylor's mind, fulfilling
what he thinks are the worst fears for what women can do?
Yeah, absolutely. He, he would frame it all that
way because that's his, his very tight and sincerely held
worldview that's fairly unshakable.
So he wouldn't have these questions about what happened.
He would take it as it came and it would be very shameful, like
you said, something that required penance, like you said,
and maybe extreme penance. And that's exactly what
happened. It was extreme penance that
came, and an extreme result. Whether that result was was
helped along is something we'll discuss in a moment.
But there's no doubt what he did was well, wow quote.
For 40 days he kept his regimen. On the 41st day, he was found
collapsed before the altar of the Mother.
Grandmaester Munkin did what he could to heal the King.
So too did the boy High Septon. But his miracles were at an end.
The king joined the seven in the 10th year of his reign in 171
AC. So this was not the first time
Baylor had gone on extreme fast. But this probably was the
longest as far as we know. And that is really long. 41
days. I mean, goodness, I mean, just
bread and water for 41 days. I mean, hard to imagine what
that would do to a person. We we hear from Yandel that as
his reign came to a close, the King quote began to spend more
and more time fasting and praying, attempting to make up
for all the sins and offenses he believed he and his subjects
were committing on a daily basis.
So it wasn't just this. This was perhaps the biggest
event that weighed on his mind in in recent weeks or months,
the the birth of young Damon. But there were other things that
weighed on him and his escalating mental health
problems. Madness.
Whatever you want to frame it as, whatever you call it, it was
getting worse. Yandel notes here too that
Baylor fasted when there E gave birth to two short lived
children. So whether he was ashamed of
that or just thought it was the thing to do to get guidance or
to communicate with the gods, really fasting was just his go
to response to a lot of things, really a lot of major events,
whether they were something that you could say he was taking
responsibility for or something else.
Maybe it was on his mind. But as we mentioned before, he
he did this kind of regularly. So it wasn't exactly something
that people would expect to have such extreme consequences, was
it? No, absolutely.
And and this is. Goes back to the point that I
was making before is that. You know, in the same way that.
No one knows. What's going to happen with any
given fast? This was not, as you say,
Baylor's first fast. This was he's not not his first
rodeo. So to speak.
And so and we see in this fast, even though Baylor is obviously
taking a very extreme measure, he's only getting.
As much food and water as. He believes is necessary to
survive day-to-day. He is taking that food and
water. So I think that Baylor himself
did believe that, you know, fasting didn't mean consume
nothing. It just meant deny yourself
everything except the basic sustenance to live.
So I think it still would have been seen as very shocking and
very sudden that the that this is what kills the king.
That when he had gone on fasts before, when he's still
relatively young, when he is fasting aside, seemingly
otherwise pretty healthy, that all of a sudden he's just, you
know, drop dead. And that's the end of Baylor's
reign. So suspicions arose pretty
quickly that the King's death wasn't exactly natural
poisoning. After Baylor died, his uncle
Viserys became king after having been Hand.
We'll talk a bit more later about the transition to power,
but let's focus for the moment on these suspicions around
Baylor's death. Quote malicious rumors that
followed in the wake of Vicerys's ascension.
Begun, some say, are the pen of the Lady Maya, of how Stokeworth
suggested that Vicerys poisoned the king in order to finally
gain the throne after a decade and more of waiting.
Others have suggested that Vicerys poisoned Baylor for the
good of the realm since the Septon King had come to believe
that the Seven called on him to convert all the unbelievers in
his realm. This would have led to a war
with the North and the Iron Islands that would have caused
great turmoil. So it's interesting that some of
these rumors started with Maya Stokeworth, given that Viserys
son Aegon was in a relationship with Felina Stokeworth, later
Felina Lawston, some 20 years before Baylor's death.
What do we think was the relationship between those two,
Maya and Felina? That's a huge question for me
and and I don't, I don't know, I've not known what to make of
it for the. Ten years that we've had the
World of Ice and Fire, I don't know that I've ever seen a
really good theory as to why Jordan Martin made this.
Specifically Maya Soapworth. Who is giving this rumor?
Is it just a red herring? Is it something that is being
informed by Felina? Are they sisters?
Are they? Cousins I I don't know.
I I don't know. I think it's something that I'm
very curious to see if Fire and Blood has more information on.
Obviously the Stokeworths are, for lack of a better term, in
the Targaryen's backyard, so they are as close as physically
possible to being near to court hearing about these rumors.
So it. May just be as simple as that.
But it also may bring in this dimension that, you know, Maya
clearly is some kind of relation to Falena Stokeworth Lady Lady
Falena Lawston. And to the extent that.
Falena and Aegon still have any kind of personal connection at
this point. There may be something more
there to to these rumors. Yeah, absolutely.
I got to agree. I mean, Aegon does eventually
end up king within just a couple years here.
And with all the things we discussed about potentially
starting Civil war, there's so much motive here, not to mention
Baylor's other anti noble policies and his mental health
problems. So it's fascinating too how much
this is a question not just for us, but in world.
We know that these rumors have made it into present day as we
see discussed in A Storm of Swords here.
This is a fantastic conversation, an exchange
between some different characters right here.
Oberyn gave a shrug. A year or a fortnight?
What does it matter? He poisoned his own nephew to
gain the throne and then did nothing once he had it.
Baylor starved himself to death. Fasting, said Tyrion.
His uncle served him loyally, as Hand as he had served the young
dragon before him. The series might only have
reigned a year, but he ruled for 15 while Deron Ward and Baylor
prayed. He made a sour face.
And if he did remove his nephew, can you blame him?
Someone had to save the realm from Baylor's follies.
Now, George isn't so simple as to suggest poisoning.
And for us to take that as an automatic, he's clever enough
and subtle enough to mix it up to suggest poisoning.
And it doesn't have to mean that that's the case, because it's
going to be rational sometimes for people to think about a
poisoning and it not always be the case.
It can't always be a poisoning, right?
But when we don't know, it's fair to ask the question, even
if we can't get to the answer. Yandel deliberately introduces
the idea, but Tyrion doubts it, right?
I, I love this. We get so many different takes,
and some not just on the murder potential, but on Baylor
himself. And it's a character that we
don't see explored. Like this very often for our
historical figure, sure we see this discussed about Stannis or
Renly or maybe even Rob or Ned, cause those are characters in
the present. But to have a character like
this discussed in this light is really interesting and it just
shows just how much effort George put into Baylor.
Now there's two important caveats here to keep in mind
when talking about him being poisoned. 1 George has left
himself an out to explain Baylor's death.
We have the very strong cover story of yes, his own health was
questionable. It's not an automatic, but it's
within the realm of OK, yeah, he just had bad health from poor
nutrition. Baylor had almost died after
fasting from the death of Nares twins.
So he went really far with that one.
And according to Yandel, it almost took his life then.
Now, what does that mean? What does it mean that he almost
died? I mean, we don't know.
He was on death's door because he didn't have enough food.
They gave him some food, and he started feeling better.
I don't know how it works with starvation in that sense.
And every case is probably a little unique.
And he wasn't. Yeah.
He wasn't in a normal situation. So it's.
It's hard to say. So it's entirely possible he
died of, quote UN quote, natural causes.
But the number two example here is our possibility is that he
wants us to consider the possibility of poisoning, but
that's just part of where he wants to leave it, right?
He doesn't intend for us to know.
He intends to leave it as a question.
That's a very strong possibility, isn't it?
It is, and Jordan Martin does this sometimes where he'll give
the possibility of a certain conclusion or or maybe several,
you know, conclusions to a situation.
But then ultimately leaves it up to the reader to decide what do
you think happened, what you think happened?
Well, that's your theory. You get to.
Decide that as the reader.
So you think of, for example, you know, comparison, the death
of King Amis. We know Amis is an extremely
poor health at the end of his life.
We also know that there are rumors.
That the Senya poisoned Amis. She's there, and there is an
argument that he had motive to do it.
Does that mean that the Senya poisoned Amis?
Well, not necessarily. The author leaves it ambiguous.
He doesn't answer the question. And so it's left up for us as
the readers. Do you think it's more likely
that Amy simply died of natural causes or that the Senya
poisoned him? And you know, this isn't
poisoning, but I think it's a a useful comparison.
You think about the way that fire and blood presents the
deaths of leaner Valerian and then the Strong's Lionel and
Harwin Strong during what's called the Year of the Red
Spring. Again, speaking specifically to
the book, not to the way that the TV show presents it.
Bruno Martin doesn't give us an answer as to.
Why Carl? Corey kills Leonor.
He doesn't give us an answer as to who, if anyone, set the fire
at Harrenhal that killed the Strongs.
He gives us a lot of possibilities, but he doesn't
settle on any one of them. It's for us as the reader to
decide what do you think is the most likely?
Aren't any of these the most likely?
Or is there something that the author doesn't even mention that
you think is more likely than that?
Ultimately, it's not something that we're ever going to get a
firm answer on. It's a mystery, a Riddle that's
left for us as the readers to solve, which it's really fun as.
We get to analyze, we get to piece it together and we get to
make theories, but it's not something that we should ever
expect sort of Word of God as the author to say, yeah.
And and this is what happened here. 1000% I mean, that's
George R Martin. This is the world he's created.
And we don't get answers like that.
There is no narrator. He treats it like real history,
like we're doing now. And it's not, that's not a
thing. You get real answers in, you
get, you get versions, you get theories, you get ideas.
And then you, you know, pick the one that works best for you.
Which in a way is great for a story too, because you get to
use your imagination more than just being told something.
All that said, what do you think?
Where do you fall on the idea that Baylor was poisoned?
The shorter answer is yes, I. Think he was.
Poisoned. I don't think he was poisoned,
all of those caveats aside, and I do think they're important
caveats to keep in mind. Absolutely recognized.
But yeah, I think he was poisoned, and I think Viserys
did it. And the reason I think Viserys
did it is because, put simply, I think the saris decided that he
had to choose between the king and the realm, and the saris's
choice was the realm. Not the king, you know.
It's important for us to keep in mind what the Saris's political
background was. It's not an exaggeration at all,
I think, to say that the Saris grows up in political chaos.
First he sees the outbreak of the Dance when he's still a
child. Then he is captured and
basically sold into exile and lease.
Then he returns to Westeros and he's immediately thrown into the
chaos of the Regency. So he spends his entire
adolescence and early adult life seeing this political chaos all
around him. He sees.
What the civil? War did, in terms of
destruction, both to the Kingdom and to his family.
He sees via the Roguers how quickly even a very powerful
family can implode, how quickly popular forces can turn against
a popular family. He sees with the Regency how
much backbiting and infighting there can be even among people
who should ostensibly have the same political goal, which for
the Regents was ruling the realm until Aegon the Third became an
adult. And for the better part of at
least 20 years, if not more. The Saris had been serving as
hand to three successive kings. It was the Saris's job to
rebuild the realm when Aeon the Third was king.
It was the Saris's job to keep the realm together when Daron
was making war in Dorn. And So what the saris gained was
two decades or more of acting as basically king in all but name.
He is ruling with all the powers of an executive while his
brother is withdrawn and while Deron is quite literally gone.
And I think while he's serving under Aegon the 3rd and under
Deron, Vasaris probably felt more or less in line
ideologically and politically with what the kings wanted,
certainly with his brother. We know that Vasaris and Aegon
were personally extremely close as brothers, and I think they
became even closer during that Regency when they are literally
besieged together. They go through this chaos
together, and this heiress becomes the one person that
Aygan believes that he can trust.
And together they've got the shared goal of.
We saw how awful the Dance was. Now let's put the realm back
together. Let's rebuild.
Let's restore peace and justice and stability.
And obviously that's not. Quite what Daron's goal was.
Daron's goal was conquest and Dorn.
But there is precedent for that in Targaryen history.
There is precedent for Targaryen kings to go and try and conquer
Doran. And that's probably augmented
because Daron did, at least for a brief time, succeed quite
spectacularly in doing that. So I think that the.
Saris more or less felt comfortable in terms of ruling
as hand under these kings. And then Daron dies and Baylor
comes, and Baylor is a very different king from either his
father or his brother. He's we mentioned this at the
very, very first episode. Baylor is just a strong world as
Daron. But in the completely.
Opposite direction. He's not just focused on peace
and piety, he's trying to roll in ways that have.
Little to no. Basis in reality, and that's
making the saris's job really difficult because now it's his
job to implement the King's will to make good on what the king
wants, even though the King's wishes really don't have much,
if any practicality to them. And you know, obviously for the
better part of 10 years the saris is trying to do this.
The saris is ruling his hand and as far as we know he's loyally
serving his hand. But I think over the course of
that decade the saris was probably becoming pretty dated
as to the situation. Here he is.
He's got all of this intelligence.
He's got all of this experience, and yet he's spending it serving
a king who has. All of the.
Will of a of a strong king, but none of the ideas of how to rule
practically. And all of that I think comes to
a head when Baylor decides he wants to go on this war against
non believers. Because again, we mentioned this
before, the saris is a survivor of the dance.
There's probably not going to be anything more shocking to him,
more horrifying to him then the idea of a king who willingly
wants to go to war against his own people, who actively wants
to throw the realm back into civil war.
I think Viserys's mind, he's thinking you, you blockhead,
you've learned nothing. You learned nothing from the
Dance. Didn't you see how our family
was almost destroyed? Didn't you see how the Kingdom
was almost destroyed and now you want to do it again?
What's wrong with you? And I think this is the moment
that Viserys thinks I got to get rid of this guy.
I, I, I can't let him keep going.
I can't just sit here. He needs to go.
It's not just that I'm. Going to try and rule for.
Him, I need to get him out of here.
And conveniently for Beceris, I think at that moment he has a
very easy excuse to do it. Baylor's on this fast.
That's a real easy way for Beceris to make it look, for
lack of a better term. Like a natural.
Death. Oh, unfortunate.
The king just happened to go on a little too long of a fast.
And the saris also knows that if Baylor dies naturally or
unnaturally, he, the saris is going to be best placed to
immediately step into power. So I think, yeah, I think the
saris had means, the saris had motive, the saris had
opportunity. I think the saris is the one.
Who killed him? Well put, well said.
It's a strong case. I mean, it both serves the realm
as a man who had served the realm all along and makes the
power transition very easy, even if it couldn't look very
self-serving since the power transfers to him.
But you know, as an extreme action, it was arguably an
extreme circumstance. Now, the Visenya, a nice
parallel, is very strong in terms of the murder mystery
angle and in terms of whether it even happened and the fact that
we have a a king who's already in questionable health
circumstances before their death.
So that similar muddying of the waters is there.
But in terms of the motivation, in terms of what would be caused
by the king were they to remain in power, what do you think is a
good parallel or two that we can think about here?
Well, I think it sounds perhaps a little strange to say it this
way, and I think the comparison is limited, but I think we can
look just in certain ways to the relationship.
Between Jon Snow and Bowen Marsh in A Dance with Dragons.
Now again, I want to be really really clear here.
By saying this I am not saying Bowen was right or John with a
dummy or you need to side with Bowen or anything along those
lines. But what I'm trying to.
Point to is the idea of. What I'll call, for lack of a
better term, a long serving, high-ranking civil servant who
initially tries to work with a young teenage executive, but
eventually decides that that executive is far too dangerous
to his institution to be allowed to rule and even to be allowed
to live. You know when we started Dance
with Dragons? Boa Marsh doesn't start chapter
1. You know John 1 by saying, all
right, time to kill John. He's not John's best friend by
any stretch of the imagination, but he is.
Trying to do what Bowen believes is his job, but.
What we see again and again and again in John's chapters is that
he and Bowen Marsh are. Constantly butting heads
ideologically, they are not on the same page in terms of what
they believe the Watch should be about and the future of the
watch should be. And I think, as Bowen is
continuing to butt heads with Don, what Bowen decides is
eventually that John is simply too dangerous to be allowed to
continue serving as Lord Commander.
And yes, I think Bowen does at some point decide John has to go
now whether or not Bowen's original.
Plan was to murder John, especially in the way he did.
I'm not quite sure of that versus, you know, deposing John.
But I do think that Bowen obviously decided John can't be
allowed to rule anymore. He's not acting the way a Lord
Commander should be. He's acting like he's.
King of the Wall, he's acting like he's king of the North.
He's acting not in the way that I, Bowen Marsh, think that the
Lord Commander should act. And the especially strong, I
think comparison here is what is it that prompts Bowen Marsh
into, you know, assassinating John in the way he does.
It's Don's bombshell at the shield hall.
It's John saying. Guess what lads, Not only.
Am I going to send a bunch of you off to Hardhome on an
overland mission to try and rescue the people there since my
ship mission didn't go well? But also I'm declaring war
essentially on the Boltons and. I'm going to take.
A private army of whoever wants to join me to go fight.
Them, I think in Bowen. 'S mind, he would have felt
quite the same as what I think the Sarah spell, which is Oh my
God, this guy needs to be stopped.
He's not just a bad Lord Commander, he's now a tyrant
Lord Commander, and he needs to be brought down.
And what is Bowen Marsh's famous words to John as he's stabbing
him for the watch? Bowen isn't doing it because he
personally hates John. He's crying.
He doesn't like doing this. He's doing it because in Bowen's
mind, John is dangerous to the watch.
And when it comes between serving the Lord Commander and
serving the Watch, in Bowen's mind, killing Dawn is the only
way to serve the Watch. Yeah, it is.
And that's like you said, pointing to the fact that there
were tears running down his face I think is a huge tell of of
what was really on his mind and how difficult the decision was
for him, which may have been very similar for Viserys.
Now, Viserys, of course, has a cover story with the starvation,
whereas Bowen and company had to go straight to the stabbing,
which is very unsubtle, especially given we're in the
POV's mind when it happens to him.
So it's very unmistakable. But anyway, moving back to to
Baylor, there's another factor here too, because we Add all
this up for Viserys. If we think about everything
facing him, the difficulty of balancing the realm versus his
loyalty to his family versus Kinslang, versus what might
happen if he waits, which is a a big unknown in his mind.
Sure, he has experience and he can draw on that experience.
He's intelligent, rational. He has the advice of other
people around him, presumably counsel and and the like.
It's still a very difficult decision, which is arguably what
the the best thing to write about, right?
Say it with us, everyone. The human heart in conflict with
itself. It is George RR Martin's
favorite theme. And I think that that is what is
coming in here too. You know, it's the Sarah's.
We, we lay out the argument. I was, I laid out the argument
to say there's reasons that the Sarah's may have believed Baylor
was a danger to the realm and may have genuinely believed this
at the same time. This is his brother's last
surviving son. This is his beloved brother's
last surviving son. To save the realm, in Viserys's
mind, he has to murder his brother's son.
He has to betray his brother's legacy.
He has to destroy the dynastic future that his brother had laid
out. That's not an easy choice by any
stretch of the imagination, and I imagine that Viserys may have
wrestled with it, may have thought, Can I do this?
If I do this, am I the hero of the realm or am I Maigor who's
murdering my nephew just to take the crown?
It it it may have seemed a very blurred line to him.
And you know, I think it is worth considering the Sarah's
grandson Bloodraven, I think, was caught in a similar dilemma
because what does he have to do on the red grass field?
He has to murder his brother and his nephews.
And I firmly believe that Bloodraven loved Damon
Blackfire, which is. Exactly why it would have been
just as difficult of a choice. You know, saving the realm
doesn't mean making easy choices in the minds of of these
individuals. It means doing what they think
ultimately needs to be done, but having to deal with the
emotional and personal consequences of that.
Absolutely. And, and that's part of why
power has to be such a big part of the story, because you have
to have these personal consequences weighed against
some large consequence outside of yourself, which in this case
is generally the realm of generally Westeros or, or a
large portion of it or, or something like along those
lines. I like as well the idea of
comparing this to Rhaegar and Aries, who you know he
apparently was thinking about deposing his father and would
have presumably done so peaceably and with support if if
it gone the way he had hoped for.
I assume he wouldn't have wanted violence, but that's a thing
that never actually happened. Some some other interesting
notes from the quotes there. Grand Maester Munkin did what he
could to save the King. This is presumably the same
Munkin who became Regent for Aegon the Third, which means he
was both a witness to and an expert on the Dance.
He quite literally wrote the book on the civil war, even if
Tyrion disagrees with some of it.
Munkin had also shown an unwillingness to acknowledge
Aegon the Third's half sisters, Bella and Reyna, as Aegon's
heirs if the king died childless so just because they were women.
So there's obviously some some bias here at work on Munkin's
part, but regardless of that, did what he could to save the
king. That's interesting.
That means they that maybe he wasn't completely dead when they
found him passed out on the altar or what have you.
And either way, it's possible that Munkin would have supported
Viserys if there was a conspiracy, because Viserys
probably didn't just do it on his own, right?
He would have needed the help he would have needed to acquire
poison. Someone had to help him.
I mean, even if he did the poisoning himself, there's still
the acquisition of it. It's hard to believe he would
have done it completely solo, isn't it?
Oh well, I think. So, and it and it is an
interesting note. I mean, if if we're assuming
that this truly is Munkin, who, by the way, must have been
incredibly old tired if he was already grand maester for Aegon
the Third before he reached his majority.
We're talking about a very old man, but also I.
Kind of noticed that. As I was sort of rereading for
this episode, is that Munkin, you know, did what he could to
save the king. In my mind, putting that
together with how Munkin felt about Aegon's sisters not being
shouldn't, or in Munkin's mind, not being worthy to be his
heirs, I'm thinking Munkin may have thought, oh, no, no, you
know, if the king dies and his sisters are possible next
candidates, I can't allow that to happen.
I'd much rather have the saris in line, you know, sort of the,
the strong executive figure who've been serving his hand for
so long. So I'm, I don't know, maybe I'm
just cynical, but. When I read, Munkin did what he
could. To save the king.
I'm kind of thinking about, you know, when Tyrion confronts
Paisel and Paisel says. Well, yeah, see, John Aaron was
was poisoned, but his nature was actually doing what he should be
doing and trying to heal him and I.
Didn't want that to. Happen because John Aaron very
definitely knew about the parentage of the Baratheon
children. So I made sure that he died.
That's. Kind of what it sounded like,
what he said, did what he could to save the king.
Yeah, it it really does. And the the boy High Septon
doing what he could is well, I'm sure that was boy.
Yeah, it was probably a close call.
That kid probably almost ruined all their plans with his.
I don't know what exactly his his miracles on demand, but they
weren't on demand that day. I.
Feel so bad for him, that kid just like.
This is a little. 10 year old off the streets and all of a
sudden he's in the middle of a gigantic political crisis.
Yeah, I don't think we hear about it, but did they just
remove him as High Septon afterwards?
Something and I think I. Actually got it wrong the last
time. There's no there's no no as to
what happened to this child. Now, that being said, I have
always had cannoned that he was quietly assassinated following
Baylor's death, either by the Most Devout or by Viserys, and
the most Devout just simply accepted it.
Again, we don't know this, there's no evidence of this.
But in my mind, I think the most about we're like, yeah, we, we
don't want a child ruling us. We, we can't deal with that.
They don't know what they're doing.
So oh shoot, it's so unfortunate how awful that he just died in
his sleep. The seven took him home.
We were we maybe he declared that he would enter, you know, a
a life of penance or something, you know, after.
But Poochie died on the way back to his own planet.
That sort of thing. Exactly this is this definitely
has shenanigans all written all over it for sure.
We've been using the script for three years now.
To start, it was an audio editing tool.
It provides a transcript that you can edit from directly.
It's really neat. Instead of editing the waveform,
you can simply cut words out and Descript removes the
corresponding portion of the track.
Over these three years, Descript has continued to improve,
becoming an invaluable part of our video editing toolkit.
We use it to make captions, animated quotes like the ones in
this episode. Unlike many other transcription
tools, it allows you to add your own Dictionary of words so it
actually recognizes words like Baylor and Nerys.
Now, it's one thing for us to endorse a product we use
personally, but I think it's in another level entirely to
endorse something that we use for a living.
Find it at get.descript.com/howdescript or
click the link in the description.
Thanks to our Queen of Love and Beauty, patron from the depths
of Flea Bottom. Lord Ken of House Hammer has
declared for Queen Carey Fire of the North, who recovered Dark
Sister from beyond the Wall succession.
Whether Viserys had a Hand, pun fully intended, in his nephew's
death, he was certainly quick to take advantage of Baylor's
passing. Though both of the sons of King
Aegon the Third were dead, his three daughters yet survived,
and there were some amongst the small folk and even some Lords
who felt that the Iron Throne should buy rights now pass to
Princess Dana. They were few, however.
A decade of isolation in the Maiden Vault had left Dana and
her sisters without powerful allies, and memories of the woes
that had befallen the realm when last a woman sat the Iron Throne
were still fresh. Dana the Defiant was seen by
many Lords as being wild and unmanageable besides, and wanton
as well. Or a year earlier, she had given
birth to a bastard son she named Damon.
Whose sire she steadfastly refused to name.
The precedents of the Great Council of One O 1 and the Dance
of the Dragons were therefore cited, and the claims of
Baylor's sisters were set aside. Instead, the crown passed to his
uncle, the King's Hand, Prince Viserys.
Perhaps the new King, Viserys the Second, had learned a few
lessons from the outbreak of the Dance.
The Green faction had been physically present in the Red
Keep and quick to meet as soon as Viserys the First died to
make a plan for Aegon the Second.
A session and it was pretty smooth.
Rainier was back on Dragonstone, only heard the news later and
was unable to do anything about it.
Maybe Viserys wanted to do the same, sees the throne quickly at
the moment the king was dead, and not allow anyone a chance to
react to it and make things as smooth as possible, and in that
establish himself and have that be a point of strength.
Ironically, despite the fact that Beceris and Baylor were
almost certainly very opposed in a lot of ideologies, if not
their entire ideologies, they were united in their
unwillingness to give Baylor's sisters any political agency.
It's possible Beceris even used Baylor's attitude towards his
sisters to justify his taking of the throne, as well as his
closest to the king and being Hand for so long.
That's certainly That is actually something of a fair
argument, the fact that he has so much experience ruling.
But regardless of fairness, it certainly helped as well.
Now I would bet Viserys also took advantage of the lack of
clarity. Of course there was no
succession. So as the Hand, he's arguably
the guy that gets to make the call more so than anyone else in
the 1st place. So not only was he next in line,
but he was the guy that got to make the call.
And these are all things that would have been blatantly
obvious to him, as well as to a lot of other people around him.
But what could they do about it, right Nina?
Like what? What could anyone have done to
Viserys about this, given he had control of pretty much all of
court? And again, I think that that's
why, you know. Whether or not Viserys actually
killed Baylor, although again, I think he did Viserys.
Is quite literally best placed to take over at the moment of
Baylor's death because he is right there.
Viserys probably knows, you know, the moment the king dies
because he's Hand, he's going to be there.
If the king, you know, we, we know obviously there's some
level of trying to treat the king before he dies.
If, if monkind is treating him, Viserys is probably there as
Hand. He's probably watching this
happen. So the moment the king breathes
his laughs, Viserys can move immediately.
And you know, his argument is not a bad one.
He's the next male. He's the next closest male.
He's been serving his Hand for at least two decades, if not
more. He is the most senior male of
House Targaryen. He's very intelligent.
He's widely seen as a ruling figure.
So yeah, in a way, it seemed pretty natural that the crown
should just simply pass right to him.
And I think it's an important point that, you know, speed is
everything. We see this so much in A Game of
Thrones. When Robert dies, you know, one
of Ned's crucial mistakes is that he loses that opportunity
to move immediately. What he needed to be doing is
immediately saying, by the way, Robert's dead, I'm now Regan
Enhan. Oh, and by the way, the.
Joffrey is not Robert's son, and the rightful heir should be.
He doesn't move immediately. And So what Ned finds is that
when he tries to do this, Joffrey's already literally
sitting the Iron Throne. He's already got that baked in.
I think the Sarah didn't make that mistake.
I think he made sure to. Move.
Quite quickly to consolidate his power so that the moment Dana or
Rayna or Elena figures it out, it's too late.
They, they don't have any shot at making themselves, you know,
having a shot at becoming a queen legacy.
It's a big one. It's a rich 1.
Baylor is highly memorable as an in world figure, which makes him
doubly or triply given the number of episodes interesting
to us. Appropriately, we have 3
specific examples of people who are named after Baylor, and they
have a nice variety to them. There's Baylor Breaks Beer, who
of course was born not long before Baylor's death.
He was born technically about a maybe a matter of months, maybe
as much as a year. It's not entirely clear, but he
had been born. So that would have been one
where Baylor might have actually eaten something that day.
So that's that's something good. But maybe he still starves
himself when he's giving thanks. I don't know this guy.
You never know. Then there's Baylor Black Tide,
who was ironborn but worshipping of the seven so that that
family's a little different or has at least some adherence to
the seven. They're a little, they're a
little different, but that's the story of another day.
Baylor Hightower, AKA Baylor Bridesmile or Baylor Breakwind
is a current example. He's alive as well right now.
I guess. So is Baylor.
Well, Baylor Black Tide was alive at the start of the
series, but not so much anymore. He got he got drowned and Baylor
Hightower is is of course still right now and also might be
killed by Euron, However, but until then, he's a good example
because the your name. Is Baylor just avoid Euron
entirely? You should avoid Eurons, Yes,
you should. But he is associated with the
Hightower family, which of course, being a member of them,
which is of course associated with the closeness to the the
Faith of the Seven and the former seat of the Faith, at
least it was sometime around this time maybe, or before the
seat moved entirely clear. But as we'll discuss in a little
bit, Baylor Sept is a big part of what really established the
seat of the faith in King's Landing instead of in Old Town.
Now, of course, the tale of Baylor and the Dragon Knight and
the Vipers is extremely memorable.
People are going to. That's the kind of thing people
aren't going to forget easily. It's a great story, especially
coming as it does in the non dragon era of Targaryens, which
is also more recent. So in some ways it's more
memorable because it's not quite as old as some of those other
stories. It's a little easier to
remember. Now let's get back to our
friends in A Song of Ice and Fire.
This time a bigger conversation. I love this one even more than
the other one because it has even more voices.
Tyrion, the Red Viper, the Laria, Sand and Sansa all
weighing in here. Quote, But Baylor the Blessed
was a great king. He walked the Bone Way barefoot
to make peace with Doran and rescued the Dragon Knight from a
snake pit. The Vipers refused to strike him
because he was so pure and holy. Prince Oberyn smiled.
If you were a Viper, my lady, would you want to bite a
bloodless stick like Baylor the Blessed?
I'd sooner save my fangs for someone juicier.
My Prince is playing with you, Lady Sansa, Said the woman,
Ilaria Sand. The septons and singers like to
say that the snakes did not bite Baylor, but the truth is very
different. He was bitten half, 100 times
and should have died from it. If he had, Viserys would have
reigned a dozen years, said Tyrion, and the Seven Kingdoms
might have been better served. Some believe Baylor was deranged
by all that venom. Yes, said Prince Oberon.
But I've seen no snakes in this Red Keep of yours, so how do you
account for Joffrey? Gotta love that.
Four different opinions on Baylor there.
Santa has the version from Stories and Song, of course.
That's what you would expect from her.
Highly sanitized version is kind of the point there.
Oberon just seems to doubt the whole thing.
All of it seems like bull to him.
He's like, yeah, I don't know about these Vipers.
I don't know about this other thing.
None of this stuff makes sense to me.
He's he's very cynical about it, which is fair.
You know, I think that there's reasonable doubt for a lot of
it. Hilarious says actually he was
bitten and that just makes it all the more impressive.
Singers say he was bit half a dozen times.
She's like, it had to have been more than that.
It was she. She gives a much higher number,
while Tyrion thinks the more competent ruler would have done
smarter things all along and would not have been in a
position that Baylor was Vipers or no.
Like whether it's impressive or not, what the hell is he doing
in that pit? You know, he's like, he
shouldn't be testing himself in that way.
That's not what King should be doing.
So he acknowledged this is a Baylor meant well, though, which
I appreciate that Pyrion has a very nuanced kind of he's the
only one of these of this group maybe that has a a multi faceted
opinion. Maybe if we had more time with
them, they'd they'd have they'd say other things.
But he also kind of like the Red Viper doubts some of the more
legendary elements like he he's not willing to believe that the
guy was actually bitten like 50 times.
Like that's I don't think so. I don't know.
Yeah, which again, that's a fair thing to question.
I mean, right, like 50 times being bitten and he didn't die.
OK, yeah, I I do have a hard time believing that even in this
setting. Then Oberyn brings up a very
interesting question. I love this question.
It's the it's the the question of what does madness really
mean? He compares Baylor and the idea
of madness to Joffrey and a different idea of madness, which
is a provocative thing to say, yes, but it's it's a good point.
Baylor and Joffrey are extreme opposites when it comes to
violence, but they're both extremes and they both have an
argument to be made that there's madness there.
What do you think about that, Nina?
You know, I, I think. We talked about this at the
very, very, very beginning of this series.
And you know, one of the points that I really wanted to focus on
when it came to Baylor is that Baylor.
Baylor is a character of extremes.
And, and I again, I, I said it before and I'll say it again, I
mean extremes, plural, because Baylor.
Is very extreme in some ways in terms of, you know, his, his
peace and his commitment to piety and his commitment to the
small folk. And in some ways those are very
good things. Some things he did, I think we
can, you know, accept as as good and and noble and worthy.
But he is extreme in other ways. Again, at the end of his life,
he's willing to go to war against his own people.
He's willing to do that on the basis of religion.
He's treating his sisters very poorly.
He's treating a lot of women very poorly.
So Baylor is a really difficult figure to get our hands around
in a way, far more difficult than someone like a Joffrey.
Joffrey is, you know, Simply put, a, a teenage sadist.
He's he's someone who just enjoys pain and cruelty.
There's not much depth of that when it comes to Joffrey.
There's depth in terms of, you know, his back story and, and
what happened and what his upbringing was like.
But in terms of his personality, he's a lot more straightforward
of a character versus a Baylor, who is someone that I think has
a lot of facets to his personality.
He he is the same person who wants to empty the treasury
constantly to make sure that his people have food and money and
doesn't want to wear finery because he believes that that's
a waste of a waste of gold if it could be put in the hands of the
people. And he's also someone who drives
all the sex workers and their children out of King's Landing
with nowhere to go and eventually wants to make war on
his people. What do you do with a person
like that? There's a lot of extremes there,
and there's a. Lot to unpack with that.
Well said. Absolutely.
Now continuing on the theme of Baylor being highly remembered
and name dropped and cited. And a theme amongst that theme
is that he's cited as the most you can do like the maximum, the
guy who exemplifies several different ideals more so than
anyone else, which is why he gets name drops so often.
For example, none other than Barristan the bold quote.
No ruler can make a people good. Selmy had told her Baylor the
Blessed prayed and fasted and built the seven as splendid a
temple as any gods could wish for, yet he could not put an end
to war and want. The context of this quote is
Danny taking on a lot of responsibility and taking on
things that maybe she shouldn't or can't, and Barristan is very
interesting because of the level of experience he brings to the
table in this regard. Compare him to Viserys, who had
the very difficult decision, arguably, of whether or not he
had to murder his own nephew to take the throne.
Someone like Barristan would have been not there at the time
because this was a different era, but there would have been
Kings Guard Nights in a similar role who would have maybe been
aware of this conflict without the burden of having to be the
one to make that call. But Barristan would be a very
good example of that, someone who was around for several kings
and saw a lot of dilemmas and saw Aries's descending madness
and things like that. So he's a very unique
perspective on this, a very learned and experienced
perspective. And unlike Viserys, we actually
get direct quotes from him. So there's that too.
Now there's also the character of Lancel now as a a person, a
character in the story. He's maybe the best example, if
not of someone who is holy and pious, but someone who becomes
holy and pious, which isn't Baylor.
Baylor was always like that, but in becoming a very holy slash
pious person. Lancel, of course, has a very
positive view on Baylor, as he says here, going a lot farther
than say, a Barristan Selmy or even maybe a Daenerys quote.
He was a rare spirit, pure and brave and innocent, untouched by
all the evils of the world. I am a Sinner with much and more
to atone for. That's a bit over the top, but
again, this is the equivalent of a born again in this world,
right? So he's very enthusiastic and
effusive about his beliefs. They're fresh, they're new to
him and he's he's all about it. In the context for this case
with Lancel, it's Jamie pointing out a very good point, which is
there might not have been a Black Fire rebellion if Baylor
hadn't set aside his wife and actually had children with Dana
the Defiant rather than Dana the Defiant having a child with one
of his other relatives. So that's it's not a bad point
by Jamie, I got to say. And and Jamie is also a King's
guard who has some very strong opinions on mad kings and such.
Now one day we'll have quotes from Blood and Fire, hopefully,
which will give us even more context on Baylor and that'll be
great. But these quotes directly from
George R Martin, that's pretty good for now, in terms of things
that you might not be directly aware of, y'all, For example,
this question, which is why didn't Bailor the Blessed, the
Septon King, rearm the faith? Bailor the Blessed wasn't
interested in arming anyone. He would have preferred to
disarm the entire world. He was a man of peace, and his
favorite weapon was a prayer. Yeah, that's that checks out,
doesn't it, Nina? Yes.
And no. And I and I don't mean to
disagree with the author on his own.
Character interesting. To do that.
But I think. I think there's a way in which
there can be two truths at the same time.
Here I. I don't disagree.
Obviously Baylor is a man of peace, we know that because he
literally walks hundreds of miles to Doran to make a peace.
So yes, 100% agreed on that aspect.
But. I think.
It is also worth considering he's not just.
A man of peace because again, the end of his life, he's.
Fully willing to go into war against his own people.
So I don't think we can simply say, oh, man of peace, and
that's the end of the story. I think for Baylor, why he
didn't rearm the faith, why he doesn't restart the faith
Militant kind of goes hand in hand with.
What we were saying in terms of Baylor naming, essentially
naming the high Septons, naming Pate the stone Carver, and then
you know this, this young boy, I think Baylor saw himself as
really the representative of the gods on earth that.
In a real way. He's the voice of the Seven, not
the high. Septon it goes.
Gods, then Baylor. Then the faith, then everybody
else, and in that order. And so if that's the case, then
maybe Baylor's thinking, why would I rearm the faith?
My armies are the armies of the faith.
If I tell someone to go somewhere, it's because I'm
doing what the gods want. I don't need the faith to.
Separately, run an army. Because.
I'm going to tell the faith in the entire realm what the gods
want, including if I need the army to go somewhere.
Now there's that saying. We are all familiar with the
Targaryens and madness and coin flips all that.
It, it might be exaggerated a bit because it's pretty hard to
argue that actually half of the Targaryens have been mad.
It's it's not quite that extreme.
Even if you stretch it out a bit and loosen the definition of
madness, you really, it's hard to get there, but it's hard to
argue as well that Baylor doesn't qualify like you.
You don't have to be loose with the definition of madness for
that, but he kind of proves that you can't simplify it too much.
As we've given with the examples of Aries and and maybe Magor and
some others, it's not so easy to always define what madness is in
just that context. You have to include other
factors like like violence. And as Nina pointed out, even
that isn't enough sometimes. You have to have maybe separated
intent to be violent versus policies that inevitably lead to
it through naivete or insanity in this case, since we're
talking about madness. So there's that same argument
that we have in the real world about the fine line between
madness and greatness, which I think George is playing off of
here. A lot of these Targaryens fall
into that category. Certainly not half of them were
great, just like not half of them were mad.
But that's that's beside the point.
Which Barristan heard from Jaharis the Second, by the way,
the coin flip thing, it shouldn't be implied that you
can't be both mad and great, right?
Aries was mad, certainly great. OK, he wasn't great, but he
would be very, very memorable if he had actually succeeded in
blowing up King's Landing. That would have been a quote UN
quote great achievement. Not a good thing to do.
But like, wow, Oh my God, that one of the things that would
ring throughout history. I'm not sure Magor was mad or
great either, but there's some arguments for both.
He certainly remembered more than most.
Again, because of these extremes, his legacy includes a
lot of things that are actually somewhat similar to Baylor, as
we said before, and here's a new one, commissioning of buildings.
That's that's something that Baylor and and Magor had a
little bit in common of, unlike Aries, who nearly destroyed not
just those buildings, but like everybody else and all the other
buildings in the city, we're talking really important ones.
You know, Magor's hold fast and his tunnels and and the dragon
Pit, which, you know, that thing's still around, though not
in a completed state anymore. Baylor, he had ideas.
And an Aries, Well, remember Aries, he he had suggestions.
He had, oh, yeah, I want to build beyond the wall.
Oh, I want to build King's Landing on the other side of the
river. He just had these ideas and and
gave them up. Baylor was more consistent.
I'd say even though his ideas were maybe just as crazy, he
didn't just give up on them right away.
I don't think so. These different types of madness
I think are an interesting subtopic within all this.
Amongst the Targaryens, Baylor again stands out as unique
because of his dedication to peace, even if it was misguided
at times. No other Targaryen really
matches him in that regard, except for maybe a, you know,
like a Jaharis or something like that.
What what, what do you think in that, in that comparison, like
a, a Jaharis to a Baylor? Perhaps the the one who's most
famous for creating peace would would be Jaharis, I think.
And to someone who like like a Baylor.
I guess Daron the second is. Really.
Yeah, that's a good one. And and Daron being directly
influenced by Baylor is a big point.
So yeah, tell us what you think about maybe that triumvirate,
maybe in Baylor being kind of in between them like that.
Well, I think you know, and I was, I was thinking about.
This quote about, you know, sort of the, the madness and
greatness and, and to your point, I, I don't find it a
particularly useful paradigm to think about because.
As you mentioned, it doesn't really feel.
Applicable to most of the Targaryen.
Kings. I mean, what do we do with a
king like an Anies or an heiress?
The first, they're not mad or great, they're just bad at their
job. They shouldn't.
Be king in the first place. What do we do with someone like
it's a Harris the second he's intelligent, but he doesn't rain
very long, does he May always agree.
I don't think he's either. I think he's just maybe he would
have been good if he had been in better health.
I don't know. So, you know, I don't really
think. About it in terms of a useful
idea in that sense, in terms of well, let's put let's put all
take our Targaryen king toys and we're going to put some of them
in this box. We're going to put some of them
in that box. But what I think it is useful
for in terms of thinking about this quote, is thinking about
what I'm going to call an extremely pretentious way, the
great and terrible burden of being a Targaryen, specifically
being a Targaryen king. Because it's not just.
Being king, it's not just being at the top of the political food
chain in in Westeros, having the most power, having the most
authority, having the ability to command the lives and deaths of,
you know. 10s of thousands or millions of subjects.
That's all very true, obviously, but it's also being heir to this
legacy of dragonlords that no one in Westeros.
Yes, there were many kings in Westeros before the Conquest,
but there was never a family of dragonlords before the Conquest.
And that's a level of supernatural power and authority
that really no one can have an idea about.
And really no one can say, oh, my family had a similar
experience to that. It's it's a really unique
history and legacy in this world and specifically in in Westeros.
And the reason I bring it up here, the reason I think about
that, that quote in that context is because again, and I've said
it again and again and again, I'm going to.
Keep saying it. Again and again.
What we're looking at with Baylor is this first generation
of Targaryens to be born after the Dance, and so in real time,
what Baylor and his siblings and cousins are struggling with.
Is this change in the conception of what it means to be a
Targaryen that is happening in real time?
When Baylor is born, there is still at least one dragon alive.
And when Baylor dies, there are no more Dragons.
He lives to see the extinction. Of the creatures that made.
His family great and powerful in Valyria.
What do you do when your parents generation had Dragons and road
Dragons and then the Dragons are gone?
How do you? Define yourself as a Targaryen
and a Targaryen king. After that, there's, there's no
precedent. Baylor and his siblings and
cousins are writing the playbook in real time.
And so I think it, it leaves Baylor and again, along with,
along with Aaron, along with Egon the 4th, along with the
other Targaryens in this generation caught in this sort
of liminal place. They're, they're wanting to
live, I think for better or for worse, in this grand scale of
their dragon Lord ancestors. But they don't have Dragons.
They don't have that power. They don't have that authority.
They don't have that legacy. They just have the memory of
this legacy. And so I think for Baylor,
that's why I think of him as this character of extremes,
because he's trying to wrestle with those extremes that are,
that are present in that legacy. He's trying to say.
I want to rule with all of the power and all the authority and
all the grand ideas of someone like a Jaharis the 1st.
But I don't actually have a dragon.
To make those things happen again.
For better or worse, and. So I'm trying to do that while
struggling along as. A dragon rider in a dragonless
age. He's someone who believed what
he was doing. Was for the good of the realm,
who fully believed that he was the.
Agent of the Seven on Earth, and who was not going to be gained
said by anyone. No one could tell.
Baylor what to do? Yeah, you see his older brother
trying to perhaps re establish Targaryen supremacy by
conquering Dorn with men, whereas it had failed with
Dragons. And he, you know, almost pulled
it off. And now his brother Baylor is
turning to an entirely different form of power, which is the
gods. And there's arguably nothing
more powerful than that. They're the greatest authority.
And this culminates in a new topic, a new subtopic, the idea
of greatness, which is difficult to define, as we've discovered,
along with the concept of madness.
But some things are in arguably great just because, well, it's
in the name. And I refer to our next subject,
the Great Sept of Bailor. Now, if you live in King's
Landing or visited frequently, Baylor's going to be on your
mind a lot because this Sept is huge and it's loud.
The bells are going to ring every day.
I mean, that's you get daily reminders of this guy.
Not only did his actual deeds during his life ring out and are
still remembered, but you have this backing that up.
That's a huge thing. And it's literally a huge thing.
The Great Sept is named so because it's immense.
It's like I said, it's harder to apply to people, but this is a
monstrous building. It's completely fair to call it
great. It's like arguing that Gregor
Clegane isn't a large human. That's silly.
It's definitely true. So it's also called Baylor Sept.
It's got a lot of nicknames. This is where, again, we get
back to Baylor and Megor having some similarity.
Pacifist versus warmonger. Yes, Megor fought against the
faith, while Baylor upheld it more than any anybody ever else.
They both thought very big when it came to building.
You got the dragon pit, basically the largest building
in the in the in the land until this came along, which is the
biggest of its kind ever. So you got a giant House of
Dragons, a giant House of the seven similar concepts 1 is the
thing outside of their humanity that they claim to give them
authority over everyone else, whether it's Dragons, whether
it's the gods. Yeah, that's, that's kind of it
in a nutshell, isn't it? Well, it is, and it's sort of.
This it goes. You know what I was saying
before this sort of perfect dichotomy of Baylor where?
On the one. Hand.
I think that Baylor genuinely believes that the reason there
are no more Dragons is because the gods were angry with the
Targaryens because of their incest.
That the gods were angry that the Targaryens were promoting
the doctrine of exceptionalism using the Dragons, and so
decided to get rid of the Dragons to punish the
Targaryens. So on the one hand, the Great
Sept of Baylor is the answer to the dragon Pit.
It's saying no, I am. I'm rejecting the Dragon Pit on
the opposite hill. I am going to build the greatest
temple to the faith in the whole land.
I'm going to show in brick and mortar and stone.
I am worshipping the Seven. Now we are rededicating the
realm not to the Dragons, but to the Seven.
And yet. He doesn't get rid of the dragon
pit. Now maybe practically he
couldn't have. I don't I don't know how
practical would have been trying to get rid of it, but he doesn't
get rid of it. And again, we know that Baylor
does try to hatch Dragons at some point.
So I think there is still this wrestling with this legacy of.
Well the seven got rid of our Dragons because they were man
and we have to rededicate ourselves but we are still.
Targaryen So we do still like those Dragons in the memory of
those Dragons. So we're going to leave the
dragon pit as sort of that legacy to there and and just
leave it as is it. And it's this, it's the, it's
the dichotomy in in building form.
I love that idea of Baylor because he prays over the
Dragon's eggs. Like you say, that is kind of a
a strange, like hard thing to parse there because they don't
exactly fit. But of course, he's conflicted
guy on on some ways, not when it comes to the faith, but if he's
like, well, if the gods say it's OK, then it's OK.
So I'm going to ask them, I'll just pray over the the eggs and
if they hatch, then clearly the the gods are cool with it.
So why no? Why?
There's no harm in asking, right?
Another funny thing these two have in common is that these
huge projects that they started, neither of them live to see them
completed. This isn't that unusual for
large scale building projects in a medieval issue type setting
because, well, I don't know about the dragon pit.
There's maybe not a lot of real world comparisons we can make to
that so easily. Maybe there are.
I just as an architect, as a non architect rather, I don't really
know where to start with that. It's a little easier with the
Sep because it's a lot like a real life cathedral, isn't it,
Nina? Which we have lots of examples
of and those take a long time to build, don't they?
And well, they do. And The thing is with this I, I
tend to think that the Sept was completed or mostly completed by
about 187, because this is when they're on the 2nd and Marin
Martel rise, the Great Sept, they lay this wreath at the foot
of Baylor's statue. I'm guessing that means the Sept
was more or less done at this point.
Which might seem like a really short amount of time if we're
thinking of something along the lines of, I don't know, insert
any given medieval cathedral here and, and this is built in
what the better part of 1720 years?
That's a really short time frame.
But I don't really care because in this sense, I don't really
care if George Robert sort of cheats the timeline because it
works narratively in terms of what he wants to accomplish.
Daron is Baylor's spiritual successor, and in every meaning
of the word. And I think you need.
Aeron to be the one who sees the completion of this because he is
also seeing the completion of Baylor's political legacy, which
is this piece with Dorn so. Yeah, the key to the.
Timeline. A little maybe.
Do I care? Not really.
We can argue it was like a like a Return of the Jedi situation
where it wasn't fully completed but that thing was operational.
Like they can still have weddings and ceremonies in it
even if they're still painting the windows or installing
filigree on the archways. Or I just coming up with terms.
I don't even know what I'm saying here.
They're laying, they're laying the bricks as the horses are
walking. Over.
Absolutely. Yeah.
So who know? Or maybe the Smith actually did
answer some prayers and come down and just like, get to work
you. Know what?
Maybe, maybe that child Septon actually could talk to the.
Gods, maybe, Maybe. That's what happened.
He was a stone mate, and there's that stone Mason one, right?
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, you know what? That's what it.
Was it all adds up Actually we've we solved it but but if we
Fast forward to story in current times, meaning a song of ice and
fire well past Daron and these other characters who inherited
Baylor's legacy. This is where Ned was executed.
Quote. Let the High Septon and Bay
Lord, the Beloved and the Seven bear witness to the truth of
what I say. Joffrey Baratheon is the one
true heir to the Iron Throne and by the grace of all the gods,
Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and protector of the realm.
This was a big problem for the Faith afterwards.
Like Ned said what he had to say and Joffrey had his head cut off
anyway. But you're not supposed to be
killing people in front of Baylor.
I mean, the whole look what we just got through talking about
what the man stands for. You're not he's not a place of
this is not a place for blood and executions.
This is a place for peace and contemplation and joinings and
alliances and marriages and, yeah, positive things, uplifting
things, not not death. So you you can see already what
George was doing with that scene and having it be not just
Joffrey and perhaps Littlefinger pushing him into it, trampling
on this carefully laid plan of that several people were were
involved in. But also just ignoring an
important political consideration, which is the the
happiness of the faith and the the high Septon and the the most
about they're a very important political body.
And Joffrey didn't think about them even for a second.
So Cersei also began her walk of shame there, which is maybe also
not so in line with the positive things.
And yeah, under the under the High Sparrow, maybe we see more
of these punishments and, and things that are also maybe not
what Baylor had in mind. Baylor, we don't hear about him
really torturing people or, or inflicting punishment.
He inflicted it on himself. But I don't know, how do you
feel about this in terms of torture and punishment as a as a
device that's used by certain rulers or leaders under the
guise of being faithful vis a vis Baylor?
I don't think we've really talked about that specifically.
I don't know how how much Baylor would have looked at or would
have. Used it.
Certainly that's not what comes down in the in the popular
imagination, but at the same time, if we look at the high.
Sparrow, as someone who very clearly takes Baylor as an
inspiration, very clearly thinks of himself as, you know,
inspired by Baylor. I don't.
Know that it would have been that far away.
Obviously, Baylor is. You know, punishing himself very
severely and very physically for, you know, what he believes
are his sins or the sins of the realm, but.
They also does a lot of things that I'm not.
Sure are that far away from what we see happen under the High
Sparrow in say, if he's for Crows or Dance with Dragons.
We see him, you know, again. He literally imprisons his
sisters for the better part of 10 years.
I I don't know how. Comfortable the Maiden Vault
was, or wasn't, or what they were subject to on any given day
in the Maiden Vault, but at very least.
They're not free to go. Which is already a form of, you
know, unwilling imprisonment. He's also.
Promoting the use of. Chastity belts, which again we
talked about are are not a real historical.
Thing, but in the context of this universe are not a nice
thing to put. On girls and women, and he's
promoting that actively. And he's also not.
Afraid to make his courtiers perform public acts of service
that. They don't want to do.
Now again, I'm not saying that that's torture, but he's
certainly not afraid to make people do things that he
believes they need to do that they themselves would never do,
because he believes that's what the gods want.
Absolutely. I think that's very true, and
it's easy to frame it if you think about what we discussed
very early on in the series, which is that Baylor puts faith
above everything else. Yes, he's a man of peace, but he
puts faith even higher than that.
And if he believes that pain or suffering is purifying in
certain cases or brings you closer to the gods, then that's.
It's worth it it he won't think of it as cruel.
Even if someone is suffering, if he believes the end result is
holiness or a positive connection to the greater above,
you know that the seven themselves or something like
that. So yeah, you can you can see how
it could be justified in a lot of cases, given that he was
willing to do things like kick all the sex workers out, that's
that's inflicting punishment on them.
Maybe he's too naive to to think that they'll suffer, but the
rest of us can pretty easily see that that would be more than an
ordeal. They're effectively refugees
with with almost nowhere to go and are extremely vulnerable.
So. So that's a big deal.
Now, what do we think about the idea that the Sept will be
destroyed? Because it would be rather
symbolic. It doesn't have to be the same
circumstances as the TV show. Obviously it could be very
different, but the Pirate Ranchers Guild is below it in
the tunnel, so it is located kind of conveniently for a
conflagration to happen. We've already got Cersei messing
with the forces like that again, the parallel to Aries.
We've gotten multiple examples of caches of wildfire that
weren't discovered that were left behind.
The Jamie didn't find or the other guys didn't find.
So there's a lot of possibility here.
It would be kind of interesting to have the most peaceful king,
to have his greatest work or most standing monument thing
he's most remembered for, just fiery destruction that that
would be pretty meaningful and symbolic, maybe the kind of
thing George wants to do. What do you think?
Oh, 100%. I mean, I have said it for a
long time and I will continue saying it I very firmly.
Believe that the. The entirety of King's Landing,
including the great set of Baylor, is going to be blown up,
and it is going to be blown up in something close to an atomic
explosion thanks to all of this wildfire.
And it's going to be set off, not intentionally, to be clear,
to be absolutely clear, not intentionally, but it's going to
be set off by Danny with her dragon.
And I think why that works narratively for me is because,
you know, again, I do not at all think this is going to be
intentional on Danny's purse. He obviously doesn't know that
this exists. But I think what is going to
horrify her about this and just utterly, you know, really,
really deeply affect her is that not only are all of these
people, you know, suffering and dying, which is obviously going
to affect her very, very deeply, but also this is her family's
legacy. This is the city that her
ancestor, Aidan the Conqueror built.
This is his city. With his castle, with his iron
throne, she's blown it up. And now this is Baylor Sepp.
This is his legacy. This is his grand monument to
the gods blown up. And I, I genuinely believe that
this is going to be a, you know, really deeply affecting moment
where Danny thinks, is this who I am?
Is this All I can do is just destroy everything that I
ostensibly hold to? Now, again, I think he's going
to have a heroic arc in the end. But I think that there that is
going to be a moment in probably a dream spring.
Yeah, I could really see that if she wouldn't be targeting that
building, there'd be no reason to.
But oops, you know, and then people would, obviously people
would blame it on her, the person that maybe had brought
some of the fire there in the 1st place.
Very. Seems very possible.
And to back the idea up, we even have Jamie thinking of when he's
kind of reminiscing, for lack of a better word, on the wildfire
plot. He beneath Baylor's Sept was
absolutely one of the places where it was planted.
So all we have to have is one of these caches being missed, which
as I just said a minute ago, there's 2 examples of caches
being discovered during the time of the books alone.
So there's been 17 years between.
So yeah, uh huh. In Brienne's first chapter, she
meets this group of worshippers who are bringing bones to
Blessed Baylor. His Sept, the Sept we've just
discussed, of course, in the group is the future High
Sparrow. This is right before he takes
power. He actually calms his followers
when they grow angry because they're like, Hey, why don't you
join us? We could use your help.
And they're like, Nah, we got we got places to go.
We're not going that way. And some of them get kind of
angry. They're like, hey, we're they
already are a little uppity. They're already kind of, you
know, wielding their new power a little inappropriately.
But to his credit, thy Sparrow calms him down.
But obviously he now maybe power seems to have already gone to
his head because this is before he's installed.
And he does give off some Baylor vibes, as we said, in terms of
his humble bearing and being very common or focused and
seemingly that's who matters most and and keeping his eye on
the gods for most of all. But it's a very violent man.
He's different in that regard. Baylor, even if Baylor's memory
is sanitized a bit, we don't have, I think it's pretty safe
to say the book version of the High Sparrow is willing to go a
lot farther. I mean, he the, the torture
we've seen the, the, the words he's spoken, the yeah, would
would you agree with that? I'm still holding out that
there's there may be more to Baylor and and he may be, you
know, more more violent up into, you know, this actual
declaration of war against his own people that we don't know
about. I, I don't know, I, I think that
there's ways in which the High Sparrow and Baylor may not have
been particularly different men. Because I think, you know, the
one thing that we can say about the High Sparrow, I, I don't
believe that he's a charlatan. I don't believe that he's
someone who's just pretending to be pious just because he wants
power. I think he genuinely believes
everything he is saying that he genuinely believes.
He is the agent of the gods. He knows what the gods want and
he's going to put that into practice.
And everything he is doing is for what he believes is, you
know, the will and the benefit. Of the gods, whether or not you
know you agree with that is a completely separate point.
But I I don't believe that he's a hypocrite.
I don't believe that he's charlatan.
I don't believe that he's making it up.
And similar with Baylor. I think Baylor very, very, very
genuinely believed everything he was doing and that everything he
did was justified because he was doing it for the will of the
gods. Let's move on to our next
section, de facto St. So he's the prime example for
several virtues, as we said, and that makes him maybe the in
world equivalent of a concept that doesn't necessarily exist
in Westeros, but one that we kind of understand.
Now, here's a particular example of that, the concept this time
being abstinence. And our example is the soiled
knight Sir Arias Oakhart, right here.
SER Arias heard faint music drifting through louvered
windows as he passed below, and somewhere finger drums were
beating out the quick rhythm of a spear dance, giving the night
a pulse. Where 3 alleys met beneath the
second of the winding walls, a pillow girl called down from a
balcony. She was dressed in jewels and
oil. He took a look at her, hunched
his shoulders and pushed on into the teeth of the wind.
We men are so weak, our bodies betray even the noblest of us.
He thought of King Baylor, the blessed who had fast to the
point of fainting to tame the lusts that shamed him.
Must he do the same? Another example of a person just
thinking of Baylor as the example of of being shamed by
lust and how he went to extremes to manage that.
And this is really difficult. You you think of Baylor as the
prime example and and realizing that, yeah, even he couldn't
succeed. Even Baylor couldn't tame his
own lusts. What a thing to have to realize
and believe in the most pious and holy guy.
Even he couldn't control his thoughts like that.
So that might be sort of a well, what the hell are you supposed
to do kind of realization for some people like, like
apparently, Sir RSO card, who's having these thoughts in this
moment. If Baylor can't do it, then what
chance do I have? Maybe that's part of why he just
gives in. From another angle, one might
argue that, well, fasting didn't work, or it worked in the sense
that being extremely sick and weak works, you know, but that's
no way to live. And it's certainly not an
example that a common person can follow or a Kingsguard knight
who cannot be extremely sick and weak.
That's not going to work for that job description.
You can't spend all day praying and fasting if you have a
kindergard or if you're a peasant that has to work the
land. So in a sense, that's his
example is just beyond everyone else, which is part of the
point. This is a king that takes
responsibility for or took responsibility for the soul of
his nation by doing things that no one else could.
His Holiness was meant to be unmatched.
That was part of the point. It isn't just something to
strive for. It's something, you know, you
can't reach. Who could be Baylor except
Baylor. So yeah, it's interesting to
think about. Yeah.
They don't have the concept of sainthood, but this he really is
in all ways basically that without the word for it, isn't
he? Yeah, and and it is interesting.
Because you're right, the Faithless 7 doesn't have Saints.
They don't have specific holy figures.
And yet there is Baylor, and I think you make an interesting
and a good point there in the Baylor's legacy it is.
Almost one of, you know, purposeful inability to retake.
You know you can't actually ever become Baylor.
You can only strive to be Baylor.
You know, whatever Baylor actually was in life.
In death and in legacy, he's so much more than that.
He's so much more elevated above, you know, what the
Westeros characters might call the common run of men.
And it's that's reflected in the way that he's remembered.
We basically never hear about Baylor except when he's called
Baylor, the blessed Baylor, the beloved, the Septon King,
blessed Baylor, beloved Baylor. He has these epithets that are
almost more important than him becoming king.
It's not just that he was in the role of Targaryen kings.
He is the saintly Targaryen king.
He's the holy Targaryen king, He is the king who is remembered
for his piety above all else. And so Baylor becomes this model
of, again, what we'll call de facto sainthood.
He is something for all faithful to try to attain, even more so
than he is an example for, say, any given king or Targaryen
kings. Even Cersei is like got to hand
it to him, even with all her anger and cynicism and all that
she even she can got has got to hand it to him.
You know, she gives him the little mental grudging hat tip
there. Now, do we think Baylor's piety
had a positive effect on the behavior of the average
Westerosi peasant and or noble? Is that is that something we can
judge or say is tangible enough? Or is it is it just kind of too
hard to to gauge? I think it's a.
Little too hard. And part of this I problem, I
think is the way in which George or Martin sort of writes
characters who practice the faith.
Because what I've noticed, at least when it comes to
characters, practice the faith. They.
Basically fall into one of three buckets.
You're either a cynic who doesn't believe any of it and
thinks it's all made-up in lies and foolishness.
Or yeah, you worship the faith, but it really doesn't have
anything. To do with your story or your
narrative or your character, you maybe interact with it.
Once and that's about it. Or you're a zealot.
And the only thing you think about is the Faith of the Seven
and you are solely motivated by what you can do for Faith of the
Seven. And there's really no crossover
to any of those buckets. So I, I really wish that we had
a little bit more world building in terms of popular piety.
What does popular piety look like in Westeros, and how has
the legacy of Baylor affected that?
But at the same time, I do think there is a way.
And, you know, we talk about it. Baylor is.
Basically the the Saint of the faith.
He is the figure that everyone can look to, the one specific,
historically verifiable figure that everyone can look to and
say, Yep, that's who we should be.
That's who we should be trying to attain.
That's who we should be modeling ourselves after.
It's Bay Lord the Blessed. It's Bay Lord the Beloved.
It's someone who worshipped the gods and loved the gods so much.
That's who we need to model ourselves on.
Let's return to our conversation between our very cynical and our
very non cynical Lannisters, Lancel and Jamie quote.
Each night I make my bed beneath a different altar and the Seven
send me visions. Bay Lord the Blessed once had
visions too, especially when he was faster.
How long has it been since you've eaten?
My faith is all the nourishment I need.
Again, Jamie has experience with this whole mad king genre.
He's not going to fall for the old starvation visions or from
the gods track. He knows starvation visions come
from starvation. Jamie as a knight has stood
vigil a few times beyond his experience with Aries, who was
mad for reasons that had nothing to do with food.
He stood vigil when he was newly knighted and when his father
died. That was a crazy seven day
experience. So he knows what it's like to
have some deprivation. He has personal experience with
it. Not in the same type that Baylor
and Lancel have gone through, but this is a guy who who knows
what it's like. He's he's been in the field.
He's he's been there, done that. And we're also pretty sure he's
seen at least a vision or two. If you count dreams, it's
definitely a few. If not, there's at least that
one time where he sees his mother, which, well, he wasn't
starving during that, but it was, yeah, that was something
that it's outside. Don't tell Baylor that that was
on a on a weirwood stump, by the way.
He would just absolutely have a heart attack with.
That he would not like that he's like kick that guy out of the
King's guard. Yeah, he doesn't belong anymore
so let. But Jamie, I think it's fair to
say Jamie actually has. He doesn't say it, but through
his words, reading between the lines, he kind of respects
Lancel a bit despite everything, because he's he's got this faith
and loyalty and Jamie is so cynical.
He wants to be devoted and loyal.
He that's the life he thought he was going to have and that's the
world he wants to live in. And Lancel is living in that
world, even if it's and Jamie's mind fabricated.
So I think that's I think it's kind of an interesting dynamic
between those two. Now we have a real life example
here or a sort of real life slash semi fictionalized account
version here that I think is a lot of fun.
Nina, take us away. I've got the real life example,
but then I've also got the semi fictional example so I'll do
both. You get both.
So we talked about him a little bit in in the last episode as as
a possible inspiration for Bay Lord, as someone who the author
has specifically noted is an inspiration for Baylor.
Bayonet obviously was a real historical figure and he was
really canonized. He was in fact, the only king of
France to ever be canonized. But he's not just a real
historical figure. He's also sort of a character in
The Accursed Kings, and obviously I'm going to use every
time I'm on the show to talk about the Accursed Kings because
that's who I am. He's not a character in the
sense that he's on page because he's dead by the time the books
start, but he is an important historical figure.
And what I think is so notable when we think about George
Martin being influenced by Louis the 9th and also being
influenced by The Curse of Kings in writing Baylor, is that the
way that Maurice Drawn, the author of The Accursed Kings
writes Louis the 9th. It's very similar to how George
R Burton writes Baylor in some ways.
We basically, you know, when you're reading The Curse of
Kings, Louis the 9th. Is almost never referred to as
Louis the 9th. I think there is literally.
One time in all of the books that he's referred to as Louis
the Knight. Every other time he is either
Saint Louis or the King's Saint. That's how he is referred to.
That is, it is inescapable, that definition.
He is King and St. at the same time.
And when the author Maurice Dron is describing him, he calls him
the canonized king, the defender of Christendom.
And you know we we are introduced in the 4th book to
one of his daughters, Louisiana's daughters, Agnes.
Maurice Dron literally describes her as anyone who had seen him,
meaning Louis the 9th had been spoken to by him or been the
object of his affection was endued with an almost sacred
quality. This is a character that figures
in this universe are literally praying to for intercession.
The 1st chapter of the books when we're introduced to Queen
Isabella and she finds out that her son Prince Edward, the
future Edward the Third has started talking.
The first thing she says is make sure you teach him the prayer to
Monsieur St. Louis.
She wants to make sure that he is remembered as this canonized
ancestor figure of hers as much as he's remembered as a king,
and he's still venerated in this in this world his tomb has pride
of place at. Sandini at the Royal Necropolis,
even though Morris sort of adds this wry line that there are so
many relics around purporting to be Saint Louis that if you would
put them all together, he would have doubled in size since his
death. The implication obviously being
that a lot of people are just saying that they have relics in
him. They're not actually relics, but
I think it goes to show that. When we're reading The Accursed
Kings and we're reading about Louis the 9th, this is.
Very clearly, I think giving inspiration to George R Martin
for Baylor, how he's writing Baylor as this figure who is as
much if not more so St. as much as he is king.
Now again, that's a semi fictional portrayal, but real
world. We can also look to Henry the
6th. We mentioned Henry the 6th of
England as another possible inspiration for Baylor, and I
think there is a real way in which George R Martin may look
to this legacy in this pseudo. Saintly legacy of Henry the 6th
as inspiration for Baylor. Henry the Six was never
canonized. Not for lack of trying, I
should. Say, because his nephew Henry
the 7th did try to get him canonized when he became king.
Papacy didn't. Go for it.
Mostly because he had been murdered for political reasons
and not as a martyr, and that really just didn't didn't really
add to his sort of saintly argument.
But Despite that, the fact that he never actually had the title
of St. Karen the Six was treated almost
immediately after his death as a St. in all but name.
So pilgrims are coming to his tomb.
Many, many pilgrims are coming to his tomb in the years after
his death and praying for his intercession.
He is being referred to as Holy King Henry by contemporaries.
It it's this. Sort of.
Strange amnesia where everyone just kind of forgot that he was
A. Terrible king and not good at
all for England. And just remembered him as pious
and gentle and loving and kind to his wife and faithful.
To his wife and they said. Yeah, but this guy was was a St.
So they're going to his tomb and they're praying for his
intercession, and they're leaving relics.
Of what they believe that he had interceded for that.
You know, there's a story of people are wearing his hat
because they believe that he can intercede to cure their
headaches. And there's this, I think
there's another story where someone was choking and they
said, oh, well, holy King Henry reached into my throat and took
out what was choking me. And so I'm going to go to his
tomb and and thank him for that. So in a real way, for basically
half a century after his death. He's treated as a St. now.
And it goes away. Because unfortunately, his grand
nephew and namesake, Cameron Gates puts an end to that.
But I think that's also a way in which we can look at inspiration
for, for Baylor is a way in which, yes, he's not a St.
formally, but he is looked to as a very, very holy figure in his
time. Right on one final in world
example from a POV character and it's a unique ish POV character.
And I mean Davos because and what makes him unique in this
case is and in a lot of cases is that he is a noble who was
raised up from a common born person.
So his opinion of Baylor would be a little bit different as
Baylor was particularly popular amongst the Commons and remains
that way. So here is the case where
Stannis tells Sir Axel to share his plan with Davos.
Quote. Sir Axel turned to Davos with a
look on his face much like the look that proud Lord Belgrave
must have worn the day King Baylor the Blessed had commanded
him to wash the beggar's ulcerous feet.
Nonetheless, he obeyed. So Sir Axel is, compared to a
proud man, brought low humility of sorts.
This is a very ubiquitous type tale would be familiar to a lot
of people, a lot of different settings, a lot of different
religious upbringings. So that it's the prime example
again, is Baylor here. If someone when you think of
humility or bringing someone low for pride, it's Baylor.
That's who comes to mind for Davos.
So that's really neat. I, I, I want to throw that one
out there too. And there's just so many more
common folk than nobles. If you think about the the sheer
number of people that think of Baylor as as the best king ever
in terms of numbers, in terms of popularity, he's he's probably
got that going for him. Well, and and Davos.
Is also someone who very much believes in the faith.
He's he's a a a, a a faithful for a better term follower of
the seven. And so I think that, you know,
I'd be really curious as to, you know, Davos's upbringing.
He's not a a a zealot in. Terms of you know, he's going to
give up everything to go join the Faith Militant now, but.
I think he is someone who does. Genuinely believe in the seven
and so. Probably grew up thinking of
Baylor really in this way, as as a St. and all but name as a holy
figure of someone to look to. And maybe that adds to that
feeling of. When he sees Axel's face, he's
thinking of these sort of pious morality tales with Baylor of
oh, this is another thing that Holy King Baylor did to, you
know, humble the proud. And of course, Davos being kept
out of the old boys club is a running theme and mixing it in
with with faith here is very interesting as a as a point of
pride and and a way to humble him and a way to mix all into
Davos's story. These are these are themes that
are very part, especially his early story, which is what we're
seeing here. Now here's a subject that's
particularly interesting because it both infuriates the modern
mind. Would also personally upset
George if it were real and you could tell a lot by him writing
it in the first place, but would not be such a big deal to in
world commoners. So we would differ on that I
think a lot here and that's what makes it so interesting and that
is book burnings. We talked about this a little
bit in Part 2 when the book burnings were happening, but
it's the long term impact of the burnings.
The legacy of all that lost knowledge is where the impact is
really felt. It's not something that plays
out over the course of a few years.
You might not even notice the difference over a few years.
From a societal standpoint, we're talking about education
and knowledge. Things that don't by nature move
quickly, especially on a big scale, which is what we're
talking about. This is the very definition of
something that plays out over the long term.
Quote. One unfortunate aspect of King
Baylor's zealotry was his insistence on burning books.
Though some books might hold little that is worth knowing,
and some might even hold matter that is dangerous, destroying
knowledge is a painful thing. That Theylor had the testimony
of mushroom burned is no great surprise, given its ribald and
scandalous content. But Septin Barth's Unnatural
History, however mistaken some of its proposals, was the work
of one of the brightest minds in the Seven Kingdoms.
Barth's study and alleged practice of the higher arts
proved enough to win Baylor's enmity and the destruction of
his work. Even though Unnatural History
contains much that is neither controversial nor wicked, it is
only fortunate that fragments have survived so that the lore
within was not wholly lost. Yeah, George knew what he was
doing here. This is a guy that's probably
even more horrified than the average reader at the concept of
mass book burnings. He knows this is a thing
associated with some of the worst regimes of all time, the
Nazis. I'll go all Godwin's Law here
and bring them up. They burned a lot of books.
And George was a young man not long after this happened.
So it was both fresh in the history of his, of the recent
history of his own life and world history when he was a
young man. They actually called it a
cleansing by fire. Not only did the Nazis burn
books in Germany and Austria, where they took power initially,
but they did it in captured territory, especially Poland,
where they burned. And this is not an exaggeration,
as far as I know, millions of books, more than 75% of school
and scientific libraries were burned.
The Nazis were of course quite guilty of unqualified genocide
as well, but this is cultural genocide.
So Baylor never went that far. But if we go back to what
Viserys was worried about, it is something along this level,
which is maybe not like calling to mind real world examples, but
something like that in his setting where things escalate
and you've got worshippers of the seven killing people for
owning a particular book or just for, I don't know, owning a
piece of weirwood or something credit.
It's kind of maybe a bit far fetched, but it's not out of the
realm of possibility. And it might have been what was
impossible or not. It might have been what was on
Pesaris's mind. So it's fair to imagine that
sort of scenario or, or to imagine him imagining that,
right? No, absolutely.
And I mean, how far fetched is it when during the annual
invasion there are annual invaders who are chopping down
weirwood trees? I mean, it's not that.
Far to chop down a weirwood tree, to chop down the people
who are worshipping at the weirwood tree.
So I no, I don't think, I don't think it's that far.
And I think that is something that may have been worried
about, not necessarily the book burnings vis a vis the Old Gods,
because I don't know how much written text there was with
respect to that, or the ground God for that matter, but
certainly the destruction of anything that Baylor deemed not
in line with the seven. Right, it is obviously this
wasn't just about books that these were in the general
category of things offensive to the faith in in his mind, you're
you're absolutely right. Arguably even worse and more
similar to Baylor and more recent in the 1970s was the Pol
Pot regime where they he burned so many books his his idea was
to make Cambodia great again by returning to the days where
almost everyone was a farmer. And not only did they burn
massive numbers of books, they killed people.
They killed educated folk just for the sin of being educated.
Which is again the kind of thing Viserys may have been thinking,
imagining in the proto medieval version of all that.
People who had valuable skills and knowledge, things that are a
boon to the realm, killed for minor religious infractions,
that sort of thing. Or at least driven out.
Maybe they're not killed. Maybe they just leave.
Maybe they move out of Westeros because the climate is is too
dangerous for them. That is also what happened in
Nazi Germany. You had German writers who
weren't under any direct threat leaving.
Well, they moved out of Germany because they're like, well, this
is, this isn't good. I can't trust that my books
won't be next, etcetera. The saris didn't stop the
burnings as hand to the king, but he might have slowed the
progress or deceived Baylor about how thorough they were.
I have a head cannon that that they lied to Baylor about a lot
of things. Maybe not direct lies, like
lying, you know, like blunt to his face lies, but deceived him
just to avoid certain topics, You know, like kind of how they
do with Cersei, things like that for a different reason.
But still, just if the leader isn't paying attention to that,
we can get them to focus on something that's more important
or keep them not distracted by this thing that shouldn't
distract them now. And essentially, if you look
forward, I mean, yeah, he probably burned books on
prophecy. Hopefully he didn't burn too
many books that dealt with like, medicine.
You know, astronomy might have been a problem for him.
I don't know that that's the purview of the gods.
And maybe he didn't like navigation handbooks or things
like that. But think about like Aries the
first, or even Rhaegar who was quote UN quote bookish to a
fault. Like those guys found books at
the Red Keep that led them on a prophetic path.
So clearly either some of these books were reinserted in the
library or were not burned in the 1st place.
And that might be evidence of what I'm saying, that some books
were just they disappeared rather than being they were.
Baylor was told they were burned, but they actually just
went under someone's bed, you know, for a while.
It just makes sense, right? Like people, a lot of people,
just the people who own the books are told to burn them.
Are they, are the maesters really going to be like, yes,
Sir, I'm going to burn all these or are they going to well and.
It's also, I mean, it's not, it's not like.
Baylor knows how many given copies of any given book are out
there. There's there's no.
True. There's no central depository of
Oh well, there are 1000 copies of this book or there are 7000
copies of this book. If Baylor says I want every copy
destroyed, well, he has no practical way of.
Knowing if that ever happened, it's and quite honestly, even if
people wanted to follow what he said, who's even to say that
they would have even been getting that message?
I mean someone. Could own a book who would never
know that. The king said that, depending on
how far it trickled down the message getting to them.
So I'm not really surprised that certain things would fall
through because #1 not everyone is necessarily going to follow
that #2 even if they want to follow that, they might not get
the message and #3 they may want to follow it and be foiled by
people, you know, internal to their organizations, families,
whatever it may be. Yeah.
Now one place where the real world analogy really fails is
again, amongst common folk, like the the level of literacy is
hugely different in the real world, especially in the areas
we discussed versus Westeros where their level of literacy is
extremely low. So it's really hard for common
folk in Westeros to care a lot about some of these books being
burned. They have never read, owned a
lot of them would never have really seen a book in their
life, like actually maybe a maybe a copy of the Seven Point
Star and that's it. You know, like that might be the
only book a lot of them have ever seen in their entire life.
And so it's hard for them to care to be really outraged by
that. Even if a lot of nobles or
learned folk or maesters, archmaesters, they would care a
lot. And they're not going to really
have the sympathy of the common folk in that.
So it's it's one thing that enables it to or enables us to
imagine that it might have been worse in some ways than we
imagined, because it wouldn't have been, the common folk
wouldn't have stood up to that. And they may have even helped.
They may have been like, yeah, burn those books.
This is something that the nobles hold over us.
It's an advantage they have that we can't have.
So if they can't have it, then no one should have it.
That kind of thing. They don't understand what's
being lost, they don't understand what's being
destroyed, etcetera, that kind of thing.
So. Well, it reminds me of of two
things. Number one, it there's a a
sarcastic joke that Tyrion makes in the Dance with Dragons when
he's aboard aboard the ship and and he says that, you know, he's
he only he's looking for something to read and he says,
well. The captain being an.
Especially book, this chapter had three books.
So it sort of goes to that sort of joke of, you know, Tyrion as
an aristocrat, as among the highest circle of aristocrats in
Westeros. He's used to having access to
virtually as many books as he wants, or at least as would be
readily accessible to him. Whereas someone who's even
relatively well to do like a captain of a ship.
He's. Not necessarily interested in
having more than three books, none of which are particularly
academic in nature. But I think at the same time
there is. There may also be the sense of,
you know, even among those who wouldn't necessarily have books
or have a high rate of literacy may still have veneration for
the written word because this Tyrion also takes advantage of
that with Mord at the Erie. He writes him a promise and
he's, you know, when he does it, he says, is Mord one of these
people who scorns literacy or is he one of these people who
venerates literacy because he's not.
And he bets correctly that Mord is one of those people who says
I can't read, which means anyone who can read.
I'm treating that as almost, you know, not, I don't want to say
almost magical, but something that is out of the realm of
possibility for them and therefore of a higher status.
So, you know, it would be interesting to see what people
would think about Baylor's order of book burning.
If they themselves don't own books or not necessarily
literate, Would they go along with it or not?
I think you'd have a lot of different reactions.
One person who would either be for it or not care is Braun, who
told Podrick that books will ruin your sword eye.
I didn't know a sword eye was a thing.
But Braun is an extremely good swordsman and I'm not at all, so
I won't argue with him on that one.
So yeah, it would be really interesting.
Like that would be like a fun short story or a thing that
could be written in Westeros one day about, you know, how
different institutions, different places handled the
book burning, like what happened in the Veil, the Reach, the
store, like different places, how they handled it.
Iron Islands, they don't care. They don't have any books to
burn in the 1st place. No, I'm just kidding.
The the reader is an example of there are some books in the Iron
Isles, but that's a place that could have fairly just ignored
it, like, yeah, he's not going to find out the wall.
They're like, yeah, he's not, there's not going to know.
But other places where it's close by the river lands, the
crown lands, yeah, that could get really interesting.
And story wise, we could, you know, we could hear that he
burned books that are relevant like the Jade Compendium or
Danny E the Dreamers, Signs and Portents or the Book of Lost
Books. Maybe he's the reason the Book
of Lost Books exists, because he.
Yeah, how many? How many?
Entries in the book of lost books are just like lost because
of bail or lost because of last known copy in the reign of bail.
And, and we know that he had a few particular targets.
For the most part. It's a little bit of an open
question, but Dragon lore seems to be one of the main casualties
of this, which is interesting that burning would be the thing
that caused the loss of dragon lore.
Ah yeah. Now here's a famous quote that
we're looking at because it's a direct sighting of Baylor's
burnings. What he really wanted was the
complete text of the Fires of the Freehold, Galendra's history
of Valyria. No complete copy was known to
Westeros, however. Even the citadels lacked 27
scrolls. They must have a library in Old
Volantis, Shirley. I may find a better copy there
if I can find a way inside the black walls to the city's heart.
He was less hopeful concerning Septon Barth's Dragons, worms,
and wyverns, their unnatural history.
Barth had been a blacksmith's son who rose to be King's hand
during the reign of Jahari's the Conciliator.
His enemies always claimed he was more sorcerer than Septon
Baylor. The Blessed had ordered all
Barth's writings destroyed when he came to the Iron Throne 10
years ago. Tyrion had read a fragment of
unnatural history that had eluded the Blessed Baylor, but
he doubted that any of Barth's work had found its way across
the Narrow Sea. And of course there was even
less chance of his coming on the fragmentary, anonymous, blood
soaked tome sometimes called Blood and Fire and sometimes the
Death of Dragons, the only surviving copy of which was
supposedly hidden away in a locked vault beneath the
citadel. Just Barth's reputation as quote
UN quote sorcerer as it's put there, would have irked Baylor
whether he believed it or not. That would be a certainly a
negative connotation. That's not the kind of thing
that the faith would allow or or sanction.
Somehow he ignored that. None other than Jaheris chose
and honored Septon Barth in that, so hey.
But Baylor went against lots of things that other good Targaryen
kings did, so that's not too different.
This is Baylor's conflict in a nutshell here.
I guess the Citadel refused to burn that single copy of Death
of Dragons. Or maybe Baylor just didn't know
about it so he didn't order that one destroyed.
Barth also comes up in Sam's POV as well regarding Eamon and the
Princess that was promised and all that, so it's another
example of of perhaps Baylor having an impact on the story in
that way. A book he didn't burn was called
Dark Wings, Swift Words, and it was actually written well after
Baylor's reign by Archmaester Walgrave, which includes a
passage about Baylor's attempt to replace Ravens with doves,
which is one of his more crazy notions.
Just bizarre. And a good example of like,
yeah, that guy was. It's hard to argue that guy
wasn't at least a little insane. It's not a lot.
It's a fun fact, by the way, and I just learned this because I
was listening to a podcast the other week.
This is not an intentional burning, but.
The only surviving copy of Beowulf, almost.
Destroyed by fire in the 18th century.
Literally, there was one manuscript, but it will fully
survive because of one manuscript that was written, I
think, in the 10th century and preserved for centuries
afterward and then. There was a massive.
Massive massive house fire where?
It was in the 18th century, and I believe I may be getting
details of this wrong, but I believe it had super thick
binding on it and that was the reason that it survived.
If that had been destroyed, we'd never know anything about
Beowulf. There would be.
One entry in one. Catalogue.
And that's what we would know about Beowulf.
Wow. So, you know, things, things,
things could be. Lost released like.
Mixed political legacy That says it all.
It's very mixed, not only because the results were mixed,
but because there's such mixed opinions on the impact of his
reign and his policies and his legacy.
You can't even find agreement in in some circles on whether
certain actions or policies had a good effect or what good even
is. It gets very meta in some cases.
And that's the nature in some senses of a man of extremes in
charge. They're naturally going to
majorly please some and deeply displease others, and that might
be putting it mildly. One example, divorce.
What examples did Baylor set by divorcing his own sister, which
she was queen very briefly until he set her aside, which was
after his walk. So she was queen for like a few
months while he walked adorn. But what did this do?
Did this reinforce or set any precedents that we can point to?
I mean. I, I don't know if only because,
and I, I think we've mentioned this in, in the one of the other
episodes, Baylor didn't make a unique argument.
I will say in terms of when he, you know, called for an
annulment of his marriage to Dana because what he said was.
Number one, that he was underage, which which is sort of
an interesting argument. I wonder how often that would
come up, but #2 that it wasn't consummated and we.
Know that's a. Very valid argument in Westeros
for putting a marriage aside. You know, ancestor, no incest
when it comes to Westeros, if a marriage is not consummated,
that's a really easy argument to put a marriage aside.
So I'm not sure that Baylor was really, you know, inventing new
law or, or inventing new legal precedent when it comes to
putting his marriage to Dana aside.
That being said, I would be curious if this example were to
come up in the future. Obviously, we see this a little
bit, not quite explicitly, but certainly implicitly when it
comes to Lancel, Lancel and, and, and his his bride, Amy,
obviously taking inspiration from from Baylor and Dana in
terms of their personalities. And Lancel does and his marriage
to Dana to join the warrior son. So there's a little bit of
similarity to that. And he uses the same reason,
which is that he didn't consummate the marriage.
But the other point that it might come up is potentially
with Santa's upcoming marriage to Harry Harding.
Obviously she knows and Littlefinger knows that she was
married to Tyrion. And they also know that this
marriage wasn't consummated. So is someone Santa
Littlefinger? Someone else in the veil?
Who knows? Going to bring up the point.
Well, just like Baylor was able to put aside his marriage to
Dana. So we can put aside this
marriage. Maybe, maybe not.
There's a lot of examples of it. But I would be curious if it
would come up in the future. Absolutely.
And I think one way it might come up additionally or not
additionally, but within the context that you mentioned, is
that because Baylor did it, it maybe is a little bit stronger
because so many things he did ring out that because he did it,
that makes it more OK, that solidifies it.
I agree with you that he didn't establish that precedent, but he
may have really firmed it up. And as you say here, it's
there's some very specific examples.
In fact, I wanted to mention the land cell example.
He absolutely does cite Baylor as a reason why his own marriage
is invalid right here. I said some words and gave her a
red cloak, but only to please father.
Marriage requires consummation. King Baylor was made to wed his
sister Dana, but they never lived his man and wife and he
put her aside as soon as he was crowned.
So yeah, it's very straightforward.
Like you said, this is it comes up.
It comes up with Sansa and Tyrion, similar ish reasons,
very different potential consequences.
I really wonder too what they think about Baylor and Dorn.
You know, we don't have a lot of as much as we get mentions of
him. We don't actually have a lot of
Dornish POV on him and he thoughts on on that.
I mean, I we're mostly guessing probably, but still I'm curious
what you think. I'm super curious and I would
love to think that maybe Arianne in the future.
Is going to is going to mention this because obviously you can't
talk about Baylor, especially Baylor and Dorn without talking
about what Baylor set up, which is this idea of a peace and
eventually a union between Dorn and the Iron Throne.
Now, Baylor wasn't quite making that in his own lifetime.
That was left to his spiritual successor Deron to do.
But what Baylor was starting to establish is the foundations of
that, the beginnings of that connection.
By walking to Doran and making a peace, he's making it very
obvious. I, as king on the Iron Throne, I
don't want to conquer you. I'm not trying to make you an
imperial province of the Iron Throne.
I'm going to leave you as you are.
But I'm not just going to leave you as you are, because I'm also
going to create this marriage between Deron.
And Princess Mariah Now whether or not Baylor thought of
Daranis's heiress, that point, whether or not Mariah was he was
doing this because Mariah was at that point her father's heiress,
I don't know. I don't, I don't know the.
Details of that, but I think it's at least the beginnings of
this legacy and I think that would be hard for any given
family or aristocrat and endure and to ignore is that for better
or worse the beginnings of their union with the Iron Throne start
not with their own a second. They start with Baylor.
They start with this marriage. They start with this idea that
if not for Baylor we don't get there on a second if not for
Baylor we don't get the union of Marin and Daenerys.
If not for Baylor, we don't get the fact that every Targaryen
king after Daron has Martel blood in them and that every
Martel Prince and Princess after Marin has Targaryen blood in
them. And there is this shared legacy
that it all starts with Baylor. So I would have to.
Think that in a large way, his influence is relatively
positive, enduring. Now there may be pockets of
families or or individuals who don't believe that.
I don't know what, for example, the wills think of Baylor today,
considering they their ancestors were taking bets on his death.
So I don't know, I think. It's probably a mixed legacy,
but I would say probably overall pretty positive.
And again, I'd be really curious if this is something that would
come up vis a vis say, Aryan and R Agin in the Winds of Winter.
Absolutely, and I'm very curious for that too.
I would love to learn more. It is fair.
I agree with you that we would call his legacy in terms of
politics very mixed. Most of what he tried to do
probably wasn't accomplished. Now to be fair, maybe with more
time he could have, but to be fair he might have also just
ruined more and made things a lot worse.
That said, Dorn, the marriage and making it A at least semi
permanent part of the realm is a massive achievement no doubt.
Like that's a big deal. The building of the scepter is
pretty big too. That's not necessarily a
political achievement, but it is a big deal.
So I do think that if we look at his overall impact, it's mostly
in terms of culture and on the minds of common folk and how
maybe people think and act rather than creating last
lasting political change, which other than Dorn, which is pretty
darn big deal. Yeah, no, I agree.
And I think that, you know, in a in a strange way, Baylor fails
at almost everything except the thing which might have mattered
to him most, which is being remembered for his piety.
That is the thing that lasts. About Baylor is that everyone
remembers that Baylor was the Septon King, everyone remembers
that Baylor was the Pious king and.
In a strange way, I think Baylor might have been happy with that
if if he were remembered. As the king who most loved the
seven, the king who was most remembered for his piety.
Maybe he'd be OK with that as a legacy.
Maybe he'd say, you know what? That's that's what I wanted all
along. Right on.
Despite 3 episodes on Baylor, there's a huge amount left
unknown. I mean, a lot of what we
discussed is theoretical. A lot of times when we discuss
theoretical stuff, we have to go in a couple different directions
to cover a lot of different bases.
And if we were to learn just a couple more things that might
send us an entirely new directions, it might cancel out
some of the ideas we've had. It might make us more confident
in them. And there's a lot of hope,
though, for more. I mean, it's not just something
that we're going to, we know that we won't get the answers to
some things ever, but there's a very realistic expectation for
quite a bit more here. Blood and fire in particular,
but also just Duncan Egg and the Song of Ice and Fire.
Given how many times they lore has been mentioned to date in
either of those, you would think that more is to come, especially
given the plot lines like the Sept and Searcy and like you
said, Arianne and more maybe who knows what else, like you could
go name many more possibilities. So yeah, there's there's a lot
of possible more and don't you agree, Nina, there's the, I
think there's a reason for optimism there. 1000% I mean, I
mentioned the OR I hope I mentioned.
If I didn't, I'm sorry I'd. Go through with George RR Martin
and Dan Jones where he was talking about the George RR
Martin was talking about the future of fire and blood, you
know, Volume 2 or Blood and Fire, whatever's going to call
it. And he specifically mentions he
he mentions Baylor by name. So clearly this is a character
that he's going to write more about.
Clearly this is the character he's excited to write more
about. And I think there's very natural
ways for Baylor to come up. You mention it yourself, there's
literally a character named after Baylor that we're probably
going to meet or at the very least hear about via Sam in Old
Town. There are characters in King's
Landing who are being directly influenced by and referencing
Baylor. Vis a vis the Faith, there's
reason to believe that Baylor will come in.
Danny's going to land in Westeros at some point.
He's going to have to interact with that legacy of her family.
Baylor's an important part of that.
We mentioned Sansa with putting aside her marriage to Tyrion,
potentially marrying Harry Harding.
Baylor could come up with that. And again, Duncan Egg, Duncan
Egg are not that far away timeline wise from Baylor,
certainly closer than we are in the main series.
So even though they're not necessarily interacting with
anyone. Who?
Knew Baylor, although actually I take that back because they
might, depending on how old Elena was when she died, maybe
they actually would be. And that would be great because
if Elena is there, he knew Baylor, he interacted with
Baylor, this is her brother. So it would be great to have
someone. Who actually knew Baylor?
I could give stories about Baylor and her opinion on Baylor
as he was. So I think there's a lot more to
hear about Baylor, and I can't wait to see it.
This is a character that George RR Martin clearly likes writing,
and I can't wait to see what he does in the future for it.
Well, she doesn't have a the Dunken Egg story where all it is
is Duncan Eggs sit at table and listen to stories about their
ancestors told by some of their other ancestors.
We'll take that. No actual adventure, no plot.
They just like hear a bunch of stories from those are the that
is the plot. Those other stories, I'll take
that. Several four or five stories
contained within a story framework.
Sure, Duncan Egg don't do anything but listen, but we are
entertained. I'll take that.
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Nina.
This was amazing. This series has been a super fun
deep dive. We've had so much to talk about.
It's been a lot of fun both behind the scenes discussing
these topics with you to to kind of shape them into the podcast
versions that we present here. And I'm just so glad we did it.
Thanks so much for all your great takes and all your time.
Well, thank you so much for having me.
I, I love doing this. I am, you know, I'm eternally
grateful to everyone who comes before me.
I don't do this in a vacuum. I love, you know, sharing my
thoughts with with you all. That's super fun to me.
But also, you know, I'm a creature of influence.
So, you know, I wouldn't be here without someone like the Laker,
Steven Atwell. He's he's a huge influence.
And if you think I talk a lot about historical Targaryens,
please go read his works because he's he was so great and he's
written especially about Baylor. I wouldn't be doing these
episodes. And you know, I also, I wouldn't
be here without my loving husband as my live studio
audience doing that too. So I have to.
Get a shout out, shout out to James.
That's right, that's right. And shout out to Steven as well.
RIP Steven. So we mentioned a few other
episodes here that are relevant, but I also want y'all to check
out good queenalley.tumblr.com where you can get more of Nina's
thoughts. The the latest post over there
is a question about what the plan with Theon and marriage
might have been in terms of Ned's plans.
Would he have married him to one of his daughters?
The. Short.
The short answer is no. The short answer is no.
Yeah, but but there is a little more to it than that, so.
There is, there is. That's the the short answer.
The long answer is my usual verbosity, but.
Yeah, so check that out and see for yourself.
We also mentioned our episodes on Eamon the Dragon Knight,
Deron the First, The Young Dragon, Deron the Second, which
we actually did before we did Deron the First.
But really, we have a lot of Targaryen episodes, so I'll just
leave the list at that because you could browse our our back
catalogue and you will find quite a lot on House Targaryen.
But not everybody yet. We gotta, we gotta do.
We gotta do everybody, that's the thing.
It's true. We have not crossed off every
list. You gotta catch them all.
The Targaryens are like Pokémon. Sometimes they do evolve.
Sometimes it's kind of terrifying.
Sometimes it's a little cute. So well, but well, yeah, we're.
Working on it. We're working on it.
Thanks to everyone who supports us on Patreon and Spotify.
We really appreciate the paid subscribers that enables us to
do this as frequently as we do. If not for y'all, we would do it
a lot less often. We would have to have, you know,
spending our time doing like regular job stuff.
And so we're very grateful that we can focus on this.
Thanks to Joey Townsend for the original music that we use at
the beginning and Jesse Koval for the the Redon version, his
cool version at the end. Thanks to Michael Klarfeld for
the maps behind us. Extra special shout out to
Michael, who at this time in real life is only about 48 hours
from being here in Atlanta. His involved his first trip to
the US. We're going to show him a good
time and hang out and do sorts all sorts of fun American
activities. USA.
That's right. You could have also.
You had a live studio audience. That's true, we're just a little
shirt on there. But no, he won't be our live
studio audience for our live stream on Sunday.
That's true. You know what?
That's true. I take that back.
Let's thank those of you with titles on our Patreon supporters
page by reading out those names. Our Hand of the King is a base
born man, Jack, literally just a drunken Spearman.
Gods help us, Lord Jim the Fortuitous of the Wars and
Politics of Ice and Fire Blog is our Warden of the West.
Kabeth the Unfrozen is Lord of the Bricks and Castle Crimson
Light, Defender of the Old Gods and Warden of the North.
Pirate Queen Carrie is a storm of Secrets of the Sea Captain,
Queen of Depth Feeder, which has sent countless ships to the
bottom of the sea. Jenny the Just is captain of the
ghost ship Liberty, which vanished in the Shivering Sea
over a century ago but has recently been sighted near
Volantis. If the tales can be believed.
Nevada Pike is 4th of Frost, Frost Kraken, drowned in ice,
Commander of cats and krakens. Our small council includes Lord
Chris B of House Baelish. Always keep your foes confused.
Master of whisperers, drowned Dan, Lord of House Windsor, a
master of karate. Friendship for everyone and
ships. Lord Goodkill McGee is ruler of
castle over Yonder and master of laws and Grandmaester Scotty.
Our Lords and ladies in their castles include Lady Dyerliz of
Castle Nachi, the alpha patron, Gregor the Toasty, Lord of the
Breadford, the Bastard of the Wolfswood, first Forester of the
Old Gods, sworn to house ironware wood.
Listen for the silence. Lady Maura of how Stark Arch
mistress of apothecaries and woods which her castle features.
Where would doors with painted moons?
Elena Snow is the Twilight star bastard, daughter of Dane, wife
of the Trickster and Lady of Castle Rivia.
Amanda Pink Wolf is lady and ruler of Castle Whitefast.
The ice emboldens Lord Benjin of House Hornwood.
Lady Rebecca Stark of Castle Aurora is wielder of a weirwood
bow with Valyrian steel tipped arrows and friend of Short
Round. The direwolf Aurelian Mattheus
Rhesus is Lord of House Aurelian, ruler of Domus
Aurelianus and the Valley of Tennessee, wielder of Soul
Invictus, which might be Valyrian steel, and keeper of
the largest collection of books outside the Citadel.
We restore the world. Lord Derry in the Daring is
wielder of the Valyrian steel sword Wisdom, Lord of House
Hollingworth and the Holly Hold in Dorn Power in Knowledge Gabe
the Jade Blade, whose foes are skewered and grilled.
Lady Maria of House High Tree, Lady of Castle Fair Oak on the
Crooked Lake Sigil is a long Grapevine with dark green leaves
and purple grapes winding around a greystone pillar on a white
field bordered by gold. Ever Watchful and Lord Abelard
of House Hearkenen, the Queen's High Council.
Grand Archmaester Rennie, whose rod and ring and mask are quartz
Crystal, wielder of the Valyrian steel pen, fire and ink.
Lady Wolfburg, Mistress of the Eastern Rivers, gatekeeper of
the Northern Skies, daughter of the Silver Sea, and Master of
Coin Devorah Lynn Blackwood, maker of the Frozen Fury muscle
bomb, eucalyptus and mint leaves washed with Dornish Peppers and
sealed by fire ants. Master of Laws, Lady Jane of
Driftmark, Guardian of Dragonstone.
The circling flame burns Master of Ships, Lady Sonia of Sun
Spear, Keeper of the Martel Menagerie, Master of Castle
Tormira, Topanga, Tame and Keep Well, Master of Whisperers.
Our Kingsguard includes Sir Dean the White Knight of the Black
Star, Sir Bateman The Dark Knight, Lady Annie, Bringer of
Winter's Warning, watcher in the Weirwood and bearer of Wrist
wolves, Lord Jonathan of House Tanner, Lord Ray Deto of House
Avocado, Protector of the Royal Kitchens, Green in the morning,
dark by evening, Lady Katy Cat Herder of Toebean Terrace and
Royal feline Advisor. Our Queens guard is led by Lord
Captain Commander Hema Hellman, the Cell Sword Sentinel, James
the Green, Lord of the Meadows, Keeper of the Trial of Grasses,
Archmaester Vena, whose ring, rod and mask are made of steel,
not pudding. Laura Boros, The Lady of
Infinity, Our Beard Guard includes Lord Commander George,
the Golden Lady, Rita of the Copper Maine, The Unbound Dance,
The Fervor, Bloody Men, Blackwood, Big Brian Blackwood
and Davin Mack. Night of the Reeds, The Bog
Nights. Last but not least is Lord
Commander Richard the Liger, Heart wielder of Barry's Ankle
Breaker, a flail with blue and silver Valyrian steel spikes.
Motto Go Blue. Backed by Sir Kobe of how
Stonesmith returns. Words are wind, deeds are stone.
Legitimate grandson of the Bastard of Runestone and 1st
Steward Zach of House Wild Lord, Shredder of the Spiral, wielder
of the Valyrian steel axe Grail. So until next time everybody,
thank you for watching, thanks for listening, thanks for
subscribing, thanks for supporting and for discussing A
Song of Ice and Fire with your friends and Valar.
Reread us.