They came to die for the Dragon Queen, every last man of them.
But frankly, the first part was the important bit.
Whether it was for Rainiera, Lord Cregan Stark, their actual
commander, Lord Roderick Dustin, the Winter Wolves wanted to die
in battle for the Dragon Queen was a bonus.
As long as it was a good death, as long as it was a good fight,
that's what mattered. A memorable fall, one that folk
of all walks of society would speak of for generations.
That was the goal, and well, it seems they achieved it.
Folk on a battlefield want glory and acclaim and regard and
respect, but they also want to live, to survive, to talk about
it afterwards, to enjoy the benefits of all those things.
But not these guys. Their goal was to be in death as
they were in life. Wolves howling pack, not merely
unafraid of death, but seeking it.
They were hunting not foes, but a good death against foes.
It's not quite the same, is it? They chose to die in battle
rather than to winter or aging altogether.
Very common ways to go when you live in the north.
Those aren't ways to be memorialized in song though.
Dying that way. But if you live a life filled
with bravery, that's the type of death you want.
A type of death worthy of the North.
These are not Knights. These are wolves.
These are the terror of the North.
These are men who have seen everything when it comes to
blood and battle and are ready for one last go.
Their battles, their history, their traditions, the cultural
touchstones that led to their existence and their end.
And of course, some real world parallels.
The Winter Wolves. All that and more on this
episode of History of Westeros Podcast.
Hello and welcome back everybody.
It's another Sunday at 3:00 Eastern.
That is when we go live with most episodes of History of
Westeros Podcast. The exception is during TV
season such as House of the Dragon Season 3 coming up here.
Not too far this episode partly inspired by that, but we are
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any of our places that you can find us on social media, which
is pretty much everywhere. Facebook, Blue Sky, you name it,
we're probably there. I'll name a few episodes at the
end of this one that relate to this one in case you want to
stay immersed. That's often the case.
That's how I roll. Often when I'm listening to
something do a deep dive in history or something, some
fandom, I want to stick with that for a while.
Let's start with a little trivia question, shall we?
What was the bloodiest land? Battle of the Dance of the
Dragons answer at the end. A clue that you probably didn't
need is that it does involve the Winter Wolves.
Yes indeed. Let's have our section headers
for today. Here's our topics, our subtopics
as it were, set up. Origin story.
Dark wings, Dark words. Wolves in the Riverlands.
The fish feed. Dances with Wolves, Drunk on
Blood and Battle, AKA How to be a Wolf without skin changing,
The Battle of Tumbleton, The Last Charge, the two Betrayers
and Aftermath, and then Outro. That's right, a reminder too
before we get into the meat of the material.
The wolf meat, as it were. The Hugo voting for 2026 World
Con is open. If you're already AWSF Society
member or World Con member or want to sign up now, do it.
The Hugo packet contains a lot of stuff.
It's so valuable. You get every book that's
nominated, every game code for games that are nominated.
You get so much the the value alone is enormous just in terms
of cost benefit. But you can also vote for us
best related work. Our Ragnarok versus the Long
Night episode is up for that category.
Best related work. And well, there's a little bit
of overlap with this episode because that episode obviously
covers a lot of Norse influence, Viking Age influence on A Song
of Ice and Fire parallels there, which of course are found in a
lot of fantasy, not just George RR Martin.
It's one of the most popular miss cycles to borrow from.
There is some overlap here, so we will be able to touch on that
a little bit. I recall, by the way, from when
Fire and Blood came out, obviously the Winter Wolves were
mentioned in World of Iceland Fire, but very little.
There's a lot more exploration of them in Fire and Blood.
There's a lot more expansion of their role in the Dance of the
Dragons and their full story. I remember just one of the IT
was a big reaction in 2018 when Fire and Blood came out.
A lot of the Facebook groups and forums that I was in and still
am in really reacted to the Winter Wolves and Roddy the
Ruin. One of the first things that
really stood out. I, I have very clear memories of
that. It's very fun.
Even though the book was obviously very focused on
Targaryen stuff, it's really nice to have some cool Northern
stuff, and that's what we're doing today.
As events were setting up the Dance of the Dragons in the
South, the North was dealing with issues of their own, as
they often are. Sometimes these issues are not
recorded in the annals of the South.
The Lord Craig and Stark hadn't been lured very long at this
point, but he did have to fight to reclaim his inheritance from
his region uncle who ruled when he was underage and didn't
really hand the reins over when the time came.
And now on the heels of that winter, the old standard thing
that the North has to deal with. But this time it looked like it
was going to be a really bad winter.
And it did turn out to be a really bad winter.
So five years or so, in fact, it turned out to be.
And they had a sense it would be that long because it was a
really long spring before that. And that's generally how these
things work. It may have brought some
superstitious fear as well. But the bottom line was the
North couldn't move as quickly as they would have wanted to to
send troops S with the exception of our subjects today.
But let's get into where these people came from.
The Winter Wolves. This section called origin
story. You'll probably remember the
line. There are old cell swords and
bold cell swords, but no old bold cell swords.
It's not that different for other warriors in a warlike
world. But what happens when an old
cell sword decides it's time to die, decides it's time to go out
in battle? That may not be how a cell sword
really behaves, but you get the point, because that's what these
winter wolves were about. And the name is simple, right?
Winter wolves. It's not hard to understand why
they call themselves that. They are wolves.
They're like a pack. They howl, they're from the
north. It's the great symbol of how
Stark, which is the rulers of the North and have been for
thousands of years. The unquestioned top dog.
Top dog, Get it? The the wolf does have a certain
sort of supremacy in the animal Kingdom, especially in the
North. Even more so dire wolves, but I
digress. The winter wolves embody that
fierceness with the pack mentality.
They go as a group, they work as a group.
They're individually quite fierce and dangerous but as a as
a group, well, it's even far more dangerous.
They're scary before you even encounter them because of the
sounds they make. And in this case, because we're
talking about real people, these people aren't afraid of dying.
And that's already something Northern warriors kind of have a
reputation of. But this is actually true in
this case. That's a, that's a reputation of
being fearless versus no, these guys actually want to die.
And I don't mean they want to kill themselves.
No, I mean they have a specific means chosen and it's to die in
battle. And it's sincere.
It's as sincere as you can get. And they had a unique purpose
too. I mean, if you're making a
suicidal charge, a semi suicidal charge will say it's
increasingly effective the more men you add to it.
Because just the sheer weight of numbers really tells.
And quantity can always matter. But when you have quantity and
quality and the quality being these men have the quality of
willing to throw their lives away to make a song or a story,
then that's scary. That's scarier than wolves
howling. But they do that too.
So this was a nickname given to this group of men.
But and they're a unique group because of their place in
history. But what makes them unique is
the circumstances that allowed them to be what they were.
Because normally old man in the North, well, there's kind of a
standard tradition. There isn't usually some big
civil war that encompasses the entire continent to participate
in. That's not usually an option.
Generations of Northerners, usually they just, well, they
choose to go out hunting, right? It's, it's like you stand up to
a foe that you can't beat. Winter itself.
Well, in this case, a human foe did emerge.
Southerners, they love to fight Southerners.
They're not other Northerners. It's a little easier thing to go
up against in their minds, right?
No individuals dying in the snow this time.
The Old gods actually gave them a chance to die in battle,
truly, rather than the the poetic northern tradition of
going out hunting. So winter drove the wolves
South. It's kind of like they're a
flock headed South for the winter, but these don't intend
to return. They did go South for winter,
but they're not flying back north.
And this belief system, sure. Warrior culture, that's all
throughout Westeros, That part's not without prior understanding.
You all kind of get that. But the North is unique in terms
of how it faces winter and the inevitability of such things.
And when your family maybe doesn't have to get by, have
enough food to get by, you got to make tough decisions.
Here's a conversation about this very thought topic between none
other than Alice Karstark and Jon Snow.
This winter will be hard. Few of the old people will
survive it, and many children will perish as well.
It was a tale that any Northman knew well.
My father's grandmother was a Flint of the mountains on his
mother's side. John told her.
The first Flints they call themselves.
They say the other Flints are the blood of younger sons who
had to leave the mountains to find food and land and wives.
It has always been a harsh life up there.
When the snows fall and food grows scarce, their young men
must travel to the winter town or take service at 1 Castle or
the other. The old men gather up what
strength remains to them and announce that they are going
hunting. Some are found come spring, more
are never seen again. It is much the same at carhold.
The exception is, like I said, when there's a war, there's
something actually to go out and do.
But in the North, when is there a war in the middle of winter?
That's pretty rare, right? They, the North isn't stupid
like that. They've been through a lot of
winters. They know maybe we should save
the fighting for when it's nicer outside, you know, when we're
not, we actually have the food for all this.
It's just very foolish to go do that.
And they've had, and it's foolish as human beings can be,
especially when it comes to violence.
They've had thousands of years to learn this.
And it's some of it, for the most part, it's set.
So some take the black, right? But that's less true of older
men. Like if you're going to take the
black, you're probably done it by the time you've got to that
age. There's obviously exceptions.
You know, GR Mormont took the black as an as an older man, but
he's a little different. He's from the nobility, the high
nobility. It's not quite the same game,
but still there are always exceptions.
Now, the fiercer the winter, the more likely this is to happen.
The Flints are a good example. And George made this
conversation well constructed because he shows that in the
worst parts of the north, of the most, the ones that are hit the
hardest by winter, this phenomenon is most likely to
occur, or it is the most. It happens most often in places
like this, in the high places like the places where the flints
live, it's extremely bad. So you'd think the mountain
clans, the hill tribes of the North, are those who deal with
this the most, who most often face this grim reality of if I
remove my mouth from my family's list of things that need to be
taken care of, then they may all survive.
If I'm in the mix, needing to eat food throughout this whole
winter, which may last a year or two, they're not all going to
make it. So they take themselves out of
the equation, leaving their share of years of food for
somebody else. Now that tells us something,
right? Because, well, the seasons
haven't always been screwy, which means maybe the ancient,
ancient First Men didn't have to deal with this.
Sure, they're nor their winners would have been bad, but they
would have lasted three to four months.
Who's committing suicide over a three to four month period of
starvation? I mean, it might happen.
It's probably has happened. It definitely has happened in
the real world, but it's a way different thing than years of
winter, right? Like you can usually can stir up
food for a few months. If not then the north would
never have lasted as a Kingdom at all, let alone being able to
survive years like this. So I think that this is a
tradition that likely developed after the seasons became screw,
which is of course still a very very long time ago.
But it does imply that it's not as old as, say, perhaps the dawn
age, the pre, the time before the others came for the first
time, right? Whatever caused the long night
before that the seasons were normal, I suppose.
So we're talking about houses like Nori and Wall the one and
then Flint, of course. And I like how this conversation
also shows that some of these other lesser or newer Flint
branches came because of this tradition, not because the older
men, but because the older men like it's too late for them to
start families and found new dynasties.
But the younger men that well that a few of them were
extremely successful. We're able to start completely
new dynasties that lasted with castles and everything.
It's also a little strange to consider that people willingly
go out to die in winter and leave their body there.
Right? Isn't that giving bodies to the
others? I I don't think the free folk
would do this, for example. I don't think the free folk do
this whole I'll go out hunting kind of thing.
I think they probably handle it differently.
They know better and that tradition has been more held
that also it tells me this also connects to that whole point
about the Others in the Long Night being when the seasons got
thrown off. Well if people weren't doing
that 100 tradition before, it makes sense that they would have
started afterwards. Once a once the seasons get
screwy, but maybe not until after the Others have been gone
for a long time. Because if you're just like
going out there to die in winter, well, you're giving a
body to the Others. Like that doesn't necessarily
fit right? We know you're supposed to be
burning bodies to your Mormont to come back to him.
Beginning of the Game of Thrones.
They bring those bodies back, right?
Jon Snow and Sam and they O Thor and Jafer flowers, the ones that
rise at night. GR Mormons is how we should have
burned those bodies. We should have.
We used to know. We should have remembered.
Come on. The North should have
remembered. But yeah, So these things, it's
interesting to wonder how these traditions began and how they
evolved and what pressures in different directions, whether
the others, the superstitious fear there, or whether that was
a lesser consideration to the just the very most fundamental
starvation versus not starvation.
You might not even be thinking about the other stuff.
When it comes down to those very basic things, which frankly
we've seen in play when the Nights Watch was starving at
Crasters, the evil in those evil men really peaked.
There's an ancient Northern song called Wolves in the Hills, for
example. It's song about men living in
those higher places, wolves in the hills, right?
This is a very common association that could think of
them that way. I like that.
These are the kind of men we're Speaking of.
So the actual winter wolves here, this particular group of
2000 men was led by Lord Roderick Dustin.
We don't know much about him, but he was a grizzled veteran of
many battles probably in the 60's.
The kind of men that men who are warriors like to follow a
warriors kind of guy, you know, sort of man that men like to
follow. Warriors like to follow someone
they could trust, someone they know is definitely going to be
fearless and nothing's going to rattle him, that kind of thing.
It's interesting to try to think about his history, but it's even
for us who try to use every little scrap of imagination and
reading between the lines, it's, it's difficult for me to come up
with anything for him because his he would have been born
around the year 70. Let's say he's 60 years old. 70
is 20 years roughly into Jeharis's reign.
Jeharis's reign was pretty darn peaceful.
Lots of things happened. There was scandals, there was
conflict, but not much is said about the North during Jeharis's
reign. Obviously there's the Queen's
crown and Alison going up there, but that was before Roderick was
born and then afterwards. So there must have been battles,
probably between Northern houses, maybe against the
Ironborn. I'm not sure that in Baratin you
do a lot of fighting against the Free Folk, but I wouldn't be
surprised if Frederick Justin travelled to go to to get into
some fights. Maybe he fought against some
Skagosi, who knows. There's no famous obvious
battles he would have been in though.
He might have gone overseas, really have no idea.
But there were clearly some things because this guy's
reputation preceded him. He probably had followers.
He probably had guys that had been with him since they were
all young, like when Lord Dustin, maybe before he was
Lord, he was the heir to Burrowton or something like that
in his 20s. I'm just completely making this
up. He would have had some sworn
Shields. Some of those guys are still
with him 40 years later or 30 years later.
They've been following him forever and he's ready to go.
They're ready to go with him, right?
It makes it. It's pretty fitting.
They don't want to die the winter.
They don't want to die the old age.
Like really a huge civil war, something we can actually make
our name in. Something that even the South
will sing songs about us, which maybe they don't care about, but
it's nice they want the song sung about them here in the
North. But if they're sung in the South
also, all the better, right? And we know these are not.
This is not a complete mixed force of Northerners.
It's easy to get mixed up with TV show events here.
Jace flew to White Harbor first, then Winterfell, and the
Manderleys immediately got their stuff together and sent ships to
King's Landing. So the White Harbor men were not
with the Winter Wolves. These aren't.
This isn't a mixed force of including some Manderleys or
even some of their vassal houses.
No, those men went with the Manderleys.
This is most likely men from around Barrowton.
Rizwell's probably. Certainly Flint's.
And men of the Barrow lands right the southern N, nearer to
the Neck than the Wall. So men of the Wolves would for
sure less likely to contain Glovers and umbers and men from
car hold, but probably some. But these would have been men
who already knew Lord Roderick or were already in Barrowton.
Maybe they already took service with him.
Because from all we understand, the Winter Wolves took off
quickly. They rode soon after Jayce
arrived in the North, you know, soon as far as these things go,
we're talking about weeks, but not months or certainly not a
year where Kregan eventually sent a much larger force.
But these guys got going right away.
So it's there's not enough time for people to have ridden down
from Car Hold or from Last Hearth or even from places like
Bear Island or Deepwood Mott. So I think these were guys who
were just ready to go and they were whoever was there when, and
it was a substantial force of 2000.
And especially given what they were after, they would fall with
him or die and die in the attempt.
That's, again, that's the whole point.
This is it's kind of funny to say these things like that.
Tony Sled sends the Super chat, says Flints are scarier than
Bolton's, in my opinion. Yeah, they kind of are.
I mean, on a battlefield, definitely, maybe in a locked
room. I'm I'm more scared of a Bolton.
Maybe inside the castle. I'm more scared of Bolton's
outside, I'm more scared of flints.
But I get what you mean. They are fearsome in battle.
And there's probably many flints in the winter wolves flints from
various types of flints too, because there's like three of
them, three different Flint castles.
So yeah, very, very true. And and this Tony sled is sends
this from Canada and they know a few things about the north and
some wolves, right? Dark wings, dark words.
In this case, the dark wings and dark words were a good thing.
And we're not talking about a Raven, we're talking about
Vermax bringing Jace. His relationship with Lord
Kragen and the existing Northman Vow to Raniero was sufficient to
get them committed, right? He men immediately sailed from
White Harbor and the Winter Wolves rode out from Barreton.
I would assume the White Harbor men got to King's Landing well
before the Winter Wolves got to the Riverlands, because one's
sailing and one's riding, and because the White Harbor men had
a head start. But they were eager.
The Winter Wolves were eager to get going.
They were eager to make their mark, and they, like I said,
probably got going very quickly. You would have to assume Lord
Roderick had his succession in order.
He's the Lord of Barrett, and you can't just take off and die
and just ignore everything else. He most likely had, well, he had
a son or a brother or somebody that was in line to inherit and
that was all very clear. Like everybody knew he wasn't
coming back. This wasn't some tongue in
cheek, like we're not going to tell people what's really
happening here. No, they all knew he was going
and not coming back. I don't think there was any
doubt there. I mean, I am editorializing here
because I don't know that for a fact, but I'm very confident in
this read. He would have taking care of all
that business. You know, maybe his he may have
already been a widower. If he had a if he had a wife, he
would have said farewell. All that business, you know,
kissed his grandchildren. Who knows.
But yeah, a couple other houses that I didn't mention.
I guess maybe the, the Sirwin's might have been there, maybe
even some older Starks, you know, like a cousin Stark, older
guy Hornwoods. But in in any case, a lot of but
a lot of men that are not are they're not noble.
They're just these are just warriors.
They're not they're not born into some noble house.
They're not noble at all. That's what the bulk of them
would be. But it is curious and fun to to
point out where they may have come from originally.
So yeah, 2000 of them riding shaggy northern horses armed
pretty well, but not with high end weaponry.
Because they're not coming back. They don't expect to come back.
So they want to leave the, the good sword.
You leave that with your, your son.
You leave that with someone who's going to have a whole life
to fight with that thing. Because decent chance is not
coming back, right? His body's probably not coming
back. Neither is his stuff.
There is some exceptions, which we'll get to because there's
some note of these warriors wanted to also maybe get a
little something, something to send home, a little wealth,
little something to get send back to their families who are
about to deal with winter. But they weren't going to take
the good stuff away. That's the whole point.
They're trying to keep their family unburdened.
So just going to take the clothes on their back, maybe an
axe, you know, a shield. That's about it.
Their horse. Yeah.
They marched through the Neck, along the Kings Road and met
with the phrase Wolves in the Riverlands.
So the war was well underway. The River Men and Westerman were
shredding each other under a variety of leaders.
Prince Amond and Kristen Cole went for Harrenhal and when they
did, King's Landing fell behind them and the Winter Wolves were
headed South. While all that was happening,
the outlook was good for Team Black, at least from where the
Winter Wolves were standing. Their homes were at risk back in
the North, though, right? So it's it's like, yeah, we were
in a good military situation potentially, but we don't care
about the long term. We just want to.
We're here to die there. As Corin Halfpan might say or
did say, our lives are coined to be spent for the realm.
In their case, probably more to be spent for their families or
for the north, that realm, not the whole realm.
Here's another line. This is from the World of Ice
and Fire. We had John and Alice Karstark
discuss this. But I want to hear, I want you
all to hear how the maesters put it down to Penn.
It's the old man of the North. Here we go, quote.
The snows were already deep beyond the Neck, the cold winds
rising in keeps and castles and humble villages throughout the
North. The great and small alike prayed
to their carved wooden God trees that this winter might be short.
Those with fewer mouths to feed fared better in the dark days.
So it had long been the custom in the North for old men,
younger sons, the unwed, the childless, the homeless and the
hopeless to leave hearth and home when the first snows fell
so that their kin might live to see another spring.
Victory was secondary to the men of these winter armies.
They marched for glory, adventure, plunder, and most of
all, a worthy end. There's something very accepting
about that fate. I mean, we're all, we all are
going to die someday. So there's something kind of
there's a strength in that of choosing the manner of your exit
that I think is respectable. I mean, we don't have to respect
war. We don't have to respect
violence, but we can respect that sort of courage that you
choose to go and and actually do.
But it's neat and ironic that they say they're going out
hunting in normal circumstances, but in these circumstances,
there is actually someone to go hunt.
And it's wolves do go hunting, right?
Men go hunting and wolves go hunting.
In fact, men and wolves often go hunting the same things.
That's something that we'll get into a little later, and we talk
about how people can get into this mindset.
It relates to hunting and hunting the same things Wolves
could go after deer, they go after sheep.
So do people that we eat similar things right when it comes to
meat anyway. So it's neat to think also about
Roose Bolton hunting wolves as a symbol of him turning on the
Starks late in The Clash of Kings and Aria's POV.
Meanwhile, the wolves loose in the Riverlands at that time were
under the leadership of a direwolf, Nymeria, who herself
is a symbol of leadership and and wandering and finding a home
for people who were displaced. Now here is a more direct quote
also from I believe this one. This one's from Fire and Blood
and we have a description of the men specifically right here
quote. At their head rode the Lord of
Barrowton, Roderick Dustin, a warrior so old and hoary men
called him Roddy the Ruin. His host was made-up of grizzled
Gray beards and old male and ragged skins.
Every man a seasoned warrior, every man a horse.
They called themselves the Winter Wolves.
We have come to die for the Dragon Queen.
Lord Roderick announced at the twins when Lady Sabbath of Frey
rode out to greet them. Man, every man was a horse.
I was. Santa, they're all, they're all
centaurs. Every single the winter horses,
they should be. Yeah.
That's the winter centaurs, you know?
Yeah, so these are different phrase.
When you think of the phrase, it's really easy to think of
Lord Walder and treachery and the Red Wedding and all that.
But these phrase fought with the winter wolves.
These phrase were loyal. Well, they were a little
ambitious, especially Lady Sabatha, but Lord Forest rode to
battle with them. And this again, don't think of
the TV show here. They weren't on horses in in the
TV show. And Forest Frey, they didn't
really cast a guy that looks like a fighter.
I'm not sure if he's going to go fight with them or not.
Maybe I'll be wrong. But anyway.
Game Forest. Neither of them look like real,
you know. But they're going to be going
out in the field, yeah. No, no, I was honestly one of
the greater disappointments to me, but we'll see.
Yeah, we'll see what they do with that anyway, but I would
assume that the phrase treated them pretty well.
We're out to go to war together. Like it is very standard
operating procedure in Westeros and pretty much anywhere.
If you're going to go ride off to war with somebody, you have a
meal together, you eat together, you're about to shed blood
together, you're going to fight side by side.
They're both very much bought into team Black.
They're for the queen. These guys just came to announce
they're going to die for the queen.
And, and the phrase phrase, no, the Northerners, they're not
fools. They're not uneducated about who
these guys are. Rodney the ruin my I, I said
maybe he's 60, but he might have been older.
There's no way they haven't heard of this guy, especially
given the geography here. The Barrelton is in the southern
part of the north and the Twins are in the northern part of the
Riverlands. Only the neck separates them.
It's just unfathomable to me that that they haven't heard of
this guy and they know why he's there too.
Even though they're not northerners, they know he I
mean, he, if they didn't, he said it out loud.
We've come to die for the Dragon Queen.
So yeah, give them a nice meal, have one final hurrah, you know,
have let the drink flow. This isn't a Red Wedding
situation. This is legitimate.
This is sincere. This isn't stinginess.
Especially cause, yeah, like I said, Lord Forest is about to go
fight with them. He's riding out with 200
Knights, 600 footmen. So that's 2000 Winter Wolves
plus 200 Knights from House Frey, 600 more footmen.
So that's 2800 men on the way. They meet up with Red Rob
Rivers, the Bowman of Raven Tree, 300 Archers.
Red Rob considered the best Archer in Westeros at the time.
And the second best was was still back with Benjicop
Blackwood because, well, he pops up later, Lord or not Lord, but
Billy Burley. So yeah, that Raven Tree big
history of of archery there anyway, so great combination
here. They're all going hunting.
They're all going hunting greens, right?
So we've got this nice combined force of winter wolves, frays
and Archers and, well, they wouldn't have to wait long to
get that taste. Several tastes of battle and the
taste of fish. The fish feed Lord Leopard was
not supposed to be here today. He hadn't been the top of the
chain of command, he had been like third at best.
But after the deaths of Lord Jason Lannister and Sir Adrian
Tarbeck he was next, even though he himself had been badly
wounded and was carried about in a litter.
Not to mention he was already very old, maybe the age of
writing the ruin, but not nearly in the same kind of fighting
shape and not wanting to die. It's actually pretty impressive,
but it is a guy up against a lot without much support.
So he headed for Harrenhal with his army, the army that was
again led by Lord Jason Lannister at first before Lord
Jason was killed by Peyton Longleaf, the lion Slayer.
And he finds this army of roughly 3100 Winter Wolves, Red
Rob and phrase in his way. And he's like, all right, well,
I don't want to. What am I going to do?
Maybe we'll maybe we'll fight them.
So they start to get into fighting order and build a camp,
a fortified camp. And then they were uh oh, behind
us, uh oh, another army's coming.
There's Lord Bigglestone, one of the funniest name Lords, Lord
Chambers and Lord Perrin. These are more minor river Lords
that come up with a smaller host.
But then they have Garibald Gray, who is a notable knight,
and House Charlton and the aforementioned Benjicott
Blackwood. So Raven Tree sent out two
different forces, one to support the Winter Wolves and the Frays,
one to support this army. And that was the bigger army,
the one to support here. So they have Lord Lefferts
Westerman kind of trapped. Leffert is worried.
He's like, well, if I try to go this way, the northern group
will hit me in the back. If I try to go this way, the
southern group will hit me in the back.
So he's not really sure what to do.
It's a very desperate situation. So he tries to send off some
Ravens, tries to get help, nothing works.
It's interesting. I'm going to make a few
comparisons here throughout the episode of the Dragons to the
winter wolves because the Dragons to me, the winter wolves
are more like the Dragons than any other humans because they're
the most just willing to die to go all the way to like once I'm
committed, I'm committed. I don't care if I live or die.
I'm just I'm about to fight. I'm not about the after, you
know, there's no short, there's no long term thinking here at
all. The Dragons are like that.
When a dragon fights another dragon, unless there's a big
size disparity, the end result usually is both of them die, or
one of them is horribly wounded and the other one dies.
That's pretty much the only result we ever see.
So Leffert wanted a dragon. He wanted Veigar to come help
him. You know what a huge deal that
would be? Meanwhile, the 2 northern hosts,
the black hosts were like, yeah, well we don't want Veigar to
come. We may have prevented the scouts
from finding out that Vergar from alerting Eamond and Vergar
and Kristen Cole what's going on here, but we can't be sure.
So normally they might have just waited it out and just let let
the let the left for desperation play and make them do something
desperate and then react. But that's just not how it went
for a couple reasons. One, there was a legitimate fear
of a dragon showing up and throwing off the odds.
But the winter wolves also were just you're just ready to go
sitting around waiting. That's not what they're about.
Quote Best make an end to these lions before the Dragons come.
Said Roddy. The Ruin, the bloodiest land
battle of the Dance of the Dragons, began the next day with
the rising of the sun. In the annals of the Citadel it
is known as the Battle by the Lakeshore, but to those men who
lived to tell of it, it was always the fish feed.
Attacked from three sides, the western men were driven back
foot by foot into the waters of the God's Eye.
Hundreds died there, cut down whilst fighting in the reeds.
Hundreds more drowned as they tried to flee.
The Winter Wolves went first as the other sides closed in, very
likely blowing they're war horns or perhaps just the one war horn
from Roddy the Ruin himself. But there was definitely
howling. We know that they do that.
They howl like wolves. They it's their name.
They surely had some stark battle standards.
It's just part of their preparation, part of getting
fired up for battle. It it's pretty much what they
were looking for. I mean, it's the like, like the
quote said, it was the bloodiest land battle of the dance.
It was not about taking a castle or a city or anything of direct
strategic value, it was about killing as many enemy soldiers
as possible from to in order to prevent them from doing the
aforementioned participation in direct strategic value
operations. So yeah, the Winter Wolves
aren't built for a siege. They don't really want easy
battles or ones that they had no hope in.
They wanted a good fight and and this is what that was.
This is what they came for. Many winter wolves made their
final charge or charges and the list of the dead is really
something here. It really drives the point home.
Quote. By nightfall 2000 men were dead,
amongst them many notables including Lord Frey, Lord
Lefford, Lord Bigglestone, Lord Charlton, Lord Swift, Lord
Raine, Sir Clarence Crakehall and Sir Emery Hill.
The Bastard of Lannisport. The Lannister host was shattered
and slaughtered, but at such cost that young Ben Blackwood,
the boy Lord of Raven Tree, wept when he saw the heaps of the
dead. The most grievous losses were
suffered by the Northmen, for the Winter Wolves had begged the
honor of leading the attack and had charged five times into the
ranks of Lannister Spears. Thirds of the men who had ridden
S with Lord Dustin were dead or wounded, Lord Dustin himself.
Did not fall and he almost certainly leads from the front.
So impressive. This is a, you know, maybe
someone in the mold of Sir Barristan in terms of his
competence at such a high age. But in terms of his style of
battle, I imagine it's very different.
This is a lot more, a lot Wilder, a lot more intimidating
in terms of his presentation. Perhaps not nearly as well
trained, you know, maybe not trained in nightly type combat
like Barristan was and raised in a different place, but still
effective for different reasons. Still effective, extremely
effective at such a high age. Really something now.
Scars are something to brag of. It says he got scars in this
battle. Roddy did more because surely
they weren't his first. But scars are something to brag
of. Of course you got to be alive to
brag about them. But even though a lot of the
Winter wolves died here, there were still plenty left and they
would have toasted the fallen and said hey, we'll be joining
you soon and told the stories of what happened there.
You know who they fought and and what stuff they took and the
stories of other men they saw fall who weren't there to tell
their own stories. So this wouldn't be their end.
Of course, despite the high casualties, a lot of them would
heal up and many of them would be maybe of that Sir Humphrey
Harding attitude. Maybe something even more severe
or exceptional than that where like, yeah, my leg's broken, but
I can ride a horse. I'm going these guy.
I mean, they came to die. Why would a a wound if you can
physically sit your horse and you came S to die?
I think you're getting back on that horse.
I mean, that's if you were sincerely here to die, you're
not going to let that slow you down.
Now, there might be a few that just literally can't get on
their horses though. Like they really can't even lift
their sword if they're in that state.
They might be on their way out anyway.
They might die of their wounds, but some few might survive that.
And that's important because we're looking throughout this
episode to see if any of these guys survived.
And I'm not sure they did. But if they did, if some few
did, it would be because of things like this where they were
just actually disabled. Cool you'd lost your arm, your
sword arm and it's one thing to go in battle with one arm.
We we're going to see that. In fact, we see it plenty of
times. But I mean maybe maybe you lost
your left hand and your right arm like you really can't even
hold a weapon, you know like that's that's not great.
It's kind of unpleasant to think about, but these these things
happen right, not necessarily relevant to their afterlife.
That's kind of a interesting consideration here.
It's not something the North really discusses.
It's not part of northern valley.
Yes, you, you brave, you don't Kinslay, you observe guests,
right? There's lots of northern values,
but there isn't like a Valhalla, you know, like the the Ironborn
have that the drowned gods, watery halls, they want to be
remembered in the living world for what they did afterwards.
It's not about a reward in the afterlife.
The reward is the glory you leave for yourself and your
family and your culture. Well, the other northerners will
benefit from your brave stand, your brave fall.
You're representing that. Here's a fun line.
Fighting continued elsewhere in the realm as well, though these
clashes were smaller than the great battle by the God's Eye.
Once again, Winter Wolves got what they wanted.
Etcetera, right? That's this is the kind of glory
they were looking for. People are talking about it.
It's remembered as this great battle, bigger battle, biggest
battle, right? Can I say originally?
Aziz wrote in his notes. This was exactly what the WW
came for. And I was like White Walkers.
And I was like, well, they do want more bodies.
That's right. Yeah, it's one nice little thing
where they're like, others aren't getting these bodies,
They're all the way in the South.
Something horrible. It's gone horribly wrong.
Otherwise, you're going to raise some just.
Skeletons for the depths, you know, like, oh, that one's.
Definitely a winter wolf. Look at that beard.
Dances with Wolves ironically, they turned next to hunting the
kingmaker, the wolves and the Ravens from Raven Tree Hall and
the twins, What do you call them?
The the castles? I don't know.
What are you marching around 'cause they don't work as well
for this animal symbolism, darn it phrase.
And they all haunted this green army that had been in the
Riverlands that was mostly not made of Riverlanders.
So that was something that Kristen Cole's army had really
working against them is that they were in a not a foreign
realm. The Riverlands isn't that
different. You know, it's the culturally,
but they're not as familiar with the terrain, the geography.
They don't know like who where their friends are.
And of course, this was the site of the most perhaps unique
campaign or demoralization tactic in any Westerosi war,
which was the feasts of the dead left both in front and behind of
Kohl's March. Now, this was the idea of the
cell sword Black Trombo. So we're left to wonder what the
Winter Wolves thought of it. They're not here to to mess
around like this, but they might have gotten some amusement from
it. You know, they're setting up the
bodies of people they themselves killed to demoralize the enemy
and they got to hate Kristen Cole.
Although it's kind of ironic that Kristen Cole is hated so
much because he started this war, had a huge role in starting
this war, and but this is the reason the Winter Wolves have a
war to die in. Maybe they should be a little
thankful, huh? But no, they weren't.
They weren't particularly thankful.
Or they showed their thanks by, well, fighting him.
Yeah. Or tracking him, hunting him,
making him feel like the haunted.
So they really did go hunting in the depths of winter here.
Yeah. Hunting a a kingmaker and his
men. And they would have a lot of
experience with that. You know, these are guys who
lived in the wolf's wood near that.
These are guys who are hunting all their lives, hunting humans.
A little different, but not that different.
Kristen Coleman had a horrible time of it.
Seeing these feasts of the dead was indeed demoralizing in a
very creative, imaginative way. That's what they would have
rather not faced. And eventually they with their
inexperience and unfamiliar with the train, they found themselves
in a a valley and realized that they had become trapped.
The black armies have them cornered in that valley that
they couldn't get out of without fighting a much stronger,
fresher army. And here's what transpired.
Next quote calling for a peace. Banner, King Aegon's Hand wrote
out to treat with them. Three came down from the Ridge
to meet him. Chief amongst them was Sir
Garibald Gray in his dented plate and mail.
Pate of Longleaf was with him, the lion Slayer who had cut down
Jason Lannister together with Roddy the ruin bearing the scars
he had taken at the fish feed. If I strike my banners, do you
promise us our lives, Sir? Kristen asked the three of them.
I made my promise to the. Dead, Sir, Garibald replied.
I told them I would build a Sept.
For them out of traders bones, I don't have near enough bones
yet. So, Sir, Kristen answered.
If there is to be battle here, many of your own will die as
well. The Northman, Roderick Dustin
laughed at these words, saying that's why we come.
Winners here, time for us to go. Kristen is negotiating from
position of weakness. And they knew it.
And he knew it. Not only is his army in horrible
shape, these men absolutely hate him.
Yeah, I said that whole thing about maybe the Winter Wolves
are actually like, yeah, actually, thanks for starting
this war because it gave us this chance to die.
But other than that, I mean, they just.
Everybody hates him. A very poor reason for switching
sides. This is how Kristen is perceived
by a lot of people pop personal reasons.
Whether it was romantic reasons or not, it still comes off very
poorly to put the whole realm in this state because of your
personal reasons. But his position was even weaker
than he realized. He he didn't have anything
negotiate from he he did in my opinion, say the things that
needed to be said to give himself a chance.
Maybe not him, but his men. He pointed out he's like, oh, I
can't appeal to your honor over my life because you don't care
about my life and you don't really care about my men.
So he brings up, well, some of your men will die if we fight,
So that's the one thing that might move them, right?
He's like, well, you don't want your own soldiers to die.
But no, he didn't realize what he was up against.
Even Ride of the Ruin, or especially Ride of the Ruin
looks at that as a plus. He's like, well, that's
literally why I'm here, man. You probably don't believe me,
but no, I'm here to die. But I'm not sure you're going to
be enough for that, Sir Kristen. In fact, no, truly, Kristen
couldn't have done anything here.
And as as much as the fish feed was the kind of fight the winter
wolves were looking for, this was something that needed to be
done. But it really wasn't high on the
list of what they rode S for. According to Fire and blood.
Here is what came next, quote Lord Roderick raised.
A war horn to his lips and sounded the charge, and the
Queen's men came screaming down the Ridge, led by the Winter
Wolves on their shaggy northern horses and the Knights on their
armored desterers. With Sir Kristin dead upon the
ground, the men who had followed him from Harrenhal lost heart.
They broke and fled, casting aside their Shields as they ran.
Their foes came after cutting them down by the hundreds.
Yeah, Kristen Cole. Had been shot down by arrows
before the battle even started. So they were leaderless there
and already in horrible shape and with their leader gone.
Well, yeah, it it doesn't seem like it was much of A battle.
It sounds like it was a slaughter.
It was called the Butcher's Ball, and indeed it was
butchery. Not so much of A battle now, but
Despite that, of course the Winter Wolves were still first
into the into the battle. They charged 1st.
May have taken a few casualties given that, but it sounds like
most everybody just ran away and there wasn't much of a fight at
all. George does a really good job
here of capturing the vibe of historical counts written by
people who weren't there because that happens all the time in
real history. As someone who's read a lot of
history books, like the source material, there's so many like
invented speeches and lines just given to historical figures that
there's no way that anyone could know that that was said,
especially not like the precise wording.
So it's just full of that sort of stuff.
And this is where we get it. It's it's somehow an accepted
form of historical fiction, but this is fiction, so it's even
more accepted here. But I just really like how he
captures that real world vibe of fictional historical fiction
within his fiction. Yeah.
So there wasn't much of a fight. Victory is grand, but it it does
beat losing, right. It's not a bad thing.
But still, the Winter Wolves didn't finish what they came S
for. There had to be more.
It wasn't this wasn't glorious. It wasn't an end.
It was just something on the way to do good, good, good victory.
But again, victory was the number one on their list.
They did. Now, it was mentioned in the
earlier quote that they did seek some measure of plunder.
That's why I referred earlier to the notion that maybe they were
also still helping their families.
You can get a few people who, maybe some younger men or maybe
even some people who are disabled or not fighters in the
1st place that could escort some loot back to the north from
victorious parties here, especially given the Riverlands
was pretty much won by the Blacks at this point.
You know, we're moving after the defeat of Christian Cole's army.
The only thing, I mean, Veigar is still flying around burning
things, but Veigar is not going to take note of a small group of
soldiers carrying loot back N he's burning villages and
castles. Yeah.
He's not really concerned with this sort of thing, even if he
didn't see it. So I think there's a good chance
some of this plunder that the Northerners were gaining through
these two different battles they fought in.
Yeah. They might have shipped some
back home, feed their families, you know, make the next
generation a bit stronger, whether it's coins or captured
battle standards to hang in the halls or a little of both, you
know? Yeah.
Stuff worth things that can help you get through winter because
there's no point. Obviously they're not keeping it
for themselves, right. Like, what's the point of loot
that. I mean, I'm going to die in two
months here. I'm.
I'm going to find a battle here shortly and that'll be the end
of me. What's the point of having loot?
Yeah. So I have to assume there's some
sort of effort to get that loot back to the north to those
families. From a hungry mouth to a
profitable excursion. S Yeah, this war, war was
profitable for for some of these families, after all, given their
circumstances. Not in the South, but in the
North. Yeah.
Irony. The irony of war, It's it's
really does strange things. I would like to introduce you to
the Philippo Loretti Winterfell Gray Watch.
Look, I'm wearing this thing here.
It's super cool. It's perfectly timed here.
Hey. Pun intended.
We've got concepts like winter is coming.
We got Roddy the Ruin saying it's time to die.
It's it's perfect. There's a lot of watch and time
symbolism built built into the Starks in Winterfell in the
North. This collection features 2
models. There's the Winterfell Gray and
the frost born blue. He pulls it up closer to the
cameras. Absolutely.
Here we go. Yeah, there we go.
Yeah, we swapped it and we put this white strap on it.
I'm going to show you guys a closer look via some photos
right here. Yeah, we don't have any.
Affiliate link or anything like that?
They just sent this watch to us and wanted us to talk about it
and you know, we, we were happy to do so.
It's a very nice watch and it's really well made.
It's got great cool symbolisms. Got the Stark sigil on it.
They've got their own sort of custom Stark Weywood sigil that
comes on the box. It's also got the.
Valyrian steel blade ice as the hands of the clock.
That's right, 22 ices. A smaller and a bigger.
It's got little. Little castle details where
would details as you can see here and it glows in the dark at
night, which is which is pretty cool.
I have a picture of that here as well.
Yeah, it's very beautiful. Watch yes, if you're going to
some. You know, high end function, you
know, and you want to represent the North, well, by all means,
you got to get yourself a Filippo Loretti Winterfell watch
for sure, friends. You can support our show in
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helpful to us as well. Congrats to listener Vasilicious
666, who just had twins. Twins.
Speaking of the twins, we've got twins to shout out here.
Very great. I love that.
Heck yeah. Speaking of twins, hey Dom,
Tartaglia says the phrase are double crossers for the 2 Tower
Bridge and other stuff. Double crossers.
Oh my goodness, that is a good pun.
Dom, you got me there. Double crossers.
Oh, how did I not think of that? I've done a whole episode on the
phrase and didn't think of that one.
Good one. Now, George R Martin is a big
wolf conservation guy. You know, obviously wolves come
up in his stories because they are ubiquitous in fantasy, in
real world mythology, and in just the real world.
I believe you can still donate $20,000 to the Spirit Wolf
Sanctuary and in exchange George will name a character after you
and kill you off gruesomely. I believe you even get to choose
the manner of your death. I'm not sure that offer is still
out there, but he did that for a while.
Of course Tolkien had a lot of wolves in his legendarium.
There was Bjorn the skin changer, who was pretty much a
berserker when he was in in bear form and was kind of a lot more
mild when he was not. I find maybe I get that
backwards, but Bjorn literally means bear, so there's that.
And of course wolves were big and in his since Tolkien was big
in Norse mythology, there's that crossover as well.
Now let's talk a little bit about age and the reality of old
men in combat roles like this. How realistic is this?
Now, it doesn't need to be realistic, of course, this is a
fantasy world. But I think we all prefer when
the human elements are realistic.
Sure, Dragons just do whatever they do because that's not
realistic. But still, you know, people, we
want people to be like people. We want the human parts to be
realistic, germane to real life as much as possible.
It feels more, it just feels more authentic that way.
I think a lot of people who are drawn to A Song of Ice and Fire
feel that way. You know, it's not the same for
everybody. Your your mouths may vary, but
most militaries throughout history do have age-related
milestones right? Whether it's a retirement age or
draft age or certain ages where you age out of certain things or
into other things that they are there.
A good example is one of the most famous militaries of all
time, Rome. If you haven't thought about the
Roman Empire this week, here's your chance.
Roman legions were generally after, I believe after the
Marian reforms, divided into 3 ranks, the front, the middle and
the rear. How about that?
But there. But these were age-related.
The youngest men were in the front, the middle-aged were in
the middle and the oldest were in the back.
The oldest more experienced guy. Generally they're, they're
called the Triarii, right? That's the third ranked Triarii
3, right? Third.
But you aren't in the Trearia unless you had been in the 1st 2
ranks for a stint each space. So you survived a lot.
You've survived being in the front ranks.
That's not easy. Then you survived being in the
middle ranks, which is also not easy, but not quite as
dangerous. And then you survive and get put
in the third rank where you've been promoted.
You've got some regard, you got respect.
So these aren't just older men, they're older men who have
survived a lot. The Winter Wolves are dissimilar
to Roman legions in 1000 different ways, cause like the
way they fight, the way they're organized, the way they
discipline, the what they believe in.
But in this way, there is some overlap because, well, Roman
legions didn't just force dudes into retirement 'cause they're
old. If you could still fight, you
could still fight. Also, this is kind of the
reverse in that I just told you that the older guys stand in the
back where the young men are in the front.
The winter wolves are literally in the front.
The young men are still picking crops in the north because
winter's coming. In this scenario, where has the
winter wolves will have already like mostly fought and died to a
man before any of these youngsters March South.
So anyway, if in general an entire unit made out of men in
their 50s and 60s, if not older sounds unrealistic, well, it's
not. There's lots of examples
throughout history. It's not common, but it
definitely exists. My favorite example is the
Arduraspides, which I might have said wrong, but it means silver
Shields. I'll say silver Shields from now
on. That was a Macedonian Greek unit
that took its name while in India.
That's right, Alexander the Great.
He took his armies all the way to freaking India.
They were an elite unit, not just a unit of older guys that
had made it this far. They were a unit of older guys
that had made it this far and were elite, and we're still
elite despite being that old. It's kind of wild.
They were a veteran unit with most members over 60, not 50s
and 6 / 60. Most of their members were over
60 and they were called the Silver Shields, not because of
their age, although that is a good joke.
No, but they actually put silver on their Shields to to indicate
their elite status. But they had earned it, right?
So the final commander of the silver, they went through a
bunch of different guys over the years.
This wasn't a unit that lasted hundreds of years, but their
final commander was a guy named Antigenes, and he was executed
by Antigonus One eye. Yes, Antigenes.
And Antigonus and Antigenes, by the way, also had only one eye.
So we have Antigonus, one eye, Antigenes, one eye.
And he had, Antigonus had antigenes burned alive partly
because he hated the silver Shields, because he lost to them
so many times. They were on the opposite side
of in the civil war, a long standing civil war.
And Antigonus was highly, highly successful.
So no one really could say they beat him several times except
these guys, give or take. So he, he was really annoyed by
them. So he, he really took it really
stuck at the antigenes here just for fun.
By the way, Antigonus and antigenes much, much earlier in
their careers fought for King Philip the second of Macedon,
who also had one eye. So it's like a whole army of one
eye. This may as well be a Cyclops
army here. All three of these characters,
by the way, will eventually appear in our continued coverage
of the Game of Thrones at the end of ancient Greece, although
pretty far away is we're we're we're like 80 years away from
this. And taking his one eyes son is
also on the docket. And I, you've heard me mention
him many times because he's got such a great name, my favorite,
perhaps ancient world moniker, Demetrius the besieger.
Yeah, which also Demetrius, thank you Demetrius, for
providing me a nice segue to saying winter wolves once again,
are not here for sieges. Nope.
They they are the anti besiegers.
They're they would storm the walls if there's like, if
anyone's giving them any resistance, well, that's that's
just something for us to try to overcome.
And if not, well, that's what we came here for.
And somehow they get themselves worked up.
But this is the part that, well, I don't think maesters would
necessarily understand this or get into it or be Privy to it
even. But.
I don't know that the Winter Wolves just say let's go and
immediately they're in this battle frenzy.
There's got to, there might be something they have to do to
work themselves up a little, maybe to get in the mood to get
in the zone. So let's talk about that a
little bit. Drunk on blood and battle AKA
how to be a wolf without skin changing.
So the winter wolves are known specifically for going blood
drunk in battle, which I believe is a pretty clear parallel to
the so-called berserker rage associated with Viking age
warriors. Berserkers are a highly
fictionalized but misunderstood because very real thing, like a
lot of the things we hear about them in pop culture and on a
variety of TV shows and movies aren't very accurate or they're
made-up because we don't know. And you got to make up something
because I mean you. It's too fun to just leave blank
and just don't talk about it. Make something cool up for that.
But the point is a lot of these things are made-up because we
just don't know. Sometimes they're called more
generically frenzy warriors rather than berserkers because
it's not just a Viking Age thing.
It isn't just a Norse culture thing.
It wasn't just Scandinavian. There's frenzy warriors come
from a variety of traditions pretty much all over the world.
More on that in a minute. Berserker is thought to mean
bear shirt because Sirk it means shirt.
If you watch the TV show Vikings, there's a character
called Vitzerk. Vit means white, so his nickname
is just white shirt. Now some have thought it means
bear shirt like BARE like BEAR 'cause they would often go into
battle shirtless or just with an animal skin.
But that's probably not accurate.
Even though they the bear shirt part them going into battle that
way is. It's probably not what the name
meant though. To go berserk means to change
form, which is very much getting into skin, changing in the whole
vibe of being like the animal you're kind of embodying, right?
They're all over the sagas. Berserkers.
There's common reference to them, not just sagas, but
histories. Of course, there is a bit of a
blurry distinction between saga and history.
There's a fun example, a guy named Caveldolf, which literally
means evening wolf Werewolf. Yes, he turns into a wolf at
night. You guessed it, sometimes
berserkers are just called Odin's men because they he's
like the patron God of this battle frenzy.
It's not from Thor or someone else.
It's this is an Odin thing, and so is the one eyed bit, but it's
getting all confused. So the wolf version of this
berserk bear shirt, the wolf version of this is ulfednar,
which I also probably didn't say right, but close enough.
I hope this makes more sense in in a lot of ways to me as a
human thing to embody. Because bears are more solitary.
They don't really hunt in packs. You know, wolves are pack
hunters. That kind of reflects more how
humans fight in armies. They live in large groups,
operate and such. Yeah.
Berserkers were banned in Iceland, for example, in other
parts of Scandinavia, in Iceland, I believe it was in the
year 1015 AD. So that's another example of,
yeah, it must have been real if it was banned.
It's a similar example as in the Bible.
And we talked about the Bible and then I forget what episode.
Oh, it was the necromancy episode.
Necromancy was banned in the Bible.
That's curious, isn't it? So the concept may have
originated with hunting. There's Old World and not just
in, again, not just in Scandinavia, wolf cults, bear
cults and boar cults and other animal cults.
And this comes from, yeah, hunting, right?
Hunting's a way of life. It's everything.
It's where you get your food. It's where you get your skins,
your fur. So it's it's like half of your
entire existence is hunting. So you can understand why people
would really associate everything with it.
To hunt an animal, it behooves you to think like that animal.
But you're not really hunting wolves, are you?
But you are hunting, as we said before, the same animals that
wolves hunt. Wolves hunt game.
Humans hunt game, right? They both go after deer and
other similar animals, prey animals.
We predate on the same animals. So you can kind of understand
that concept. You can kind of understand that
crossover, how ancient peoples would see themselves as similar
to see that, to see wolves as sort of a brother species,
sister species, sibling species, right?
Something that they have a lot in common with because they
operate in the world, the world of nature, in a very similar
manner in terms of how they sustain themselves and how they
hunt. All right, Ancient hunters
didn't live in one place. They had to move with the herds.
If the herds are going South, we got to go South.
We got to go where the food's going, Right?
So yeah, the wolf cult, which is kind of just referred to as a
generic thing that could have existed in many different places
around the world in many different times, is a recurring
thing because of this proximity, humans living so close to these
values, to these naturalistic ideas, these concepts that play
out in front of them. Olfadnar translates as wolf
skinners, not skinners, like, not someone who's skinning a
wolf like a wolf skin, like a fighter, you know, someone who
fights not Yeah, a wolf. Or the other translation is wolf
heathen, which is pretty interesting.
The oldest reference to berserkers is Harold Finehair,
who himself is a real world figure, historical figure who is
very fictionalized, but he had them as a personal unit, so it
was a real way to inspire fear. And he was the first king of
Norway supposedly. So it explains how he was able
to subjugate so many very stubborn, warlike lesser
chieftains if he had ulfhedenar, that he could unleash men who
would die in battle because of their frenzy.
People who are willing to die to beat you are not a foe you can
easily defeat. And like, well, they're willing
to go farther than I am. I'm not willing to die to defend
my, my own land. I mean, I would defend my family
that way, but it's not going to get me any profit to die, right?
That's something you aim for except in extreme circumstances
like this when you want to glorious noble death, right?
And this is the interesting thing about Harold Fine here and
having ulfednar as his personal either shock troops, bodyguard,
the terms are thrown around. It's not entirely clear.
Some of this comes in directly from his court poet.
That's right. He had a court poet named
Torbjorn Horn Clove, which I really wish it was hork love
like he loves Hornks. I don't know what a hork is
though, and I say indirectly because we don't have his direct
writings, but we have poets and sagaists who quoted him.
So it's assumed kind of like Homer.
No one actually has the writings of Homer, but we have a
bajillion people who quoted Homer and Iliad and all that.
Now there's a lot of attempts in history and historians and
archaeologists to figure out how Vikings did that or how anybody
does it. How do you get yourself worked
up like that is? How do you get your mind state
to be such that you don't care about being stabbed or that
nothing scares you? Like, how do you get your mind
into that state? Because you're not walking
around like that day-to-day. You're not like, wake up first
thing in the morning, go to the bathroom, have breakfast, you
know, like, I'm going to die at breakfast.
Yeah, it just does. You can't be like that all the
time. That's not healthy.
That's not workable. So 1 theory for a long time was
drugs. There's a mushroom that's
suggested as a possibility. That theory is not very well
supported. Henbane.
However, there was a Viking age berserker grave where they found
henbane seeds. And henbane will absolutely make
you, you know, kind of like, like this, like PCP where you're
just like mad angry strength with no brain, no upper
thinking, just I am, I am strength.
I am power. I am kill.
I am die. Yeah.
You have, no, your brain's gone. You're just muscles and
reactions and stimulus. It's yeah, there are drugs that
can do that to you. And and for some people, that's
easier to wrap your head around than some sort of like working
yourself up into that just by thinking and biting a shield or
biting your own arm or you and your buddy punching each other a
few times or dancing around a fire with some shame and guiding
your ritual. Like in the movie The Northmen.
That's a good example of the they don't know how berserkers
went berserk, so they made it up.
Robert Egger just being creative.
He's like, well, I don't know, maybe they danced around a fire
and and tried to act like wolves and started going and eventually
they their eyes would roll back in their head and they would
become like that. Yet nobody knows.
You got to make stuff up. Maybe that's why George didn't
get into this for his guys, because he doesn't know either.
I mean, he could have made something fun up, but what are
we supposed to imagine? Right?
We don't. It's it's it's written between
the lines here. Like I can't imagine, like I've
been saying that they just all right, let's go berserk, go and
then 2 seconds later they're battle drunk, right?
Something has there's there's a process here.
I don't know what it is and it's not described in Fire and Blood,
but something's going on here. The maesters just don't get it.
The maesters don't get a lot of things.
The maesters don't talk about the supernatural very much.
They shun it. They they talk down about it.
I think there's a little bit of that here.
They don't get Northern culture. The maesters are all worshippers
of the seven. This is this is outside of their
area of expertise. It's doesn't really fit in their
worldview. But consider this conceptually
in Westeros, this this is a bigger deal in Westeros in some
ways, because skin changing is real in Westeros.
You know, it's not just like a mythological thing or something
people talked about as if it could be real.
It is real and it's well established.
And, and even Maester's would, you know, downplay it saying,
oh, they used to be real, but no, they're very real.
So I, I don't want to call them mundane, but there's no, these
are not supernaturally enhanced wolf men.
They're winter wolves, but there's no skin changing at all
here. It's kind of neat that they have
these values and it's reinforced by the fact that skin changers
really do exist. Maybe they interview them like,
hey, what's it really like being in a wolf's head?
I want to get some of that. I'm trying to be like a wolf.
So you a skin changer who's been inside a wolf's head.
Tell me what it's like. What am I going to do?
Commonly repeated in this in the North sources and sagas is the
idea that berserkers would ignore fire and edged weapons,
which is often written as fire and iron, which is very much how
the others are denoted, of course, in the opposite way,
that that's the one thing they don't ignore.
Everything else they ignore except these things.
So it's they are sort of the polar opposite, pun intended, in
that sense. Now, wolf warriors, as I alluded
to before, Viking culture is a great example.
George loves Viking culture. The North is very steeped in it.
I've argued before that in fact and will again, that the
Ironborn have the famous aspects of Viking culture, you know,
raiding and plundering and sailing in the Drowned God's
watery halls. But almost everything else about
Viking Age culture, tradition, worship, all that is much better
represented in the north. Blood sacrifice, Ravens, trees,
one eyed blood Raven, stuff like that.
Yeah, the Drowned God is yeah, the watery halls part is more
like Valhalla, but we're talking about like the drowned God
itself is more like right. So anyway, Native Americans for
example, that's a really good example.
They have wolf warriors or at least and or different
relationship with the wolves that are a little more
spiritual. Wolf names are really common in.
Now, you don't want to get too crazy with Native Americans as a
catch all phrase because there's Native American cultures that
were extremely friendly and ones that skinned people and engaged
in cannibalism. So like, it's like the free folk
in a sense where you've got a culture that kind of lumps them
all into one, but they're really quite diverse.
And it's the same with Native Americans.
But it was still ubiquitous amongst a wide variety of Native
American cultures because wolves were ubiquitous, just like
wolves are ubiquitous around the world in the northern countries
or northern continents, right? There's not really, there aren't
really wolves so much in South America, Africa, Australia.
Australia has dingoes instead. There's a wolf called the canid
wolf in South America, but it isn't really, it isn't really a
wolf. It's it's a type of canine.
But anyway, that's just kind of side trivia there.
It's just really interesting to note how many different ancient
cultures in our world had very close relationship with wolves
or bears or other animals. Wolves are just a really common
one because of how common wolves are.
Neanderthals may have it coexisted with wolves now.
Well, they had to have to some degree.
We're not sure what, but this is Neanderthals were gone before
they were dogs or mostly gone before they were dogs, quote UN
quote, before there was full domestication.
So the relationship with wolves would have been different.
In fact, Neanderthals coexisted with actual dire wolves, which
that's interesting. I don't know what to I have
nothing much to say about that, but it's pretty interesting
anyway. One ubiquitous aspect of the
wolf warrior culture that whether it's Native American or
Viking or Indo European or Turkish, there's all these
examples. It's this bloodlust, this battle
lust thing that yes, berserker is a Norse term, but it's the
idea is expansive. It doesn't just involve
Scandinavia like it's phrased many different ways.
Battle lust. Blood drunk is one that George
likes. Blood drunk isn't really out
there for a lot. I looked up blood drunk and it's
most it's like a band by it's like a, a song by a famous death
metal band called Blood Drunk and not much else, though.
Well, let's let's think about the Ironborn here, though, we've
got Victarion's POV. When he's in battle, he's
excited, he's confident, he's proud.
He's not the most active brained guy, but he's nothing like
Berserk. He's not like, you know, he's he
actually thinks a little bit, you know, I mean, so, So what
what passes for thinking? But he's not a he's not a
completely useless in a fight. He's he's good at that.
He yells at his foes a little bit to scare them.
That's the same as like shouting war cries.
It's just be intimidating he but he also says things and retorts
and, you know, questions and taunts.
It's as far as it goes. It's nothing like berserk.
Theon, however, has a very interesting moment where he
thinks of how the Ironborn used to be.
So there is some evidence that maybe the Ironborn used to be
more like this. This is a really, really cool
quote. Here it is drunk Theon.
Decided watching him bellow, it was said that the Iron Man of
old had OFT been blood drunk in battle, so berserk that they
felt no pain and feared no foe. But this was a common ale drunk.
The man in question is. Todrick who was fighting with
some of the other Raiders over a loot and soon enough moments
later Theon killed him. Notice the use of the word
berserk there, which only comes up three times in the whole
series. The other one is the second one
is a mammoth Catching Fire during the battle of the wall
and just going off Ned. Ned Stark recalls quote Roberts
berserk valor in the melee during the tournament of
Harrenhal. Berserk valor during the melee.
The one time he thinks of Robert is berserk.
It's the tournament of Harrenhal.
When when Rhaegar's there and Liana's there and interesting
yes. So it's the conceptual opposite
of extreme discipline. Like that's why I said in many
ways, Rome, Roman legions and the winter wolves were opposites
because of this whole like extreme discipline versus this
chaotic, wild, intimidating charge.
Not that Spartan legions or Roman legions or Persian
immortals or whatever are not intimidating, but they're
intimidating for kind of the opposite reason for their
extreme discipline, for their wow, these guys just no matter
what, they operate along this, this structure and this pre
designated lines of behavior and and responses and nothing seems
to rattle them. Well, it's the winter wolves.
Nothing rattles them either, but they're already chaotic and
frenzied. And it's a similar, it's a
different kind of thing, right? Like it's the opposite, yet it's
effective in its own way. By the way, this topic was
really funny and fun slash to do surface level look UPS on
because it's just so overwhelmingly gamified and
omnipresent in fantasy like World of Warcraft, a Wolverine,
the marvel character, I mean a Lord of the rings.
Of course I mentioned that I already mentioned Bjorn the skin
changer, but it's just big in real life too.
Of course. I mean, it just comes up in real
wars and real stories about humans in adrenaline filled
moments, like people doing things that they wouldn't
otherwise be able to do because of something the the extreme
circumstances of the moment. Whether it's a mother lifting a
car off of their child or someone being shot a bunch of
times and keeping and and managing to keep going.
Or perhaps, I don't know, I'll be having your arm chopped off
and continuing to fight something like that.
Maybe. You know, it's funny.
Morgan Little AKA middle Little nearly killed Asha near Deepwood
Mott in in her POV chapter there, one of those POV chapters
there. And after she's taken captive,
he comes to apologize, but not for nearly splitting her head
open, as she says, but for calling him, but because she
called or he called her the C word in his quote Battlelog.
They go, I'm I'm really sorry about calling you the C word.
Not for trying to kill you. I mean, it was a fair fight.
You, you're you're an ironborn and near deep wood Mott like
that's just fair game. But I there was no reason for me
to call you that word. But again, like he's in some
state of mind that's different than he normally is.
It's a really interesting moment.
I think it's telling like he's he's not himself, right.
He he's ashamed of that. He's not ashamed of trying to
kill this person. That was I don't know, you're an
invader. You know, you're I'm here to
fight you, but there was no reason for me.
It's like kind of not like a nightly thing to be like
chivalrous even as you're trying to kill somebody or had been
trying to kill them. Anyway, let's move on to the
battle where this whole battle lost blood drunk stuff is most
on display. The the reason that I was
inspired to do a little extra research on real world stuff and
and talk about that for a minute and it began with the wolves in
the Riverlands becoming wolves in the Reach, the Battle of
Tumbleton. Now of course history remembers
it as the first battle of Tumbleton, but I don't know that
any Winter Wolves survived to hear that revised phrasing
because for them it was just the 1 battle.
Maybe as I said earlier, a couple of men did and but to
them there was only one battle at Tumbleton.
If you're a Winter Wolves, the second battle was just that was
a mop up. This was the one that mattered.
So they travelled S they'd beaten Kristen Cole.
The Riverlands was mostly in black hands at that point, but
the Reach was another matter. So they went S to where the
fighting was. Lord Orman was down there, of
course, and he had been making progress, especially because of
Tessarian and the general disorganization of the black
factions leadership in the South around there.
It was definitely a hotbed of green activity.
So Orman had a big host and they wanted to confront him and they
were going to meet at Tumbleton. They were going to say, OK,
we're going to get to Tumbleton first.
Orman's marching that direction. We're going to combine the
Winter Wolves, Red Rob rivers, the Frey armies, plus those that
other host. That was that it helped trap
Lord Leffert at the fish feed. You got Bigglestone and
Charlton, while some of those guys are dead, but their hosts
are still there. The the idea was to get to
Tumbleton and link up with Hugh Hammer and ulf White and a few
other stragglers from various battles.
That could combine to make a pretty substantial army to fight
Lord Ormond. Now, the Greens only had
Tasarian to match that, which of course she couldn't.
Tasarian could not match Vermithor, and a Silver Wing
probably couldn't match either of them individually, really.
But as we know, the Dragon's involvement here was a little,
well, to put it mildly, delayed. And so the humans got to do
their thing first. And here's how it began.
The Hightower host came forward and were met.
Quote. 6000 of the. Queen's men formed up to face
Lord Hightower in the field under the command of Sir
Garibald Grey. They fought bravely for a time,
but a withering reign of arrows from Lord Orman's Archers
thinned their ranks, and a thunderous charge by his heavy
horse broke them, sending the survivors running back toward
the town walls. There, Red robbed Rivers and his
Bowman stood, covering the retreat with their own longbows.
When most of the survivors were safe inside the gates, Roddy the
Ruin and his Winter Wolves sallied forth from a postern
gate, screaming their terrifying Northern war cries as they swept
around the left flank of the attackers.
There's a. Big part of me that thinks this
was the plan all along. It doesn't actually make a lot
of sense to meet a larger army out in the field when you have a
fortified town you can hold up in and fight them from there.
Unless you have support a trick planned which we would have
thought maybe Dragons were involved.
Like I would think the Dragons maybe that wouldn't have been a
trick, but we can probably guess that Lord Orman knew to advance
and wasn't worried about the Dragons because the two
betrayers were already corrupted.
That the plan was already there. Or perhaps they just said they
were going to join this battle and didn't.
They were expected to help the blacks in this battle but didn't
and so but Which would mean though that Roddy the ruins move
was something that he came up with in the moment which I'm not
sure that works either. I feel like this was the plan
meaning this he volunteered his men at they had like they did to
fish feed to make a surprise attack here.
Well, it wasn't a surprise attack at the fish feed.
They just volunteered to go 1st and they went first at the
butcher's ball as well. Now remember, of course, that an
army is most vulnerable when it runs away.
So battle commanders know that. So an experienced commander can
manipulate the other commander into thinking that they're
running away and say, oh, they're running away, let's get
them. All of a sudden your men are
running to get them and they're no longer in battle array.
And the other guys turn around and say, ha ha, we weren't
actually running away. This is a fake.
Now we're going to get back into position really quickly.
And suddenly you're not in position because you're chasing
after us and you're no longer in formation.
So I think that might have been what happened here.
They they sent their men out to face this much larger army.
And then when they retreated, Orman's men rushed forward to
try to cut them down, and that's when their army lost cohesion.
And that's when Roddy's ruin made his move.
Once the Orman's army was stretched out, that's when he
was able to make his attack His army.
His army. Oh boy, are you?
Roderick rolled me there with that one.
Yes. So I think that might have been
what happened. Like luring the high towers
close to the walls was good for the from the perspective of red
rap rivers, just raining down arrows on them.
And that in turn would distract them and give them a little bit
of ah, we got to back up because of these arrows coming at us.
And in that moment of distraction and needing to
reform their lines, that's when Roddy hit.
I just don't think that was an accident.
The timing was perfect. And yeah, he could have figured
that out on the fly. But I really think the idea of
sitting their smaller army out there to face the bigger 1
doesn't make any sense unless you have some sort of trick like
this planned. And it worked, right?
This plan worked. It wouldn't have been anything
Orman expected because they were winning.
The enemy was running away. And not only would they not
expect them to counter attack, they wouldn't expect a counter
attack to work. It's like, yeah, go ahead and
counter attack us. What are you going to do?
You know? But it actually did work.
Let's see what happens here. One reason it worked, one reason
it was effective was that it it was a flank attack.
Orman's army is attacking forward and they were hit from
the side. They're not defending that way.
They don't have let alone their discipline and their ranks.
They're not together anymore. They're just, you're just also
not expecting a suicidal charge. You just don't plan for that.
You're like, OK, well, these are Westerosi men.
They want to live. They act like most people do,
You know, when they're scared, they run.
When they're well commanded, they fight.
You know, they're not. They're not thinking what if
these guys are suicide troops? Yeah, that doesn't matter your
thinking, right? Unless you already know about
it. But they didn't.
They didn't know who these guys were.
They didn't know the Winter Wolves were the Winter Wolves.
And they might never have heard of Roderick the Ruin this far
South. And even if they had, that
doesn't mean they know his reputation.
Exactly. That doesn't mean they know why
he's here this time. This wasn't a man that before
had engaged in a bunch of suicidal charges.
Probably because he probably wouldn't have lived so long if
he had. This is a man that came S to
die. He's acting differently than he
had in the past. And what's better, if you're
going to make a suicidal final charge, what is better than
taking out the highest value enemy you can?
The last charge, Yeah. Whatever they did to get ready,
I don't think there's a lot of thinking involved.
Even if there was some strategy ahead of time at this point in
the battle, once they're charging, they're in the frenzy
mode. They're in the let's do it.
This is the last bit, the last charge.
What they had sought, it was pretty well set up for them.
The fish feed was a great battle for them.
It was what they wanted, but it was a weaker foe, made dangerous
not by true bravery, but being cornered like a a cornered rat.
That's what the Westerman were in that spot, the Butcher's
ball. As we said, it was butchery, not
battle. This was an army bigger than
them, but not so big that they didn't have a chance.
So if you've been following my Greek series again, once again,
there's a stirring moment where the commander Epaminondas gets
in front of his army and holds up a snake and crushes its head
and says, look, the body dies. And when the when the head is
killed, so he the point being, kill the leaders and the army
becomes it doesn't do anything. It's it's easier to deal with.
And you all know, you guys know the Dance of the Dragons.
This isn't your first run through.
You know that when Orman dies, that is what happens.
The snake, it just eats, you know, it doesn't even sit there
helpless. It eats itself in this case.
But I'm getting a little ahead of myself here.
This is what Roddy the Ruin and the reigning Winter Wolves had
in mind. That was what they wanted.
They're like, the best possible result here would be to kill
their leadership and to have their army fall apart because
they don't have anyone good to step in and do do a good job.
They don't know whether or not there is such a person capable
of stepping in, so you better kill as many of their officers
as you can. To be sure, it would be such a
win to just kill a few of their guys, but the important guys and
have their whole army fall apart from bad leadership.
And again, that is what happened.
Sadly, the Winter Wolves didn't get to see the aftermath, but
hey, that's that's what happens when you are riding S to die for
the Dragon Queen, isn't it? You don't get to, you don't get
to see the aftermath. You just have to do your best.
Here's what actually happened in that epic moment.
Quote in the chaos that. Ensued, the Northmen fought
their way through 10 times their own number to where Lord Ormond
Hightower sat his War Horse beneath King Aegon's golden
dragon and the banners of Old Town and the Hightower.
As the singers tell it, Lord Roderick was bloody from head to
heel as he came on with splintered shield and cracked
helm, yet so drunk with battle that he did not even seem to
feel his wounds. SER Brendan Hightower, Lord
Ormond's cousin, put himself between the Northmen and his
Liege, taking off the ruins shield, arm at the shoulder with
one terrible blow of his long axe.
Yet the savage Lord of Burrowton fought on, slaying both SER
Brendan and Lord Ormond before he died.
Lord Hightower's banners toppled and the townsfolk gave a great
cheer, thinking the tide of battle turned.
It's really quite. Epic it is perhaps one of the
best deaths in all of the Song of Ice and Fire.
It's a 9:50. I mean, maybe there's an 11 out
there, but who? Whatever rod he had left,
meaning strength and confidence and courage and energy, he
unleashed it in that moment. This was it.
This was the thing he waited for.
This was the the man he came to kill.
This is the best target he was ever going to find.
This was his shot to do his best.
He put everything into it. I suspect it was something like
Brendan's axe takes off his left shoulder just and his counter
stroke takes out Brendan. You know he doesn't feel his arm
coming off as he's at the same moment slashing down maybe gets
him in the neck or somewhere important enough to disable him
or kill him. And there's that line so drunk
with battle. Even a tear, a blow that takes a
takes his arm off doesn't stop him.
That is unstoppable. I mean, it's about as literally
true as you'll get from a human being.
It is this is this is proves how sincere his wish to die in
battle was. This wasn't just talk, this was
a guy who went down swinging and took down the biggest target,
biggest value foes he could in the process.
Again, this was the moment that one of the most shouted out
moments when fire blood came out.
Who else killed 2 Hightowers in this war?
No dragon rider did that, right? Who did it?
I mean, unless you count them Hightower Targaryens.
But they're Targaryens, not Hightower people with
Hightower's last name. I don't think anyone killed 2.
Certainly not a span of two minutes.
So wow. I mean, there it was like, and
it's written down. The maestros wrote it down.
It's even immortalized in song in the South.
I'm sure in the North too. But the maestros are accounting
for its presence in the South. As the singers tell it, the line
goes blood drunk, covered in blood, everything.
I suspect there was about 800 of them left maybe give or take
'cause it says they fought through 10 times their number
roughly. You know, that's to be outright
because, you know, they, they lost two 2/3 of them were
wounded or killed at the fish feed, which would be about 1300,
leaving about 700. But some of those wounded would
have recovered by then. And of course, as we said, some
of those wounded would have just done everything to get on their
horse. This isn't, this isn't like I'm
not too, I'm not well enough for this battle.
No, this is it. This is the last charge of the
winter wolves here. Y'all.
You better get on your horse or they're going to be telling the
story rather than being a part of it.
However, of course, what happened afterwards, it's well,
let me back up a second. This is, let me get one more
historical reference here. This actually reminds me a bit
of Alexander the Great's charge at the Battle of Gogamela where
he had way fewer men. But his front lines are here,
the Persians are here and he rides his horses.
He takes his companion cavalry just along his own front lines
this way. And the, the Persian King's
like, hey, keep an eye on that. So they, they send some guys to
kind of follow, kind of shadow them just walking.
All of a sudden Alexander's guys cut back like this.
They, they charge the opposite direction right at Darius the
king now. So it's kind of similar.
They waited for an opening, stretched things out, even
though they were the smaller army.
They waited for an opportunity and created an opportunity to
expose the king, or in this case, Lord Hightower.
Now the difference being that Alexander and his men didn't
didn't want to die, and Dorias didn't try 'cause he ran away,
or Orman Hightower did not run away, and maybe he wished he had
as he was dying with Roddy Ruin's sword in his throat or
wherever it was. So Alexander's play had more
long term effect. But the Winter Wolves, oh, the
short term. Oh, as they were.
They didn't care about the long term.
Not for themselves. They accomplished.
And well, if they did care about the long term, it was getting
into songs and stories, which they definitely did.
There's no real comparison. These guys were trying to die.
They did it. And they took out men far more
important in terms of strategic importance.
War effort and all that. Yeah, they were.
They were a missile aimed at the South and it landed in its
target. But of course, right after this,
all the Dragons turned on Tumbleton, so it's easy for this
to get. Could have been brushed under
the rug. It could have been forgotten
more easily. Given how much more heinous
things turned right after this. I don't think any of this is
what Lord Ormond planned. There's no way Lord Ormond
wanted to destroy Tumbleton. Why?
He captured it. It's in the Reach he destroyed
bitter bridge because of what happened to Malore, but he every
other target he captured along the way and there were several
he just flipped it. He's like, OK, well, this is
ours now. This is you swear to the to the
king and you're on our side now. But after his death, the
leadership in his place. It was horrible, right.
There were drunken looting, abuse of the citizenry, abuse of
the noble families too, which is, you know, people are people.
But this is out of the ordinary for high Lords to behave.
We got men like Bull Jon Roxon seizing the wives of other noble
women and other men just taking them as battle prizes.
That's not normal for for Knights in the Reach.
So you kind of get the sense that Lord Orman was holding back
a lot of savagery on his own side.
And once he was out of the way, the Greens Army, it just was
terrible, right, The way they behaved at Tumbleton.
And it indeed was like a snake with its head cut off.
They had no leadership. What leadership they did have
was people like Unwin Peak and Hobert Hightower, guys who were
soft or cruel or both. Just.
Yeah. And then, of course, the two
betrayers themselves. And that whole deal, which had
nothing to do with the Winter's Wolves, but certainly had a lot
to do with the scenario, was created by the Winter Wolves
killing Lord Armand. So that that domino effect, I
think is very much lost in the shovel.
No one actually ends up forgetting the Winter Wolves,
even though what happened to Tumbleton right after was far
more important. But I think that detail, the
fact that the Winter Wolves killed Lord Armand and the
effect of that huge, because everything fell apart for the
Greens at that point, their army, their huge host that was
going to take King's Landing. And there wasn't necessarily a a
host to stop it. Only the death of the leadership
killed it. It wasn't the death of the
soldiers. I mean, eventually it was once
the battle, second battle of Tumblin came.
But if they had had big good leadership, they wouldn't have
still been at Tumbleton. They would have moved on the
capital by then. But Nope, they turned into the
caltrops and all that other business just turned on itself.
Yep. Instead of a headless snake, it
became a snake eating its own tail.
So yeah, I, I wonder too, like, what kind of conversations
happened inside Tumbleton? Was that how ulf?
And Hugh Hammer managed to hide their intentions?
They're like, oh, yeah, well, why aren't you?
Well, shouldn't we form our battle strategy around these two
dragon riders? And, well, Rod to the room's
like, well, hang on, I got a plan.
You know, we're here to die. I want to do this.
And the dragon was like, yeah, let's do that.
Allow us to hang back to attack everybody once the battle's
done. So that would have maybe seemed
a lot more fishy. They're they're hanging back, if
not for this other plan maybe that came forward to take out
Lord Orman. Or perhaps, like I said, they
just, they were, they indicated that they were going to join the
battle and then they just didn't, which Lord Orman may
have known that going in because someone had to corrupt those
guys in advance. And there's definitely accounts
of some of Lord Orman's men sneaking into the town ahead of
the battle to maybe do some mischief.
And some mischief did occur. So yeah, why Hugh and Alf didn't
fight against Lord Ormond or how all the chicanery that went on
in the background there, the intrigue is a bit outside the
scope of the Winter Wolves, but it's certainly something worth
talking about. Another time, everything was
planned except for Lord Ormond's death, and that changed.
Well, that changed everything. All those plans were destroyed
by that. So back it even went weird back
in Old Town, like Lord Ormond's 15 year old son took over and he
took his stepmother as his Paramore.
Sam Tarley, Samantha Tarley and Samantha Tarley would go on to
found the Bank of Old Town of all like whoa yeah, stuff
happened. So none of them, Lord Orman's
son Samantha Tarley or the Winter Wolves were there to see
what came next, let alone the rest of the war.
I do think they deserve extra credit for killing Lord Ormond,
given the effect it had, effect that maybe they couldn't have
even hoped for. But it really worked.
Again, I want to return to the possibility that there were
maybe a few survivors. You know, it wouldn't have made
the Evening News if just a few, maybe just one man survived.
Or someone, someone gets you charge into battle expecting to
die and you get knocked unconscious.
Like that could happen, right? You wake up and you're like, oh,
I thought I was going to be in the afterlife.
I'm still on the battlefield. I thought I was going to die.
Well, I'm disappointed, but you still, you're not just going to
like slit your wrist at that moment, you know, it's not a
death and battle. You pick up the pieces and go,
well damn, I guess the gods didn't want me yet.
And you go tell your story. When you go back home, you go
back to the north. You bring your plunder because
you probably got some of that. Or maybe you just get killed in
the second battle of Tumbleton. The Muddy Mess was the final
battle of the Dance, one that featured no Northerners as far
as we know. But Lord Cregan did come soon
after, expecting more battles. He brought a big army of younger
men. It was the Hour of the Wolf.
He declared his intent to assault several major
strongholds. This freaked everybody out.
Not only were they done with war, but they saw what 2000
Winter Wolves could do. Now he's got 10,000 younger and
fiercer. He claims they're more fierce.
I don't know if they really are, but younger does have some
benefit, right? These would one day be a new
generation of winter wolves, those who survived that long.
These are men who these are like Wolflings, Winter Wolflings,
right? Never again would there be a war
like this to fight in. So in that sense, they wouldn't
be the same, but there would be plenty more wars, plenty of
chances to prove their medal, plenty of chances to live up to
the standard that these winter wolves set.
And it's a pretty big standard, right?
These guys continue to be mentioned, right?
They continue to be an example, a standard, the pack of wolves
that brought down not one, but two Hightowers in the midst of
their army. That's a statement that rings
out. People remember that.
It doesn't really make the Hightowers look so bad.
I mean, it doesn't like them look good, that's for sure.
But it really it's more that it makes the winter Wolves look
great. It looks them, makes them look
amazing, even though they lost the battle, right?
But they went S to die and they made sure everybody knew that
and they accomplished that goal. And it wasn't easy for someone,
right? They ended it on their own
terms, and many would never admit it in the South, I mean,
particularly the young, but they would not.
You don't want to fight those guys, you know, like, yeah,
maybe I'd rather fight other Knights met at arms.
Like, I don't want to fight savage Northerners who keep
fighting after their arm is cut off.
Like as not again, they don't. You don't admit that to your
buddies necessarily. But, you know, when you're
sitting there at night and, like, I don't know if I want to
fight. Like, yeah, I think I would
rather fight someone that's not howling like a wolf and doesn't
seem to feel pain. And that's the value of these
men, one of the values of these men riding off to die the in the
way they did. It makes everyone think the
North is full of dudes like that.
It really sends a message that, yeah, these are our old men.
What do you think our middle-aged and young men are
like? We're all of us together.
What do you think? What are you going to do when we
bring a host that's got all of that?
It really makes people think twice about fighting the North.
It's part of how the North maintained its independence.
Stuff like this, you know, I mean, semi independence, right?
Cultural independence. How we say look what 2000 of our
old guys did. Imagine what 12,000 of a mixed
force would do like, right? Here's an example of that coming
up in conversation. It's a shutdown moment when you
bring this up. Here's a comment by Kermit Tully
of all people. It prompted this reminder.
Here it is. Half your men will die.
Lord Stark, the Gray eyed wolf of Winterfell replied.
They died the day we marched. Boy, like the winter wolves.
Before them, most of the men who had marched S with Lord Craig
and Stark did not expect to see their homes again.
Does that phrasing kind of imply?
A few of them did survive. After all, it's most of the men
who'd marched South of Lord Craig and did not expect, like,
the Winter Wolves before them. I don't know it.
It might imply if you did survive.
Maybe it's like I said, some that were too injured to ride,
lost limbs, lost consciousness, who knows.
But either way, just dropping that name, reminding them like
they died, the daily March, boy, that is not just talk.
It might have been talk when Roddy just said it.
But then they went out and proved it.
So now we're all the other guys are like, yeah, they really do
mean that when they say that. They were like, there was no
response. Kermit Tulli was like, OK, yeah,
forgot I said anything. Fine, fine.
Have your have it your way. You know, wolf guy.
So these are guys who fought at the fish feed the butcher's
ball. And then they had their end at
at first Tumbleton and it's 3 battles, but those ring loud.
They could have this is an example.
They get to be spoken of by men like Lord Stark and so many
others. And just to remind people, yeah,
don't winters wolves. Yeah, don't don't think think
twice about the North. I love it.
So many those few that did survive, if any boy would they
have some stories to tell and they would have had some money
to to live out their days. I mean, that's maybe not so hard
as it would have it would have first thought maybe they would
have preferred to die in battle. But hey, if you didn't have, if
you're broke and you want to die in battle and you didn't die but
you came back with a lot of money, well, that's those worst
things. So again, as we said in the
beginning of this episode, this episode was made before season 3
of House of the Dragon. So we know that the winners
wolves made a brief appearance at the the winter wolves rather
made a brief appearance at the end of the second season just
marching. They don't that's a bit just
marching looking cool and fearsome and old, but we don't
actually have any TV show stuff to go on.
So we didn't we didn't go there here.
Hopefully they do do a decent job of it and might have
inspired some talking points, even though I it's not obviously
doesn't speak to book cannon. But sometimes they do things on
the show that make us think, Oh yeah, that might make sense for
them to have done or they they uncover an idea, you know, like
that It's it it gets out there. Yeah.
I'd be interested to see for. Example if it was.
If it is depicted as a ploy by the Winter Wolves to lead them
there, you know what I mean. Some.
Sort of brilliance in the moment.
Yeah. I'm very curious how they depict
it. Right.
Yeah. So.
And it's not going to be the final version if they do depict
it that way. But I do wonder what their
interpretation of fire and blood is in that case.
So we'll see. And again, one more, one last
thing about Dragons, right? It's the winter wolves were like
the Dragons. They went there to die.
When they go to, when they fight, they often end up dying
because they don't back down and they don't have regard for their
own lives. Almost all the Dragons were
killed in the Dance, and all the winter wolves were, too.
It's like the same thing in that regard.
The fiercest and most determined killers and least concerned with
consequences, and in consequences including death.
Yeah, it's certainly a big what if, what if, what if there had
been a dragon on the ground for the winter rolls to charge at.
I I bet they would have taken that chance.
I don't know how it would have gone.
Might not have gone very might not have been such a glorious
end for them after all. But maybe a few of them would
have made it. I mean, think of the dragon pit.
There was that guy, the burning knight who killed a dragon even
as he was engulfed in flame. But yeah, maybe a singer's
embellishment. But so it was a lot of this and
it's it's a fun, makes for a good story regardless.
Those who stormed the dragon pit, I mean, those guys were
also blood drunk kind of maybe it was more of a religious
fervor brought on by the shepherd.
But it's, it's another example of this concept, right?
If it's, it's fascinating to me that people can be worked up
into that state, whether on purpose or whether it's through
someone else manipulating them or combination of both.
Religious belief, cultural touchstones, combinations of the
above. The North remembers, to be sure.
So we know that all the Winter Wolves deeds in the North will
be spoken of quite a bit, whether in Taverns, around the
Hearthfires, you name it, but also in the South, right?
The Dance is one of the most famous events in all of Westeros
history. In the Winter Wolves were an
exceptional participant. Despite relatively small
numbers, their impact was outsized.
And despite their age, their impact was outsized.
Yeah. So many major events that
happened in the dance, drama and conflict involving more famous
and higher born players. Yet these men, their story rings
out as loud as those more famous names.
They were fun. They were exciting.
They're memorable. The trivia question was what was
the bloodiest land battle of the Dance of the Dragons, the fish
feed, the first battle that the Winter Wolves participated in?
That's right. The bloodiest sea battle was, of
course, the Battle of the Gulf. That's why that has to be
delineated 'cause if you just say the bloodiest battle, I'm
not sure which it would be. Yeah, I mentioned our Ragnarok
versus the Long Night episode. A lot of nice overlap with some
Norse stuff and the Long Night and Northern culture.
That is our episode that is up for a Hugo Award this year.
So, you know, once again, reminder to go do your voting on
that. We are up in the category best
related work, not best fancast. We are not best fancast.
We are best related work. This episode in particular,
Ragnarok versus the Long Night, if you've already signed.
Up for the world science fiction society or for Worldcon.
You can vote. You can also sign up now and you
will still get the Hugo packet, which again incredible
incredible value. You can get Claire obscure like
the video game and game code for that the the epubs of the best
novel and many other categories. Not everything is in there
because it's as well as the the Hugo committee can do to get
everything provided. But it's, it's a, it's a lot
more than the $50 cost of membership that you get by a
lot. Yeah, one game.
Is $50, Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, like of course I also mentioned the Game of Thrones of
the end of Ancient Greece series that has some up overlap in
terms of cultural stuff and and battle and politics.
But mostly it's just a lot of fun and deep dive into into a
different portion of history. Of course, our Dance of the
Dragon series with radio esteros is highly related to this and
our upcoming House of the Dragon Season 3 coverage I mentioned
that will of course be something coming in the future, a few
months from now. Depending on when you're
listening to this, it may already be out.
Thanks to you all for participating Live Today or for
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Until next time, on behalf of a Shea, I'm Aziz.
We'll see you for more and you know what to do.
Until then, Valar Riritis.