Early on in Arya's chapters, her biggest problem is keeping her
stitches straight, being less pretty and graceful than Sansa
and SEPTA. Mordain's judgement on all or
some of the above. Now no one calls her a sweet
summer child because in world that's a pejorative term for
Naive adults, not for actual children like she is.
But comparing those early chapters to later ones is like
night and day or black and white.
Since then, so much has changed. This is a girl who ate worms and
didn't bat an eye, and she did it multiple times.
Once when it was a wormy apples didn't bother her at all.
And then there was the worm in the skull face of the Kindly
Man. It's hard to imagine this girl
was ever afraid of SEPTA Mordane, right?
Like that's she's come a long way.
It it hasn't even been that long since SEPTA Mordane was her
guardian, since her death even. But it might feel that way
because so much has happened, right?
It's it's hard not to think of Arya as someone a bit older
because of all she's been through.
But really, not that much actual time has passed from the start
of the series to where we're at now, about two, 2 1/2 years.
In that time, she's been through a lot.
Loss of family. She's been a refugee in the
Riverlands during wartime, during the time where some of
the worst people in Westeros were unleashed to do their worst
upon the Riverlands, and she encountered all of them.
Anne Marie Lorch, Gregor Clegane, Vargo Hoe, Roose
Bolton, Tywin Lannister. She arrived just in time for the
Red Wedding. For the worst part.
Now she's killed people as well on her own, and now she's being
trained by the best killers in the world to do more of that.
These killers are basically a death cult and apparently
unaware that she has skills even beyond what they can teach.
By that of course I mean skin changing.
They might have watched her hide Needle, but they don't know
she's a warg. Or if they do, or if they learn
that eventually that could get interesting.
But they want her to be no one. But she is Arya Stark.
And Arya Stark has a list of people she wants to kill that
ironically the death cult won't allow.
Because Arya wants that. No one doesn't want that, right?
And she's supposed to be no one, not Arya.
They want her to give up the list because that's Arya's list,
not a list made by a servant of the Many Faced God.
So that's at odds, and it's also at odds with what caused her to
write the list in the 1st place, which is a big part of what
we'll talk about today. But she calls it a prayer, not a
list. And once she comes up with it in
A Clash of Kings fairly early on, the prayer is in almost all
of her chapters after that, sometimes twice.
Pretty much the only time it doesn't appear is right after
the Red Wedding. She's also kidnapped by someone
on that list and is overheard reciting it at the House of
Black and White. So it's a huge part of her
story. In this episode, we're going to
dive deep into that kill list, that prayer, everyone who's on
it, whether they're still alive or not, their fates.
And we put it in order chronologically, who might get
added later, information she might get that might change her
mind on certain people. How it continues to impact her
story, her relationship with death, justice and authority.
We've got all that and more on this episode of History of
Westeros podcast. Hello and welcome back everyone
to an Aria focused episode. We did Stark Skin Changers last
week, had a good bit of Aria in there and this is going to
relate to that episode a little bit.
Some of the themes are a little similar, but the focus is is
quite a bit different in terms of what we're diving deep on.
But there's definitely a lot of connection to that one.
A lot of, of course, a lot of Aria.
There's a big connection to what's coming for her and those
things are very much interwoven. We are here almost every Sunday
at 3:00 Eastern live streaming. And if you want to catch the
episode after the fact, it gets edited and put up on Spotify.
It's a little bit of a cleaner version over on Spotify and
there's an audio only version available on every podcast
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week after. It's on YouTube and you can find
our all of our back catalog there.
But if you listen on Patreon, it is ad free, no ads whatsoever.
We even take out our host, read ads, edit those out.
So it's a little smoother, you get through it a little faster
and there's no interruptions. You can sign up for that on
patreon.com/history Westeros. There are spoilers for the Mercy
Winds of Winter chapter. We are certainly talking about
that one in here. There's a even a quote or two
from it. So if you're trying to avoid
that one, well, it's not going to spoil the whole chapter, but
it does spoil the main event of that chapter.
I assume most of you have already read it.
In fact, we have an audio version of it that was pushed to
the front of our feed recently. I highly recommend it.
It's got all of us doing voice acting, it's music, it's
extremely well produced. The lead playing Aria is
excellent. So I think you all would really
enjoy if you haven't listened to it or if you have listened to
it, listen to it again with this episode in mind.
Also make sure to check out good queenalley.tumblr.com.
Nita as always has some great notes in this episode and you
will want to check out her takes over on her blog where there are
just an endless amount of great questions and answers on a
variety of topics covering A Song of Ice and Fire and never
the show. Nina doesn't talk about the
show, so you know you're going to get high octane book content
only. If you have questions for us,
feel free to ask them live or send them over to us at
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e-mail us through patrons e-mail system.
And let's get started with our trivia question.
At the end, I'll give the answer and a couple episodes that
relate to this one. By our count, Aria has killed
eight people. It's a little iffy because of
the the storming of the holdfast by Armory, Lorch's men, and it's
a little bit of a montage and she's knocking people off the
wall, stabbing people, this and that.
So maybe there's more kills, but that's not important for this
question. I just wanted to clarify why we
think it's 8. How many names of those eight
people were named on her list? So in other words, how many
names has she personally crossed off the list with her own
action, with her own blade or her own poison or what have you?
I don't. It doesn't count when she gives
the name to Jockin. Those don't count.
So only killed by her own hand only took the life personally.
How many of those eight were on the list?
You'll be able to get that from listening to the episode, if you
don't know already, because we're certainly going to go
through the details. Here are the different sections
we'll be talking about today. We've got the origin of the
prayer. We've got the Jockin of the Lamp
brings three death wishes. We've got the full list, meaning
the full Arias list. Then we've got the ones who were
dead on that list and the ones who are alive on that list.
And alive is in quotes thanks to mostly thanks to the Cleganes
cause. Yeah.
Then Aria's other kills, we've dedicated a short section of
that and just kind of rounded out to other people she's killed
and the circumstances, some of which will kind of come up
between the prayer and the many Faced God, or perhaps I should
call it the prayer versus the many faced God.
As I said during the intro, those two things don't get along
very well. That's a developing situation.
And then the future of the list. That'll be our final section
where we discuss potential ads to the list, maybe a subtraction
or two, and the outlook for those particular cases, how they
might play out, what Ari may or may not learn about them.
Maybe she won't have time to deal with them before someone
else does things like that. So let's get to it.
It's ironic that Ned in the 1st chapter takes the boys to that
execution, because in their world this isn't the irony, but
in their world, they're supposed to become more accustomed to
death. Men are supposed to be the deaf
dealers in their world, right? But it doesn't actually work out
that way for the Starks, does it?
Arguably, Arya becomes the most intimate with death and killing,
if not the most, certainly quite a bit.
And John might argue, hey, I'm actually dead.
I know more about being dead than Aria than death than Aria.
OK, Fairpoint John. And John and Rob saw more death
total because of all the battlefields they've seen,
right? All.
And all three of them, including Aria, have seen countless
innocents die. And Rob, frankly, would have
caused some as well. Bran lives amidst skulls and
veritable ghosts with visions of blood and just dead secrets.
So yeah, he's pretty up close with it too.
But John and Rob and and Bran weren't getting up close and
personal with suicides on a daily basis, learning anatomy,
addressing corpses and undressing corpses and all the
various ways to end a life, right?
Like John and Rob and and even Bran know the basics, you know?
But like the the which arteries cause the most bleeding and how
to give someone mercy, all these are things she's been taught
along the way. And a lot of that came before
House of Black and White. A lot of it came in it in it.
So that's what I'm getting out here.
Even Sansa has a lot of experience with death by this
point. And it isn't, she's not unnerved
by it, right? When the tournament happens, the
first tournament, and Sir Hugh of the Veil is killed.
Sansa isn't like Jane Poole is. She has to be taken away.
She has to be LED away because she's, you know, overcome.
But Sansa doesn't. She doesn't really bat an eye at
it. She's like, whoa, that was
crazy. She's not like, she's not like,
I hate this. No, she it was exciting, I
suppose. So this is a a big deal for all
the Starks really is is their relationship with death and how
it went very differently than than how their parents may have
planned it for them. And this is important for us,
for Aria specifically, because we, we need, we need to ground
ourselves. As Nina puts it in Aria's
reality, her approach to death and the people she wants to kill
is unique, to say the least. She's very aware of the futile
responsibility and privilege that comes with being a Stark.
She sort of expects some of that because she's a Stark.
For example, she expects Harwin to be loyal to her because
Harwin was her father's man. But even though Harwin is not
her father's man, he's become a Brotherhood Without Banners
member. So but she feels like the
obligation of dealing out justice to people that have
broken certain laws. Like she kills Darien because he
broke the vows of the Night's Watch.
That's not really her business, but she saw it as an act of
justice. I mean, her, her father didn't
take her to that execution, but she knew what was going on.
She knew they were going to an execution.
So she associates her family, her father, Starks, with being
the facilitators of justice. That's part of why she has that
attitude is she's a Stark and in her mind, Starks deliver
justice. Now she's scrappy and unafraid
to get dirty and rarely like holds her privilege over others.
It happens occasionally, but she's more, you know, down in
the muck with other people. She doesn't hold herself over
other people. She kind of gets down in the
dirt with them, right. It's not, it doesn't usually
come up when she's having relations with other people,
discussing things with people. Like she doesn't like it.
In fact, there's a couple times where Gendry mocks her about it.
It's it's it's like a reversal, like, oh, you're highborn, blah,
blah, blah. And she's like, Nah, don't talk
to me like that. It's kind of a it's almost
ironic. She's like, don't talk to me
like that because I'm highborn, but don't tell me I'm highborn.
So because yes, despite all her getting in the muck and getting,
you know, in the dirt, not living the way you would expect
a person of privilege, she is still a child of Ned and Catlin,
right? She still has a lot of their
traits. She's a Stark and a Tully, more
of a Stark than a Tully. That's where she was raised in
Winterfell. So that's that's fair.
But definitely some of both, some of those like standard
noble values of hey, we're in charge.
We deal out, we deal out justice.
We, we're, we're the authority figures here, but she's
separated from a lot of that too.
So, so much of this is, is learned at a very young age.
And now out in the world, she's learning all these new things
separated from her Wolf Pack. And that's where her journey
truly begins. Her journey at home was again,
that was the Septimordane stuff. And, and Ned being like, should
I let you carry a sword? You know, things like that,
which is like now that's well, of course she's carrying a
sword. She's quite good at it.
And other blades too. And then so many other things.
And far from being graceful and and keeping her, she's able to
keep her needle straight, which she probably could sew pretty
well now too, but she's sewed things like Fleck instead of
just sewing her garments. So even in that separation, even
as a refugee, even as a person that the House of Black and
White is trying to make into no one, she's still Stark.
You can't change that about her. Above everything else, Arya is
extremely stubborn and being a Stark comes with certain duties
that she sees in her perspective.
Like I said, justice and and and doing the right thing, things
that she learned from her family.
The origin of the prayer, it starts soon after Joran and many
others are killed by Sir Amory Lorch and his men.
It's a horrible experience, of course, but Arya and a few
others of her companions escape from it, only to in turn wind up
in the clutches of Sir Gregor and his men instead.
Which is quite a bit worse. As an aside, consider how this
works out for Tywin's Reavers is something that Arya experienced
mostly directly because she basically dealt with all these
people at one at one point or another.
So he sends out Tywin, does Gregor, Lorch, and Hote into the
Riverlands to be evil. We'll say.
Lorch finds Joran, Arya and company escape, but she frees
Jakin, Roorge, and Biter. Arya and company wind up in
Gregor's clutches next, so they just go from one of the three to
the next. And then Jock and Rogge and
Biter, who were freed by Arya don't wind up in Gregor's
clutches, they go a different direction.
They join Armory Larch, the man that just nearly burned them to
death. And then later, when Armory
Larch is victim of the weasel soup incident, Rogge and Biter
turn and join the Bloody Murmurs instead.
So they switch from one of the two or one of the three to a
different one. And later, Vargo Haute kills
Armory Larch, and then Clegane kills Haute.
And then of course Clegane is semi killed by Oberyn and this
is when she first witnesses torture.
She's seen, she's aware of execution, she's maybe had seen
some bad things before, she had been through some some minor
things, but this is just far beyond anything.
She had seen the Ticklers questioning the Mountain's
indiscriminate brutality and she realizes how little Syria had
truly taught her. After all, reality came to her
too young quote. Arya watched them die and did
nothing. What good did it do you to be
brave? One of the women picked for
questioning had tried to be brave, but she had died
screaming like all the rest. There were no brave people on
that March, only scared and hungry ones.
Most were women and children. The few men were very old or
very young. The rest had been chained to
that gibbet and left for the wolves and the crows.
Now, she didn't technically see her father's death because Joran
stopped her from seeing it, but she was there.
She knows what happens. She probably saw his head pulled
up over the crowd. If she didn't see the actual
moment of execution, she knows what happened.
And she had also killed someone by then herself.
She killed that stable boy with Needle during the escape.
So not her first experience with death.
Like I said, either personally or what even Art had already
lost her father. But this is on another level.
This this relentless torture hearing, screaming and marching.
And she's so clinical about it. She says she's not like I'm a
coward. She's just like, bravery is
pointless here. He's like, I'm not a she's not
afraid to be brave. She just sees how useless it
would be in a moment like this. And that's what what she
realizes that what Siri taught her isn't sufficient.
They just took her sword away from her and and put her in the
situation. Simple as that.
She could. She had almost no chance to stop
it. George writes this as
predominantly as hatred. She's she's yeah, she's afraid.
She has fear, but it's hate that is really the predominant
emotion here. It's the thing that's
overwhelming her. It's the main manifestation
here. She hates Polyver for taking her
sword. She hates the Tickler for all
the torture, Joffrey and Searcy for what they did to her father
and a few other things, and Sir Gregor for, well, there's a lot
of things, but related to all. All under the category of
brutality, basically all just being a violent, awful person.
And she keeps having these thoughts over and over.
She has not much else for her to think about this hatred, and it
manifests into this tangible group of names.
It becomes a list. Here's the first time in Aria 6A
Clash of Kings quote. Every night, Aria would say
their names. Sara Gregor, she'd whisper to
her stone pillow. Dunson, Polyver, Chiswick, Raft,
The Sweetling, the Tickler and the Hound.
Sir Amory, Sir Ilan. Sir Marin, King Geoffrey.
Queen Cersei. Back in Winterfell, Arya had
prayed with her mother in the Sept and with her father in the
godswood. But there were no gods on the
road to Harrenhal, and her names were the only prayer that she
cared to remember. The hatred manifests in a number
of ways, as we said, and it overlaps with that fear perhaps
no better in the case of the Tickler, a man so inhuman that
we never actually hear his real name of him.
She thinks, quote, the Tickler was almost too scary to hate.
So that is why I chose him as this example because he's
perhaps the one that scares her the most.
And you can see why. I mean, a torturer who seems to
take pleasure in what he's doing.
This is a great example of George's ability to write
horror. This is a supernatural setting,
but there is nothing supernatural about this guy.
He's just a bloodthirsty psycho who legitimately enjoys what
he's doing. That's what Ari keys in on, I
think, and why he realizes he's such a scary guy.
She lacks the maturity to put it into words and maybe the
understanding of psychology, but she she grasps it on a way that
she's unable to express. Gregor is psycho too, but he's
angry and hateful. He has lusts to satisfy and
inflicting pain seems to be one of them.
But he never seems to like enjoy himself.
Gregor's never like, that was great.
You know, I feel good That doesn't happen.
He's in severe pain and he inflicts severe pain.
The Tickler just loves being cruel.
He legitimately enjoys it. He's it's a different kind of
psycho and. I do think it's appropriate to
think of it the way Aria does. Yeah, I'm calling it a list, but
it really is a prayer. It's like a mantra.
It is like a focus exercise. She's focusing her energies
rather than feeling like she's surrendered to giving up.
It's like. She's manifesting.
She's manifesting this is this is this is mindfulness, the
mindfulness of trauma and revenge, of of seeing death is
something lesser, of seeing it as normal, which in her life it
has been normal. Arya hates herself and her
fellow captives for being sheep, but not.
But she recognizes there's nothing they can do.
She recognizes that she should have been more prepared to deal
with this, even though she's so young.
She should be a person that's capable of dealing with a
situation like this, of being able to defend herself, of being
able to defend others. She hates that helplessness and
she hates how they took their her courage.
She was, she felt good about herself.
She escaped from Larch and fought her way out and saved
Jock and Rorge and Biter and she accomplished a lot.
She proved to herself what she was capable.
That was the first time she like was, you know, in an adventure.
It was terrible. It was terrifying.
You wouldn't call it an adventure, but it was, you know,
using her skills besides just being a captive.
But then she became a captive and she's like, oh, this is this
is what it's like. And remembering the people that
wronged her, remembering the people that inflicted this on
her is everything besides wanting to get home.
But it's but those two things are overlapped because those
people are in her way of getting home.
So it's a very appropriately called a prayer in this context
because it is something she repeats to comfort herself, to
focus herself, to be yes, to be mindful, to remember what's
important, to keep her eye on the prize.
And it works. The Jockin of the Lamp brings
three death wishes. I first brought this concept up
in Valerie Ritas, but here we can explore it a little
differently and go a little deeper with it in some ways.
Jockin cleverly uses his debt to Aria to recruit her and in the
process George is able to play around with the old Jeannie and
the 3 wishes trope. He does it in a in a way
reminiscent of John appealing to Ned, as in appealing to a higher
power. Now let me explain.
Ned didn't want to keep the direwolves, but John appealed to
the old gods, which is the only authority figure Ned would ever
listen to. He can't say hey, I, John think
you should keep the direwolves. But he said the old gods sent a
sign and Ned's like, oh, I don't want to go against that.
He's got a good point there. John does.
And as an aside also, he probably very much respected
John's take there. Bran was like love John in that
moment. He's like, oh thank you John for
putting it that way. Ned probably realized he was
doing that too and, and respected John and for that.
And what a strange moment that must have been.
Like boy, this kid really is my son.
Even though he's not my son. This kid really is a Stark.
So likewise, Jakin doesn't tell Arya, I owe you 3 deaths.
He says the Red God is owed those 3 deaths.
It's not a matter of what Jakin wants, it's a matter of what the
Red God wants. Don't deny the Red God his due.
So he's really putting a hard sell on here.
He wants to get her involved. He wants to give her a taste of
that power, of what it's like to have the power to kill.
For whatever reason, he figured this out about her.
And one theory I have is kind of a newer theory, at least for me,
is that, well, much, much later, Arya says the prayer out loud at
the House of Black and White. She starts to say it in her mind
because she realizes people can hear her.
At one point, the kindly man confronts her.
She's like, what's that list you're saying?
She's like, we actually have that quote later.
We'll get to it. But I wonder if she was saying
out loud at Harrenhal, whispering in and jock and hurt
her and was like, yeah, it's interesting.
So he, he kind of got her in by promising these deaths, saying
it's the matter of the gods who insists it must be done, right.
And it's very ironic when you think about it like you really
owe 3 deaths because these deaths would have been, would
have happened, right? If, if Aria hadn't saved them,
those three people would have died.
But you just saved 3 killers. Those plenty more deaths are
going to happen because of Rorge Biter and Jock and being free.
If they had died right, then that would have saved lives.
That's so I don't think you need more deaths to to make up for
that. But anyway, yeah.
So that's a new term for me. Dark, you have humorously
ironic, but now we have dark, humorously ironic.
And some of those would be by burning, right.
George Jockin and Biter, they had to burn some people, right?
Because it's the Red God ode to death.
And he's very particular about how he gets his.
Yeah. So here's another scene where
Ari is thinking about it as, as I said, a lot of this happens in
Harrenhal. And at first she's not so sure
it violates some of what she's learned about death and killing
and and how it should be done. It basically what she learned
from her family. Here's the quote.
As she worked, Arya thought about the people she wanted
dead. She pretended she could see
their faces on the steps and scrubbed harder to wipe them
away. The Starks were at war with the
Lannisters, and she was a Stark, so she should kill as many
Lannisters as she could. That was what you did in wars.
But she didn't think she should trust Jacob.
I should kill them myself. Whenever her father had
condemned a man to death, he did the deed himself with ice, his
great sword. If you would take a man's life,
you owe it to him to look him in the face and hear his last
words. She'd heard him tell Rob and
John once. Notice that Ned didn't tell her
that she overheard it, but it still had the same effect that
it probably had on those two for the most part.
So yeah, the Northern ideal is this is being violated by that.
He's like, well, my father said you should swing the sword
yourself. But she realizes how powerless
she is to do that, even though she wants to.
This along with the just constant evil and brutality
around her, from the small scale abuse of Weese to the torture of
more captives and people and just watching Gregor and the
Tickler and all this, the, the day-to-day of that is just
overwhelming. So eventually she accepts
Jockin's offer, but also dedicates herself to the idea of
learning how to do it herself. She, she's like, yeah, I'm going
to let Jockin do this, but I want to learn how to do it
myself too. Which brings us back to that's
probably exactly what he wanted. He wanted to bring her in, make
her responsible for some deaths, make her like it, or at least
see how she takes to it, and then do further recruitment
things, which I've got a few, one or two more of them here,
coming in a minute. Now the trope of the genie and
the 3 wishes is inverted further here.
Or perhaps not inverted, but played in a way that's very
familiar. Arya does the thing that a lot
of people do with that third wish.
They try to wish for more wishes, which is super familiar.
I love that. This is such a great inversion.
But there is a difference here. The trope is slightly inverted
or or changed a bit by Arya, say, wishing for the third name
to be him. She says the third death should
be you. Very clever.
Even the genie can't out think that one, which is probably just
justifying in Jockin's minds, like, Oh yeah, I'm recruiting
the right girl here. This, she gets it.
This, this girl knows what's up. This is this was a good move by
her. We need her.
We want her on our team. So what is it?
Of course, this ends with weasel soup, right?
That's, that's where it goes from there.
She gets him to unsay the She unsays the name in agreement to
freeing these northerners from prison.
And the net result of that is 8 dead guardsmen of Amory Lorch.
Remember Jock in his shirt, make sure to rub some of the blood
from one of his kills on Arya's jerkins so that she has the
blood of that death on her. So the blood is on her hands as
well. Again, all plays into the
recruitment, the the responsibility angle of this.
You know, you can't just give the order and not have
responsibility for for the death, which is something Arya
hasn't really fully sussed out yet.
That's a big theme that we're going to be tackling throughout
this episode is Arya is too young sometimes to understand
responsibility. She blames Ill and Payne for
killing her father. Fair, he did that.
But the person who gave the order is the bigger deal.
And fairly, she blames Joffrey for that.
Joffrey gave the order right in front of everybody.
But who encouraged Joffrey to do that?
Probably Littlefinger. And she doesn't have
Littlefinger on her list. So that's something that's
coming that we'll talk about a bit is that this is the kind of
thing that Ari hasn't learned to think through.
Like, well, who's behind it? Who's behind The Who sent the
man to do the murder? That's the the power structure,
the authority levels and, and all the insurance and outs of
that. And she hasn't fully figured
that out. And it's a big deal for her
because of who she works for, meaning the House of black and
white. Like who's behind all that?
Is there a person in charge? Are they really just all sort of
equally in charge there? There's a lot of mystery in
terms of like, who's running that place and do they have a
connection to the Iron Bank? And these theories get a little
off of what we're dealing with today.
But I wanted to throw them out there because it it relates to
Arya's naivete in that regard. And it's, this is one of the
things that the adults can can get past her because she's too
young to even consider some of these things.
But how long will that be true? She's eventually going to start
figuring some of these things out.
Let's talk about the full list. Let's get into the actual list,
the names on it, and start to get into that particular nitty
gritty. Ari has only 5 chapters in the
Game of Thrones. That's 7% of the book.
Of course, the list doesn't come there.
A lot of the things that drive her to make the list happen in
book one. But in The Clash of Kings, she
has 10 chapters, twice as many, and that's the second most
chapter, second most chapters of anybody.
It's also the second most percentage of the book.
She's 14% of the book is her POV.
Tyrion is first on both counts in that one.
So Ari is number 2 in both cases there.
So she goes from one of the lesser PO VS to one of the most
major ones and it's and chapter 26 is when the prayer first
appears. 20 chapter 26 of a Clash of Kings.
That's six of her. That's her 6th chapter.
She has 6 chapters in the 1st 26 and then she has another one in
chapter 30. So that's wild.
Arya is way the main character of the first part of the Clash
of Kings. Seven of the 1st 30 chapters are
hers. Almost 1/4, right?
Then only, but then she only has three more chapters for the rest
of the book, which is 40 chapters.
So 7 out of the 1st 30, but only three out of the next 40.
So really early A Clash of Kings is, is very Arya.
So again, it appears in her 6th chapter.
The list does. Then it's in her 7th.
Then it's in her 8th. It's not in her 9th, but it is
in her 10th and it evolves along the way.
In A Clash of Kings, she spends most of her time at Harrenhal,
right? And at the end, it's when she
flees while Roose Bolton is still in control in A Storm of
Swords. She spends her time with her
friends for a stretch before running into the Brother Without
Banners. Right then she's eventually
kidnapped by Sandor and spends a lot of time with him.
She says the prayer twice in chapter 1 of A Storm of Swords,
then again in chapter 3578, twice in Chapter 9 with with
some names freshly crossed off, and then that's about it.
So she doesn't say it for a while after the Red Wedding.
She's more in grief and fear and not sure what to do.
So yeah, she's not thinking about killing the people who
weren't involved with it because it, she knows it was the phrase.
She was there. I mean, she went to the, she was
at the Red Wedding briefly. So she knows basically who's
responsible, but she doesn't know their names.
So a little more on that later. She's the phraser on her list,
sort of. She just doesn't know what their
names are. In A Feast for Crows, it's
almost immediately happens. The prayer comes up and then in
her second chapter it comes up three times.
In A Feast for Crows now she's only got 3 chapters in that
book. In A Dance with Dragon, she's
only got 2 chapters, but in both chapters it happens.
In fact, in the 2nd chapter it happens twice.
It doesn't happen in the Mercy chapter, but she killed someone
on her list in the Mercy chapter.
So it's very, it's a much more intense version of the list.
It's an actual crossing of a name off.
She doesn't actually have to say the list.
She she acts on it. So that's like almost every
chapter with multiple times it being twice.
So that's a lot. So here we go with everyone
who's been on it or is on it or was on it because some people
have been crossed off. And then again, including people
like House Frey, who or name she doesn't know or people that she
could learn were responsible. Because you'll notice in that,
for example, she doesn't mention House Bolton.
She knows the phrase were involved.
She doesn't learn that about House Bolton, but it's not
exactly uncommon knowledge. So she could learn about that.
So we'll talk about them too, but we'll do it in order before
the actual list. In her second chapter of A Game
of Thrones, the list, there's a proto version of it.
It starts to form. This comes when she's sad that
Micah was killed by Sandor and she poor girl, blames herself.
He held her gently as she turned to him and sobbed against his
chest. Grieve for your friend, but
never blame yourself. You did not kill the butcher's
boy. That murder lies at the hound's
door. Him and the cruel woman he
serves. I hate them, Arya confided, red
faced sniffling. The Hound and the Queen and the
King and Prince Geoffrey. I hate all of them.
And they all end up on her list, right?
All three of those and several more, right?
And as I said earlier, hatred is the thing that really drives the
creation of the list in the first point in the 1st place.
And here we go. She's hates them now.
The moment softens a bit. This is part of how it's brought
in slowly. Ned sort of makes it a little
humorous here. He's able to soften the
situation by saying because Ari's like Sansa lied about what
happened there and Ned's like we all lie and.
And points out with a warm smile that Ari lied about Nymeria
running off and that's his way of saying that.
Look, just a lie isn't necessarily bad.
It's why you lie, right? You can lie for a good reason
and that. Would know.
Ned would know. Ned would know.
He would know better than most. And that was a very well put
sentence by him there where he's like, I know you.
You chase away and it and you did it for a good reason.
You did it to save her life. And so she's it's a clever way
to introduce that concept to her, to her.
And she's like, yeah, that's a good point.
OK, Yeah, Ned, not only does Ned keep conceal those John's
parentage for all his life, even from Catlin, but he has to lie
to the crowd to save Sansa in front of everybody when he's
being executed by Joffrey or before he's being executed,
before he knows he's going to be executed, He's like, yes,
Joffrey is the king. He didn't believe that.
He told Varres he didn't believe that.
But then Varres is like, yeah, but Sansa, he's like, OK, I'll
lie, right? Some things are more important
than honesty. People's lives, right?
We would like the two to be more intrinsically linked, but that's
in the real world. And in fantasy worlds like this
one that aim to be realistic, not so much.
So yeah, the list is extremely personal to her.
It's not just about justice. It it is about justice in so
many cases, but it's more about personal justice for the most
part. She doesn't add people to the
list for crimes committed against others.
The Tickler is maybe an exception.
He's just so overwhelming, though.
The list is mostly for crimes against her, things that people
did to upset her or to her family, which is kind of the
same thing the way she perceives it.
And as we've been saying all along, it only extends to people
that she's capable of perceiving as guilty, which is difficult at
her age. So more we'll continue to talk
about that. So here's who's dead, here's
who's already been crossed off, that was on the list and isn't
anymore. And Harrenhal, of course.
Like I said, this is when the plot line kicks into high gear
because that's when Jockin makes the offer and eventually she
accepts it. The first one to go is Chiswick.
This is a guy that bragged about a gang rape and and Arya
overheard it. And of course, being one of the
mountains men, he's clearly participated in other awful
things that we don't need to think about.
This one is one of the worst passages in all the series.
It's just so gross and and terrifying.
But it's realistic that people do these things and and brag
about it and and laugh about it. And Aria recognizes this is
rightfully disgusted by it and is a good example.
This this Chizik didn't do anything to her.
So right off the bat is it's a exception to what I was saying
before, which mostly things done to other to her or her family.
This is not the case. She doesn't even know this
person, Lena, this girl that had this awful thing happened to her
by the mountains men. So it's just so offensive.
It's a young girl near Aria's age, near Santa's age, so she
can't let it fly. It's it's just something that
has to be answered, answered in kind.
So she's not completely selfish with her list of I wouldn't say
she's selfish at all. She's I mean, she's 11.
So it's a mix. Mostly it's about what's done to
her and her family, but her first example was not.
Self absorbed versus selfish Like list isn't completely self
absorbed. Yeah, that.
That's a good. Yes, that's a good way to put
it. Yeah.
Self absorbed as, as, as most children would be.
It's hard to have a worldview, a, a, a grander view to think of
others when you're that age, even when you've been sort of
taught to, because you're a noble and you're supposed to
have authority over other people.
So there's a little more of that in a noble household of thinking
about others, but not thinking about others in terms of what
they're going through, thinking about others in terms of telling
them what to do and how they fit into your Kingdom.
You know, how they what roles they play, not necessarily
caring about them as individuals.
So he was killed. Chiswick was by being pushed off
a wall by Jockin the first death wish.
And it's pretty important. And, you know, it gets her
started. She's like, wow, that the
feeling of getting rid of this awful man is empowering to her.
And this is when she starts to feel like the ghost of
Harrenhal. She's like, yeah, I'm, I'm
somebody now. I'm no longer a mouse.
I'm a killer, or at least I have the power of death.
Maybe she's not a killer. Maybe she doesn't quite think of
herself that. But she's on that the spectrum,
the killer spectrum. She's she's not a zero anymore
on that. Well, I mean, she already wasn't
because she killed the stable boy, but she felt powerless.
And now and she just starts to bring her back to feeling a
sense of agency that she hadn't had since King's Landing.
And it goes from there. The next one is Weese.
She starts to, you know, feel herself a bit.
She's like, yeah, I've got options now.
I'm not completely helpless. I can do things like this.
And this is when she does become a little more selfish with it or
a little more self absorbed with it.
To her credit, she realizes this.
She Weese, is very abusive to her, lies to her, beats her.
And he's abusive to the rest of the the workers as well.
So at first she's thinking of killing some more of the
mountains man. She's like Dunson REF Polyver.
She's got these, you know which one of them?
The tickler maybe. But then they go off on a
mission. They leave to go fight in one of
Tywin's battles. It's actually turns out to be
the Battle of the Stone mill. Point is, they're not there.
She can't send Jock in after them because they they're not in
in even in his reach. And the combination of them not
being there and the day-to-day constant abuse by Wiese focuses
her energy on him. So she names him to Jockin as
her second wish, and then tries to change her mind.
She's like, actually, what am I doing?
I He's not important. Yes, he's a big problem for me.
But this guy is nobody in the scheme of things.
He's not a commander, he's not a leader.
He's not Tywin. He's not.
But it's too late. Weiss is killed by his own dog.
Jockin apparently used basilisk blood, because we know basilisk
blood can do that. I have no idea where he got
basilisk blood. Maybe he stole it from the
maestro's chambers, but that's a mystery for another time.
Anyway, it has a has an interesting effect on her.
Now she's down to one death and that is well she can see the end
of her new powers creeping up. She doesn't want to lose that.
She's like, well, if I ever use this last wish, then I won't
have any more wishes and I won't I'll go back to being a ghost.
I mean a mouse instead of a ghost.
And she's she can see the end of her power.
It's like she was elected and the end of her term is coming
and she doesn't want it to end. So she's trying to figure out a
way to extend it like a lot of people do when they're losing
power. It's very human, what's
happening here. It's just a very unusual and
dark power that she has the ability to whisper a name and
have that person die. So this is when we get back to
Weasel Soup or not back to I've already explained what happened
with that. You already know, and during the
commotion of all this, Jockin wipes this the blade on her
shirts that she's got the blood and she's, you know,
symbolically got her the blood on her hands.
And then he changes his face in front of her and leaves.
Now he didn't have to change his face in front of her.
He could have done that in private.
He did that to to show her he could do it.
So she'd be like, oh, I want to learn how to do that.
She's like, Oh, you're not only are you good at killing, you're
good at that. I want to do that.
So this is more just a wowing the kid to get her to want to
learn more and to follow his footsteps.
And here's the iron coin, you know, meet me in Bravos or meet
my friends in Bravos. So the full sales pitch is
completed by that point. He's like, like I've done
everything I can do now you're as recruited as I can get as I
can recruit you. I've got other kills to go do.
So he leaves during the confusion and all this helps
this this also empowers her in a way she didn't see coming
because even though she loses Jock and she loses her ability
to be the Ghost in Winterfell to kill with a whisper, she gets
promoted by Roose Bolton. And that actually helps her
escape because she has access to parts of the castle that she
wouldn't have had because she's Roose Bolton's direct servant.
She has a flayed man badge on her, which gives her a higher
level of authority amongst the servants.
And that leads to the conditions that allow her to escape.
But before she escapes, right, what happens?
The ceramorie Lurch is killed the first person on her original
list. Cuz Wheeze and Chizik were not
on the original list. They were added later.
I think Chizik was added later actually.
Could be wrong about that. But anyway, Lorch was certainly
an original member and for her his crime was killing Joran and
some of the other boys she was with.
But really it's about Joran now. Of all the people that lived in
Westeros that had people that wanted to kill them, Emery Larch
would be among the most famous or most well known.
This is a guy that had a lot of enemies.
This dude is horrible. Nobody likes this guy.
His family probably didn't like him.
His own men probably didn't like him.
He's just terrible. Just a jerk.
Not very smart, cruel. Yeah, just all the no redeeming
qualities whatsoever. Basically, if other people had
lists of people they wanted to kill, he'd have been on more
lists than most people. He might have topped.
He might have been the most appearing, the name that
appeared on the most lists of people that need to die because,
yeah, the Martels, for example, they wanted him dead.
He he's responsible for Princess Rainey's death.
So that's, that's their, you know, their granddaughter or
their their niece, depending on which Martel you're talking to,
so or cousin, whatever. And they wanted him dead as bad
as Gregor and Tywin. But you know, they didn't get
their chance. Neither did Arya, but Arya at
least got to see it. So it's no surprise that Arya
didn't get to kill this guy 'cause he was.
He was top 10 most wanted. Now it was after the weasel soup
incident. He lost the castle.
He had been Castellan, appointed by Tywin, Vargo turned on Tywin,
invited Ruse into the castle and boom, that was that.
Amory Lorch's death is presented.
Nina writes as almost like a divine reward for Arya, like
everything fell into place the right way and she got to witness
his death. It just seems so perfectly for
her. She gave up her last wish to
make the weasel soup thing happen, but Armory Lorch is very
possibly the guy she would have targeted otherwise.
So she she sort of was rewarded for spending her wish on
something that wasn't directly about her.
It's like the gods gave her that benefit anyway.
It's like, it's like, if I'm a good person, I'll be rewarded in
the afterlife. Well, this wasn't the afterlife,
but it's a similar kind of concept where she's like, I'm
going to do the good thing here, the thing that I perceive as
good, and the gods will reward me for it.
And it seems to pay off. Like it's from her perspective.
That's kind of what happened. She saved some imprisoned
Northmen, men that were in Rob's army, and that's what she
thought she was doing. And yeah.
And the bear, it's a bear that kills Armory Lord just starving
a bear in the bear pit. The one the same bear that later
Brienne and Jamie contend with. In fact, do you all remember
when Jamie is like, looking for any sort of weapon whatsoever in
the bear pit and he picks up a jawbone and it has maggots on
it? Well, that's probably Armory
Lorch's jawbone because it has maggots on it.
That means it's fresh. Like the other bones in there
wouldn't have maggots because the meat would have been eaten
off. You know, it would have rotted
or eaten a while ago. But this was fresh, ish.
So yeah, it was probably Lorch's jawbone there.
And Aria, when she sees it happen, she kind of it's almost
like trance, like she feels like it's, it is like a divine
moment, like this is what's supposed to happen.
And she thinks the bear is all in black, like urine.
It's like urine getting his revenge.
It's a black bear. Yeah.
It reminds me a little bit of Danny seeing her brother die.
She has more complex feelings for Viserys and Aria has for
Armory, larch and urine. But it's an abuser getting a
severe taste of their own medicine, right.
Danny was abused by Viserys. She also loved him, which is why
it's more a lot more complicated.
Ari never had any love for Armory Lorch, but she is in it's
kind of a like a reverie. She sees her brother die and
it's like a release. It's like, yeah, he kind of
deserved this, you know? And she feels and in that moment
where she's like, she thinks a dragon, he's no true dragon.
A dragon wouldn't burn, right. It's it's a little bit similar
vibe to the bear is all in Black.
Yeah, that's cool. And the bear is a northern
symbol, kind of the fire is kind of a symbol of House Targaryens.
You got a little a little similar vibes there.
And Tywin was going to blame Clegane's crimes on Armory Larch
when she when he found out he was just like, well, I might as
well just pin everything on Larch so I can keep Clegane for
myself and not have to turn him over to the Martells.
Of course, that didn't work out because Gregor admitted his
guilt during the trial by comments like, yeah, I raped
her. Yeah, I killed your, your
screaming whelp. Like, oh, that.
You weren't supposed to do that, Gregor.
That's what Oberyn wanted, though.
He didn't want the, you know, skull getting smashed part.
But it's all Harkins. Back to my point about Tywin's
Reavers all killing each other. They're just resources.
They're just, you know, they're just tools to Tywin.
He doesn't care. They're not people, right?
And also, it's very, it's another example of how Tywin is
very good at keeping his evil under wraps.
We the reader are very intimately exposed to it.
But most people don't know how bad a guy Tywin is.
Tywin's not on Arya's list, right?
Like, that's kind of when you think about that way, it's like,
yeah, he kind of belonged, right?
But again, this is the she doesn't, she's not able to parse
through these structures of authority and say, yeah, she
blames Gregor. She blame, she blames Armory
Lorch. Tywin sent both of them out.
She should absolutely blame him. He's the one who put them in the
position to do all the horror that they did.
He's the one who gave them permission to do that.
But again, she doesn't quite see it that way.
She thinks of him specifically again, Armory Lorch at the House
of black and white. It it reminds her when she sees
him face death very cowardly. He's begging and pleading and
doesn't go well, right. He's it's not a good death, you
could say, because he's he's so afraid and doesn't fight back.
Just kind of you know, is torn apart by a bear while he's
crying. So Arya sees both sides of it.
She sees that and is very struck by people who come to the House
of Black and White for the gift of death, right?
For the gift of mercy. They don't call it death.
They called mercy, which is part of why she has that name.
Mercy later. Yep.
And the the, the people asking for mercy certainly comes up as
well throughout her arc and places that you may not have
noticed. That perhaps is meant as a
little wink by George, but they go there willingly to end their
lives, to have mercy and to to just end their lives in peace
like a suicide machine. Like to go.
They go to visit Doctor Kevorkian and they want to have
they they welcome death at that point.
Not to be fair. They get a peaceful death.
They get a painless peaceful death.
Well, they're not torn apart by a starved bear.
So there's other circumstances that are different here.
But still, it's for, for a young girl in Aria's place, it really
speaks to how she's learning about death, how she's seeing
all the ways people die, how the way, the ways they face it.
And it's a lot of, it's a lot for an 11 year old to, to learn,
to have at her disposal, to have in the front of her mind.
But it's part of what makes Arias so darn fascinating.
Now it's also this, this bit about painless death, brave
death versus facing death, you know, with, with cowardice or
with, with calmness. Amory Larch himself has his own
little philosophy that came up when he was confronting Joran
and was like, look, you know, or if you don't send open the gates
and let us inspect you and see who you have, we're going to
attack you. And he's like, well, there's
just young boys here, you know, and, and Armory says young boys
and old men die the same. He was very casually, cruelly in
that sense. Well, there is some similarities
there, of course, like a stab to the heart will kill 1 the same
as the other. But how they act facing death,
what it means to them, the life they experienced before that,
not even close, not even close. Right.
So it's it's death is a complex subject and for some people it's
simple, but for Aria it's not. Maybe it started off simple, but
the longer she goes, the less so it is, which might affect how
the list plays out in the long run.
Here at History of Westeros, we're here for the obsessed
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Kimber Lafay says I'm confused Jack and claims the red God is
owed but he works for the many faced God.
Are they the same or is he playing a role?
I think you're picking up on what I was saying, that he's
playing a role. He's trying to get Aria in with
him, trying to get him to do his things, get him to or get her
to, to kill and to associate death with the parlance of gods
and to say, to put it beyond humanity, to say the gods decide
who lives and who dies. The prayer of the many Faced
God, whether it's the Red God or the many Faced God, it's just a
way to say this authority comes from above.
We are servants. That's the way he's trying to
sell it to her, in part because I think he knows his audience.
He's been around Aria. He's very good at this.
He's a very highly trained and he's able to kind of undo her
psychology and say the right things to to pull on her
heartstrings and to encourage her to get her interested.
So I think you're right to to key in on that because, yeah, I
think he's spinning a yarn. He's exaggerating, maybe
outright lying in some places to get her to get on his path to
become a faceless man. So yeah, playing a role very
much. That's a good term to use too,
because mummery and and playing roles and and plays is a big
part of her arc as well. As I said earlier, when he
leaves, he's he he dazzles her with the face changing skills
and gives her the coin. Now he had made her feel more
powerful. And here is a moment where she's
kind of reflecting on that and thinking about what it means now
that she's that he's gone. Quote.
She took out the coin that Jake and Hagar had given her and
curled her fingers around it as she lay beneath her cloak.
It made her feel strong to hold it, remembering how she'd been
the ghost in Harrenhal. She could kill with a whisper
then. So the coin, not only is it the
token that gets her access, but it's a Talisman that causes her
to remember how powerful she felt with Jockin's abilities,
with his wishes at her command. So even as he's gone, he left
her with this thing that will continue to cause her to think
about it, that keeps her, her mind enraptured and thinking of
what could be if she were to find a man of Braavos and speak
the words Valor Margulis. She really likes that phrase,
too. She starts saying Valor Margulis
pretty regularly. She starts associating it with
her list. Yeah.
And dark humorously, she even uses the coin to help her kill
that Bolton guard when she escapes Harrenhal.
It's like, it's an, it's, it's like part of the kill.
She's like, I dropped it on the ground and she leans over and
she stabs him in the throat. So she's less powerful without
him and the wishes, But the the notion that she could be more
powerful really motivates her. And she adjusts quickly, in part
because the status she gains through being Roose Bolton's
servant doesn't change her nightly routine, though the
prayer continues. And as I said, she actually has
less duties under Ruse, even though it's a promotion to help
with Ruse, who's, you know, an awful man.
She actually has more alone time because Ruse's requirements are
somehow lesser than Wese's, because that actually makes
sense because she's working for the entire castle now.
She's just working for one guy. So while Ruse is out hunting and
this is the hunting scene when he's out symbolically hunting
wolves in concert with his turn against how Stark, which Arya
has no clue about, which is very ironic that it happens in front
of her. She doesn't figure it out.
She just still doesn't know he's associated with the Red Wedding.
So it's like this guy was right there.
And then later she'll learn, man, that guy was was the the
cause of so many problems for my house and for myself.
And she could have she could have gotten him, but she never
she never knew. So while he's out hunting, we
get this scene showing us that instead of a prayer that she's
whispering at night, it's becoming more she's she's got
more confidence in it. And it's not just a whisper,
it's something she says out loud.
Here it is she or she is practicing her needlework in the
Godswood quote. She slashed at Birch leaves till
the splintery point of the broken broomstick was green and
sticky. Sir Gregor, she breathed.
Dunson polyver raft the sweetly. She spun and leapt and balanced
on the balls of her feet, darting this way and that,
knocking pine cones flying. The tickler.
She called out one time, the Hound the next.
Sir Ellen, Sir Marin, Queen Cersei.
The bowl of an oak loomed before her and she lunged to drive her
point through it, grunting Joffrey, Joffrey, Joffrey.
Her arms and legs were dappled by sunlight and the shadows of
leaves. A Sheen of sweat covered her
skin by the time she paused. The heel of her right foot was
bloody where she'd skinned it, so she stood 1 legged before the
heart tree and raised her sword in salute.
Valar Morghulis, she told the old gods of the North.
She liked how the words sounded when she said them.
So there you go, associating these things together, what
she's learned from Jockin with the Old Gods of the North, sort
of syncretism of sorts, her own version of of old gods mixed
with the House of Black and White, which she doesn't even
know the House of Black and white by this point, but that's
what she's doing, right? By the way, excellent reading
there, Shay. That was really good.
I'm. Greeting like angry, are you?
Yeah. It lines up pretty well.
So this is also the chapter she leads.
It's the final chapter of A Clash of Kings for her.
So this is like sort of her maybe building up her courage a
little more and realizing how she's got to get out of there.
She goes and talks to Ruse, and this is when Ruse tells her
that, yeah, she's going to, he's going to give the castle to
Vargo Haute and and she's going to stay with him.
And she's like, am I? I don't think I'm going to do
that, actually. And she leaves right away.
And that's when she does the dropping coin thing and kills
the guard and escapes by partly by lying to Gendry about what
Vargo Haute's going to do. She says Vargo Haute's going to
cut off his foot. Virgo didn't say he would do
that. He might have done it.
I mean, he might might have been correct, even though she didn't
know for sure. So either way, it's another good
example of, hey, sometimes a lie is was the right thing to do.
Now, after escaping Harrenhal, of course, we get into a storm
of sorts. And this is when she's caught by
the Brother without Banners and she sees the justice of the gods
fail. This is very interesting to her.
Sandor beats Barrick and is set free.
She knows Sandor's guilty. This isn't some like, well,
what's going to happen? She's very surprised and
disturbed by the result because the gods were supposed to be
watching and they were wrong. She knows for a fact that Sandor
killed Micah and that it was unjust, but he got away.
He was freed. They had to let him go.
And more confusingly, Barrick stood up after being chopped
nearly in half. Like what the heck happened
there? So that's confusing but doesn't
directly relate to the list. It does give Arya an even, maybe
stranger sense of what death means because, well, you've got
people who just stand right back up and aren't dead even though
they took mortal wounds. And of course that comes right
is going to come around, presumably with Sandor himself,
who she left for dead. She thinks at first he doesn't
deserve the gift of mercy, and then multiple times later, she
regrets that. She's like, I should have put
him out of his misery. Of course, he's not dead.
So he's going to be like, oh, well, I'm glad I didn't give you
the gift of mercy after all, because you're alive.
Presuming they ever meet again, I think they probably will, or
at least hear about each other. And so that's all very
interesting to compare to each other to, to size up as as one
whole, to think about this trial by combat.
Barrick doesn't actually die. Sandor should have died and then
does die later, but doesn't die actually.
So and as farther into the story as we get, I think we'll see
more and more people defying death either through just
confusion, like Sandra Clegane. There's nothing supernatural
about Sandra Clegane's example, but with Barrick, and if she
finds out that Barrick Donderian's soul or spirit or
whatever is why her mother is walking around.
I mean, this is all very heavy for Arya and it's all very
confusing as to how death works. It's like, well, death isn't
working the way death is supposed to work here.
Now, of course, she is stolen by Sand Oraclegame.
Kidnapped, for lack of a better word.
I know. Actually, kidnapped is pretty
much the perfect word. And they spend a lot of time
riding around the Riverland together.
And more on him a little bit later.
He is on the list, so we have a separate section just for him.
But this culminates with the Red Wedding.
They get to the Red Wedding. She starts to warm up to him a
little bit, as much as she can, you know, forgiven his crimes.
But she stops wanting to kill him and eventually takes him off
the list and stuff like that. And then they go to the end of
the crossroads and they find out Joffrey is dead right before the
duel between Polliver and the Tickler and Arya and Sandor and
that Squire. So and that's of course when she
parts from Sandor. So let's talk about Joffrey
because this is the one that first that happens first there
in that scene, she finds out that he's dead.
And it's like, wow, that's amazing.
But before that, he's probably the number one person on her
list again, for fairly obvious reasons, for he was part of the
Nymeria faffo, you know, situation there where Cersei had
lady executed and all that, where both Santa and Joffrey
lied about what happened. And of course, even bigger than
that was Joffrey executing her father.
So lots of stuff she and even before that, she hated him from
the first time she saw him at when when she was training or
when he was training with Rob and she and John were watching
and and watching Joffrey be terrible.
And John said Joffrey truly is a little shit and Ari was like
Yep. But then Joran remember Joran
explains to her that he was paid to wait.
He was he was paid to wait to hold his wagons because Lord
Stark would be joining his journey N he'd be taking the
black. Joran told Aria this and she
knows what happens. She's like she figures out what
really happened and knows who to blame.
Quote. Joffrey, Aria breathed.
Someone should kill him. Someone will, but it won't be
me, nor you neither. I like his voice.
Yeah, that was my urine, right? So that's reminiscent of Sansa
thinking someone should chop off Janos Slint's head, which John
does later oblige. In this case, the someone is in
part the same someone for her, responsible for her father's
death. But it's actually several
Someone's right because lots of people conspired to kill
Joffrey. It's not even entirely clear how
many people, but we know Olenna and Littlefinger for sure.
And they made Sansa included in that.
And of course this comes up in the story when he's dead.
They're told that Sansa was part of it, right?
And then she's like, what? Because the story, the story is
very dubious, though. It's Sansa turned into a bat
wolf and flew off after blaming the imp and Sandor laughs about
that and and Ari's like, that's stupid.
Sansa doesn't know spells, she knows songs, so she doesn't
fully form a thought about it. But everyone knows Tyrion
escaped by his lost after his lost trial by combat.
So that's his common knowledge. Even Ari and Sandor know that.
And despite all the swirling rumors, there's no disputing
that Joffrey's dead. So she knows that for a fact
now. And it circles around too.
If we go, if we Fast forward all the way to the Mercy chapter,
well, they're the play that she's in is called the Bloody
Hand. It's about Tyrion murdering
Joffrey among other things. So it probably we, we don't
actually see that spoken of in the play.
A lot of other details pop up here and there, but it's not
like Joffrey's name is specifically mentioned.
You would you would just assume it's in there.
And the TV version had him there, if I remember correctly.
Not that that has much bearing here, but still.
Just a way to jog our memories. You would wonder though, Nina
asks a good question here. What would Arya's take be on the
depiction of that event in the play?
She's like, that's not how it happened, or it's close enough,
or if she just doesn't care. I imagine it's not the third
option. I imagine she does care, but she
probably keeps it to herself. I wonder if we'll find that out,
because by the end of the Mercy chapter, she already knows that
she's going to be kicked out. She's going to face the
consequences for what she's done.
So we'll see. Now in this moment where Joffrey
calls for the execution of her father, it's of course Sir Ellen
who actually does the execution. More on him later, though,
because we're going through the the people who are dead and
Ellen is not dead. Again, I want to point out
Littlefinger's involvement. Littlefinger is almost certainly
the one who planted the seed in Joffrey's mind, the one who sow
sowed the chaos here and said, hey, you know, don't listen to
the women. They're soft hearted.
You know, how can you possibly stand for treason?
You know, you should execute this guide to set an example,
right? You know, and he's like, that's
strength. That's what a man would do.
That's what the kind of things Littlefinger probably said to
Joffrey to to get him to execute Ned.
Anyway, Arya does need to be a little more savvy about such
things. I I would hope anyway that she
learns to to look at who's giving the orders.
As we said, I feel like Tywin, it's too obviously too late for
Tywin. He's dead.
But I do think that this is a thing that we can say yet about.
Like I think Arya will start to understand some of these things,
whether it's taught to her or whether she figures it out on
her own or a little, both. Either way, I think it's coming,
getting wiser in the ways of the world.
I mean, it's part of her education.
It's the kind of thing that would have, we might have fast
forwarded on if we had the five year gap.
She probably just jumped. I had five years and she's
probably just wiser. But that makes sense.
I mean, going from age 11 to 16, you you would think 5 that's
important. Five years of wisdom gaining
there. A lot of naivety would be shed
in those five years. So, but it's going to have to
happen differently, the way it's actually playing out.
She also, one of the things she has to come face to face with is
that, yeah, her father and mother can be wrong sometimes.
I don't think she's fully grasped that.
I think she's maybe danced around that idea in her mind,
but maybe not fully suggested it.
She's willing to admit Sansa could be wrong.
So she's not like my family's always right.
She doesn't have that attitude. But like a lot of young people,
very young people, you often have a unrealistic version of
your own family, your own parents, like, thinking that
they can't do anything wrong if they're, if they're good
parents, that is, which Ned and Caitlin are, I would say.
Yeah. Anita also wonders, like, what
extent will Aria ever learn about Littlefinger's crimes?
Like, surely she won't learn everything that he's guilty of.
That would be kind of ridiculous for everything to come to light.
I mean, he's guilty of so much. And I it's probably more of a
Sansa thing to deal with Littlefinger.
That's her great foe, her final boss of sorts to topple.
But Arya could help. Arya could be the one this to
pat to swing those swords or says I could pass the sentence,
but she won't be swinging that sword herself.
I don't think Arya might be the one to do that, though.
And especially if Arya learns a few things, it wouldn't take
much for Arya to be on board with killing that guy, right?
And it's like, Yep, he's the one that encouraged our father's
death. He's the one that, you know,
killed Aunt Lysa. He just there's a bajillion
crime. Jane Poole, he could find out
what she did to her. Like if that's that's one of the
more likely ones, Arya being in Braavos where Jane Poole's going
to be with Justin Massey. If they run into each other,
she's like, oh, hey, that's Jane Poole.
I know her. She made fun of me.
But you know, that's probably not that much of A obstacle to
them having some sort of reconnection and she'll find out
what the Boltons did to Jane Poole.
But that Littlefinger's the one who put her in that position and
and like, forced her into sex work and then sold her to the
Boltons as fake Aria. So there's a lot she can learn
through that connection. But getting back to Joffrey, her
reaction to him when she hears that she was poisoned, given how
badly she wanted his death, even above a lot of the others, let's
hear the quote. Joffrey's dead.
She could almost see him, with his blonde curls and his mean
smile and his fat, soft lips. Joffrey's dead.
She knew it ought to make her happy, but somehow she still
felt empty inside. Joffrey was dead, but if Rob was
dead too, what did it matter? She's getting pretty close to
the Miri Mazdur philosophy example, which says if
everything you love is lost, then what good is life, right?
She hasn't lost everyone, but she lost her mother, she lost
Rob, she lost her father, and she thinks maybe she's lost more
than that. As it turns out, the rest of her
family is alive, but she's not sure of that.
So she's having. It's quite a moment for her.
She thinks that she should be happy that Joffrey's dead, but
she's not. Death isn't as sweet as she
thought it would be. Revenge isn't what she expected,
and maybe it's deserved, but it doesn't make her feel happy.
Justice isn't supposed to make her feel happy, it's supposed to
maybe be satisfying or just a thing that needs to be done.
It's a duty, but it's not what she thought it would be and
that's a really important part of her character development and
is likely playing a role in how she sees death in the later
cases. It's probably not that Joffrey
isn't probably the person that horrified her the most.
That's probably the Tickler, but this is the one who she probably
personally hated the most. So her reaction is very telling.
There's no the fact that there's no sweetness to it.
On the other hand, the Red Wedding was so fresh in her
mind. I mean, it did it was only a
couple chapters prior to this, so she's still very much feeling
the effects of that. So a lot's going on.
And it's also even in this case, she doesn't have much time to
even think about it in this moment because this is again
happening at the end of the crossroads, right?
This is all being said to her right before a huge bloody duel
breaks out. So very quickly she's distracted
and fighting for her life. So it's not like she has a lot
of time to ponder and and philosophize about her own views
on death. Not like an 11 year old would
even do that. She might do it, you know, as a
matter of course, but she wouldn't actively be like, you
know what? I need to think about death
more. I need to consider my
relationship with death. So yeah, things escalate rather
quickly and it leads to more names being crossed off.
Oliver is the first one to die killed by the Hound.
Oliver stole Needle from Arya and right after this encounter
she takes Needle back and uses it to finish off the third
person killed in this encounter. So Polyfer dies by Sandor and
she's able to cross him off later when she the next time she
thinks of the list now she thinks of him as less brutal,
not a cruel sadist. And the logic of he stole Needle
from her is a little bit lighter than a lot of the crimes
committed by others, like the Tickler, for example.
But he's one of the mountains men.
I mean, he's complicit to a lot of crimes, a lot of horrible
things, even if he's less brutal than the mountains of the
average mountains man. That's the bars so low that you
might not trip over it. So it's pretty bad.
So he's quite dead. Then we go to the Tickler, who
as we said earlier, is probably the one that scared Ari the
most. 22, Scary to hate. She thought about him, don't
know what his real name ever is. And this is perhaps the man that
most inspired the list in the 1st place.
If anyone. There's several.
There's too many people involved in this to pin it all in one
person. But if you're going to say who
has the biggest share of creating the list other than
Aria herself, I would put it on the Tickler and think of how she
reacts. Remember that moment?
I didn't want to quote it because this is too much for to
make a Shaya read this, but think of how she reacts when
killing him. It's not her usual demeanor, she
is. She's got the wolfblood.
She has gone full Brandon Stark or John when he's sparring with
Iron Emmett and he just like loses time.
She's stabbing him over and over.
She's shouting the things he would say calmly to people when
torturing them. Is there gold in the village?
Is there gems repeating these things over and over as she's
stabbing him? It's really extreme.
Sandor pulls her off of him. Like that's enough, you know,
like that guy is quite dead. You're disturbing even me.
And of course Sandor has he's seen some stuff, right?
Like disturbing Sandor, like, wow, what is that's bad?
Like what is what disturbs him, you know, So she's just, it's
like this pent up rage and it's like all the emotion that went
into her creating the list in the 1st place is released in
that moment of stabbing him. And she thinks of how easy it
was. Like he's so focused on the
hound because Oliver's dead and he's like, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm
one-on-one in with the hound. And that focus is what enables
her to sneak up behind him and stab him in the back.
And that's that. So that's the first one she
crosses off the list. Personally, again, I don't count
Wheeze and Chiswick, even though they were on the list because
Jock can cross them off. She gave the order, he did it.
She didn't commit the murder herself.
There is certainly that doesn't mean she's not responsible, but
still I want to make that still a different level of
culpability. Now remember there was that
scene where she's clutching the coin.
We we we quoted that earlier. She quite clutches the coin and
she's thinking of the list and she says Valor Morgolis.
It's an interesting moment here when this happens again because
the personality, the the, the personal aspects of revenge
start to fade for her. It's pretty interesting.
Here we go, quote. Arya tried to imagine how they
would look when they were dead, but it was hard to bring their
faces to mind. The Hound, she could see, and
his brother, the mountain, and she would never forget Joffrey's
face, or his mother's. But Raff and Dunson and Puliver
were all fading, and even the tickler whose looks had been so
commonplace. However, it's kind of like
riding a bike. Once you see that face again, it
all comes back. The visual memory can be
restored when you are refreshed. For example, let's Fast forward
to the Winds of Winter. Yes, Mercy chapter quote.
There were four guards, big hard looking men in ring mail with
heavy Westerosi long swords sheathed at their hips.
Their Crimson cloaks were bordered in whorls of gold and
golden lions with red garnet eyes clasped each cloak at the
shoulder. When Mercy glanced at the faces
beneath the gilded lion crested helm, her belly gave a quiver.
The gods have given me a gift. Her fingers clutched hard at
Dana's arm. That guard, The one on the end
behind the Black Pearl. So she has no trouble
remembering him when his face is right there to be seen.
She almost loses herself. She almost forgets herself.
She, Dana, of course, Dana has no idea who that is.
She asks about who he. She asks Dana.
She's like, who is that? You know that guy?
And he's, she's like, why would I know that guy?
He's a Westerosi guard. And she's like, oh, yeah, She's
like, why? Why are you even asking?
And she plays it off. Mercy's like, oh, he just seems
so handsome. And then she uses then she runs
with that idea of pretending she's attracted to him all the
way to his death. And who is this person?
It's RAF the sweetling. Now RAF is on the list because
he killed Lami Greenhans. He did a lot of other awful
things like a lot of the people on the list, especially the
mountains men. He killed a toddler and then her
mother RAFF was definitely candid to be killed as Jockins
second or third wish. But Arya realized, like some of
the others, that he she couldn't get him because he left to go to
the battle of the Stone Mill and wasn't around simply out of
range. But that worked out because she
got him herself much later. So this again is where I remind
you to check out our Mercy chapter audio playthrough.
Full acting and and sound effects and all that.
Different voices, a bunch of different people doing each
character. And she flirts with him while
she's on, while he's guarding during the play, telling him,
hey, we've got time to run off together because the play is
going to take a while. And she leads him to her home,
notably, which is dangerous not for her in terms of her putting
her in physical danger. But like, you're not a smooth
murderer isn't usually killing people in their own house,
right? That's usually a way to get
caught. Like that's usually do.
You're killing somewhere else where people won't find out.
Like it's not like she owns this house.
It's like a little apartment that she's renting.
So she kills him with needle and Nina points out how how this is
a really culmination of what she's learned at her time in
Bravos. Like every skill she's learned
in Bravos she puts into use to kill RAF the sweet link.
First of all, she's good enough at speaking Bravos a Bravosi
rather, and pretends to be bad at common.
And at one point she's like, yeah, he doesn't speak Pervosi.
Am I going to am I going to have to pretend to know common?
Like how far am I willing to go with this?
And she she barely hesitates. She's like, OK, I'm going to
pretend to speak common badly. And she does that.
Then she knows enough about bodies.
She knows so much about anatomy that she's learned from the
House of black and white that she's able to just cut his
femoral artery, I think is the one he she cuts.
And he said so smooth. He doesn't even know she did it
on purpose. She's able to play it off like
an accident. She's like, Oh my God, I cut
you. You're bleeding so heavily.
And, and he's like, oh, what did you do?
What, you know, get me a towel or whatever.
He doesn't realize that it was a he doesn't recognize it as an
attack on him. She's so smooth with it.
And that's also having been taught by the faceless men to be
so smooth with her knife. And then her plan to get him
there in the 1st place seems to be inspired by one of the sex
workers, Savrone. There was a girl, Savrone, who
would murder her clients. She's a sex worker that would
kill some of her clients and throw their bodies into the
canals to be eaten by eels. Which is what Arya does here.
She drags his body to be eaten by eels, throws it into the
canal after she kills him. She's like, now why did I do
that here? Why I got to drag his body all
the way to the canals? Because she wasn't thinking it
through. She was just so eager to scratch
this name off and to put her skills into use.
And she puts the whole, she makes this whole thing into a
play. This whole episode, this whole
event of killing Rafta Swiegling is a it's a theater production.
She she tells him she's going to teach him to say a line, then
cues him to say that line. And that line is you'll need to
carry me, which is the last thing Lamy said.
What did he say to Lamy? He said think so and then
stabbed him through the throat with his spear.
You might remember the show version where he stabbed him
through the throat with a needle, which that's almost more
poetic. But that's not what happened in
the book. But in the here in the book it
is the same exact phrase. You'll need to carry me.
And Aria says think so. And in the chapter the name
Rafta Sweetling isn't revealed at any point until she says
think so. It's just Lannister Guardsman
handsome. You can figure it out.
A lot of people knew who it was just from context, but the name
doesn't come up until this moment.
Quote. Raph the sweetling looked up
sharply as the long, thin blade came sliding from her sleeve.
She slipped it through his throat beneath the chin,
twisted, and ripped it back out sideways with a single smooth
slash. A fine red rain followed, and in
his eyes the light went out. Balar Morghulis, Arya whispered,
but Raff was dead and did not hear.
She sniffed. And as I started to allude to a
minute ago, this is when she starts to think of the
consequences, start to realize the consequences, minor and
major, the minor consequences of having to drag the body to the
canals, major consequences of, well, that's it for me.
And the the play, you know, and then the play Playhouse, they're
going to kick me out of that. And it's going to be a problem
for some people because, for example, she thinks this would
make trouble for the Sea Lord and the envoy with the chicken
on his chest. She did not doubt they saw her.
The other guard that RAF was with, there was a pair of guards
saw RAF leave with her and he's not going to come back.
And she is. So it's pretty blatant, like
this guard went off with her and didn't come back.
And there's a witness. So yeah, it's this isn't
something she can just kind of evade and she knows it.
She absolutely knows it. And yeah, Nina points out, she
absolutely prioritizes her revenge over doing the faceless
man thing she's supposed to do. Like just completely throws it
all away in a second for a chance at revenge.
Just boom. Like, doesn't even think about
it. It's instant.
Doesn't consider it, doesn't. And maybe I shouldn't do this.
Is this worth it? No, just does it.
She just does it. Let's talk about alive.
Who's still alive? Alive in quotes, because Sandor
Clegane is alive, as far as we know.
But Aria doesn't know that. So in a sense, he's dead.
In her mind, he's dead. Now, the reason, of course, he's
on the list was 'cause he killed Micah.
So in some ways he's the original member of the list,
because he was the first one to really do something.
Of all these things that someone's on the list for, This
was the first one, let's put it that way.
He also stole her from the Brother Without Banners, hit her
with the flat of his axe. You know, she complained about
that, but even she's being stubborn about that one.
He say he actually saved her life with that one and I think
she even knows it. But Sandor is very unique on
this list, the only person to be removed from the list for
reasons that aren't about his death.
Because she took him off the list before she left him for
dead. And it was, it's a way for
George wrote it suddenly, like she won't admit it, but she's
still saying her prayer and he's not on it anymore.
So yeah, that happened. It's not, I wouldn't go so far
as I call him a father figure. And it's a bit of an inversion
of the wolf and cub trope. But it's a really, it's a good
one. It's a good version of it.
It's very it's clever. It's both meaningful and well
written and touching in some ways, and also dark.
But they, the two of them have some interesting things in
common. So, yeah, she learned, he
learned. She learned a lot from him.
And arguably, he learned some things from her.
Maybe not. She wasn't trying to teach him,
but just their experience together taught him some things.
You know, having actually caring for somebody, actually having a
responsibility of caring for someone who's younger and, and
you wouldn't call Ari helpless, but someone who needs care.
Very important as well. Remember, Sandor taught her how
to kill with mercy. She learned that from him.
Didn't learn it from Ned or one of her brothers.
They encounter that mortally wounded Archer on the road after
fleeing from the Red Wedding, and he asked for the gift of
mercy. Sandor very gently gives it to
him, shoves the blade in his heart quickly make it as
painless as possible, and is telling Aria this as he's doing
it. Like teaching her.
This is how you put someone out of their mercy, or out of their
misery rather. This is how you give someone
mercy. It's a subtle in some ways and
very unsubtle in other ways, foreshadowing the types of
things she's going to learn at the House of Black and White.
Killing and putting people out of their misery.
Mercy killing. I mean, she's mercy, right?
Yeah. I mean, these are the this is
this is a person that would have crawled into the House of Black
and White to take the gift of death because he's suffering.
And the perfect example of that well before she ever gets to
Bravos. And it's also ironic that she's
learning things about death from Sandor Clegane, who has a pretty
unique relationship with death too.
Death and pain and suffering and trauma.
This is a man who is the opposite of a faceless man.
This is a guy who can't go anywhere without being
recognized. His great size, his burned face,
his reputation. This comes up in this same
chapter. After they give this guy mercy,
they encounter that small village where they hope to lose
themselves for a while, where Sandra was like, hey, I can, I
can build this fence for you. I can maybe help you if the if
the Klansmen come raiding. But they're like, no, we don't
want you to hear Sandor. And he's like, oh, so you know
who I am? They're like, yeah, even here in
this remote village, we know who the Hound is.
Joffrey's dog, they call him. So it's very much the opposite
of a Faceless man. Compare the Hound, a guy she's
attached to. There's nowhere they can go
without being recognized. When she gets into the faceless
man, they're experts at. You never even know if you may
have seen this guy 20 times before and.
And he's standing right in front of you, and he wouldn't even
know it. So it's interesting dichotomy
there. But yeah, she thinks he's dead.
And as I said before, she regrets not giving him the gift
of mercy. She thought, after all, maybe he
did deserve it. But that'll be interesting when
she presumably encounters him again, Like, hey, you're, you're
walking around. Cool.
And I wonder what his reaction to her will be, you know, like,
will he think fondly of her? Is it one of the few people in
the world that he doesn't hate? You know, Santora's full of
hate, but he doesn't hate Arya. So yeah, I'm looking forward to
a reunion there. Maybe maybe it won't happen
though. Maybe that's just a show thing,
but I think I think they'll get a chance to at least have a
little convo. Maybe.
Now his brother, this is a little bit simpler in a lot of
ways. The Gregor is not as complex as
a character as as downed as his younger brother and he but his
status is arguably more complicated because again, this
is is he alive? I mean, what do you call him?
Is he undead? I think undead is the right
term, but what do other people see in the world?
What do they see him as? Because we can call him that
pretty easily, but in the world, what do they call him?
Like that's just some creepy guy that never talks or eats or uses
the bathroom. So he's on the list for
capturing Arya and the other small folk and, and being in
charge of directly in charge of the people that abused her and
the people she was with like Dunson and Polliver and all that
and the Tickler, etcetera. Now everyone knows he was
stabbed by Oberyn Martel. That trial by combat was famous
and widespread. The results of that were just,
it was the news, the big news. But Ari is actually unaware of
of his death because nobody actually knows what happened.
They're like, Oh yeah, he was taken back and operated on or
given surgery, but no one know there's an 8 foot guy in armor
walking around. Like it doesn't take a genius to
to figure that out. Like a lot of people have
figured out Kevin thinks about it.
Like I'm pretty sure I know who that guy is.
You can't really hide an 8 foot monster night.
So Aria has never seen another 8 foot person she's going to know.
However, the odds of Aria being the one to actually deal with
Greg or being the one to actually finally put him down
seems pretty unlikely. That seems like it'll be Sandor
or someone entirely unrelated. Who knows, But I doubt it'll be
Arya. That one would actually be a
challenge for her. Some of these other ones would
be easy, but you can't just, like, stab him in the back of
his throat and. And that won't kill him.
Yeah, he'll just be like, hey, don't do that.
But without the words. Dunsen is next.
Dunsen is by far the most unknown, the least descript.
The the thing guy we know the least about, the one that has
the the least description. He stole Gendry's horned helmet
that's even weaker than Poliver's, stealing her sword
for a reason to deserve death. But again, this is one of the
mountains men. So yeah, he's I'm sure he's done
awful things. It's a safe assumption, but he I
guess he loses the bullhelm. Maybe George screwed up here,
but it's not a screw up that matters.
And it might not be a screw up. It's just a possibility because
he because Dunsen takes the bull helm from Gendry but then Oliver
is seen wearing it later. But Oliver doesn't have the helm
when Sandor and Aria kill him at the crossroads in.
So the horned helm is missing. Oh my God, Gendry's horn helm.
It's out there somewhere. Dunsen might have it again
because Oliver's dead now. Maybe they maybe he lost it to
him playing dice, but now Oliver's dead so he got it back.
I don't know. No idea where the helm is, but
that's a a potential way to identify him later because that
that particular helmet is is notable to us now.
Like RAF and the Tickler and Polliver, he was a candidate to
be the second or third kill of Death Wish by a Jockin, but he
like the others wrote out on campaign to the Battle of Stone
Mill before she could make that call.
Now he of course unlike those other three, Polliver, the
Tickler and Rath the Sweetling are all dead.
He is not. He appears to have been among
the men sent by Jamie to escort Willis Manderley to Maidenpool.
Cause Willis Manderley was was ransomed, right?
And they he and Manderley, Wyman Manderley and Tywin finally came
to a deal. Remember the fake Davos
execution plot? So Willis was sent home and
Jamie wanted those men escorted. So he was like hey nothing.
I don't want anything bad happening to these guys.
This is an important dude. We need him to get home safely.
Red Ronit Connington was in charge of these men, and he sent
the mountains men with Red Ronit.
He's like, hey, you don't have enough dudes.
I'll send the mountains men with you.
These are dudes. Use them, you know?
Fast forward a little bit later. Red Ronit clearly seems to have
accomplished that mission because Willis Manderly did
arrive back in White Harbor. But Red Ronit isn't in Maiden
Pool anymore because we see him show up in King's Landing during
the Kevin epilogue and he complaints about the Golden
Company and his cousin John Connington taking Griffin's
Roost. He's like, they did this, I've
got nothing to do with it, don't consider me part of them.
I want my castle back. I'll do anything to prove it.
Give me an army, I'll take the castle back myself, blah blah
blah. So that's presumably Dunson
followed Red Ron Connington to King's Landing when he after
completing this mission to Maiden Pool.
And this adds up in the form of the Mercy Chapter because Raph
the Sweetling was in this group as well.
Raph and Dunsen both went with Red Ronnet to deliver Loyalist
manually to Maiden Pool. So it figures that Raph then
followed Red Ronnet to King's Landing and then was sent to
Braavos with the Master of Coin. It makes sense that Dunsen was
perhaps nominated to go in that as well.
He might have even, he might even be in Braavos and just
wasn't in that group of four. But probably not.
Probably he's just still in King's Landing, just doing guard
stuff and hanging out, being a guard.
And quite possibly he'll just die in King's Landing amongst
all the stuff that's going to happen.
Whether someone burns the city, whether it's who who who
actually burns the city isn't our question at the of the
moment. The point being, Dunson quite
possibly will be killed during all that, that conflagration,
whether it's Danny doing it, whether it's old pyromancer
stuff, whether it's some combination of both, whether
it's all the above, who knows? Yeah, Dunsen might not get out
of all that. But if he does, it could be an
interesting, like, leftover, like dangling participle that
Arya needs to handle later. She's like, you know, Dunsen's
still alive. Everybody else got a, you know,
everybody else got crossed off the list.
But there's this one guy that I got to go handle.
Can't let him slip through the cracks.
A little bit more prominent, a lot more prominent, but a little
more mysterious is Sir Ellen Payne.
We already know what he did. He beheaded Eddard Stark for Ari
and Sansa ever get to discuss Sir Ellen?
She'll learn from her sister that Sansa has many nightmares
of him. She has had lots of nightmares
of Sir Ellen. She, of course, remembers him.
She actually saw Sir Ellen cut their father's head off, whereas
Ari's face was blocked by urine. She didn't actually see the
killing blow, so her vision of it, her memory of it is a lot
more distinct and horrible, horrible, horrible.
She's had memories of like marrying Joffrey and Sir Ellen
being there and just of her, her of Rob turning into Sir Ellen,
if I'm remembering correctly, just a variety of nightmares
about him. So she'd be like, yeah, that
guy. I would wouldn't mind seeing him
die. Now, Jamie has experience with
this man. She, he thinks at one point, Sir
Ellen lives for killing. He doesn't care about anything
else. His he keeps his sword
Immaculate. He keeps his steel, you know,
well polished and all that. But his room is disgusting.
It's like nothing about him. He doesn't seem to care about
anything else. It's like anything that that's
part of the killing and fulfilling the duties of his
office, which is the King's justice.
It's he doesn't care. It's only that which is a very
interesting contrast to what Arya has been taught about
killing. It's a very it, it's a very much
at odds with the, the, the thinking of the faceless men
and, and you know, their attitude towards the gift of
death and how you don't choose who does it, you don't have to
take pleasure in it, etcetera. This is another one that I kind
of doubt Arya will have anything to do with.
I mean, it's hard to imagine their paths crossing again at
least soon, you know, I'll get to exactly where I think Arya
will be and why she might not be in the Riverlands a little bit
later. But he's in the Riverlands with
Jamie, right? And Jamie just went off and got
himself captured by the BWB. Ilian was not captured with
Jamie, He was captured by himself.
So presumably, I don't know what's going to happen with
Jamie's army. They're like, well, what do we
do without our commander? Should we are we can we go back
to King's Landing to face Cersei without Jamie?
Well, will she just like have us all killed?
Well, she won't kill the whole army, but the commanders of the
army would be wary of returning without Jamie.
Although if Cersei at this point is in the clutches of the faith,
so maybe they figure this is, this is, this is the right time
to, to come back without Jamie because Cersei's unable to do
anything to us. But either way, Illin will be in
that group. Maybe he'll get ambushed in the
Riverlands and something to just get killed by the BWB.
But I, I think the BWB is a little more distracted by what
they're, what they're doing with Jamie and perhaps the rescue of
Jane Westerling, you know, if not Ed Muir.
So they've got their sights maybe set on a different
Lannister group and and they don't care about Ill and Payne.
He's not a high value target for anyone.
He's just a killer. Arya wants him dead.
But like in terms of politics, he doesn't matter really.
He's not like he doesn't control a house, he's not like leading
men and he's not leading soldiers.
He's not even a soldier. Cersei, of course, a huge topic
in herself, less of one for Arya, but still very important.
Obviously she's on the list. Oddly, she's on the list for
reasons that maybe she doesn't deserve to be because the main
reason she's on the list is for the death of her father, but
Cersei didn't want that. Cersei tried to stop Joffrey
from killing Ned, but Cersei's also guilty in the sense of
Micah and Lady. She pushed that more than
anyone, so there's that too. Now, this one there's not much
theorizing here to discuss because my head cannon is Cersei
is going to die by Jamie's hand. I don't think Ari's going to
have a darn thing to do it. They won't even be related,
won't even be barely connected. So I think Cersei is just a
character that Arya wants to kill but won't.
I'm open to other ideas, but it's just so it's foreshadowed,
You know, she's not she's not the the younger, more beautiful
queen that's going to cast her down or her little brother.
You know, it doesn't make sense. You know, those aren't the
Valancar. She's not the Valancar.
Yeah. So I don't think that's, I don't
think we need to get too deep with that.
However, one of Cersei's Kingsguard, and I call her
Cersei's Kingsguard because Marin Trant pretty much does
whatever Cersei wants. He killed Sirio Pharrell
allegedly. And certainly that's what Aria
blames her for, blames him for. And he was last seen guarding
the hands apartments the the night virus murdered Paisel and
Kevin. Marin Trant was standing guard
effectively. Clearly, he's very good at his
job. He's another candidate for just
someone that will die before Ari can get to him.
Obviously, she killed him directly in the show, but that
was the role Raph the Sweetling played in the Mercy that was
those were the equivalents there.
Now, this is another example. This is now hear me, let me say
why I have a lot of doubts that she'll be at King's Landing or
even in the South anytime soon. Contrary to what the show LED us
to believe or or indicated, me and Nina tend to agree.
That Aria's most likely path back back to Westeros is via
Justin Massey and Jane Poole, which would not involve going
through the South. If Jane Poole and if Justin
Massey gets his, what's he want? What he wants, or it's time,
let's say it's time for Massey to go back to the North.
He's not going to go to King's Landing.
He's not going to go to the South.
He's going to go back to the north where the campaign is
active, where he's trying to get in Stannis's good graces to earn
himself a castle. He wants to marry Asha, so he's
why would he go to the South? And if Arya goes with them, then
she's going to show back up in the north, either through White
Harbor or through E watch. So she won't be anywhere near
the vicinity of Marin Trant or Searcy or Ellen paint or Dunson,
you know, so these or Gregor or even or or even Sandor, although
there's a chance Sandor comes N, but he's not even on the list.
So Sandor doesn't even matter in that regard.
Now, on the other hand, let's look at the long term, the
longer term. Why should we assume that all
those people will be dead by the time things in the North are
resolved? Let's say we go all the way
through the Windsor winter. Others are defeated, but that's
not going to be the end of the series.
There's there's going to be humanity still has things to do
after the others are defeated. Maybe Ari gets back to her list.
She's like, you know what? Marin Trent's still alive.
That Dunson's still alive. Then she can go South,
potentially. Maybe it's part of her epilogue.
Yeah. Maybe she sails W to to as an
explorer, but before that, maybe she's like, well, I got some
unfinished business before I sail.
I gotta get enough supplies, get some maps and kill Dunson and
Sir Marin Trent. You know, this could be a reason
this this could be the reason for her to go South to finish
her list. After the threat in the north is
dealt with, after the Starks have settled their business and
re established themselves and they're they're back in charge.
You know Winterfell is restored. Even if that does happen, Marin
Trant is not unlikely to simply die before that.
I mean, he's a Kingsguard. The regime will probably change
more than once, and King's Landing quite likely.
Searcy will lose power, Aegon will gain power, then Aegon will
lose power, and Daenerys will gain power.
And then maybe after Daenerys, someone else like Bran or
someone else entirely. I don't know, but that's a lot
of potential regime changes for one Kingsguard to survive.
Maybe he gets sent N to the wall and then he's then he's in
Aria's clutches or at least nearby somewhat if there's even
a wall to send people to though. So it gets real tricky to
theorize about some of these names, but it's still part of
the fun, even if we can't really pin it down.
So real quick, let's go through Aria's other kills and then
we'll talk about the House of Black and White and how some of
these things are going to maybe come to a head.
So the her first kill was that Red Keep stable boy that tried
to grab her and talked about how he would get rewarded by the
queen for turning her in. And Ari just did what she had to
do. You know, one of Amory's men, as
we said, she killed one of them for sure during the night Joran
was killed, but she may have killed more.
I don't think she did given the description, but it's possible.
She obviously killed that Bolton guard when escaping Harrenhal.
Now do these count as not choosing who we kill?
Because that's the many faced God, the the servants of the
many faced God don't choose who they kill.
Now these are people that she didn't aim at killing.
They were just necessary, necessary deaths for the
circumstance she was in. She didn't say, hey, I'm I must
kill this man. She's like, no, I need to kill
this man to do what needs doing. She finished off the Sarsfield
Squire at the end of the crossroads with Needle.
She killed Darian the singer slash deserter for violating the
Night's Watch code for deserting the Night's Watch.
She was punished for that. It wasn't much of A punishment
though. And I think this is an
interesting aspect to Arya. Pushing boundaries with the
Faceless Men is like, well, what are they going to do to her?
She's not afraid of death. She's afraid of being kicked out
of their order, but she's less and less afraid of that the more
she learns from them. The more she learns from them,
the less they have to teach her. And the the more she feels like
she can go out and do things on her own, the next person she
kills is the insurance salesman, which was an order that's
certainly not someone on her list.
It was someone that they told her to kill and she did it.
It was she was successful with her first hit, her first
sanctioned hit. Then of course, you know, she's
been a part of kills while in her wolf dreams, which isn't,
you know, that's not her, she's not guiding Nymeria.
Those aren't her kills. But she experiences it.
She experiences the sensation, the senses that, you know, her
nose and her mouth and the taste of blood through her wolf.
So it's, it's another way that she relates to and connects with
the process of death and killing is through her wolf dreams, the
prayer and the many face God. So, yeah, how do these things
collide? Because they do collide.
Let's start off with a conversation, and here's where
it gets brought up directly in A Feast for Crows quote.
Each night before sleep she murmured her prayer into her
pillow. Sir Gregor, it went.
Dunson Wrath, The sweetening Sir Ellen, Sir Marin, Queen Cersei.
She would have whispered the names of the phrase of the
Crossing, too, if she had known them.
One day I'll know, she told herself, and then I'll kill them
all. No whisper was too faint to be
heard in the House of black and white.
Child. Said the kindly man one day.
What are those names you whisper of at night?
I don't whisper any names, she said.
You lie. He said.
It's so funny that you like, I don't say any names.
Only a child would say that every once in a while.
As dark as Ari's story is, sometimes it's just pure comedy.
And that's so funny. It's like, I don't whisper names
like I heard you, you do it every night like you're going to
tell me. And I was like, I don't know, it
wasn't me. But obviously this list is at
odds. You're they're not supposed to
do that. They're supposed to not kill
people that they want to. They're supposed to kill who
they're told to kill who the God decides, right.
It's it's kind of BS this whole many face God stuff, but still
it's at odds with what they're teaching her.
Not only is she not giving up on her list, she's killed someone
on it. You know, after this, she's
killed someone on it before it and someone after it.
So yeah, 21 before Bravo, she kills RAF and we haven't seen
the reaction to that yet. So this is coming presumably at
her second the Wind's of Winter chapter.
She knows it's going to be serious, but how serious?
She's already seen how all they did the first time.
The penalty was just we're going to blind you sooner than we
would have because they were going to blind her anyway.
They were going to was like, so it's almost like she was in
punishment. It's almost like in a way they
they advanced her training sooner.
It's like we're going to push you and your curriculum faster
for for cheating, for breaking the rules.
We're going to teach you advanced classes sooner.
Like it's it's almost like she was rewarded.
So like in her mind, she should keep pushing the boundaries.
And this is something she does right.
This actually does harken back to her earliest chapters, the
arguing or facing SEPTA Mordane, right.
She as big as she is on justice and righteousness, she's got
issues with authority. Whether it's SEPTA Mordane or
her father or mother or the House of Black and White.
She doesn't do what she's told a lot of the time because she
values certain things more than than that, right?
Her sense of justice, her need for revenge, to her, that's more
important than following the rules of the House of Black and
White. It is important to her.
She follows the rules most of the time.
She cares. She wants to do well, she wants
them to promote her and teach her more things.
But it's just not quite as important as getting home, as
being a Stark, as killing the people on her list.
And nothing seems to change that.
Nothing seems to trump that. She's just, Yep, that's how she
is. She's again, stubborn above all
other things, and she is what she is.
And no one's changing that. Remember too, in in Bran's Koma
dream in chapter 3 of A Game of Thrones, Well, his sorry, Bran 3
of A Game of Thrones, there's that line.
And he saw Arya watching in silence and holding her secrets
hard in her heart. Yeah, I mean, that's what she
does a lot. She holds her secrets hard in
her heart and eventually unleashes them when like she
kills the Tickler and she's just all that emotion comes flooding
out Sir Gold in the village gem. She's screaming and yelling and
stabbing. That line might be more
foreshadowy than George initially intended.
He intended it to be foreshadowy for Arya watching in silence and
holding her secrets hard in her heart.
The list is part is one of those secrets that she refuses to
admit to. Another one being her skin
changing skill that she doesn't cop to even to herself to a
certain extent, but certainly not to the kindly man or the
other servants of the many faced God.
Now remember again she linked the phrase Valar Morghulis,
which is something Jacquin taught her, to her list which
she thinks they need to die. So it makes sense to link all
men must die to a list of people that she thinks need to die.
And this is of course at Harrenhal that she first does
this. She's practicing with her broom
sword. She's feeling powerful the more
she goes along with her triumphs, her killings, builds
the sense of power, of agency within her.
Jakin was recruiting her all along.
But interesting to think about this, compare Jakin's teachings
to what she's taught at the House of Black and White.
Jakin wasn't putting restrictions on her.
He was like to bring her in to encourage her, to get her
interested in joining. He didn't give her these
restrictions about ethics or about we don't choose who we
kill. He didn't bring any of that up
at the time. You know, he's like no kill.
You know, I got to give you 3 deaths for the red God.
Oh, it's not me though. It's the red God.
It's like he gives her a taste. But the reality is they're not
supposed to get to kill who they want.
She's not going to ever get to have 3 wishes.
That's not a, that's not a real situation that would ever happen
as a faceless man. So it was a little, you know, a
little tricky, a little dishonest by Jockin there.
So this is how they actually view death, which is very
different than say Jockin, how Jockin explains it to versus how
this is Plague Face, one of the other servants that talks to her
and gives her the mission to kill the insurance man.
Death holds no sweetness in this house.
We are not warriors, nor soldiers, nor swaggering bravos
puffed up with pride. We do not kill to serve some
Lord, to fatten our purses, to stroke our vanity.
We never give the gift to please ourselves, nor do we choose the
ones we kill. We are but servants of the God
of many faces. So yeah, that's definitely at
odds. Jockin was like, which three
people should I kill? And she got to choose.
Nor do we choose the ones we kill is what Plague Face just
said here. So yeah, they're recruiting.
They're a lot open more they're they're not telling you the
whole story when they're recruiting you, clearly.
So right after this, though, comes one of my favorite
exchanges. It's another comedic moment.
Little, little, little break from the the seriousness of all
this, the kindly. The kindly man follows this up
and says, you know, servants should be humble.
Actually, this might still be plague based, but it doesn't
matter the the phrase. The line is you servants should
be humble. And she says, I can be humbler
than anyone. I can be the most humble there
is, you know, like I'm that's so that's really funny.
Yes, I'm, I'm she's proud of how humble she can be.
And yeah, so Ari's been traumatized repeatedly, but
she's so hard to intimidate. Like she is just trying to
intimidate. Ari just gets her to dig her
heels in more deeply and makes her just stand up straighter and
and want to fight back even more, no matter how bad it gets.
That just fires her up. She's like, no matter.
The worse it gets, the more she wants to fight back.
But she also seeks the skills to protect herself.
She doesn't want to feel afraid. She hates the feeling of fear,
which it's like those two things come together when she has fear,
she feels hate. Hate towards whatever's making
her afraid. She hates the feeling of fear
and hates those who inflicted on her.
And she isn't just a mouse that takes it.
She wants to learn how to stop that.
To find that fear, find the source of it and kill it.
Which is again, not in line with being a servant of the many
faced God. And the fact that she can't be
intimidated is really on display in the scene too.
She again, she ate that worm, the skull worm, this plague
faced guy. His face is horrifying.
It's like drippings. He's literally dripping blood.
It's weeping sores. And it means nothing to her.
She doesn't care at all. And she's again, she's
challenging these authority figures.
She's not afraid of them, even though these are the most
talented killers in the in the world, literally.
And she's just not afraid of them.
She's more afraid of them kicking her out than of them,
like killing her or something. So yeah, just confident,
understands basically the way they act, they operate, and this
this could really bring things to a head later when she
eventually has a falling out with them, which we kind of
assume is coming. Remember that one of her acts of
defiance here, if I get back briefly to her resistance to
authority, which is a big part of her character, I want to use
Needle as an example again. She hid Needle from the Faceless
Men rather than get rid of it, something we're all well aware
of. It's one of the most blatant
symbols of her refusing to to to part with her identity.
She also hid Needle from her father though, right?
She just didn't like this is just on a simpler level.
It's just she likes her sword and wants to keep it and knows
that her father would take it away from her.
But it is an interesting little connection to draw there.
She's there's rules she agrees with and rules she doesn't, you
know. And as much as she she again
resistance to authority, she's the least tame of the wolf.
She is a wolf at heart. She has the temper of a wolf.
She has the savagery of a wolf. It isn't there all the time, but
it's in her. And but as yeah.
And she's the hardest to, to, to tame.
I think I was, I wanted to think of a different synonym there.
But no, I think tame is the right word because it's it's it
came up last week in our Stark Skin Changers episode where
Varamir said being a warg is like a marriage.
You're not. You don't own the wolf and the
wolf doesn't own you. You're part of it and it's part
of you. And very much this as well.
Arya is part Nymeria. Nymeria's part her.
She's. And beyond that, she's very much
Stark. She has a lot of her, her father
and mother and other Starks. She's qualities that we
associate with Starks. So this is all very interesting
next to her dedication to a sense of justice.
It's it's it's it is very human. This inequality.
These two things don't line up very well.
Like how do you have such a sense of justice, but you also
have a resistance to authority because those two things can't
exist without each other. You can't have justice without
authority because you can't punish bad guys or law Breakers
if they won't accept their sentences.
You have to be stronger than the people who are having justice
done to them because otherwise they won't adhere to the
sentences, right? They just use like, no, OK, I'm
guilty. Well, make me do jail time.
You know, if, if the authorities aren't strong enough, then the
justices. It doesn't exist.
But her identity, her prayer, again, it's so stubborn.
She will not release it. She just can't release it.
Quote you lie. I can see the truth in your
eyes. You have the eyes of a wolf and
a taste for blood. Sir Gregor, she could not help
but think. Dunson, Wrath, The Sweetling,
Sir Illin, Sir Marin, Queen Cersei.
If she spoke, she would need to lie, and he would know.
She kept silent. How telling is that?
He accuses her of you have the eyes of a wolf and a taste for
blood. And the list pops up in her
mind. She's like, Yep, you're right.
It's like if he, if I speak at all, he'll tell.
He'll be able to know I'm lying. She knows how the lion game
works. The best way to to to win the
lion game is to not play sometimes.
Well, she can't, she can't win. So she just doesn't play.
She's like, well, I can't lose. I can't win, but I won't lose by
saying nothing. So RAF is on the list because
this is obviously before she kills RAF, but she kills him,
you know, shortly after this cause presumably Mercy is the
1st chapter of the wins a winner that Arya has I and this is her
last chapter of Dance with Dragons.
So we talked about how her how needle and her skin changing
ability is her anchor, part of her anchor to her Stark
identity. This is too because it's
personal. The names on her list are mostly
about things done to her or her family.
They were done to Arya, Arya's family.
They weren't done to no one's family.
If she wasn't Arya, the list wouldn't matter to her anymore
because these were things that happened to somebody else.
She's got nothing to do with any of that.
But of course not. She remembers all of it.
She remembers it well. It pops up even when she's being
told that she's not adhering because she's not adhering.
She's not no one. It's not working.
She is not losing her identity. She's if anything, she's
becoming more Arya and Mercy chapter proves that the second
she was exposed to her history, to her former self, that's what
she did. She jumped into it gleefully and
without hesitation. But here's how she reflects on
death. Here's a really interesting
moment. This is the last time she says
the list or thinks about death. This is her last Dance with
Dragons chapter 'cause remember, she doesn't actually repeat the
list in the Mercy chapter quote. Sleep did not come easily that
night. Tangled in her blankets, she
twisted this way and that in the cold, dark room.
But whichever way she turned, she saw the faces.
They have no eyes, but they can see me.
She saw her father's face. Upon the wall beside him hung
her lady mother, and below them her three brothers, all in a
row. No, that was some other girl.
I am no one, and my only brothers wear robes of black and
white. Yet there was the black singer
there, the stable boy she'd killed with Needle, there the
pimply Squire from the Crossroads Inn, and over there
the guard whose throat she'd slashed to get them out of
Harrenhal. The tickler hung on the wall as
well, the black holes that were his eyes swimming with malice.
The sight of him brought back the feel of the dagger in her
hand as she had plunged it into his back again and again and
again. Some context is important here.
Some of y'all may have figured this out already, but this is,
of course, right after she's seen the room with all the faces
in it. All the thousands of skinned
faces that the Faceless Men have in their secret chamber below.
The one that people think the Boltons have, Which, well, maybe
they have one too, but. The this we've now seen and can
confirm exists and it's pretty scary.
So you can see even Ari is a little intimidated by this.
She's imagining the people she killed as faces on those
platforms, on those pillars. And by the way, y'all, that room
is scarier than just all the faces.
I mean, it's A at one point there's a tunnel with the
columns that are holding the tunnel up.
Are skulls like just actual skulls?
Like it's super dark. It's a meant, I think, to
parallel Bran's cave that he's in, which is also filled with
skulls. But the skulls aren't like part
of the construction. They're just, they're just lying
around here and there the way nature would leave things.
So it's like the the supernatural elements of death
in both of them, but one is building on those elements and
the other is existing among those elements.
Pretty cool, pretty creepy, and a lot we could say about that.
So this is, of course, a mix of emotions.
Ari is there's a little bit of fear, there's some side effect
of the magic, there's some guilt.
She's put the other face on already.
She's already got the ugly girl's face on.
So there's also like someone else's memories are in there and
that's messing with her a bit too.
So there's definitely magic happening and some, maybe some
side effects are going on. She goes up to kill the
insurance salesman with this new disguise shortly after this, but
she recites the prayer that one last time before heading out.
So she says this and then recites the prayer pretty much
just as we had it a minute ago that a Shaya read.
And then that's the end of the book, or at least her part of
it. And then, of course, we have
Mercy. She's still very much in the
midst of it. She's still dealing with the
list. She's still being told not to do
it and doesn't really seem to have an effect.
She's like, yeah, no, I'm going to still do it.
And if I see somebody on the list, I'm going to kill them, as
we saw with RAF. So unless something about her
attitude or personality changes, it's going to keep happening.
Ari's going to continue to add and maybe subtract.
And well, she's definitely going to keep subtracting from the
list. Whether she takes the names off
herself. People are going to die who were
on that list, and she probably will add to it.
I mean, she already said she would add the names of House
Frey if she knew them. So in terms of the future of the
list, let's start with that House Frey.
She knows they're responsible. Recall this line I owe that
Shaya quoted earlier. She would have whispered the
names of the phrase the crossing too, if she had known them.
One day I'll know, she told herself, and then I'll kill them
all, them all. I mean, that is what happened on
the show. It seems a bit far fetched to me
for that to happen in the because there's a lot of phrase.
I mean, damn man, get in line, Aria.
Kind of like Amory Lorch. There's a lot of people the
phrase want the the a lot of people want phrase dead.
So yeah, since it happened on TV, it's tempting to see it
happening in the books, but I'm I'm definitely not jumping to
that conclusion. I'm not even and Nina agrees
here. I'm not even sure if she'll kill
a single Frey because again, if she goes back to the north
through White Harbor or E watch, she won't even be in the South.
Where are these phrase that she will be killing?
There's a couple of them in the north, but those might not even
be alive by the time she gets there.
Stannis may have dealt with them by then.
They're they may be buried on the frozen lake by the time she
gets there. Another phrase who knows?
I mean, the BWB, the the things happening down there, the
Blackfish is alive. Yeah, the phrase may be quite
dealt with. And by the time Ari even has a
chance, I So I absolutely acknowledge it's a possibility
that she may deal with some phrase, but I'm very skeptical
she'll kill them all. Certainly not by herself.
But hey, can't say it's impossible either.
It could be another example of what I was saying earlier, that
maybe she will go South later after the others are defeated,
after the Starks kind of sort everything's out.
She's like, OK, now I can go get my revenge on some phrase.
She already hated Elmar Frey. Remember that hilarious line
where she's like, we've been or he's like, we've been betrayed
on my I won't be marrying that Princess and she's Ari's like, I
hope your Princess dies. Now, though, a lot of you
already get this joke. The Princess in question was
Aria. Aria and Elmar were were
supposed to marry each other and neither of them ever knew it.
But at that point, the phrase were still on Rob's side.
Well, they they actually had just gotten the news that they
weren't. But Aria didn't know that, you
know, Aria didn't know that they'd split.
So a very dark, dark twist would be Arya killing the wrong fray
like Perwin or Olivar, cause those are good frays.
Perwin was a, was one of the ones they didn't allow to be at
the Red Wedding because they knew they couldn't trust him.
Olivar was Rob's Squire. Olivar loved Rob.
So we never know what happened. We never, we haven't found out
what happened to Perwin or Olivar if they just disavowed
their family or if they're just going along with it or yeah, we
have no follow up on them. But it, it could happen one day.
Yeah, that would be a really dark thing.
I've already killed one of them just assuming they were
involved. And in fact, no, they were a
good guy. So that could that could be some
a big source of conflict there. As for the Bolton's, they are
just as culpable or maybe slightly less culpable for the
Red Wedding, but she doesn't even know which.
Again, I pointed that out earlier.
It's it's almost funny that Ruth Bolton decided to betray the
Starks right in front of Arya but she didn't realize it and
she still doesn't know so but I think she will learn because
it's it's become common knowledge that the Bolton's were
part of that. But I I suspect Ruse and Ramsey
will be dead by the time she has a chance to deal with them.
That plot is is unfolding now and she's still in Braavos so I
feel like by the time she gets back to Westeros they'll
probably already be dealt with. But if not they get added to the
list for sure. Or one of them does.
You know if one of them is dead and the other one isn't.
And again, the same goes for the Lannisters involved in in the
Red Wedding. She doesn't fully understand
their involvement. But Cersei's already on her
list, and Taiwan's already dead. And what about Jamie?
Does she think about Jamie? Jamie's not on her list.
We know Cersei's probably going to die to Jamie, but is Jamie
going to die at the same time? That's that's less sure.
Will Arya be glad when she finds out Cersei is dead?
Or will she be wishing that she did it herself?
Will she find it poignant that Jamie killed her if that's what
happens, if she learns that's what happened?
A lot of possibilities there, and the same similar
possibilities with her killing Lannisters that have nothing to
do with anything, just because they're Lannisters.
But a lot could change in that regard.
What if Jamie goes north and tries to help, you know, fight
the others? Is she going to?
Would that be a reason to forgive him or to delay it?
Maybe she'll never care about killing Jamie.
I mean, I think about him a lot in this regard because we're in
Bran's television. Let's go back to that.
Remember that Bran perceives Hound's helm and a man in
sunburst armor glowing golden like the sun, with a huge giant
with blood, black blood coming out of his visor, standing
behind him. That's obviously Sandor, Jamie
and and Gregor, right? She's Ari's already had pretty
distinct arcs with both the Hound and Sir Gregor, but how?
What does Jamie have to do with her?
So it seems like Bran's dream indicates Arya and Jamie are
going to have a storyline, but that hasn't happened yet.
So maybe this is maybe this is where that will come up.
Something to do with her list, her revenge against Lannisters,
something to do with the Riverlands and how he's handling
that. I don't know.
It's difficult to figure that out.
But given Bran's dream, I think something might be happening.
Maybe this is an abandoned idea by George, something he had in
mind that he said, Nah, actually, never mind.
And it may have more to do with Santa than Arya, because in that
dream, it's both Santa and Arya that are framed as part of this
particular image. Which brings us to Littlefinger,
because we've discussed how he is behind several of the things
that she's condemned, like she's mad about her father being
killed, but she doesn't know Littlefinger had anything to do
with that. She's probably wouldn't be too
happy to know about Lysa and how Littlefinger treated Jane Poole
and her sister Sansa. I mean not Jane Poole's sister,
her Aria's sister. So again, I would say that
Littlefinger is Sansa's villain to deal with, but there's
nothing stopping Arya from being involved in that from Aria
helping. Maybe she he gets put on the
list just in time before, but I think more likely Arya does
something about Littlefinger helps about it without ever
maybe putting him on the list, because it's not like he it's
not like she yearns for his death.
You know, when she finds out what he's guilty of, maybe he'll
get a place on the list, But it might just it might not play out
that way. It might just be, hey, I'm going
to kill this guy. We're going to do this.
My favorite idea of one of her murders that's kind of tinfoil Y
is Varys. I've been on this train for a
while. The the Arya kills virus train
and it's it it Harkins back to her overhearing virus and
Illyria down in the tunnels. A lot of those elements have
come back around. She's learned how to navigate in
darkness both through not being able to see, both through being
trained as a blind person, and by using cats to skin change
into, which is what drew her into that tunnel beneath the Red
Keep in the 1st place chasing the cat.
If she were able to return to those tunnels, she would be able
to navigate them extremely well given everything she's learned.
She's also outdone virus in a major way, which is that he's a
mummer. He's an expert mummer and now
she has that. But she's better than he is
because of these other factors, because of the magic, because of
the the skin changing and because of the faceless man
training. He can't match that.
So she's mastering his game, not the political intrigue, of
course, but this, the stuff that he does in the tunnels and the
secrets in the doors and the, all the sneaking around and the
disguises. She's just better than him and
all these things. And given how she detected him,
how she encountered him very early on in the story and
overheard what he was saying, wasn't able to process it, But
the things he's doing to the little birds, he's got child
slaves. What an awful thing.
If that ever comes out, if Arya learns of that, oh man, top of
the list. Or at least she'll want to get
him. That's a horrible thing, right?
So it's very possible Kyburn in the in the same light.
Well, since Kyburn is the current master workers, maybe,
maybe he needs to be put down. I kind of feel like that's going
to go a different direction. So it won't be Arya, but hey,
that's it's another possibility. The man responsible for bringing
the mountain back. That would be a reason for her
to want him dead. She wants the mountain dead for
all the things he did. He resurrected that guy and then
in the mountain killed more people continued to be evil.
Like it's a good reason to kill Kyburn, among other things.
Kyburn, he worked for the Bloody Mummers.
I mean, that's Vargo hoax people.
He was he was pretty bad. So yeah, I can see why Arya
might put him on the list. How might Arya interact with
Aegon the 6th regime? Possibly not at all.
I mean potentially Virus. I just pointed Virus out.
But he's one potential character that could be involved.
I wonder maybe Illyria, Could she kill Illyria?
That would be kind of weird, but not too weird.
Some other things would have to happen before that, but it's
possible, right? I mean, I think mostly Aegon the
6th regime, that plot line will play out while she's in the
North and they won't have a whole lot to do with each other.
But you can't be too sure about these things.
What about John becoming king in the North?
If that happens, and Aria's in the North at the time of that,
during during that, or when it's begins during any of that,
really, will Aria go after John's political enemies?
That's an interesting thing she could do for him, for her
family, is people don't want John to be in charge.
They think he's a bastard. They don't think he deserves to
be King in the North. Would she be one of his?
I don't want to say his assassins.
John wouldn't really condone that, but that doesn't mean that
she won't do it. So what about John's murderers
among the Night's Watch? That's probably something that
gets handled internally, but that's yet another thing that
Arya could have thoughts on, even if she doesn't take action.
Could Arya her return to the list after how Stark is at peace
again? That's something I've touched on
a few times in this episode, and it's one of my closing thoughts.
I want to reference that one more time.
Will she give it up, though, as a relic of her youth?
That's another possibility. And she gets a little older.
She realizes this is not ideal for her, that revenge isn't what
she wants to be all about. I mean, she's had so many shifts
of identity, she's very used to that.
It could happen again. Something that changes her
perspective on death and killing.
And maybe, maybe she goes through all this.
She comes out the other side and is like, well, maybe I don't
want to be a killer anymore. Another group that she's got a
history with is the Brother Without Banners.
I don't think she has too much ill will towards them.
She didn't love being captured by them, she didn't love being
held by them, but I don't think she looks on them as villains or
murderers. Even though she's unhappy with
how the Sandor Clegane trial by combat played out, I don't think
she's going to be blame Barrick Dondarian for that.
I mean, she can't. He's dead and she he passed his
life force on to Catlin. Which by the way, that could be
a strange thing if she ever finds that out.
Like you have my my mom's walking around as an undead
person because of Barrick. OK.
Like, how is she going to process that?
Will she ever meet any of the BWB again?
Will she ever meet Soros, for example, who is still with him?
You know, if meeting her mother again, that's a whole other
thing. I mean, wow, I don't know.
I would no idea how that could go well.
What about like Tom O Sevens and and like he's he's still
fighting the phrase in the Lannisters.
He's still in the Riverlands dealing with them.
He's still working against them. She'd like that Angai and Edrick
Dane. She knows them.
They aren't part of the BWB anymore.
They left. What if she encounters them at
some point? That'd be interesting.
They they know each other. What would they have to say to
each other after all this time? Ned Dane, you know the guy with
the kid with her father's name. She kind of liked him and he
kind of liked her. I don't mean like they had a
crush on each other, although maybe they did.
I don't think that's the way it was framed.
But they got along, you know, they, they, they had their
little meeting and seemed to enjoy each other's company
basically, you know, he, they seemed to respect each other at
least as much as children can young people like that.
So, yeah. And as our final thought about
Lady Stoneheart, how does that impact her notion of death?
Does this change her, her concept of death even more?
Like is it truly the gift of mercy if this is a potential
results? It's like it's not final.
Death isn't the end. If you come back as something
lesser, but still as part of what you were.
What a strange thing to have to process.
What a strange thing to think about.
It's going to be a lot of characters minds when you have
the others resurrecting people and then Melisandre resurrecting
people and Thoros resurrecting people, her mother dead then
alive, Gregor Clegane walking around.
You have like all these different forms of resurrection.
And so if even death loses its power, the the relorist priests
in Volantis are all yeah, the Endless summer will come and
even death will be defeated like no one will die.
I mean all these things are really interesting consider in
terms of the the large scale arcs playing out and how Arya
will fit into these is really unique.
I think her place amongst all this is is unlike anyone else's
because she straddles a lot of these plot lines in ways that
nobody else does. No one's, no one is connected to
the House of black and white other than her really amongst
major characters. And no one is has this intimate
relationship with death like quite like she does.
It's it's, it's perhaps the most unique.
Our trivia question was how many on the list has Arya personally
killed? Just two.
She's killed eight people. Two of them were on her list.
Wrath the Tickler. Wrath, the Sweetling and the
Tickler. I would guess she's not done.
I don't. Certainly she won't cross them
all off herself, but more to come.
Curious to hear from you all on which names you think she'll
cross off personally and which ones will get crossed off by
someone else. Like, I think Cersei is an easy
guess that won't be her, but some of the other ones a little
trickier, like Dunsen. So.
And then Sir Ellen. Yeah.
So I want to hear from you all on which names you think are the
most likely. Would be a good way to to weigh
in. And we'll, we'll maybe discuss
that at a later date. If you all have any theories,
we'll do a mailbag episode at some point in the near future
and then come back and, and take your comments on past episodes.
It's something we do it from time to time, but in the
meantime, that does it for today.
Certainly check out our skin changers of how Stark episode if
you haven't already, and our Valar Araritas chapters on Aria.
You can listen to just the Aria chapters.
If you're a patron, we or a Spotify subscriber.
We take our Valaritas episodes and edit them so that you can
listen to just one POV and not all the Povs are done.
We haven't edited them all yet, but Aria is one of the ones that
is done if I remember. They're all higher quality.
And they've all been, yeah, they've also been since we
recorded Valerie Ritas, the technology available to us for
editing has improved. So Shaya went back and fixed a
lot of those old ones. So the patron versions of
Valerie Ritas, character by character only are higher
quality than the original Valerie Ritas episodes by a
pretty notable amount. But yeah, we have done all of
Aria, but we haven't completely remastered all of Aria 'cause
that was AII compiled them in one phase and then we upgraded
some of our audio editing capabilities later.
So now I'm going back through and running them.
So anyways, they're they're constantly getting better.
Yeah, Yeah. It's a, it's a thing that we
quote UN quote deal with here. On our end is technology and
podcasting, especially the last two to three years, has rapidly
accelerated. The tools we have to make our
show better are becoming a lot more common, a lot more
affordable, a lot more higher quality.
Yeah, I wonder. And that can apply to our past
episodes. I wonder if anyone has noticed
that the last few months of our audio on podcast side has been
improved? If you tell it can tell a
difference. Leave us a review and tell us.
Yeah, yeah. Good time for that and we'd
appreciate your any thoughts you have on that.
And if you anything, certainly criticisms, we are certainly
happy to accept those as well if they're made in good faith.
I wouldn't call myself happy to accept those willing to accept.
Willing. OK.
Willing. Tough, but fair.
I would. I tend to agree.
I don't love criticism. Yeah, Like, yeah, give it to me.
I want to be told I'm wrong. I want to be told I'm bad.
You're bad, and you should feel bad.
Thank you, Zoidberg. And with that, we'll sign off.
Until next time, my friends, my fellow historians, you know what
to do.