As her brother Agon struck out towards Heron Hall and her
sister Rainey struck out towards the stormlands, Queen Vicinia
departed for the veil on Veigar. It was ruled by Queen Regent
Shara Aaron, whose son, King Ronald was not yet of age.
She had tried unsuccessfully to become Agon's third wife, and
now she prepared for war. Banners were called, defenses
mounted, and allies outside of Westeros were sought and
secured. In many ways, the Veil is the
most difficult Kingdom to invade.
The Bloody Gate saw the defeat of several Ironborn invasions in
the time of King Halekhore, not to mention countless others in
the Eons prior, which is why the Targaryen didn't send an army at
all. The invasion would begin with
air and sea power. With Vesenia and Veigar came the
new royal fleet, mostly consisting of the ships of House
Valarion led by the Lord of Drift, Mark and Master of ships
Damon, Valarion, Vesenia and Veigar and the Valorians invade
the Veil. It's Valar reredis.
Ha. All that and more on this
episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Hello and welcome to this most viest of episodes.
More V's in this episode then you can get a handle on.
We like to bring you as many V's as possible and today we're very
successful at that. Also, it's a very Shawn day
because we have Shawn right beside us, me and Asheya
slightly farther away. It's great to have you here in
the studio again, Shawn, just like old times.
Yeah, it was cool. I was just observing before we
started this that I think the number of.
Remote Streams has outnumbered the amount of in Person streams
at this point, but that's true. Yeah, we're not quite sure what
the count is, but I think you're probably right.
We've probably done more remote than 10 together, but we'll add
one more to the Together column here.
We should have included a lot of fives in this episode too, to
match up with the vs. Yes, yes, this episode is not
Roman. How often do you think about the
Roman Empire, Shawn? Not every day, but I think once
a week or so. You know, like more often than
you might think. But to be fair, I think about a
lot of things. Yeah, I probably think about
American history once a day. So that question's been making
the rounds, hasn't it? Every almost every 3:00 PM.
What's that? Sorry.
How many times a day do I think of the Roman Empire?
5V V times. Our live streams are almost
every Sunday at 3:00 PM Eastern on YouTube.
Afterwards you can still catch the live stream on YouTube as a
recording. You could also catch the edited
podcast version both available in video and audio only forms on
Spotify and audio only forms everywhere else available
available. That's right, I did put the V in
caps here in our document. It's also ad free on Patreon if
you choose to listen. There also a shout out to our
good friend Good Queen Alley AKA Nina Good. queenalley.tumblr.com
Interesting question that relates to the conquest that she
got. What would have happened if Agon
had died before the completion of the conquest, before having a
child? Or, you know, one of the
scenarios floated is if it had been Aegon who died in Dorn
instead of Rainey's. What would that have done?
Spoiler spoiler yes, I'm sure y'all didn't know that.
So my bad for ruining the surprise.
Our trivia question for today. There are two castles in
Westeros with the same name. Actually, there might be more,
but I'm I only know of this one duplication.
What is that name? I'll tell you at the end, unless
you know already, in which case you don't need to be told, but
I'll say it at the end regardless.
OK, let's talk about the campaign, The Targaryen side,
Damon Velarian. More on him in our house for
Laurian episode, so we'll keep this part a little bit briefer
than the fuller explanation there.
Like Oris, Damon was also family.
And like Oris Baratheon, the exact nature of the family
connection is unknown. We don't know who Arias's mother
was. We talked about it a bit, but we
have no confirmed answers. It's not even 100% certain that
he was Lord Aryan's bastard at all, though personally I accept
that as cannon, but there's a chance it's not true.
And the Targaryen siblings mother was Valena Valerian.
Damon had grown children, so we can guess he was at least in his
40s. He could have been older than
that, maybe his 50s, and if he was in his 50s or or
thereabouts, then he might have been Valena's brother, which
means he would be the uncle of Aegon and and Vicenia and
Rainey's. Now it might have been said if
he was their uncle, so perhaps that's not the case.
Otherwise I would guess he's the nephew of her.
He's her nephew rather than her sister or brother.
Rather you got because it's a safer guest that Lord Aryan
married the daughter of the Lord Adrift Mark rather than a
cousin. And Damon was very likely the
son of the Lord of Drift Mark, since he inherited became Lord.
So, you know, usually the main branches where these marriages
occur to the Royals, but there's obviously other possibilities.
It's also given the destruction of Targaryen and Valerian.
History and houses and everything.
There might be a little less concerned about the exact direct
lines or fathers or, you know, they just say we just got to
survive, right? That some things might be more
in question than normal. That's true.
Yeah, like whenever you only have one, maybe there's only one
female House Volarian member that was marriageable at that
time. It wouldn't necessarily matter
what branch of the family she was from as long as she had the
name Volarian. But if they were multiples, they
would pick the the closest to the main line probably.
And it's less important to know what the specific familial
relationship is with Damon. It's just important to know that
he was family and that his involvement might be more than
just. Well, he's the Lord of he's a
new master of ships, so clearly he's the guy here.
So there may have been some some personal angles to consider
here, which would make the whole thing a little more interesting,
especially given what ends up happening, which we'll get to
shortly. He would have definitely been
familiar to them regardless of of what age he was or what his
relationship to their mother was.
And he would have very possibly given his age when someone they
were used to seeing as an authority figure, someone that
was constantly at their father's side when Lord Aryan ruled
Dragonstone, Lord Damon may have been someone that conferred with
him frequently. They would have had a lot to
talk about. They would have been their
neighbors, right? Drift mark right next to
Dragonstone. So there there could have been a
a big presence in their youth. Damon's sons include Athan, who
will eventually succeed him as both Lord of Tides and
Masterships, and Coralis, not to be confused with the Sea Snake,
who will eventually become the first Lord Commander of the
King's Guard. There's at least one more
unnamed son. Given how battles normally go
and who gets represented by individual houses when it comes
to war, I would kind of guess that Ethan stayed home as the
future Lord. He would rule in his father's
absence, kind of like how they expected Rob to stay home.
You know, he he left, but he was supposed to stay there.
Everyone else went to court pretty much.
Bran was going to go, only Rickon was going to stay because
he was so young and Rob was going to stay because he's the
heir. So it's similar thing.
I would guess Ethan stuck, stayed behind, whereas Corley's
the one who ended up being a warrior Lord Commander the
King's Guard was probably already a warrior at this point.
He may have been there, he may have been at his father's side,
or maybe even commanding a separate ship.
Kind of depends on his age and experience, which is unclear.
So this new royal fleet, like I said in the intro, was mostly
the Larian ships, but there'd also be some Targaryen ships
straight from Dragonstone, someone from house.
Celtic are or Celtic are if you prefer, and other Lords of
Blackwater Bay. Should we know Athen's age
range? Well, yes.
Given that Corlise's younger brother is going to become Lord
Commander of the King's Guard 10 years later, probably wasn't
only like 20 years old when he became Lord Commander, or even
even 25. It's usually a job that goes to
a bit of an older man, even though this would be the first
Lord Commander, so that wasn't necessarily established.
So you would expect this one more senior man to be in charge
of the King's protection, someone, someone more patient
discipline rather than a some trying to prove themselves, you
know what I mean? So we don't know how old he was,
but we can assume he was very likely, they were very likely
both adults or young young adults at this point because of
what important jobs they would have very soon after.
Yeah, Ethan's going to be Lord of the tides within a few years
of this, or or actually right away.
But still, when you think about, and maybe George even regrets
how young you made some of the kids.
But considering how old Rob was when he's like leading N into
war, yeah, how old was he 10 years prior?
Ethan could have been that old, and that might be reason why he
stayed, because he was as young as Rick on something.
Maybe I'm pushing some numbers, but absolutely.
Yeah. Corley's could have been like
the youngest I would guess he could be his ten, which would
mean he was not in the battle I would think.
But but if he was only a little bit older he might have been
there. So anyway, a few other parallels
to the Rainies or East campaign and the and the and the campaign
here is that the dispositions were similar in that the army
sent to battle King Argalak to Arrogant where Oris Baratheon
handed the king led the soldiers while Rainey's accompanied them
on dragon back. Whereas Vecenia brought Vega and
spoke for her brother. But the soldiers, in this case
the Navy, were commanded by Damon Velarian, the masterships.
In both cases, you have this person who's close to their
family. A Valorian and Oris Baratheon
are in charge of the soldiers, whereas does the sister queen
riding one of the Dragons is, as I call it in the Battle Last
Storm episode, which comes out next week, is like a dragon
chaperone of sorts, like Orys can't order rainies what to do,
but Rainies isn't explicitly in charge of the army either.
She's not a battle commander per se.
It's the same thing here. Vicinia isn't a naval commander.
She doesn't have a lot of experience on shipboard, most
likely, but David Villare isn't going to tell her what to do
either. It's kind of like what we're
going to see in The Dance of the Dragons, which would be a
spoiler for you to me to say too much about.
But there is this situation where you have people who have
titles that are not in the same category, and it's unclear who
can tell who what to do. And in this case is there.
No one's going to tell a gun sister what to do, right?
But it's still kind of an interesting, unique command
situation where one person isn't in charge of everything.
It's a very common thing in the modern military, which is very
structured and organized. All kinds of legal rules and
precedents have been established, but you still have
scenarios where that there are ranks like you're saying it was
like ranks, you know, Sergeant. Staff Sergeant, Master Sergeant,
Lieutenant captain, Colonel. But then there's also position.
So you can have one captain who is in charge of a company and
another captain who is the intelligence officer for the
battalion. You know, they're both the same
rank, but the intelligence officer has no business telling
the soldiers in his company what to do.
That makes sense. You have different roles of
responsibility. And similarly to you, just
almost like the difference between a warrior and a soldier.
You know, this warrior might be able to kick in one's butt.
But this soldier knows how to direct the pieces of the
battlefield to maneuver the flank and then send the Archer,
as the warrior doesn't have any leadership skills, he just no
one can beat him at sword fighting.
So when you go back to medieval times in the Game of Thrones
scenario, it's almost one thing you're treating me about.
The story in the 1st place is what if the Prince tells you to
get the horse out of the stable and the queen tells you to?
Put the horse in the stable and yeah, and yours.
Your captain tells you to go do guard duty.
Like, who do you follow the command of?
So these torn loyalties, you know this is one way it can play
out here right on. That makes sense.
We hear that. We hear that happening in in
regular non military organizations to where sometimes
they just to defunct or dysfunctional organization where
you have employees that can be ordered around by multiple
bosses and these orders might conflict and yeah what do you do
yeah. The manager who's there every
day tells you to do one thing. The owner that pops in once a
month tells you to do another thing.
Yeah, yeah, you know they're both wrong because you're the
one who does it every day. Yeah.
So in both cases we have a close but uncertain relation of House
Targaryen and a member of the small council leading the
soldiers while a queen and sister to Agon riding a dragon
assists. Now Nina points out it.
It's worth mentioning that the Senia may have expected or was
expecting to act with more military autonomy compared to
her sister in the Storm Lands, where Agon and Iranis might have
relied on Oris because he was at least experienced as a warrior.
Somewhat, the Senia was actually a warrior.
She trained alongside her brother.
She fought with Dark Sister, so she may have actually had more
experience, more combat knowledge than Ranis was.
Even though Ranis was was very skilled as a dragon rider, it's
explicitly pointed out that she's not a warrior which would
mean she's certainly not a strategist either I wouldn't
think. Whereas the Senia it's not as
clear what her military knowledge was.
But there's a lot of reason to suspect that she was more of
such than her sister, but not necessarily something that she
worked on a lot because later in the in the Congress we'll see
that she's often the one that does the ruling when Agon is off
to another stuff. She does a lot of the
day-to-day, not to mention a lot of other things.
Let's just say I'm gonna say it right now.
Vasenia might be my favorite Targaryen of all of them.
She's just really cool and interesting and her personality
is a lot more defined than either her siblings, which helps
a lot too for for latching onto her as something to be
interested in. So in both cases there was also
a marriage offer. Our Galac offered his daughter
to egg on. Shara offered herself to egg on
as well, but she already had a son named Ronald whose father
had passed. We don't know who the father
was. Another one of these where we
don't know who the father was. So she was Queen Regent and
Ronald's mother prefer presumably king before Ronald
and was rather he whoever he was.
He had been king before Ronald and maybe Shara was not an
errand by birth. It's not clear if if she was
then the husband is less important.
That might be why he's not mentioned now.
Gildaine mocks Shara for being a, quote faded flower who was
apparently like, one of the most beautiful women in Seven
Kingdoms. But that had been like, a decade
prior. And I think he's kind of missing
the point. Perhaps with the way a historian
would be expected to. Her strategy was fine, like, why
not make the offer? It couldn't hurt.
He says no big deal. She's not offended.
She knows it's a political move. She's not like, oh, he's not
attracted to me, you know, that's not what she doesn't care
about that. I mean, it would be a benefit.
It'd be nice, like, use your, if you, if you've got it, flaunt it
right. She's trying to if that's a
weapon in her arsenal, use it. But that's not Gil.
Dane is perhaps making too much of that.
Being the main point here is like, yeah, like that's not why
Agon turned her down. Agon wouldn't have turned down a
good political marriage because she's not attractive enough.
Like, that doesn't make any sense.
Like Agon doesn't think that way.
That's there's no evidence of that, and it just it's not very
pragmatic either. Also it's.
I mean, I guess, I don't know, but it's not like she went from
being. 50 years old to 60 years old and you know, yeah, there's
attractive. I mean, no, 110 years from now
is going to say, well, Timothy Shelma is not attractive
anymore. You know, well age would matter
a bit because of the having children.
So there is there is still that but she's not.
But she apparently was not out of her childbearing years by any
means. But still there was the she.
The the addition to the marriage offer of Ron you have to name
Ronald as your heir is like that's a bigger no than taking a
third wife it would have been. It was like, no, it has to be a
child of my body, has to be the king.
Like they the realm won't even accept your son, let alone if I
was willing to accept him so. I really just wanted to talk
about how attractive Timothy Charlemagne is again.
So she thought that by bargaining from strength, maybe
she could get a different offer. Maybe, maybe she wouldn't have
expected that offer, except he's like, he's not going to really
take my son as his heir. But it's a point.
Like it's a starting point I. Didn't even think of that.
Yeah, she's trying to make the point.
Like, I'm willing to do whatever.
Yeah, right. This is like, this is what I
would like to do, like maybe offer me a compromise.
But he just said no, like there was no compromise because they
got is not really about compromising.
And whether or not she realized it, that wasn't necessarily a
slide on her. That's just his MO.
Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly.
Like if she had had a really young daughter, he might have
offered to marry that really young daughter to Ronald.
That might have been a way to bring the Kingdom together.
In fact, I'd save this for a little bit later.
But originally George did write it as Agon, having Agon and his
sisters having a daughter or two, and then in early planning,
it was never like written in the books or anything like that.
It wasn't a retcon. But it makes sense he eliminated
that because he didn't want that to be a variable and is
negotiating with the. I think.
So yeah, it enables the character of Agon to be more
domineering and just because, you know, I don't make
alliances. Yeah, like even that offer that
you're supposing might have made, he might have made it
after they bent the knee, right? Yes, that's true.
He still you could submit to me and this marriage alliance will
tie our houses together as the Targaryen's and and the Aaron's
did have several marriages later and to and and to one or two
other houses in the Vale. But that was to shore up
alliances, not to create an equal, an equal alliance right.
Something to help the support the throne rather than someone
to be the equal of the throne. So this comes up because our
Galac did get a counteroffer, right?
When our Galac made his offer of his daughter to Agon, Agon
countered with Oris to his daughter.
But there was no offer of Oris to Shara, which that wouldn't
have worked the same way, that that wouldn't have accomplished
the same things. Shar already had a son's.
The same problem exists there with with starting a new line or
or all that sort of business. You can't do that with a child
in the way. And the only way to deal with
that is to, you know, kill the kid.
Which is not at all the kind of, you know, obviously Agon and
Oris and everyone, they're willing to kill people, but
they're not. They're not trying to kill
children. They don't want that to be the
way they got to where they are. Yeah, that doesn't look good.
I mean, I don't think. I don't think it's about honor
and ethics. I think it's about optics.
Like they would be totally willing to do that if it meant
they got accomplished their goals, but it's
counterproductive to their goals.
Luckily for a lot of Westerosi children.
You know another thing, little things we had speculated in the
past that I feel ripple effects as we go through this.
I wonder if he knew our Galac wouldn't accept that marriage
anyway, so he's makes himself seem reasonable, offering it,
knowing our likes. Not going to take it.
Maybe Also there is a bit of sexism in there.
He offers a better deal to the male leaders.
You know it's possible to signal to the other male leaders in the
other kingdoms. It is entirely possible.
On the other hand, one theory I have is that they knew our Galac
would never bend the knee and they would have to kill him.
They would have to beat him and kill him in order to to to
overcome him. Whereas.
Shara was clearly more willing to negotiate.
Like they sent our galactic counteroffer and he flipped his
lid and cut the end of his hands off like okay.
Well, that's the end of that. We're not sending another envoy
to him. But Shara, they just cut off
negotiations because they're like, well, no, this is
untenable because you have a son.
There's just no way this won't work.
So they. Yeah, so it's not.
It's possible there was some some gender specific angles to
this, but I think the biggest hang up for the Targaryens was
her existing son in both regions.
The campaign campaign. The campaign between two large
powers allows an opportunity for smaller players to take
advantage to the benefit of the Targaryen's.
Our Galac had already lost Bannerman to Agon.
That was before the war even started.
We were talking about mostly the Lords in there, see, like Massey
and Bar Emin. But that became more official
when the Bannermen were actually called, and you saw who they
marched with. And when our black called his
banners, the Dorners men raid the Marches, and pirates raid
the coasts. The Veil is going to see
defections as well as we'll see, Nina says.
This is part and parcel of the preconquest great game of
Westerosi geopolitics. If someone gets too powerful,
everyone else is going to gang up on them.
We've used the board game analogy of a lot of times.
No one wants to see someone get so powerful that they're able to
win. So it's the one time where
people will team up. It's the one time where they
unite against a common enemy is when there's someone that
threatens to take down the mall. With Aegon, they didn't do that.
I was going to say there's a couple caveats to what you're
saying, though. If someone gets within a certain
range of too powerful, because when they get clearly dominantly
too powerful, well, we can't do anything about that.
And that, as long as you have a good leader in charge, is better
for stability, which is kind of what the whole thing Aegon is
doing. And and Shara also asked for
land. She asked for all the lands east
of the Green Fork of the Trident for the veils support against
black hair. And she's like, look, well
instead of a marriage we could do this instead.
So there were all sorts of offers and and potential
negotiation points that could have come up with a compromise.
But again Agon was just like, Nah, I'm not doing that.
You, you bend the knee or that's that.
You know another thing too. Earlier on, being hard about
things not compromising, getting people to fall in line later on
makes people more likely to just fall in line.
Like, well, he's not taking compromises.
He's already beat these people. He has more behind him now.
Like, it's more and more lopsided, but at the same time
that enables him to be more compromising toward the end.
You know that's true. He when he is willing to
compromise, it's like, oh, he is it's it's possible, but it's
rare. Yeah, he doesn't want to.
Maybe you seem so unbending that he's never compromising but but
he but having it be rare does make sense that people will
rarely expect it. One other aspect of Agon not
having daughters is that it would have proved he could have
kids because he didn't have that.
Which which is a wrinkle that we've entertained at various
points and find it quite interesting as far people
willingness to bend the knee. If he already had children I
wonder if how that would have changed things.
Besides the marriage offers, which would have certainly been,
there would have been a lot more of those.
Like, yeah, marry your son to mine.
Of course if they had had a son and a daughter who were already
married, like the targarians do, then that wouldn't have That
door would have been closed too. But maybe they have two sons and
one daughter. Anyway, you know, George is
like, Nope, no kids at all. Let's just.
I was gonna say you wonder how that would have changed these
George probably did too. He probably went through a lot
of if thens you know, I think I brought this up before in the.
The the writers of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul talked a
lot about how there's way more stuff that they wrote that was
scrapped than what we actually see because they go through
these paths of how it will play out and realize it won't work or
doesn't drive the things. So scrapping kind of go back.
I'm sure George Dutt and is doing currently is doing a lot
of that now. Yeah, yeah, you're probably
right. And George doesn't like, he's
obviously not someone who shirks the more complicated option,
right. He's not like, he's like off
this would be too much. This would be too much world
building like George's. That's not going to stop him.
I don't think so. So I don't think it was purely
to make it simple and easy for himself.
But that would have maybe been a benefit.
That's certainly like a notable benefit.
But probably fundamentally, he keep kept like as he thought
about how each of these kingdoms would go, it kept being the
complicating factor and he probably went through, well,
what if it's a daughter? Or what if it's what it
eventually is like? I just need to eliminate it
altogether. It's all a lot of parameters, a
lot of permutations, like two sons, one daughter, two
daughters, one four sons, 15 daughters, no sons like son.
And daughter married to each other already?
Yeah, they were married to other people.
With the incest in the mix, the possibility is really
ridiculous. So yeah, maybe that maybe, maybe
it really was about simplifying. He tried all those options.
Like all these stink. They're all just no, we just
gotta keep it simpler. But anyway, so on the veil side
let's talk about what they had going for them and what they
were bringing to the battlefield or the battle sea.
It's the naval encounter. What do you call that?
It's not a battlefield when it's at the ocean on the air inside
like the other kingdoms. The Veilman had plenty of
warning the Targaryens were coming after all they got it
sent out his letter. He's like I'm been the knee or
else. You know how polite of him,
right? To tell everybody.
Right. So they knew what was happening.
That's why all that negotiating happened.
And and he was saying, hey look, if you want to join me early on,
there are going to be benefits like we saw that like the
tallies were heavily rewarded. But when this battle kicks off,
when this campaign kicks off, that hasn't happened yet.
So no one has seen what happens when you've been the need to egg
on other than a few crown lands Lords.
So there isn't really established expectation for what
happens. President Yeah, there isn't a
big precedent there. None of the major powers had
been the need to egg on and saw what happened yet.
And that's part of what makes this veil campaign so
interesting is that it's the first one to kick off, but it is
not nearly the first one to finish.
A lot happens in between. It's starting and finishing, so
that a lot of these examples of what happens do pile up.
So by the end of it, we see that the the Veilman, Queen, Shara,
etcetera, they have a lot more information with which to make a
decision and that that makes it unique in its own way.
Compare Nina brings up the letter that Stana sends out as a
comparison to the letter that's sent out by Agon.
One is Stannis says I'm the true king because Cersei's children
aren't hers or aren't. Roberts like it's a it's a legal
thing. Like this results in this result
like this means I'm king, whereas Agon is just like I'm
king cuz I'm the strongest and I'm coming for you.
That's it's a totally different thing.
We made that comparison before, but that's a pretty huge
difference in the way it's presented, because people can
ignore Stannis. Like, you're not strong enough
to take us. Your legal claim doesn't scare
us. Your dragon, though.
Agon that does. And it's I just want to be fair
to Stannis. It's not that he was approaching
it wrong. That's just the scenario that
was there. Like he was legally correct and
Agon was more powerful. You know if Stannis had been
more powerful, he probably would have been.
Stannis might not have Stannis might not have included in the
letter. He might have said these are the
facts believe. Me or not, you know, Yeah.
It would have been different. True, if he was, if he was
bargaining or sending letters out from a bigger position of
strength. Yeah, which he himself puts out.
Remember that guy said in the first chapter his, his wife is
like you. It's just like you're just like
Agon, you know, you had a small army and this and that.
We're here on Dragon, so he's like, he had Dragons.
Hello. You know, don't forget that.
I will say that even though I was trying to contrast and
there's a parallel to Agon doesn't try to justify why he's
doing it. Like legal or not, like, it
seems like he had decent justification, but that wasn't
part of what he was doing. He's like, I'm just more
powerful. He stands like I just am legally
the one. You know the neither of them
were necessarily offering justifications, just which,
which is in a lot of Westerosi minds strength is a
justification. Like that's a hard maybe hard
for us to wrap ourselves mind around.
But like when Bailon took the north, it was brought up a
council and someone was like well by what right to see
holdings like and Tywin's like by right of conquest like that's
how he has it. You know.
He's like he took it. So it's his like if he can hold
it to the law if he can hold it, it's his you know.
And and so Tywin was very just matter of fact about it.
Like y'all this is, this is this is how our realm works.
If someone takes it and holds it, it's theirs.
Like how do you not get that? You know?
So in that Tywin was right. I mean, you don't have to agree
with that being the the right way to do.
Things, but it is the way the stated thing should be.
But it is the state of things, yeah.
It's a fact whether we want it to be or not.
Exactly. So that's very interesting.
And it's the fact that we don't have to listen to laws.
You know, like the law is the law, but that doesn't mean we
have to obey the law. We're powerful enough to disobey
the law. We can or lots.
That happens to laws all the time.
If if you're not going to get caught or you can't be
imprisoned, you're above the law, then you might choose to
not obey that law. You know, like people do that
large and small all the time in the real world.
King Ronald Aaron was a quote boy.
We don't have an exact age, but the subtext is that this is not
like a diminutive. They're not trying to make him
seem younger. He really is quite young.
I think 11 is probably the oldest, I would guess, but I'm,
I would actually guess more like 8, maybe even 7.
So I'm not sure. But very, very young.
Too too young enough to have very little idea what's
happening to not make any decisions or just be like mom,
what's you know, I want to have dinner, you know, that kind of
thing. Not a.
Even if someone made a point of trying to explain it all to him,
he still couldn't understand the context or some of the literal
words that were being used in the conversation.
So a lot about Ronald Call calls up images of sweet Robin,
Ronald, Robert, you know, Ronald Aaron, Robert Aaron being a boy,
having a mother as Regent, you know, this mother trying to
negotiate with bigger powers and things like that.
There are some similarities, but a lot of them are just kind of
surface level. Actually, Nina even said go so
far as to call it a possible red herring to make us think of
Sweet Robin, but it's the differences are pretty
substantial, so we'll see that as we're moving through this
episode. I wanted to throw that out
early, in case you were already thinking of Sweet Robin.
It is a a good catch, but ultimately it's going to fork in
the road for a lot of reasons. Is it a?
Red Falcon. The Red Falcon.
Nice. I like it.
So Queen Shara and her advisors ordered the assembly of a fleet
which included assistance from the Sea Lord of Bravos who sent
a dozen warships to their aid. We're curious to know if this
was due to an existing alliance. Maybe they already had trade, a
trade deal or had good we're on good terms for other reasons or
because the Bravosi are already anti Valyrian, or maybe maybe a
little both. That may be why they were
willing to help Now. One of the reasons why we
suspect an alliance, or at least a good relationship between
Queen Shara or just the veil in general and Bravos, is that
they're so close Bravos in the face.
I mean, they're like just to skip over the narrow sea there,
so it's easy to forget that. But the Vail and Bravos are
geographic neighbors, really, so they would have a lot of
dealings with each other. And yeah, the Bravosi might
still be thinking of the past Dragon Lords or the more recent
Emperor Orion, the guy who tried to reestablish the Valyrian
Empire that had only been, you know, 100 years gone.
So it wasn't a super long time ago.
It would still be in a lot of people's memories, especially
powerful people who who think about such things.
And the Bravosi would certainly have a long memory about
Valyrian things. So they may have been wary of
that. It's definitely a possibility
that it was on their minds. They wouldn't want to see a new
Valyrian oriented dynasty arise after another one had fall and
so soon. Like, Dang it, they're coming
back because they don't know that Agon is going to convert to
the Seven and all it's going to. They don't know that at all.
They don't know he's going to bring slavery to what?
They have no idea. I just said didn't occur to me
they might be really worried that he's about to reinstall
slavery on a whole new continent.
Yeah, they have. No.
Yeah. They have no idea what kind of
king he's going to be. And and frankly, neither do a
lot of the Westerosi Lords, you know, even the king, even the
one he's coming for, they don't exactly know what he's going to
do. They have an idea.
Maybe the way he's carried himself, we presented himself,
and as the war progresses and more and more people submit to
get more and more evidence of how these people are going to be
treated, that could still make them suspicious, though.
He's only treated them that way in the short term until we've
all submitted. Then he's going to do something
different like. Or even if he doesn't, even if
he continues to be prudent, yeah, How does his son?
Does he even have a son? Right.
So yeah, there's lots of concerns to have and a lot of
people might have just said, hey, we don't want anyone power
to dominate Westeros. That's not something great, you
know, you don't want to. We would rather not have that.
Bravos might want that cuz Bravos might think, well, if
there's this big unified power to our W, it might become a
threat to our independence in the long term and then not be a
short term problem. But.
Who knows, even aside from the potential future problems or
even the potential of it becoming better overall.
It would still be changed in a short run, yeah.
They probably have certain alliances and treaties and trade
routes and such set up with the Veil and the Crown lands and.
Or it's not the crown lands yet, but the storm lands and.
So on and so now this is all going to become disruptive and
they might have to rework deals. Old debts might come into
question, so on and so on. So you could see why this might
be concerning. Even if they could see a long
run where it's better, they can easily see a long run where it's
worse if this Targaryen starts up slavery again, right?
So that's a great point about debt.
If if the Veil had a debt to Bravos and they got conquered,
would that debt just be obliterated and say no, that
doesn't exist anymore. Your debt was to the throne of
errands, which no longer exists. Like, remember, that was
conditioned for Stannis, the Byron, the Iron Bank's.
Like, we'll back you, but only if you take on all the debts
from your enemies that they they owe us all this money.
You have to take on that and pay us back and we'll we'll we'll,
we'll give you more money And Santa is like, damn, but OK,
it's like that's worth it. But Ouch.
That's going to be expensive, but it's not coming out of his
pocket. So you know.
Can I can I share an anecdote of an anecdote?
OK. We saw Rowan Junior, the
comedian. Yeah, and he had this story
about. This friend he had who owed him
1200 bucks and man this like you know how he got out of it?
He went up and died. The audacity to leave this?
Earth no one owes me. He should have put that in his
will. Yeah, like I owed him 12 of
them. Make sure he gets taken care of
if I pass, so if bravo, so that's another thing from
Bravo's angle or two other things really.
If you're an independent city state, you really don't want any
big powers around you. Like as your neighbor, you want
them to be sort of smaller and piecemeal.
I think in in most cases, especially given their
experience with large powers, Cuz they're big experience with
large powers is Valeria, which is obviously wasn't good for
them. But also if the Targaryens rule
Westeros, is that who they have to trade with?
If the trade with the Valyrians now like that's who have to
arrange these deals with, that's not great.
I mean it would still be mostly done under the auspices of these
individuals and they're not trading ever doesn't doesn't
flow directly through the king. But those were those taxes will
be going and all that and be like it would rub them wrong, I
think. Anyway, there's plenty of reason
to see why Bravos would take the veil side here.
That it's it. There's there's a long list.
Of can we mention it? Maybe they haven't seen the
Dragons yet either, right? Another reason other people were
blowing and they gone off. That is entirely possible and
maybe they wish they had, given how this battle is going to go,
which we'll see in a moment. So she also sent an army to the
Bloody Gate which to beef it up now a confrontation there would
have been very interesting. It would have been stupid to try
a traditional battle there for the attackers, given how
advantage it is for the defenders in the long history of
armies just shattering themselves to bloody pulp at the
Bloody Gate. That's why it's called the
Bloody Gate. But a dragon, everyone packed in
so tight like that, coming down above like it becomes it goes
from a big advantage to a big disadvantage, quite possibly,
depending on exactly how the terrain is like.
It's not like we seen it. So it comes the BBQ gate, Yeah,
yeah, yeah, exactly. The the the fire gate.
Exactly. So it would have been
interesting to see in a, you know, bloody awful way, but
thankfully fictional. But she didn't come to that
because as I said, the Targaryens were like, yeah,
we're not going to send an army against that, that that never
works. So she ordered the defenses
strengthened elsewhere too, particularly Gall Town.
Now Gall Town is super important here.
It's one of the true 5 cities in Westeros.
Funny that two of those five cities cities have the word town
in the Old Town and Gull Town. Got to start somewhere.
Yeah, they they started small. Exactly.
Nina wrote the same thing here, there, you know, there are
errands of Gull Town, like kind of like the Lannisters of Landis
Port, but they haven't been around nearly as long.
In fact, they're not around at this point.
They're they'd only come around until the time of J Harry's the
first. So if you're wondering about
that, if you're someone thinking about the errands of Gull Town,
don't because they don't exist yet.
It's actually ruled by House Grafton.
The Graftons notably have a sigil that has a good deal in
common with the Hightower sigil. Look at all that fire.
It looks like kind of like the Hightower, right?
It looks like a tower on fire. Word is that the that House
Coharas was bummed that this was already taken cuz you know they
took over a castle with burning towers and like y'all already
have a burning tower schedule. We'll have to do something else.
Nina wrote some words for House Grafton because they don't have
any and they are so burns our faith.
It's pretty good. I mean burning yeah they're they
are a House of and alls. They took the house over from
its previous owners of the first men who were House Shet.
What's interesting is that House Shet is still around and they
live in Gulltown, so the shets were overthrown, but they still
exist and have a tower in Gull Town called Gull Tower though it
was the Grafton's who actually grew the city larger.
Like to be fair, yes they took it from the Shets, but it was a
town back then and now it's a city under the Grafton's that
grew to its current size. We may have any way, though.
It is an excellent natural harbor built for this sort of
thing, or built naturally occurring perfectly for the sort
of thing it was the building game later.
And very minor point. I don't have some reason to
defend the shets or anything, but it could be that it grew to
a city despite the grafton's. Maybe the shets really laid the
groundwork. And yeah, that's true.
That's a good, but it's entirely possible.
So it's probably similar in size to White Harbor, roughly because
it is. It's apparently much smaller
than King's Landing, Old Town, or Landis Port, and White Harbor
is the only other city which isn't mentioned in that phrasing
about how it's much smaller than those three.
So I'm guessing there's three big cities and two smaller
cities. It's the central reason the Veil
can stay supplied even in winter with a wide variety of goods.
And as I just said, part of that reason for that is it's in a
very hot trade location. It's right in the middle of the
continent on the Eastern seaboard, and that's where a ton
of trade is. Right across the way is Bravos.
As we said, it's the closest of the Westerosi major locations to
Bravos. It's not too far from Pentos
Mere, Tyrash on the other side, and then on its own side.
It's close to White Harbor and King's Landing in Dunscandale,
and everyone would stop there on the way going to other places.
So it's just a really big, important place.
Even though it isn't talked about a lot, it's hugely
important. It's the halfway point between
King's Landing and White Harbor. They they would stop at all
three, a lot of ships coming by. Given the remoteness of the Erie
and the value of Gull Town, it's pretty easy to see why this was
the target, why the ship sailed for this port to try to take it,
and because in theory, taking Gull Town alone might be enough
to force the errands to capitulate like the entire veil.
If they hold it long enough, and like winter comes, the entire
Veil might be like okay, we got to give up.
We don't have our port. We should listen to the North.
Yeah, and the Targaryens presumably knew that.
They knew all this and the errands knew that.
The Garions knew this. It's all pretty out in the open,
like take the city and the whole region might fall.
It's pretty straightforward. So plans were made accordingly
on both sides. I still want to say even when
things are all out, there is still take someone to bother to
gather that information and make a good decision based on it.
I still want to give a gone credit for piecing it together
properly because there's lots of stuff that's all out there and
then some leader still makes the worst decision given, you know,
like it was laid all out there for our GALAC, right?
Yeah. It was laid all out there for
our galac and he still just his pride, his personality were
such. We're such well known
quantities. Like, this is an older man who
had a long career. Like his personality is out
there, but he knows kind of what kind of man he is.
He's been this way for a long time.
And it's not like people change a lot when they're older, you
know? I mean, people don't necessarily
change a lot when they're younger either, but you have
more time to change when you're. Younger, that's true.
Yeah. You're less set in your ways,
etcetera. So it was a little more
understandable. And of course, as we said at the
beginning, there was also a little more wiggle room like our
Galac had basically. Set things that there could only
be 1 result. He's like he cut the hands of
the end point like that's it. Like this is it's going this has
to be dealt with one way or another.
There's no, there's no coming back from that.
Meanwhile here in the veil though they hadn't gone.
Nothing had been made personal. There weren't violations of
diplomacy. There was a willingness to
compromise on the errand side. So there's there was more room
here. And as we'll see that's going to
play out eventually, but not for quite a while.
There's a lot going to happen in the meantime before that.
I really wonder what the mood was like in Gulltown and the
rest of the Veil, as we did with some of these other kingdoms,
like with our Galac. It's almost straightforward.
They had been his men for so long, they'd fought at his side
for so long. Westeros being what it is,
they're going to follow him. He had been their king forever.
They'd fought, you know, he'd fought all these battles, won
all these victories. There's really no other way for
it to go. They had.
They were going to follow him. Queen Shara, it's a little
different. Westeros isn't as big on
following women. She's not some war hero, right?
Everybody recognizes that. She won't even be in charge in a
few years once her son comes of age.
So you don't wanna like offend her or like insult her, but it's
not gonna get your home burned down for.
Right, exactly. It's not the same.
You haven't fought by her side your whole life, where this is
what a lot of these Lords are thinking.
So it's a much different calculus.
It's a much different scenario. They kind of knew what we were
faced with in the Storm lands. It was going to come down to a
big conflict here. Like there's there's no, like
central battleground. There's no big place to meet,
you know, there it's so different.
The Veil is such a different theater of war than the storm
lands. There's no big rain issue.
There's not trees everywhere that soldiers can hide in, which
is a big deal for concealing themselves from the dragon.
It's just very different. So I can't say enough about how
different it is. So I really wonder what the
Lords of the Veil we're thinking.
I mean. You've got tradition, which is
so powerful in keeping some of these things in place.
It's one of the main reasons why so many of these Lords are so
stubborn. So many kings and Queens are so
stubborn about giving up because their families have held this
for so long. And they're going to be the one
written about in history because the one that lost it like this
is after 8000 years. Queen Shara is the one that
delayed on the ground. King R Galaq is the one that
finally lost it. You know, like they don't want
to be the one in the history books to be remembered.
Like they want to be remembered after they're gone.
Not for that, right? A lot of times to the traditions
it can be a mistake. Maybe sometimes I stick to them,
but there's something to be said for them.
There's arguments to be made, but but what happens is things
are built upon that as well, right?
Your your your reality, your decisions, your relationships
with people all built upon it. So if you abandon that, you're
kind of abandoning everything. And that's it's it's so it's so
easier to look back with hindsight, you know, to say, oh
man, it should just abandon that tradition, you know?
But I'm thinking, for example, like, some of Einstein's
theories he was coming up with were just almost completely
directed by almost the entire scientific community.
And I don't know, 30 years later, they're like, oh, he was
completely right. You know, like.
And they weren't a bunch of morons.
They were highly educated, but they just had all this sense of
reality built on other pieces of reality.
And when he challenges those fundamental things, you have to
abandon everything else. And it's not easy to do.
It's understandably not easy to do.
It's yeah, it's like changing your entire reality.
Everything you thought had been real and everything you thought
was real. That your parents thought you
were grandparents and this is, this is the part of it, is hard
to comprehend because we don't have our own history does
stretch back this far, but not in a way that we can attach
ourselves. There's no way that we can
connect with like they potentially can't hear.
Like these people can go. My family was here this long
ago. You know, like, I can't say that
like my family wasn't in America even 300 years, even 200 years
ago. Well then, yeah, they were, But
still nowhere near thousands of years.
So yeah, it's really hard to fathom what's at stake in terms
of of pride and tradition and culture.
And that's part of why Aegon has to just prove how strong he is,
because he that's part of what he has to overcome is he does
have to challenge their reality, yeah.
Yeah, he has to prove that he's stronger than that, that this is
better, that this new world can work better in a lot of ways.
And but they have to it has to be proven because they can't
imagine it by themselves because there it does their their
existing worldview doesn't allow for that sort of imagination.
It doesn't fit in that worldview.
One king, a dragon rider like these things have they've never
imagined it. Yeah.
All right. Let's take a quick break and
we'll come back with the actual battle and the continuation of
the campaign in the veil. You know the name Damon
Velarian. This Lord Damon Velarian who's
ruling the the drift mark at this point and and ruling House
of Laurian. He's the master masterships.
Even though he predates, you know, Prince Damon and the era
of the dance, Damon is always like associated with the
Valerians, you know, on the TV show and in the book.
So she, he raised valerian children as his own.
You know, with Renera, you know, not on his own, but I meant to
say as his own and and she was married to a valerian, you know,
and he's allies with a sea snake.
So it's just like his name is throws me off as it's like Damon
Valerian and guess what, Damon Valerian's son.
Ethan named his first born son. Damon Villare Yeah, so it
doesn't get less confusing, but it's cool.
It's realistic. They do name themselves after
their after their ancestors, which hey happens in the real
world too, right? I want to point out real quick,
even though I'm in town out of out of normal spot, I still have
a crazy mixed. Yeah, we skipped over your your
crazy beverage. I wanted to make a joke too
about. I couldn't find a big mug so I
just have a shot glass and I wish I had a blue drink.
I wanted to represent the the air in blue.
But yeah, but I have a watermelon Red Bull mixed with
the naked green machine, and it's tasty.
Your your drink kind of matches my shirt.
We're both wearing history of Westeros shirts, as we pointed
out at the beginning. But now I get to point out the
the color connection they're in. We're representing.
Here we go talking about the. Prince Damon and the Dance of
the Dragons and we've got our blacks and Greens on.
I'm unmuting myself for the first time in the episode to
point out my shirt, which is an R flag, means Death shirt.
Yeah, because I. Mean Super hype because the
Season 2 comes back in a week and a half, two weeks or so.
Yeah, that's pretty soon. Yeah, that's right.
Very cool. Yeah, Very exciting.
We were worried that would be a casualty.
It took a while for them to announce that Season 2 was gonna
happen. It was like everybody was like,
anxious. Like, is it gonna happen?
Is it gonna make it? But yes, anyone there who who
doesn't know that show should probably watch it.
Especially if you like humor and pirates and many other things
that are in there too. But but also Reese Darby and
Taika Watiti who are primary drivers behind that show, are
also primary drivers behind Flight of the Concords from a
Generation Back. Another show that I love a lot.
Yep, which is also hilarious. If you haven't seen fly to the
conchord, you also need to watch that.
Question from Julie A. Did we hear what's in the shot
glass or shouldn't we ask? It was just the Red Bull.
Sorry, that's so boring. He shot Red Bull, Not I might
fly away in the second-half here.
Not green bowl or blue bowl or just Red Bull.
I wish it had been Blue Falcon. If it had been those three
colors, it's the Trident color. We get the the Riverlands bowl,
the Trident Bowl. Mm HM, Okay, Let's talk about
the battle off Gulltown. That's right, off not of,
because it was in the water outside of Gulltown.
Not in Gulltown, is that? Yeah.
Like, how do you usually say that?
I thought when you were talking about the the battlefield, but
it's the ocean. Battlefront maybe could cover
it. I don't know if that's the
correct terminology for. A like a lot of battles are
still the said battle of Blank, and it's even when it's in the
water, so I don't know if sometimes it's not that.
But anyway, not important. The Navy's Other than the 12
Bravosi warships on the Veil side, we're not actually too
clear on how large either force was.
It says the air in fleet was hastily assembled, which is an
interesting thing to consider with those Bravosi warships like
they knew. The dragon, or a dragon, or
several dragon. They didn't know at first who
was coming for them, but they knew the targetings would come
for them, and they figured that ships would be involved.
So this must have happened pretty quickly because this was
this battle that we're about to describe, probably the first
battle of the war outside of the battle between.
Aegon Oris and the Lords of Maidenpool and Dunscandale that
ganged up on him because this apparently happened around the
same time Aegon's forces were ambushed while marching up the
God's eye. So quite possibly the first
major battle of the war, which is interesting because it's
happening at Gulltown, which is where the first major battle of
Robert rebellion was at Gulltown.
Because the Lord of the Vale you know, rather the Lord of Lord
Grafton sided with King Aries. And was not going to allow
Robert to leave the Vail. I'll take a ship to get to the
storm lands to rally his forces and they had to fight a battle
to to unlock Gulltown for the rebellion side which they of
course did. And Robert established himself
as a warrior that people would want to follow and and that
only, in a way, Grafton's. Obstinance made things worse on
his own side because it allowed Robert to prove how great he
when people was like, wow, Robert, it's amazing.
Let's rally more people to his side, yeah?
Didn't he? Shouldn't.
Didn't want him to prove himself, but anyway, how bloody
was that battle? How it?
Was pretty bad. Bad.
Yeah. Yeah, it was bad.
It was bad. Apparently, Like Ned's memory of
it, if I recall correctly, was. Yeah, Robert was one of the
first men over the walls and Oh no, it's Lord Godrick Borel who
who describes it to Davos. So now that I think of more
about it, Yeah, it was. It was.
It was a close thing, I think. Maybe, maybe not close in terms
of the rebels almost lost, but it was a lot of close combat, a
lot of hand to hand, a lot of fighting on the walls.
I guess I wondered how much it was just superficially he needed
to go against Robert but wasn't really trying that hard to stop
him. But.
Might have to look into that a little more.
Even if that was the case, all the men in the battle might not
realize that so. That's true, yeah.
So those 12 Provosi worships, whatever they must have had at
least enough time to to sail over.
Having given more time, Bravos might have sent a larger
detachment. Maybe if if more scouting had
been done. But apparently there just wasn't
in a lot of time. Now as well as when we're
thinking about the Valorians. You might be thinking of again
of the Sea Snake and this giant fleet that he had, but that's
the largest of Valorian fleet ever was, so don't picture that.
Picture that, but way smaller, not small.
But way smaller. They were formidable in this
era, but not at their at their peak, which they were at the
dance era. So this would be a substantial
force, but it wouldn't be the kind that would overwhelm the
errands, even though they have a hastily assembled fleet.
When you hear a hastily assembled fleet, do you assume
conscriptions that they would take some merchant vessels and
say, hey, you need to fight for us?
I mean. Cuz that often is the case in
medieval style combat like local ships or conscripted.
We've seen a lot of even Jon Snow conscripts merchant ships
to send to hard home, you know, So I hadn't thought about it,
honestly. I thought of just smaller,
weaker ships. That's what I thought.
In my mind. I didn't consider that you might
just. Where do those smaller, weaker
ships come from? Well, I thought that they would
build them. OK, but but maybe that's even
not usually they have to ship that hasty.
Yeah, so probably is just whatever ships you can get, just
local fishermen, probably in the same way that you just come into
town and someone's working on a farm you like, You're in the
army now, you know, like, yeah, bring your rake or whatever.
They might just get the fishermen and say you're in the
Navy. Now bring your ship and you just
don't have a choice. You're not really quit for it,
but yeah, yeah, but probably hastily means what's the word
I'm looking for more likely to die more, more destruction
involved, more, more damage to the village that you're coming
from, more, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, it's interesting how this
battle plays out. The navies are going to come
together and have their engagement and then later
Visenna is going to come in. You almost wonder why it didn't
start that. Why doesn't this end?
You just go out in front and just torch the entire Erin
fleet, or at least enough of it to make the rest give up.
But that's not what happened. Now.
Demonstrating the power of the Dragons was part of the overall
plan in the Congress. And remember, this is one of the
first battles, so maybe they're just like Okay.
We want to make sure everyone knows we're going to make our
statement here, like we're going to eventually do at Heron Hall
and some of these other places. Quite possibly eventually
they're a little more. They hold back a little more and
only blow things up when they really have to.
So maybe that's the strategy, They're just blow up as many
things as possible early on to not have to blow up things
later. But they also generally wanted
to preserve the people they were conquering.
So you know, maybe they if you just burn a few ships, the rest
capitulate. You get to keep all the ships as
it was. Very little is going to be left
after this battle on either side.
Maybe they didn't realize how destructive it would be, and
that's possible. Maybe it's not the example they
want to set, cuz they're not facing navies from the other
sides, right? The only other naval force is
the Ironborn, which they're making a demonstration through
Heron Hall. So.
Yeah, it's the other possibility is there's just fog and they
couldn't like the Dragon wouldn't be able to see and the
ships are advancing and they just once they get close to each
other then they can start fighting.
And yeah, I can kind of see they wanted to prove the power of
their Navy. They wanted to make a statement.
And maybe it was even Lord Valarian himself, I was going to
say. Maybe they wanted to give some
credit to the other people in the army.
To show the strength of the baby, Yeah, that's a good point.
Because they don't want to just be all about the Dragons.
I mean, that might be sufficient.
But showing the power of their allies, even aside from showing
the power or whatever, like they want to actual give actual, I
can't think of the word of my autonomy is not quite the word
we're, but they want the people under them to feel like they
matter. Yeah, that makes sense.
And in this sense, it might be, it might glory might be the
wrong word, but that might be the right word.
Yeah. Yeah, glory.
Especially in their realm. Like the Yeah, this is the naval
battle. You're the naval guys.
Okay. You know, do your thing.
You. Don't just come in here, come in
here and torch all the ships. And then what?
What do I do? You know?
So it's kind of odd to think I want to fight, but that is a
correct Westerosi mindset to to be considering, considering
given how often that is the case.
And another one. Nina brings up the a common
refrain that we should always be considering.
Maybe they're just worried about maybe those ships had some
scorpions on them, or some actual anti dragon weaponry.
That does exist, even though there's very little of it in
Westeros. At this point.
Targets don't know that. They don't know that some
scorpions weren't thrown together, and then they're being
extra cautious. You really, really, really don't
want to lose a dragon. Really, really, really don't
want to lose one. As long as they have them, their
power is intact, as we saw much later once the Dragons are gone.
Rebellions become way more common, and eventually the
Targaryen power fails. And if the Aaron's have teamed
with the Bravosi, they may have or care more about dragging
defenses. They may have given him some
scorpions, say, all right, you're going to need this.
And if we're right at all about Aegon having done some
intelligence work, you might have been aware of that, so.
Yeah, that's a really good point because the Bravosi would have
more knowledge and more. Care and more thought put into
the Dragons and dealing with them.
So yes, that's a very, very good point.
That's what I'm here for. Well, regardless of what drove
the plan, regardless of why they did it the way they did, it did
not work out. The the timeline isn't exactly
clear like I said, but it seems like it happened really quickly.
They sent their ships, the ships engaged the air in fleet, and
yeah, it was apparently a close battle.
Maybe that creates yet another parallel with the last storm.
Because the battle of the last storm was very close, there was
likely a lot of hand to hand combat ships getting very close
to each other, men boarding other ships.
A lot of ships were captured, which is usually how that's
done. You know in in a naval
engagement is 1 ship boards the other and they take it over and
then it becomes their ship and you just change what flag is
flying from it to indicate it's changed.
Teams, it's not. It's not like a person in the
battle, like I've changed sides. Well, how do I indicate that?
You know, like it's hard enough to tell whose side people are on
sometimes without, without. They're not wearing uniforms or
whatever, but even when they're wearing uniforms.
Yeah, it's true. You get all muddy and covered
and yeah, and from a distance it's hard to see and I don't
know. Yeah, so just a picture it as
best as you can. Ships.
Coming together, crashing together, sometimes sinking
people in the waves. Being pulled out and rescued.
Crossbows and bows shot from up close and far away.
Javelins thrown. Torches, probably hurled from
one to the other. Maybe other fire tools like to
set the other ships on fire besides the the dragon, which is
going to enter the battle in a minute here.
Lots of chaos and just cats and dogs living together.
Mass hysteria, yes. And by the way, why were the
cats and dogs on the ships in the 1st place?
They do not help at all in this part of the mass hysteria.
Yeah, that's right. Just evidence of things falling
apart is the inclusion of cats and dogs on the ships.
So like I said, yeah, the last Storm battle they almost lost.
Like it came down to Moraxis saving the day in a sense.
But here they actually did lose. The Navy lost.
Yeah. Lose it.
It's kind of up for debate whether they lost.
Lost. I would argue that they No one
won. It was.
Maybe That's what I was going to say.
They they maybe they didn't lost.
They still win. They maybe they didn't win.
But the Aaron's didn't really lose either.
Right. So it was, yeah.
So here's what actually I mean. Let's summarize.
Everyone lost. Yeah, everyone.
Yeah, everyone lost 1/3 of the ships, Targaryen ships were
lost. Another third, almost a third
was captured. The other, roughly a third, got
away. And Lord Damon was among the
dead, and we don't know if if his ship sank or was captured,
which adds to the interest of what happened with his son
Corley's if he was there. Because if he was, if his ship
sank, then that argues for him not being on that ship.
And so the Targaryens do what they do with dragonflame,
Visanya said. Okay.
Well, we lost, reset and burned the whole fleet, which probably
includes the ships they just captured and those conscripted
ships. And even her own men that were
captured. So that's pretty rough.
That's pretty brutal. That's like, wow, nasty.
So a lot of people that didn't want to be there, a lot of
people that had been her allies a minute before.
Think a little bit about that dude who gets stepped on and my
crack. Dragon.
Except that. Damon probably didn't even know
that guy was there. Yeah, he probably would have
done it anyway. He might have done it anyway,
though. That might have been easy, just
like land 10 feet over. He might not have done it
anyway, but. But yeah, he could.
Yeah, Like, why would he bothers?
He could easily avoid it. Yeah, but.
He didn't know he was there the Dragons in control.
He's like not he can't give a precisely it's not like a
helicopter where he can kind of control exactly where it lands
you know so so that's pretty ruthless pretty brutal and.
But not atypical of Vesenia. Vesenia is pretty brutal, pretty
ruthless and part of what makes her interesting.
So yeah, I think we'd call this a stalemate, but she made it a
stalemate. It had been a loss.
And just with one, you know, afternoon on, Veigar just turned
that into an turned that thing into an even Steven.
And it's a pretty big loss though for them.
I mean, it's a pretty good loss on both sides, like losing your
Navy or most of your Navy. It if they wanted to make a
statement about the power of their Navy, well, that backfire,
didn't it? Yeah.
And and so but they they still showed the power of the Dragon
though. Yeah they showed the power of
the Dragon and it backfires showing the power of the Navy.
But it's even worse because they don't have this Navy to capture
either. Right there.
They're down there. Navy and the Navy they thought
they were going to get and so it's back.
I I was wondering what WWAD what would Aegon do?
Would he have also burned that down?
Like he may have recognized this what we have to do but I wonder
if you would have done and burnt some outside ships or put more
care into burning the right ships or waited till a different
moment when he could have a second drag.
I I don't I don't even know, but it seems like an awful result I.
I agree with you there, and I want to throw this out there as
something to consider for the rest of the episode, which is
Vicentia's personality in light of what happens and in light of.
The decision she makes versus what she may have discussed with
her brother and sister as to the best way to handle some of these
scenarios. Because there is going to be a
time here shortly where she does go to confer with Agon and
Rainey's and then return. And her methods are a lot
gentler, and I wonder if that was something they discussed,
something Agon ordered her to do, or strongly implied needed
to be done. Or if left of her own devices,
she might have burned the eerie or something like Karen Holger's
like, well, may as let's do the same thing here.
But when she comes back, yeah, she's a little, she's a little
more diplomacy, she's a little more subtle, uses more of the
carrot than the stick while the stick is still there, you know.
So I really wonder. It's very interesting if the
Conquest ever hits TV. Or as more has written about it,
or whatever. If we ever get more on this, the
character development happens. If we see that, I would guess
that that's gonna be a part of it, like how to manage their
personalities and what they want to do versus what is actually
the best strategy for taking the Kingdom.
I can't see a lot of ways that might have gone right.
I can imagine in the 1st place they talked about what if we
lose this battle and I want to believe that they wouldn't have
been so Erica, like that won't happen.
Don't worry about it. I feel like they would have gone
deep enough to have a backup plan or follow up, you know, And
and if they did, I can imagine Egon saying, you know, just come
back here. But maybe he said burn it all.
Like maybe she was calmer in the 1st place.
Maybe he ordered to burn it all. And so she did and came back and
Egon's like, I guess we didn't work yet and she's like now I'm
not going to burn the Erie like you said.
I think I can do it my way. I'm trying to give her benefit
of the doubt. It could be the other way for
sure, but. And this is again we have to
reiterate that this was the first major battle, so the
Targaryens getting off in their. This long conquest and it starts
off with a set back and it's like, well, this is the
opposite. We were trying to make a
statement trying to prove how strong we are and just so that
might be why she just like had to torch that just to say from
her perspective like, well, we can't.
This can't, we can't have that spreading.
So it has to look. A draw is not great, but at
least it demonstrates how powerful they are is, and it's
the it's better than loot. An outright loss.
They could maybe present her characters being is that being
like a tough decision She did sat with guilt for the rest of
life. Or maybe she's just a more of a
wow car baby. Yeah, you know, she's.
Sorry, soldiers that were just on my side a minute ago.
I'm going to have to burn y'all now just because politics call
for it, you know? Like, I say that jokingly, but I
and, you know, I'm making a sunny reference, which they put
stuff in a humorous light. But maybe I could see the show,
maybe putting it in like a darker light, like maybe she
struggles with bipolar disorder or something.
Her character is this tragic, you know, interesting struggle
through her life of how to manage her emotions and when she
suddenly thrust into battles with the power of a dragon,
like, that's very interesting, yeah.
Well, I consider Meg or is her son too.
So a lot of what we look at is like well maybe Meg or was just
like this but he she's heard his advisor for a lot of his life
and he he notably. Struggles when she dies, like
after she's gone. His reign notably gets sloppier
advisor and also genetic source to whatever agreemental
disorders might travel through heredity.
It could be a factor, absolutely.
I had one other thought. If I wonder how this might have
affected Agon when it came to Heron Hall.
I wonder if he's a little more judicious.
We talked a lot about the idea of how he didn't totally ruin
Heron Hall. Yeah, maybe he's like, all
right, we'd love to ruin that fleet.
Yeah, maybe we make the point here at this castle, but don't
totally destroy. I wonder if he became more
reserved himself after this fleet was destroyed.
So that effectively. Stalled the campaign.
The Targaryens not only weren't particularly willing to try to
get an army into the Veil through the mountains, they
didn't really have one at this point either.
That it was, it was sent elsewhere.
They had it. It was just used elsewhere and
they didn't have much of 1. It might run hard to get that
army through. Yeah exactly.
So and without a fleet, well, the only option would be to
bring in the Dragons to just burn things that that's really
their only move at this point. So then unwilling to do that,
they just. They didn't.
They did other stuff also seeing that the seeing the destruction
of the air in fleet and that they were in a war with House
Targaryen, which clearly was going to be a big deal,
especially how it was unfolding elsewhere.
The sister men, the people of the Three Sisters, those islands
in the Bight, north of the Vale and South of the North Rosen,
revolt and crowned Marla Sunderland as their new queen.
They, I guess, figured it would be quite a while before the
errands could feel the Navy again.
It takes a while to build a fleet, and since the Dragons
were such an obvious presence by this point, I kind of wonder,
did did they hope to be considered separate from the
Veil under the Iron Throne? No, actually they expected true
independence they were fighting for to be completely independent
nation of the three Sisters, even within Westeros, even under
this new. Got a realm that's being built
by the tar gears like we're gonna make unite everyone into
one realm like actually we're gonna be independent us our
little three islands like. So this was bold.
I wanna say I don't wanna go quite so far as to call it dumb
cuz I don't know everything that was going on.
You know, there might be some other factors here, but it
seems. Extremely ambitious and hard to
pull off. I mean, maybe.
Not yeah. Yeah.
Dumb is too far because it may have even been smart.
They might have had like an angle that we're not worth the
fight or they won't really care, or things like that, I can see.
So but it but it turns out they not only do they us
underestimate the Dragons, but the Veil and the North, that's
probably what they didn't see. Eventually it's going to the
North is going to get involved. But at this time, the North is
just another Kingdom that Agon has claimed that has yet to
submit. So at the beginning of
everything they it, it seems to me that they took a different
view of how this was going to go.
They they maybe thought that W Rose was going to tear itself
apart. With this, this conquest and a
lot of these realms, a lot of what just happened would happen
elsewhere, which is both sides annihilating each other.
They saw the two navies destroy each other and they have thought
that would happen more and more and more.
And with, if that's going to keep happening, then their
little three islands will get left alone.
They can be independent. Gives them time to build up some
strength. And by the time I think about it
for them being islands, you need a Navy and an army to come get
them. Yeah.
And so right now the navies are fighting the Dragons.
Like, who's going to go get us? And there and it been a long
time since someone had brought armies there, and that it was
the North and the Veil had both done that.
And that was so long ago. They probably thought, well, now
we can, you know, now we can throw throw the yoke off.
Now things have changed. You know, we it's kind of like
the North throwing off the Iron Throne like under Rob getting
there, all their verb and energy.
Like we can do it, we can do it, you know, and may not be a good
idea, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Also, there's a matter of oh, Agon and his two sisters.
We're the three sisters. We've got one more.
We got a whole nother sister. Nina writes, yeah, like kind of
like uses. Maybe not as foolish as it
seems. Like Bailon Greyjoy's rebellion
against Robert was a lot Dumber in her mind because he was
gambling on the new realm, not supporting Robert, which was
silly. They had clearly supported him
during the rebellion, right? Like during the rellion against
Aries, Like they rose against the Targaryens and followed that
guy like happily. Like he had all this charisma
and they were like, so. What was he thinking?
That they that charisma was just gone.
You know. Not just that like what happens
if he becomes independent of the of of robber or the 17 is then
he starts attacking casually rock attacking the West.
Well, they're going to attack that, like, so the West is like,
well, we're definitely kind of stay like like getting free.
Even if he gets free of them, it's still just means a battle
somewhere else for someone else. And that person still wants to,
you know, even if even if like the dominoes fall and cast of
rocks like, all right, fine, the West is leaving the Seven
Kingdoms too. And we're coming for you bail
on, you know, like it's still not.
Yeah. So they may have been hoping for
the end result of the war to make Westeros weaker, to maybe
even revert to smaller kingdoms rather than to become one big
Kingdom like that. Because that that is what
started to happen when some of these bannermen were called.
We saw that happen in Storm Lands.
When Storm lands, call the banners.
Pirates and Raiders attack when the Veil calls its banners.
The Three Sisters goes into, you know, goes into rebellion.
So what's gonna happen elsewhere?
They may have thought more of that would happen, like some
house in the Reach might revolt or some other house.
And then what happens in Dorn? Or like the Iron Islands?
Like you said, there's plenty of possibilities.
The River Lands is not well allied to Heron.
They follow them because they have to.
So there's a lot of things that could could break free.
So they may have just been a little too optimistic about what
they would thought would happen. And they were at least right
about one thing, that they would not be a high priority, that no
one would come for them. In the short term.
This will not be resolved until after Aegon's real quote UN
quote coronation. He's already been crowned by
Vissenia at the Blackwater, but when he gets crowned at Old
Town, when that happens, this still will not have been dealt
with. So we'll be coming back to this
a little bit later in our coverage of the Conquest and of
of a Fire and Blood General. Presumably they went back to
their old ways, which is false lights wrecking and piracy.
You know that that that thing where they put up in lighthouses
and draw people on the rocks aren't safe and.
But they might not have, Because if they wanted to become an
independent legitimate state, it doesn't look like, yes, we're an
independent pirate state. Like that's not legitimate.
That's not a good way to keep people from coming for you.
Like if you're trading and doing that gives you a chance, but if
you're doing this. Yeah, people going to come for
you, But it's kind of like I was just saying about Bailon.
Like, OK, fine, you're independent, but still everyone
wants to get you. Yeah, you're just.
Going to make war on everyone? Like, yeah, so.
And these these folk are a lot less powerful than the Iron
Islands. So yes, they less interrupt us.
Since the campaign was stalled, Vicinia moved S to Crack Claw
Point. Let's take a look at crack claw
point on the map here. Cracklaw Point is often maybe
not overlooked, but looked down on by the other regional powers.
So it's kind of normal for them to feel overlooked or left out.
Because wars raging all around them, different kingdoms are
doing different things and and they're just sitting there
twiddling their thumbs. Not that they want to be
involved in the war, but they don't want to be looked on as a
backwater, they don't want to be looked down on.
Pride mean it matters a lot in Westeros.
I mean, pride matters a lot in general, I suppose.
But especially in a time like this, and the state of affairs
have been going on for so long. So Vasenia, she comes in and
this is what I was talking about, Like maybe maybe
something changed about her approach because she came in and
she was the diplomat. She didn't apparently make any
threats, at least not direct one, maybe implied ones.
I'm sure they were implied threats, just just vague are
being there as an implied threat.
You don't even have to say anything, right?
And she treated them with honor, though.
For a conqueror, you know, I mean, there's still some I'm
better than you vibes when you're expecting someone to
kneel, but it paid huge dividends in the long run for
House Targaryen. Now, the crack lot point is not
part of the Veil, but it does occupy the region immediately
between the Veil and the burgeoning Crown lands, which it
did become a part of. So, you know, it's like a buffer
state between a major Kingdom and the heart of Targaryen rule,
which is, of course, King's Landing.
Or would be. It's not there yet.
Now, crack law is not a valuable region in terms of wealth or
manpower, but they would make for a significant enemy if they
were an enemy, because it's a region like the neck, which is
really swampy and hard to traverse.
Locals have a big advantage there.
It's similar to darn, except that to the climate's a lot
different. But it's in that the terrain
itself is part of the enemy, and it's intrinsic to their defense
and how they live. And it's deadly.
An invader has to deal with a lot, so they're not a threat to
expand. They're not a threat to conquer
outwards, right? They're not going to Oh no, the
the Lord of crack La Point is making war on there.
Like that's just never happened. They're too small, too
unpowerful. But anyone passing by like
merchants, ships, like if that region isn't settled, you'll
have Raiders, you'll have piracy, you'll have bandits.
And you don't have to go in there to settle that cuz their
terrain is terrible. You don't wanna have to send a
dragon in there. So having it as a really loyal
base was hugely important for them.
It's just enabled the Targaryens to move on and do other stuff
and they have new vassals. How Celtic are well, they're not
new vassals for the Targaryens, but it's a new location for them
to be. And Clile is just right there
off the coast of Craklaw Point. So it's also close to one of the
most important vassals Clile. On the map here you can see that
proximity. So however for then you did it,
it was very well done. She did a great job of it.
It was like, apparently bloodless so.
As we've been questioning whether or not she has a light
touch, well, she clearly has that mode.
She has the potential. For it, yeah.
She clearly knows how to operate like that, whether it's her
default mode. Whether she wants to do this or
not is. It is impossible to suss out at
this time, but she clearly can. She's clearly capable.
Nevertheless, she's brutal elsewhere, so it's like you
said. It's hard to tell what kind of
person she really is. So consider this line spoken by
that paragon of Crack claw wisdom and history.
Nimble Dick Crab Aron sent his sisters up to Crack Claw at
Vicinia. The Lords had heard O'haren's
end. Being no fools, they laid their
swords at her feet. The Queen took them as a Roman
and said they'd owe no fealty to Made in Pool, Crab Isle or
Duscandale. Don't stop them bloody Celtic
cars and send them men to Eastern Shore to collect his
taxes. If he sends enough, you come
back to him. Elsewise we bow only to our
Lords and the King. The true King, not Robert and
his ilk. There was crabs and burns and
bogs with Prince Ray Gar on the Trident.
And in the King's car too. A Hardy, a cave.
A pine. Three crabs.
Clement and Rupert. Clarence the Short 6 foot tall
he was but short compared to the real Sir Clarence.
We're all good dragon men. Up.
Crack. Claw away.
Up. Crack Claw away.
I like how he calls it Crab Isle.
It's Claw Isle, but he's got such contempt for the Celtic
Guard that he doesn't even call the name properly.
Like, I like that. It may have been like a
legitimate mistake the way it was written, but it works really
well. It's like, it's like he doesn't
even care. That's that's how he feels about
this, the Celtic Guards. So there's a lot more we can see
about that quote. That thing is packed.
With potential analysis, what it says about the place and the
people and the history of the King's Guard, just that's a lot
of different King's Guard from there.
But it just goes to show Visenia formed the King's Guard and a
lot of people join the King's Guard from this region not only
because they want to be part of this Targaryen regime.
They're proud to join it, they're proud to be, have been
asked to be a part of it, and they're proud to join the
institutions that come with it. He said That this is packed with
a lot, almost everything, Nimble, Dick Crab said, was
packed with a lot. I bet when George came out with
this, characters like this is going to be good.
I got a lot of fun. Like, I got a winner this time.
I really. You did it again, George.
Got some stuff on the back. Like you did it again.
You did it again, old man. Yeah.
So it's hard to imagine a better result here from what Busenia
did over the long term and the short term.
Nina says her approach played perfectly to the history of the
region. On Crack Claw Point, the native
first minute strongly resisted the invasion of the and Alls,
and while a number of petty kings had tried to impose their
writ in the area, the Crack Claw Point natives, it always refused
to bend the knee. They were proud of their
independence and would only take direction and leadership from
their local heroes. So Vicenya wisely embrace that
spirit of independence by giving the families of Crack Claw Point
freedom from the prior Lord who tried to dominate them.
She elevated them to the same status as the ones who had
constantly been trying to dominate them.
She said No, you're you are officially on the same level as
them. The Darklands, the Celtagars,
the etcetera, all the other ones that had always looked down on
them, so that's a huge thing. She brought them up.
She spoke to their pride in a way that elevated them, rather
than all these others who are too proud to step down.
And avoid destruction at the hands of dragonflame.
They were proud in a different way that enabled him say, hey we
are good enough. We're honored by your selection.
We're honored by this promotion. So it's like two sides of the
pride coin right. It's kind of interesting like
one side You've got the Lord saying we have kings and Queens.
We're too proud to bend the knee.
But a crack law they're. Proud to bend the knee, right?
So that's really neat I think and and it shows like this, Two
very differing scenarios. The Veil, one of the proudest
places in the entire Kingdom. I mean this is the heart of
Andal chivalry and where the Andals first came means arguably
that's the Reach in terms of the heart of Shivery.
But it started in the Veil. They came over in the Veil
first. That's where the Andals first
landed. So it was a lot of.
Origin stuff is rude to fame. Yeah, consider what we probably
have the best parallel for crack, claw point and Visenna is
John telling Stannis how to treat them.
The hill Klansmen in the north, he's like just, you know, go
there this. Isn't need to know, right?
Yeah. I want to give her credit cuz
it's such a good point. Yeah.
It is. You honor them and, you know,
praise their daughter. He's like, well, I.
Praise their daughters and eat some porridge for 3000 men.
Yeah, of course I'll do that. It's like, he's like, if it's
really that many men, then this is clearly, he'll definitely do
that. And it's pretty similar.
Vizanya is probably thinking the same thing.
It's like, well, I do I have to praise their daughters and eat
their porridge and we'll win them.
Yeah, I'll do that. Sure.
Like, no problem. I don't even have to burn any of
them. But can I burn one of them?
Burn Maybe. Let me burn 1.
Castle, come on. The edge of the parallel.
Mellisenia is their one person. That's right.
You heard it here first, folks.
Senia is Melisandre. That's a dangerous mashup.
That's true. That's a lot of fire.
That's too much fire. Too much?
So they couldn't give up their crowns, cuz they had them for so
long. But these folks didn't have
crowns and they'd been overlooked for so long.
So elevating them was such a great thing.
They were hungry for respect. And then you gave it to them,
yeah. Very neat.
I really like that part. It's it's not even part of the
war with the Veil, but it happens in between.
This is the best time for us to talk about it.
So the Veil may have been wondering like, well, they're
going to come back for us. They're not done just because we
threw off that first thrust of their ships.
They're going to build more ships.
They still have their Dragons. They're busy fighting elsewhere,
but we know they're going to come back.
So they continue to mount defenses, probably.
Tried to build new ships, may have sought new ally.
Maybe like, hey bravo, if you want to help us again.
Like, thanks for those 12 warships.
Sorry about those all being burned, but you know it's at
stake here. The same logic that sent that
caused you to send those ships the first time.
Well, we still need that help. The same thing still apply
however. More evidence of the power the
Targaryens was mounting. For example, the veil got
further reprieve. At least they may have thought
it was reprieve. At the least, it was time,
right? Vasenia received word that she
was needed. Her brother the King had learned
that the Reach and the West had joined forces and mustering the
largest army ever seen in Westeros, 55,000 soldiers with
600 Lords in this army. This is of course the build up
to the field of fire. They would need to be made an
example of. They would also need to be just
defeated as well as made an example of.
And Veigar would be needed for that great example.
All three Dragons would be needed for that.
So Vasenia paused. Her participation in the
campaigns of the East, she was done with crack claw point by
then, or done enough and wasn't ready to return to the Vale
because, well, they didn't have a Navy, They didn't have the
means to do anything other than burn things.
So she flew to Sony. Sept was reunited with her
siblings. And maybe some more strategy was
discussed, maybe some planning, some reconnoitering, like, well,
this is what worked. This is what didn't I really
wonder? What was said in those meetings
is the first time they had gotten together after leaving
for the initial destinations, their initial targets.
Now, of course, Next up is the Field of fire here, which of
course we'll cover in a separate episode.
That is the event that's of course being built up right here
now, after the field of fire. Well, she heads back.
She took an arrow to the shoulder at the Field of fire,
and since she wasn't gone that long, it was probably still a
wound. It probably hadn't still healed
by the time she got back to the veil, which is didn't matter,
but it may have annoyed her a little, you know?
But it just goes to show that's like the only wound any of the
Targaryens took that we know of in the entire conquest.
So. What's that minus Dorn, right?
Right. Arguably, that's not part of the
Conquest. But either way, that's yeah,
that certainly counts one way or the other.
Queen Shara probably hoped for more time than this.
She's like, OK, good, Visanya is going, leaving for a while, You
know, maybe Hopefully she dies. Hopefully Agon dies and then
they won't come back and Dragon dies.
Yeah, hopefully something happens.
It's like all they got was a shoulder wound, Like out of all.
That damn. So I wonder it too.
Maybe if on some level the the the Veil or other entities
thought, well once they get 3 or 4 kingdoms that'll be enough and
they'll leave us alone. You know, that could have been
an angle they were hoping for too.
So so even though not a lot of time had passed.
Like, she probably still had her shoulder wound.
The field of fire didn't take that long.
You know, given what a monumentous event it was, it
wasn't, you know, a long, months long campaign or anything.
So the evidence was becoming, if it wasn't already obvious that
fighting the Dragons, or even a single dragon was foolish, even
though they had lost the naval battle, everything about the
Dragons suggested Yikes, let's not fight another naval battle.
Yeah. So Heron may have been.
Naive, because he hadn't yet seen the Dragons in action, and
none of the other Lords had really either, for the most
part. But after this, now there was
the field of fire, there was hair and all.
They couldn't claim to be naive anymore.
Nor, I mean, why would they? They know they have all this
evidence. And then Rainy made an example
out of Argyllac. So by the time to send you
returns to the to the Vale, there's been the field of fire,
there's been the conquest of the Storm lands.
There's been the the burning of Heron Hall.
And by then Torrent Stark had surrendered, I was going to say.
And the North too, right? N had surrendered.
Yeah, the dominoes are falling. The Vicenia.
Had burned their fleet so much. And even without all that, I
don't want to jump ahead too far.
But when the Dragons like right there with the sun, you know,
like that's. That it could have happened in
another order, I think, yeah. For example, if, what happened?
In Dorn happened now where they continuously failed and the
Dornish like showed a strategy that might actually work.
You might have seen other regions maybe try to.
I mean, not that they're well equipped to do like the Dornish
did, but they might have at least shown that there was a
way. No one had really beaten them
except sort of in this naval battle or given them more than a
setback. You know, if you flip it around
too, if this had happened in another order, if she had landed
in there and took the sun, they gave it that.
That might not have set the same example to everyone else.
They probably still have to try the Field of Fire or whatever.
Does that make sense? Yeah, maybe.
And the Field of Fire.
Something like that. Not like winning.
The veil would have eliminated the large numerical advantage
that the West and and the Reach. We're banking on, yeah, adding
the veil soldier to the mix. Still, they would have been
badly out. It doesn't give quite the same
notch to your belt that makes everyone want to back off that
here in Hall did. Or the Field of Fire.
Like you guys lost your fleet up there.
She only surrendered because you had your son her son captive.
You know, like it would be easier to blow that off.
So in a way maybe it's better for that to have come later.
Even if they could have got that sooner without the other
victories before the veil, it probably is better for it to
have come later. Vicenia's Also Nina makes a note
here the Vicenia remarks how? It may have been lucky for them
that that the King of the Rock capitulated the way he did
because casually rock like how could they have?
What could they have done there? That would have been a really
bad siege. A really time consuming,
difficult scenario I mean. It's never been taken.
The dragon can't burn. You can't burn the rock.
I think they could have eventually taken it.
Yeah, it would have taken a lot longer and cost a lot more
casualties and maybe Neon, I have been worth it, you know,
maybe not. Yeah, so, So, Vizanya says.
Ooh, that was. Yeah, I'm glad they surrendered
cuz we won't have to deal with that.
And at that point Torren hadn't surrendered yet.
So at the field of fire, Torn, torn.
Didn't surrender till after the field of fire he marks his army
down. Arrived at Heron Hall, saw it
burning and. Saw that Aegon already had men
from the Reach on his side and all this other stuff, so that
decision was separate. We'll obviously discuss that
separately as well, but every Kingdom had a different set of
circumstances to work with. But, and as we've said, the
different ordering of events may have changed the way they
perceived what their potential to defeat the Dragons were, but
as it played out, the evidence levied against or available to
Shara was that. Pretty much no one could beat
these guys. Like no one had done anything
more than minor setbacks, You know, a wound to the shoulder,
You know, obviously Rainy's and the failures and Dorn were years
away still, so that it just didn't look like anyone could
win. And the one person, maybe they
could have held out the King of the Rock, didn't, didn't try.
So that might have been, by the way, something that the veil man
and the sister men were banking. I was like, oh, it's going to
take them forever to subdue the West.
Yeah, yeah. It's just like, right back I was
like, oh, it didn't take forever to say, damn it, like we really
thought that. Was going to take forever, so I
didn't think of another thing too.
By the way, the idea of, like, burning these castles, they were
going to burn the veil from the inside, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, we can't do that.
Like our castle? Is a lot more vulnerable and
it's so pretty it will never look the same if it's blackened.
And that is also part of their claim to fame, their pride or
whatever. Is that castle?
You know, it is sort of the, I don't know, the culmination of
their empire, if you will. They're into that.
They stand to lose a lot by surrendering.
They stand to lose a lot. More by not surrendering.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because yeah, he could just if
that if their castles destroyed then.
What do they have like? Well, they'll never get back on
top, You know, he might replace them.
He's like, OK, well, you're not in charge of the veil anymore.
I'm appointing the voices or the.
The Grafton. Yeah.
Other political precedents have been set to at that point.
Yeah, you've already had people removed and and they don't want
to. Come out on the wrong side of
the the power, Shake up the Churn, as we would call it in
the Expanse. Aegon and the Sisters were
enabling, enacting a Churn on Westeros, and you want to be on
the right side of that when it ends.
You don't want to die during the Churn.
So to summarize all that, Shara had considerably more evidence,
especially given the Doran hadn't happened yet, that the
Dragons were just what are we going to do?
They didn't. They didn't have new answers.
If they had, they may have been. Consulting the old books looking
for just any kind of answer, how do we deal with the dragon?
How do people deal with them in the past?
But nothing that came of anything, nothing substantial
and worse. On top of all that, not only was
there the evidence that the Dragons were impossible or near
impossible to defeat, now the Reach.
The storm lands the north. These houses are now have bent
the knee, so the veil has to face them too.
Before they were just facing the Targaryens and their and their
new and their small group of crown lands out.
Now it's approximately one against one.
Now it's one against five or whatever.
Now it's like half of Westeros is on their side.
So they're and they're they're. Boxed in, the north is is north
of them, and Crack Claw and King's Land South of them, and
the river lands South of them, so they're surrounding Navy's
gone and they're yeah, so it's really doesn't look good.
And it's almost a surprising Doran didn't bend the knee and.
Also, there's another way to think about this.
And they're ruling a Kingdom is not just beating everyone,
making them bend the knee and everything works out.
Megor is proof of that. Megor was able to beat everyone
in the field. Until his army no longer would
support it, until everyone had just the tide had turned and he
was like, well, no one's with me anymore cuz I've alienated
everyone. He had the biggest, baddest
dragon. It wasn't enough, he thought.
It was arguably that. He may have thought this was
enough, but Aegon didn't use his dragon the same way, and this is
something we'll be talking about a lot more in the future with
Senia and Megor and all that. I mean, more Dragons were there
at the time of Megor, quite a few, but not.
But still, none that could challenge, but none that could
challenge Balerian. Yeah, there's never been one
that could challenge Balerian. At full size that in these eras,
you know, even Vagar, when Vagar got as big as she got, wasn't as
big as Balerian was. You know even that is a.
Would they challenge them? Say there was one.
Would they? That's.
Another perspective we kind of got from House the Dragon is
like they have a little bit of their own minds, you know?
Yeah, they don't want to know. Like this is a bad ideas like.
This is the thing that makes me gives me ultimate powers.
They give you ultimate power. We go up against each other.
We risk neither of us having this anymore.
I don't mean just that. I mean the dragon.
The actual dragon doesn't want to fight through the dragon I
see. Yeah, they wouldn't necessarily
want to go up against one. That's true, for whether they're
scared of it or they have some bond with it or whatever other
reason. Yeah, from everything we know
about, Dragon says. They're awfully violent and.
We'll fight first, even against larger ones, but that doesn't
mean they're all uniformly that way.
There's probably some exceptions or all the time that way.
Yeah, yeah, exceptions. Both in personality and in
circumstances, yeah, so. Nina makes a good point that it
it's if you burn too many people.
If you burn too many allies and friends like Meg or eventually
will do, it has the opposite effect.
You have to have a light touch with how many people you burn.
A lighter touch? Yes.
Or which castles you burn. A lighter, dad.
Good one. Good one.
Yeah, so that's bad. So at this point, by the time
Vissenna is back, the only Kingdom still not subject to the
Iron Throne with the veil. Obviously the Iron Islands,
which was in disarray because of the Fall of Heron, and though
the Reach had been defeated, there was still the matter of
Old Town because it didn't show up at the Field of Fire.
So it was kind of questionable at this point what their deal
was, but it seemed like they were willing to make a peaceful
surrender, which they did, though that's not necessarily
what Agon knew at the time. And of course Dorn, which will
obviously deal with separately also.
So, similar to what we saw early in the Conquest, the three
targarian siblings and their Dragons once again split up.
Aegon turned S once again, marching toward.
Old Town, Whilst his two sisters mounted their Dragons, the Senya
for the Veil of Aaron and Rainey's for Sunspear and the
deserts of dorm Shara, Aaron had strengthened the defenses of
Gull Town, moved a strong host to the Bloody Gate and tripled
the size of the garrisons in Stone, snow and sky.
The way castles that guarded the approach to the Erie.
So what? She may have been thinking, or
at least been making motions. About maybe just going through
the motions to give her people something to do to show that she
was trying to defend the veil, even if her plan was to have to
give up at some point to say, OK, honor demands that we fight,
but it doesn't mean we fight to the death, doesn't we go down
with the ship like our Navy. That means we can make an effort
to defend ourselves and not look like cowards but.
We're going to give up at some point that might have been in
the back of her mind she she wouldn't be saying that out loud
probably but you can remember what the context was.
But at some point in past when we're talking about the idea
that sometimes you fight knowing that you're going to lose, but
if you make the fight hard enough that you have better
negotiating power and then the treaty afterwards, that's also
potentially you can beat us eventually, but you're going to
lose so much doing it. We can demand more now for our
surrender. I like that idea because it gets
back to what we were saying, that Shara.
Was willing to negotiate, willing to compromise.
So that may have been on her mind like, well, what's the
what's our best angle here? She might be like, OK, we're
going to lose something here. We're going to lose our crown.
Maybe. But let's not lose much more
than that. If the battle on the field, you
guys lose thousands of troops, so do we.
Yeah, you risk your Dragons, eventually you burn our castle
down, you win. But what did you get?
Or let us keep control of X and we surrender.
Right now. Right then.
Soon and saying like, all right, all right, fine.
We'll surrender right now and give you X because we don't want
to have to burn your castle down here.
Yeah, I kind of think that's it that that that's pretty.
Likely that they, for honor's sake, they had to at least put
up a put up a fight and maybe they just expected that.
No, they're never going to subjugate us unless they can
bring an army into this region. And we're not going to allow
that. We're going to do everything we
can to stop them from being an army in an Air Force alone won't
subjugate it. They might have been thinking
vaguely like Dorn, they can burn all the castles they want.
That's not going to bring us to to to the table.
But they didn't consider an Air Force and kidnapping the air
that they did not think. You're right, that did not occur
to her. Clearly it.
Didn't occur to her. Cuz then this wouldn't This
wouldn't have happened. So think about all that work
that was put. Into boosting the veils need,
boosting their readiness for whenever the Targaryens came
back. And then this is what happens,
Quote. All these defenses proved
useless against. Vasenya Targaryen, who rode
vegars, leathery wings above them all and landed in the eries
in her courtyard. When the Regent of the veil
rushed out to confront her with a dozen guards at her back, she
found Vasenya with Ronald Aaron seated on her knee, staring at
the dragon. Wonder struck mother.
Can I go flying with the lady? The boy?
King asked. No threats were spoken.
No. Angry words exchanged, the 2
Queens smiled at one another and exchanged courtesies instead.
Then Lady Shara sent for the three Crowns, her own Regent's
Coronet, her Son's Small Crown and the Falcon Crown of Mountain
and Vale that the Erin Kings had worn for 1000 years.
And surrendered them to Queen Vasenia, along with the swords
of her Garrison. And it was said afterward that
the little king flew thrice around the summit of the giants
Lance and landed to find himself a little Lord.
Thus did Vasenia Targaryen bring the veil of Erin into her
brother's realm. You heard that Hugh Grant movie,
The Englishman who went up a hill but came down a mountain.
Yeah, that's what I think of here.
The veil boy who went up a king but came down a Lord.
Yep. But better because it has
mountains and Dragons. So yeah, that Hugh Grant movie
didn't have any Dragons. Not one.
Not a single dragon. Yeah, I don't think they were
crowns either, so. Nice fancy crowns there, Falcon.
Crown of Mountain Vale. Plus the region's cornet And
some small crown. You gotta be thorough.
Got to give all the crowns over like.
No. Did you?
You didn't keep that one crown. Did you know?
Give me every crown. Bring them all the crowns.
You got another crown hidden under there.
Yeah, I know. You got another crown there.
Like the cowboy, Like turnover. Yeah, like one more knife in the
back and a gun in a sock. And is that pulling crowns out
from underneath? The raw This is a Styrofoam.
Where's the real Falcon Crown come?
So the swords of her Garrison, is that literal?
Like I, you know, the swords of my Garrison are yours like they
are at your command, or is it literal like I'm going to add
them to the Iron Throne? I assume it's the soldiers of
her Garrison, but it could be both.
It could, and that could even be another thing that Aegon and or
Fascinia or whoever might have might have taken swords not only
to add to the the Iron Throne, however much that was
specifically planned out, but at least it temporarily disarm them
because it would. There might be this moment in
the aftermath where they tried. It's like we'll surrender now,
we're going to take it back in two weeks or whenever they let
their guard down. So that's so easy to take your
swords. And also they have to spend up
some more resources making new swords, you know?
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
And it just reminds them of just puts.
Them in their place, so to speak.
Because yes, this is. Don't.
Don't forget that we're polite. We'll rule you with.
Dignity. But we're in charge and we get
we can do what we want and we have to demonstrate that from
time to time. Seems like that's the implied
angle I didn't take into account.
May or may not have been there, but it's sort of applies that
they're taking on a responsibility.
And it's true too. You don't have your swords.
We will take care of you. We are.
We're the military will take care of you because that.
Is the heart of the vassal feudal the feudal vasal?
Relationship there so. That does make sense, yeah.
And that's part of why I'm wondering if it was like part of
a formal surrender. It's like something you always
do, like you hand over the crowns and the swords and yeah,
like that's a thing and not so much anymore, but for a long
time. And like European warfare,
especially if I understand it, like when one side surrendered
to the other, they would hand over their sword.
It would be like one officer. The commanding officer would
hand his sword to the. Victorious Commander and often
the guy would be like, we hand it back as a symbol of okay.
You're beaten. You can have your sword back as
a way of being polite about it. Like, yeah, we just killed all
your guys, but you can have your sword back.
It's kind of weird in that sense, but it is a real world
thing of this ritual of handing over your weapon of surrender.
Yeah. So the campaigns in the Storm
Lands and River Lands got far more written about them in the
book in terms of military action.
And that's because there wasn't a lot of military action.
The subjugation of the Veil. There was a lot in terms of
preparation, maybe even more. There might have been more
preparation, more beefing of defenses and doing things that
just didn't amount to anything. It just that they were all those
defenses were just, I'm going to say maybe but 55,000 troops, I
don't know. I.
Think that's the most you might be right about that, Okay.
Yeah. Fairpoint, Fairpoint, second
most we'll say, yeah, you're probably right about that.
Still, it's a lot of a lot of time.
More time spent on it, Yeah, yeah.
So more waiting, more anxiety of what's going to happen, you
know, Whereas the Field of Fire was like, just happened, you
know. And same with our galactic These
things were just the targets sent their letter out of.
People know they were coming, but they didn't take a long time
to get there. Are there even 600 Lords in the
Veil? Yeah, if you cuz Lord includes
like very small petty Lords, Lords that would not be worthy
of under Lords or whatever. Yeah, they're called minor, Lord
or petty. They're still technically Lord,
but like the difference between some Lords is like they
basically have a small village or two, whereas some control.
You know Winterfell? Yeah.
What was the? I can't remember his name.
And the the sworn sword. Sir Eustace Osgrey.
Yeah. Is he a Lord?
He had been a Lord. He was demoted to a land owning
knight, which you can be as well.
Normally when a knight owns land, they're called Master
Okay. So he's the master of osgre of
whatever. I now I've forgotten the the
name of the tower. Yeah, but the feel so.
Ashamed of that because I love those stories so much.
I think I haven't even reread all the books in the main.
But I have reread those books like I should know it better.
But so yeah, the Osgrays. Is a good example there of a
house that was demoted but still gets to own land.
So I think I think you have maybe you, I don't know how land
ownership works for like merchants in terms like they're
not, they're not nobles, but I'm pretty sure they can own land.
So yeah so it's it's like a you're holding a title for the
king. It's part of the the feudal
system versus just a landowner who pays taxes to his Lord and
that's different. So yeah, some of these nitty
gritty things, we might need to bring in someone else to explain
some of these things to us. I don't know how all those lower
level, like day-to-day things work.
Maybe we need Steven Atwell or someone for that.
So earlier we used the example of Megor and his inability to
understand the psychology of intimidation and Dragons
properly. As we said, he's pretty brutal
about it and Aegon will later spend much of his reign going
from place to place, like he doesn't sit at King's Landing
and and issue dictates all day. He went around, he went from
court to court showing himself, you know, putting in FaceTime,
kind of honoring them with his, his presence, but also eating
all their food, cuz he's bringing a lot of people with
him in his dragon. But everyone gets to see
Belleria in that way. Everyone sees this guy that's
they're now subject to and he's their protector.
And we say okay. Well, this guy looks capable of
doing what he says, you know, and he wanted to put in his put
in that FaceTime with as many people as possible to make sure
they were confident in him, to give him, give them that sense,
to honor them with his presence. And that's something that Meg or
doesn't grasp, but Jaharis will. And the reason I bring that up
now rather than when we get to those characters is because of
this whole thing with Visenia and Agon and Rainy's and who
their parents are, right? Rainy's isn't going to be around
to raise Annie's very much. Visenia will be around a lot to
raise Megor. And you wonder where if Jerry's
just learns these lessons later. He wasn't really.
He was raised by Alyssa, you know, his his mother, Alyssa
Velarian, who was a big, important character, and the
daughter of Ethan, by the way. Ethan.
Yeah. Yeah.
So it's interesting to look at the dichotomy of these different
how they rule. Like Anis, Megor and Jaharius
are all going to rule pretty differently.
Jaharius, best of all probably learned the lessons of his
grandfather, whereas the Sons of Agon did not learn them very
well. And maybe that's partly
parenting. Maybe that's partly their
lessons aren't as easy or power goes to your head.
Or, I don't know, there's a lot of possibilities there.
Maybe it's too new for the lessons to.
Come to fruition or be established or be challenged by
another method I also want to point out.
Of Cirrus and Rainera didn't learn the lessons very well
either. Nope, right?
They also had the option of flying around to the other
kingdoms on her Dragons to make it clear I'm going to be queen
next. Yeah, but they didn't.
They just sat in her ivory towers and when the time came,
no one was really ready or so. And that's the common and
correct in my opinion, complaint against you, Harris, is that he
was great in terms of managing the Lords and peasants and
infrastructure, but he was bad with his own family.
Like, not just not good, but kind of bad.
And that's the big flaw in him, is that he did not teach them to
rule like he did. Now to be fair, all this death
in his family and these other things that happened, there's a
lot that went wrong that kind of damaged him as a person.
It's also personal side but still it's also possible he
might have gone like a 10 year span of I don't.
Know this exactly but I can imagine going to 10 year span
where he did manage the family well.
Yeah, he ruled for so long. Yeah, did that.
Could ebb and flow. And I think when he was younger
he did a pretty good job. Like when before his first born
son, the one that actually got older, I mean Daenerys was, was
there, they had an egg on 1st but that baby died a baby.
So the first child they had that became an adult was Eamon and he
was going to be the king and he was the hand and everybody liked
him and had he not died, we probably would there probably a
lot less complaints. You wouldn't have this complaint
about how did you Harris manage his family.
It would still be a complaint. But it wouldn't have.
Had a spillover effect on the Kingdom the way it did, so it
would have been a lot less damaging probably.
I mean, it's not certain, but yeah, also wouldn't have been as
interesting. I don't think George would have
could have written such a great character without some flaws.
Like that's not, it's not very realistic have such a perfect
person, you know, I wonder if it maybe it's got interesting.
I mean, I'm really going off a little.
Bit here, but like say that you had two or three or four
generations of Targaryens who managed everything well.
What that might have turned into conquest of.
Yeah, they measure too well. Yeah, instead of just keeping
their own stuff together, cuz they keep screwing it up if.
They kept it all together. Well, they meant it moved out
farther. Interesting.
That is vaguely like one of the plot lines that's in Wheel of
Time. If anyone's watching Wheel of
Time, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Someone that a Kingdom far to the West.
It's established by people in the East that comes back to
conquer it. He was like, oh, you established
us, now we're coming back to conquer you.
So part of the reason I veered into this topic is that I'm
curious about the plan of submission that Vasania went
with. Did she come with up with this
on her own? Did Aegon suggest it?
Was she more of a mind to burn things and and make an example
of the veil? And they talked it out.
And we're like, no, all you need to do is just this lighter
touch. On the other hand, could they
have even known this was an option?
Could they have known that just flying to the theory and
snagging the boy, Could they? I mean, why not?
Like, otherwise we're saying she thought of that on the way, You
know, like the idea would have been just as present of that
when she scouted out the castle. OK, maybe.
Yeah, I want. To think that maybe a gun
already did that. But you also think maybe they
would have stories at some point, someone in the Erie would
have been like, what's this dragon flying around, you know?
But maybe she did. Maybe she realized, like, you
know, I think I can land right there.
And maybe if she was scouting out consistently, which she may
have, she might like, you know, the boy comes out there at 1:00
in the afternoon every day. Snag him.
All right, I'm going in there 1:00 in the afternoon and see
what happens. You know she.
Might have come up with it on the fly, or maybe even.
A gun. They had scattered out and knew
that too, and told her or told her.
Find a way out, see what you can do.
You know one more, the other. So I I think that there's a
possibility that the idea came from elsewhere, but I think most
likely Vasenia just has multiple modes.
She knows how to operate in a variety of scenarios and
understood that the silken glove with the implied threat is
better than the Iron Gauntlet. In this case, I just had another
option which we also discussed in the past, spies.
OK, yeah, maybe, someone told her.
The boy comes out every afternoon at 1:00.
O'clock you can land right here the The Archers will look any
other way or or I'll distract The Archers.
This this possible? The area is very remote, so I
wonder how such a message could have been related, but if
they've been planned this for months, if they had a spy on the
inside. Yeah, you never know.
It's it's absolutely possible and it might have been people
who wanted it to like let's just say that.
You know, after that those ships are burned, someone in one of
those families like. I have family in the Erie too.
I don't want that council getting burned down.
Hey, Aegon, I'll say yeah, I am in charge of The Archers at the
Erie. Yeah, you know, so Nina prefers
the multifaceted version of Assenia than the Aegon or Rainis
or them. Conferring led to this decision,
which it still might have, but that doesn't mean she was
pushing hard for burning them all.
Either way, this is something they could have talked it out
and realize this was the best plan, and it may have even been
her idea. Regardless, it is maybe arguably
a bit lucky that their refusal to surrender didn't go worse for
them, because for a lot of these other nations, not surrendering
cost something substantial. Like they made an example like
you either lost your army, your castle was burned.
I mean, they did lose their Navy, which is pretty
substantial, but that was at this point.
That had been months ago and it didn't really hurt them, right?
It didn't. Yes, it hurt.
Their Their constituents. Their people.
Yeah, right. So it could have gotten a lot
worse. They they were.
They were apparently willing to stand up to what was coming at
least a little bit, if not more. We don't know.
And yeah, it could have gone a lot differently and been really
bad. The area might not have shiny
white marble, might be very blackened melty, perhaps.
So yeah, Ronald had clearly from the quote about Ronald, like he
clearly has no idea what's going on.
He's he has no idea there's some milk, a conquest going on.
He's just like, I want to go for a ride.
And if you put yourself in his position, that's pretty awesome.
Like he gets to ride a dragon. Yeah.
Yeah, like, that's pretty sweet. How much do we know about Ronald
down the line? A lot.
He'll be around for maybe not a lot about his personality, but
he's not going to. He's going to rule for a while.
He's not going to die until after Agon dies.
I wonder if he, you know, goes to the grave.
Thinking like I love those Targaryens, they let me ride
their dragon. I wonder if he's thinking like.
Man, I'm lucky that wasn't worse.
Yeah, I realized they were really kind of taking advantage
of me. As you get.
I wonder what is good point like.
At some point he processes it and he's like when his olders
are thinking about, it's like, wait a minute, that was a
threat. Like it's going to dawn on him
someday. He's going to wake up and be
like, whoa, she could have just tossed me off the dragon if he
wanted to. My mom was like, they smiled at
each other for my benefit. Yeah, but like, only one of them
was smiling. Genuinely there.
It wasn't my mom. It was it was the queen.
So yeah. So one of the other similarities
between Ronald and Robert is they're both murdered.
Or. Well, Sweet Robin hasn't been
murdered yet. We just expect it.
And Sweet Ronald's murder won't happen while he's still a child.
So either Sweet Robin won't be murdered, or he'll be murdered
while he's a child and Ronald's going to die as an adult.
So is that too much of A story to get into?
Yeah, but it. We'll get to it at the end of
Agon's reign. It's going to be pretty sad Now
in this case, when Sweet Robin dies, assuming it does happen,
it's going to be Harold Harding is Harry the heir, right?
And he's not even technically an heir and he has some errand in
him, right? But in this era there's plenty
of other errands. So that's another thing that's
very different, is like you take out one errand and all of a
sudden it creates this weird succession situation.
Not necessarily a crisis, but a weird scenario where someone
that isn't full, a full blown errand becomes the the air here,
there's just a lot of errands. So it's not a big deal.
And this is where Nina points out that this is perhaps the
biggest red herring of the conquest in terms of
foreshadowing for a song Waste and Fire, because like I said at
the beginning, a lot of these parallels exist.
The parallels aren't going to make sense in in the long term,
or when you get down to the nittygritty.
Yes, there's a boy king and a boy Lord in both cases, but his
mother's already dead in the case of the Veil or in case of
Sweet Robin. So there's no Shara.
There's no equivalent. Lice is already gone, little
finger and sensor or nothing like Queen Shara as a whole, you
know. And like Sansa isn't really
looking out for sweet Robin. It's kind of she kind of seems
to understand that he's going to die.
She doesn't want it to happen, but she doesn't have any power
to really to stop it. She doesn't necessarily like
him. So she's got sympathy but not a
lot of maybe empathy, I don't know.
So it's. And of course, there's no
equivalent in terms of I don't think Daenerys is going to fly
to the top of the Erie and do a similar kind of thing because
the area is closed already. They've already shut it down for
the winter. No one lives there right now.
And if it does get reopened, if it does get reopened, it'll be
after the war of Against the others is over, because they
can't go back there until winter's over.
That's the whole reason they left, is because they believe
every time winter happens. So I wonder if maybe there will
still be a moment. For a different motivation, you
know, Yeah, I can't think of a good one, but it would be such a
cool parallel, yeah, good imagery to come.
You see why we we've reached this conclusion?
Because it's like, well, we are probably never going to see the
eerie again in the song. Advice and fire.
Like we might hear about it, like in the dream of spring, it
might come up, but like a chapter there.
I don't know. It doesn't seem that likely.
Seems like we'll hear about And whose POV would it even be?
Will Sansa go back there? I don't think so.
Seems like she'll stay in the north, you know, but who knows?
I can easily be wrong. George could write a one off
POV. You never know.
I mean he said he's not going to do big PO V's but a one off POV
just to. But I don't know, this doesn't
seem necessary for us to find out what's happening in the
veil. After all is said and done, it's
not that key of a location. There aren't going to be a lot
of characters that were deeply invested in that are still
living there. So yeah, it seems unlikely we'll
go back there at least in winter or at least in summer maybe.
We'll definitely spend a lot of time there in The Winds of
Winter because a lot is happening there right now.
We've got exciting things going to happen there, but I think the
dream of spring, it won't be much a part of things other than
as a power, but not as far as a location for us to have chapters
featured there. Be too busy with the other
locations. That's for sure.
So the campaign in the Veil is unique in that it was one of the
first to begin, yet one of the last to be completed.
It wasn't a protracted siege or a drawn out series of
engagements. It was just a matter of
circumstances. They paused the campaign and
then came back. The Dragons were never not a
threat, but they had other things to do, and it was a way
for them to prove their supremacy in a different way.
Like, yes, here your castle is in the open and the fire can
devastate it. Here it's way up in the
mountains in this remote location, but we can still get
to it, whether it's on open ground in the river lands, or
way up high in the mountains, or deep in the storm lands behind a
lot of trees there. None of these are unreachable
until until Dorn, of course, then finally a place that shows
them how it's done. But again, no one That example
has yet to be set, so no one can.
No one can look to that yet. It does still show, at least at
this time when there's only three Dragons, it's.
Sort of a limitation. I was thinking about this when
we're thinking about the idea of them taking Cassidy Rocket.
I said I think they could do it, but it would take a long time,
have a lot of casualties, like if the three Dragons were just
like on a rotation of like just breathing fire into different
entrances or whatever, you know, and but while they're doing
that, some Navy attacks. Dragonstone, right?
Yeah, yeah. Like they had to pull away from
the Erie to go deal with the Field of Fire.
So even while they're trying to soul cast of rock with three
Dragons and maybe eventually can do it, they're not managing.
They're not going after Dorn, they're not managing the North.
They're not protecting from pirates or all this other stuff.
So you know what else that will be?
Another wrinkle for George to have to have considered the idea
of having them have children already.
If the Targaryens already had children at this point, those
children would have to be protected.
That would be their like Achilles heel.
Achilles heel is if someone snoops.
In and gets the dragon stone and steals their children and holds
them hostage like, hey, look, you give this conquest up or
your children die. Which might be what the the
threat that got Aagon to stop going after Dorn, by the way.
We'll come back to that when we see Aagon concede this conquest
of Dorn, but that's that's ten years away.
It could be a dilemma for Danny too, that she only has three
Dragons. That even if she can take them
on the deep one area, then the other areas become vulnerable.
Yeah, as much as the Robert, Aaron, Ronald, Aaron parallel
is, is maybe only surface level, the Daenerys Aegon parallel is
that. So that's a strong deep parallel
with a lot of them having kids, which could be Achille Seal if
Danny. Does it once again.
I feel like that's a long way for the story to go.
But I also don't know how George can solve this story in a short
period of time. So Yep, Yep, Yep.
Last we heard, Windsor Winner is going to be the biggest of the
book so far, which makes sense for a lot of reasons, but we'll
see about that. Our trivia answer for today, the
question was what castle exists with the same name in two places
in Westeros? The answer is Oakenshield.
There is an Oakenshield, one of the four shield islands, and
there is an Oakenshield on the wall.
One of the castles of the wall is called Oakenshield.
George R Martin, his fandom of Lord of the Rings, almost
certainly the culprit here. Culprit I use, of course,
humorously because he is a huge fan of Lord of the Rings and
Thorin Oakenshield is one of the luminary big characters of that
fandom, that series. So almost certainly that's the
reference there. Do you know how, when, how early
or how far apart those two names?
Came up. I wonder what the chances are
that George just didn't realize he'd already used it or made it
a conscious decision to do it again.
I'm guessing there's a very good chance he didn't realize he
duplicated it. But yeah, he might have just
done it for fun, done it twice, and it's something is a good
happen in a world you ever made. Those castles didn't.
Know someone hundreds of miles away, hundreds of years ago,
made some of the castles? Absolutely.
Yeah. I mean, it's a pretty basic name
or didn't care, you know? Yeah, yeah, I agree, you know.
Almost every state has a Fayetteville, you know.
Next week we have our last Storm episode with Jim McGee and it's
already been recorded. Asheya is working on the editing
this week. It will not be a live stream,
but it will be released at the same usual time.
It is a Patrons only episode, so this is our call to you to join
Patreon or our Spotify equivalent, which is a
recurring. Voluntary donation that you
pledge through either of those services, either Patron or
Spotify. You can also send donations
through PayPal through our website.
If you do that, we will send all our bonus episodes to you.
I know a couple of you have done that recently and those episodes
will be sent to you shortly. So that's my pitch there.
We would love to have you on board with our with our Patreon.
We have a lot of bonus episodes, so you won't just get this new
one, but I've lost count. Now it's over 20 episodes that
we have in our bonus catalog and we're going to continue to add
to them regularly. So sign up now, get get on those
bonuses and all the other perks that come with being a Patreon,
such as our trivia contest that's coming up on Tuesday.
And once a month we do other games, as I said at the
beginning. So sign up, join, have some fun.
We mentioned a few episodes today that are relevant to
episodes we've done before, things that you could stay
immersed with if you're not ready to leave Westeros just yet
at the end of this episode. House Valarian and House Celtic
are came up a lot today, as did our episode on Dragonstone would
be relevant. So as well our episode on
Valerian. And since we're going to be
talking about The Reach and Old Town pretty soon, you might want
to check out our Under the Dragons episodes on House
Hightower, which come parallel to some of the events that are
being dealt with in the Conquest, at least part of that
timeline. Anyway, that's it.
Thanks as well to anyone who showed up today.
Thanks to Nina for her great notes that we always use quite a
bit of in our episodes. Check out good
queenalley.tumblr.com for more of her takes on quite a few
things. A Song of Ice and Fire related.
Thanks to Joey, Jesse and Bran and Michael Clarfeld for their
excellent visual and audio additions to our show.
That's our intro, our music, our maps.
Those guys are Mvp's as well as our good friend the engineer.
And I just want to say again how happy I am and how fun it was to
have Sean right here. Instead, we got Rita in the
studio over here. You can't see her, but she's
here. You also can't see Asheya, but
you already knew she was here. And we got a reference to W Riz.
W Riz. Yeah, his new Sean would
appreciate the Riz. Riz.
That's it everyone. We'll see you next time for more
Valar re read us.