Given Old Town has existed for so, so very long, it's surely
under gone a vast number of unaccounted for changes, swings
and turns of fortune. But I I find it hard to believe
that this era doesn't stand out in terms of overall interest.
The early phase of today's episode covers Megor before
doing a complete reverse into the reign of Jerry's both far
longer and far more prosperous. It's said that while Agon
conquered the Seven Kingdoms, it was Jerry's who truly brought
them together, and I mostly agree with that.
Dorn is still an exception at this point in history, but to
Jerry's discredit, he was one of the few Targarian Kings to not
attack or even plan to attack Dorn.
This meant substantial changes for a lot of the realm, adopting
similar laws and custom, lots more standardizing of things
like coins and taxes and other things.
But that took time. Of course, Jerry's reign was by
far the longest, 55 years, and there are a lot of moving parts
to consider, but I strongly suspect that this was very good
for Old Town and the high towers.
Hard to imagine that it wasn't. It's possible they had vessel
dispensation, special favors, tax breaks, whatever.
You you know, stuff that happens behind closed doors, handshake
deals. But for the most part, it's
straightforward, right? Peace brings prosperity,
especially if you're already prosperous. i.e. when you have a
gigantic financial head start, massive income, etcetera.
Jerry's famously built roads, which clearly helped Old Town
like boosting commerce. Jerry's endeavor to make King's
Landing as impressive as Old Town as well, which reminds us
that Old Town still, even in this time, was more impressive
than King's Landing because Jerry's tried to reverse that.
He also did things like raise taxes on luxury goods to pay for
such product projects. So there would have been
grumbling from the rich and even more from the Super rich,
perhaps, but like the high towers.
But it's hard to imagine that even with that, they didn't come
out way ahead, generally speaking, from the peace and
infrastructure improvements. It also doesn't mean they didn't
scheme to get more, like just because they're not getting a
lot doesn't mean they won't try to get even more.
I mean, that's kind of how greed works.
And you know, entitlement works differently when you're born
obscenely rich to a scale we can't even fathom.
And of course, there's a lot of different moving parts within
the Hightower itself. There's different personalities.
The family, as we've been taught discussing, is very large, and
that's usually true depending even despite what area you're
looking at. So there's a lot of days here
when talking about they might see it differently.
The fact that Jerry's, Allison and their people help lift the
average person up several notches on the social ladder
also would have helped the economy in ways that created
more purchasing power for the commoners.
And they would spend more at the markets markets at the high
towers own entirely or part of. Not to mention, we're told the
population of the Seven Kingdoms supposedly doubled during this
55 year period. He's landing quadrupled.
So Old Town? I don't know, but maybe even
more than doubled. We think of commerce now is, you
know, iPhones and Ford trucks or whatever the commerce back then
would have mostly been. Food.
It would have been bread, that's the thing.
And there might have been some greed driving some of that, and
some powerful houses that were well established, gaining
greater prosperity from it. But the average person is not
starving to death. That's huge a benefit that's
hard to measure and and the high towers would benefit from that.
Just like that's the thing when you control or have a piece of
just about everything, whenever something good happens, you
benefit from it, even you know if someone else benefits, you do
too. And no matter who's benefiting,
the high towers are as well. Like it's like.
So that's part of what happens when you own, you know, most of
everything. And there's another thing.
Sometimes it's hard to truly understand the cause and effect
of food availability and population, that it's likely
that when food became more available, that's what caused
the population to boom. People weren't starving to
death, they weren't spending as much energy, barely surviving,
so they could spend more energy growing their families.
And that's like a piece of the real world we could not sustain.
The population the Earth has now, if not for technological
advancements, 100 years ago with seeds and fertilizer and stuff
like that, they just weren't able to produce enough food.
And big governments of Russia and the United States kind of
recognized that and endeavor to like, what do we need to do?
Let's get better soil. Let's get better seeds.
Because the population is growing.
They recognize that and built infrastructure around it.
Yeah. And I'm sure the high towers had
similar lower tech versions of these problems, having enough
space to manage their managing not just the city but the land
around it, which would include farm lands and and rural
situations as well. So yeah, any business does
better when the number of people who can afford to shop there
increases. That's a rising tide floats all
boats and the high towers own a lot of the boats.
Another good example of what you're saying there, Sean, is
the Citadel announces when winter has come officially,
who's going to be one of the first to know the high towers.
And that gets they get ahead on the change to grain prices.
Like they get to be the first one to know that, Yep, I mean,
other people can sense that winners coming and use their own
Maester and be like Okay. It's not official, but it's
getting colder. But still like that, they still
have the inner lane in this race, right?
Yeah, that's something to think about too.
We've talked about the indirect potential power that Old Town
gets from the Ravens being centered out of there when they
send a message out, even if they send a Raven to everyone.
They don't, like, instantly send all the Ravens at the same
moment. Waves like, all right, here's 30
Ravens. You've got 30 scribes have 30
messages. Have the 30 Ravens.
Let those go. All right.
And we got 30 more. And it might take a day or two
just to get all that out. Never mind the time it takes for
the Ravens to fly. Well, do you think Old Town is
going to send the 1st 30 Ravens to the north or the 1st 30
Ravens to the Citadel is going to send them to Old Town?
And they're vasts, right? So not only do they get it
first, it's less. Distance to travel, they get to
respond quicker. There's a lot of value and
advantage, yeah. Now some of these things they
may not fully control, just influence, but that's the same,
you know, little column, a, little column B.
And when it matters most, that's when they would make sure their
control is exercised. And of course, this period of
growth under King Gary's flattened out.
Eventually King Deseris who will also get into today, did not
make improvements so much as he just kept the status quo and
allowed things to deteriorate. And well, you we, we've talked
about that in some ways, but we'll focus on the Hightower
side of that, meaning Old Town, not just Otto and Allison, but
we certainly talk about Otto and Allison as well, all them and
all that and more on this episode of History of West Gross
podcast. Hey everyone, welcome back to
another episode. We're excited to be working our
way through this very interesting period of Hightower
history. It will, of course, involve a
lot of Targaryen stuff as well, because it always does.
Except unless we're talking about the time period before the
Targaryens. But we're not.
So lots of Targaryens, lots of Hightowers, lots of other stuff.
Should be good now, Sean, you got a drink today?
Actually, you got a nice Mormont shirt there.
We're black and green again. Look at that.
I've got straight out of Old Town today.
Without even coordinating, we ended up doing it.
Yeah, that's why I say I do want to show my loyalty to House
Hightower by representing green, even if it is a Mormont shirt
where there is a. At least one tie that I know of
to High Tower with Minesse married former tie anyway, but
it did exist to happen. And I do.
I think I might have a very similar drink to what I had last
week. This is once again the Oh no no.
This is a watermelon bang mixed with the green naked drink and
just throw them out. Dude that sounds less that
sounds less weird. That one I might actually like,
meaning I would actually be willing to try it, unlike a lot
of them. Thanks to our good friend Nina,
AKA Good Queen Alley for her advice and notes.
As usual. If you check out her blog, Good
Queen Alley with one a 1L1A. Yeah okay Good Queen Alley with
1l@tumblr.com. Today's Our most recent post is
on the Lady Paramounts. Which regions have had, or
kingdoms have had Lady Paramounts ruling in their own
right? Of course not.
Not including Doran, of course, because we know they've had
plenty. So yeah, check that post out if
you want to learn more about that.
This episode was voted on by patrons.
Patrons have selected Craster for next week, so we'll be
getting into some Crasterly Rock business and having fun with
that and creeping ourselves out in the process.
We'll also mention at the end of this episode some additional
topics from our back catalog. I was at pack catalog.
Yeah, that's kind of true back catalog that include episodes
that are related to this one, ones that overlap or feature.
We have rabbit holes in this one that lead to other episodes, so
we'll point those out at the end, as we often do.
And to our trivia question. So I goofed and didn't read the
answer to last week's trivia question at the end.
So let's start with that before the new one.
Last week's was what person did Meg or burn in order to sat an
ambush for more poor fellows whom he then also killed?
And who led that secondary assault?
The person burned was Toxie Jane Poor.
And that's funny and confusing because, well, not because she
was burned. That's not funny.
But she's a leader of the poor fellows, and her name is Jane
Poor, but her name is spelled Poor POORE.
Not POOR, but it makes it look like Jane Poole, because from a
distance when you're reading it, Yeah.
Anyway, and the person who led the assault that was actually a
trap was Sir Horace Hill. Yes, poor Sir.
Horace Hill didn't work out too well for him that he fell into
that trap set by Megworth. This week's trivia question.
The Lord of the High Tower takes on seven titles.
It's seven because of course it's seven.
They probably were like I only got 5 titles.
We need two more to make it 7. Six of those titles are well the
Lord of the High Tower, Lord of Old Town, Lord of the Port,
Defender of Old Town, Defender of the Citadel, Voice of Old
Town, and what other one. It doesn't contain the word Old
Town, Defender, or even Lord, but it does contain the words of
the so yes, it's blank of the blank.
Fill in the blanks. I thought I knew this right
away, but then I second guessed myself.
So I'll I'll say it to the end to tell you my guest, Lord of
the Port was the one they just tacked on.
Like we need a 7th one. You know, it's like Lord of Old
Town, which is a port like what you are.
Yeah, like that's repetitive man.
But you know, they like repetition in their titles
because it allows them to be longer.
So Hightower allegiance to Megor had not exactly paid off, though
it's it's fair to say they might have wanted to leave that
arrangement much sooner and just didn't have a way to get out of
it and certainly didn't want that exit to happen the way it
did with Syreese's death. But Megor being Megor, what?
What could they do? They didn't have a lot of
choices. So the second-half of Megor's 6
year reign did present them with a few choices actually.
Since Megor's grip on the Iron Throne started to slip and that
maybe gave them some room to maneuver, he had fewer and fewer
willing allies, and that made it easier for the high towers to
maybe not come at him but to stand.
Back and just get out of the way and let other people deal with
him. Or hope, hope the thing blows
over, or hope he just dies, or he changes or something.
Especially given the great distance between King's Landing
and Old Town. And maybe they thought they
could just hang back. Now that's not a great distance
for Valerian, but it is, You know, It's not a, it's not a
quick jaunt, but it would be hard for him to bring his whole
army there. And even more important for the
time being, he had bigger problems and higher priorities
than the high towers just doing nothing.
So that's not exactly going to draw his attention immediately.
As we pointed out near the end of the last episode as well, the
Faith Militant wouldn't be fully pacified until after Megor.
It would take conciliation for that.
So all this time we've got warrior sons, poor fellows doing
their thing, killing people on the roads.
There's a lot of unnamed people, probably not important enough to
make it in the history books, but still causing problems.
And those problems would be particularly severe around Old
Town, I think, because it's just a population center, just more
people that are poor fellows. And warrior sons is more
activity in that area. I mean, it's just like wondering
if how much activity is going to be in an in a very sparsely
populated area. Well, you know, probably less
than in a place that has more, all other things being equal.
So let's get into what the Hightower was up to as Meg or
fought the warriors, sons and poor fellows and did all sorts
of other cruel and dirty business in the second-half of
his reign, which ran from the years 45 to 48 A/C.
Now, it should be noted that the position of small council was
not nearly as prominent as it became.
Harris was the first to set the example of kings really actually
listening to and heating the small council before it was kind
of like, I don't know if they were, I wouldn't maybe go so far
as to call them placeholders or figureheads, but early targeting
Kings didn't listen to them very much, let's put it that way.
Especially Meg or even Amy's didn't listen to very much and
he was kind of, you know, a softy egg on more like pretend.
When he did listen, he made sure everyone knew.
He listened. He was like, yes, that was a
really good idea. I'm listening.
But a lot of times he didn't. So he really flaunted the times
when he did. So you could also say the
earliest targeting kings wielded more power in some ways, though
less than others, because the realm wasn't as united, they
couldn't call up. Everyone is easily.
The laws were different. Some things, things weren't as
organized. The roads weren't built.
So yeah, other things changed. Really having a more?
Competent, established council probably actually do rule more
and better with that, right? Like maybe you on some level,
you're holding more power to yourself, but you just can't
physically communicate with as many people or send out as much
messages or taking as much information without.
And so even if there was an intense by some of these kings
to rely on their council members, if the positions hadn't
been established enough that people they needed to interact
with respected their authority. Right.
Or they hadn't built certain inroads or channels of
communication. Even if the king wanted to lean
on them, they didn't have the right answer or couldn't contact
the right person. Over time these positions would
get stronger, I would think, and there there could be some
personalities involved. But.
But I guess I'm trying to make the point.
Even if there was a king who wanted to rely on them, their
positions might be too new to be as valuable as they got down the
road either. That's a good point.
Master Whispers doesn't have as deep a developed Whisperers
network. Like their spider web isn't as
large yet. There's no predecessor for them
to have taken over for. Yeah, that's a great point.
The master coin doesn't have it in with the Old Town's tax
collector or the the Old Town isn't reporting all the taxes
they're collecting yet and etcetera.
That's a great segue to the flip side of this.
If you don't have that sort of establishment, and the king
wields more power directly, even if the realm isn't in great
shape, soft power is even stronger because you can get in
the King's ear about something and tell him, hey, can we do
this, can we do that? And the King's like, sure.
Well the king can just make it happen.
If he has to go through his counsel or go through other
levels, or if he's not as just able to just wield the level of
authority, then that soft power has to be spread around to
multiple decision makers and it's harder to get things done
through. Just, hey buddy, you're the one
with the finger on the button. Push it for me right?
Like things like that, Meg. Or with Cerise.
When when? When Cerise was right there,
maybe they could get things out of him.
Maybe. Doesn't seem like that worked
out too well, but they may have hoped for more.
If you don't have to win a consensus or build a coalition,
you just have to go to the guy in charge and get him to do what
you want. If you can do that, that's
easier. And of course easier said than
done to have the King's ear. But if you have it, Oh my,
that's really powerful, Aegon. Like we said, he did listen, but
less to his counsel and more to people he trusted, like Corey's
his half brother and his sisters.
But he did listen quite a bit to the House High SEPTA.
Amy's clearly didn't, as we saw, which was kind of odd and Megor
even less Megor did have eventually the high lickspittle
appointed who was like the reverse of that.
He listened to the high lickspittle, did what Megor
wanted, rather than, you know, Megor doing what the high
lickspittle wanted. In other words, Megor came
before the Targaryen kings really started listening to
their small councils, but after they had stopped listening to
the High Second. So it's like this in between.
Jerry's did both, but Megor was like the pinnacle of just not
taking advice from anyone who matters.
They would really start listening to High Seconds again
after Megor. And Megor really only listened
to one person at all, as far as we know.
And that was Bysenia. But she died the year before
this time period we're talking about.
She died in 44, and this is 45. Megor was like The Walking
example of what Tywin gave to Joffrey, reminding him of Aries.
Like anyone who has to remind people they are king isn't the
king. And Megor had to do a lot of
reminding. And it usually was involved
killing people. And he was good at killing
people. You know, it took a while for it
to stop. He rode Balerian.
You know, Tywin's example perhaps is better suited for a
dragonless world. Like, yeah, but if Balerian,
maybe you can tell people you're the king, at least for a little
while. I suppose also like it's maybe
Tywin's. It's not as simple as how Tywin
puts it. Like maybe at first when you're
not the king and you have to tell people you are, you're not.
But eventually, after you kill a bunch of people and you have
this dragon, they're like, okay, I guess you're the king now, but
if you keep telling them that you're the king, it will
eventually play. Tywin might argue that, look,
Megor's reign only lasted 6 years.
Like did it really work? Like how it did, but not for
very long. So that's why soft power has
more longevity. A lot of times, you know, and
hard power, you know, brutality in your face, like make you do
what you want, make you do what I want tends to be shorter term.
And of course, to Harry's great example of that, like night and
day, these rains. So the high towers, if they had
forgotten this lesson, this lesson that we've just
discussed, that which would be awkward because they have such a
long history and many lessons of the past could be learned, they
have books in the Citadel that could tell them these lessons in
their city. Mind you, you would think that
this proximity to this knowledge might help, but you know, he
doesn't always work that way. People have books on their
shelves they've never read. They would have been reminded if
they had forgotten that Meg or that things can go these ways.
And while Meg or continued his wars against the faith, the
Hightower continued to wait. The waiting policy seemed to be
the same adopted by a lot of great houses.
A lot of them just kind of stood back and we're like, well, let's
just try to avoid anything. We can just stand back and wait
for this to play out. But we hear that there were a
number of rebel leaders. They work with each other
independently, but sometimes work together.
Sometimes they didn't like each other.
You know, leaders not getting along.
It's that happens with the nobility as well.
Last episode we pointed out that the Red Dog, Joffrey Doggett,
had Sir Morgan Hightower murdered on the road to the
Honey Hole. That was one of many murders
carried off by his people, and his power had only grown since
since then. More to the point, we're told
that Casually Rock and River Run were passively involved in this.
Like maybe even meeting. There's a there's a note that
the Red Dog was invited to River Run to as a guest during all
this. So they were they were neither I
eager to support Megor nor eager to upset the rebels.
They were. There's a lot of people doing
this tightrope walk and the high towers were perhaps the most
prominent of this, because the Faith Militant have a lot of
their heart is based in Old Town, the High Step and faith in
Old Town. Even though there's been a split
there, it's happening right on their front step.
The small folk help the rebels, so fighting the rebels meant
fighting your own small folk. If you're a noble like, how do
you? It's super difficult to manage
this. Like having their hands in a lot
of pots gives Old Town high towers a lot of value and
maneuverability, but it also makes them more susceptible.
To conflict and contradiction. And especially when two
different industries or houses, they have alliances to go
against each other and they're like, well, which one do we
support? Which one do we abandon?
Do we help both? We try to make them.
We try to create peace between them.
So yeah, if, if, if they are making guerrilla attacks on your
people, right, why provoke that? Why?
If they're if they're not assassinating members of your
house, why get involved and then all of a sudden become one of
their targets? And if Megor is not coming for
you, Mike, why make him your target?
So the best thing for a lot of houses just to just try to be as
uninvolved as possible. If they liked Megor, they might
have stood for him, you know, if he had been a good king or if he
had been a not that king or king with a future, they might have
saw the opportunity. But mayor, I mean just he didn't
look like he had a future. He didn't look like it was
honorable, like there was no, not a lot of reason to support
him unless they felt threatened. That he had only fear.
Yeah, that's right. You're right.
Yeah, he there. If you have fear and other
things, you can work with that. Like that's like using Tywin as
an example. People are scared of Tywin.
But he's not. That's not his only note.
He's got other arrows in his quiver, other tools in his box,
apart from the persecution of the faithful and these many
executions and tortures and those continue to escalate.
By the way, it wasn't like a steady stream.
Megor got worse and worse with this.
He didn't have an air of his body.
That's what I mean when I talk about him not having much of A
future. Like his line, his bloodline
looked like it might end and the other Targaryen branches would
pick that up. So you can see why some people
might be like, well, maybe we should be with these guys, the
ones that look like they have a future.
Only the problem being, what if Megor just kills them?
You know, So that still was an entire, a reasonable
possibility. And he might not only go after
you for siding with them or against him, but he might go
after the people that you're siding with, that you think
there's a future. And so then you're really stuck
after that, right? And the high towers are in a
more dangerous spot because makers already shown a
willingness to come there. He's already invested in them.
So if he, he might take it more personally if they turn on him
versus someone he doesn't have a lot of prior dealings with now.
Of course, he's unlikely to take any sort of turning against him
well, but it might be worse for someone that he had a prior
arrangement with. He might take that more
personally, or see that as more embarrassing, and thus for his
image, he needs to strike immediately.
So what was that I was saying earlier about Megor's counsel in
finger quotes here? This batch of fellows that were
just more lick spittles like this?
There was the high lick spittle and the small lick spittles, I
guess you could say this batch of fellows suggested he take a
fourth wipe. They're like, yeah, you have
three, Why not go four? Why not?
You need an air. I mean, that's more important
than what anyone's going to say about you having all these
wives, right? You think about putting another
cat in a wall. I'm thinking about 3 or 4 going.
That's just in for so Megor figured his odds would be better
if he took three more wives. Like, well, if one more would
help, why not three more? You goofball, why not go 7?
This is the He Who stopped at six.
I mean, come on Meg, or? Why not Go 77?
Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Why not?
He could have, like, played it off like I'm marrying the seven.
Like each one of these women represents one of the seven.
I'm marrying all the. I don't know.
I don't know if that would have actually been done.
But it's the same kind of logic again.
Air quotes, finger quotes around logic employed by Victorian when
he was doing his thing with the burning and the trying to please
several different pantheons all at once.
Like yeah, that's this is that kind of thinking.
So his counsel also suggested one of the wives be Reyna like
his his own niece, the one whose brother husband he just killed.
So this would enable him to further claim dominion over the
children of Amy's i.e., the ones who could usurp him.
The other Targaryen branch that was out there.
He wanted to make sure he only married women who had children
already though. I E women of quote the finger
quotes again proven fertility, right?
Reina did have kids. Number two was Jane Westerling.
Not to be confused with Rob's Jane Westerling and Eleanor
Costane Jane. Westerling first of her name,
and we've only carved up a small slice of the Meg or pie here, so
the third wife, here's the one that we want to focus on the
most, the third of the Black Brides, as they came to be
called, quote. More troubling was the case of
Lady Eleanor of House Costane, the wife of Sarah Theo Balling,
a landed Knight who had fought for the King in his last
campaign against the four fellows.
Though only 19, Lady Eleanor had already given balling three sons
when the King's eye fell upon her.
The youngest boy was still at her breast when Sarah Theo was
arrested by the King's guard and charged with conspiring with
Queen Alyssa to murder the King. And placed the boy to Harris on
the Iron Throne. Though Balling protested his
innocence, he was found guilty and beheaded the same day King
Megor gave his widow seven days to mourn in honor of the gods,
then summoned her to tell her they would marry.
Like, geez, this is just unbelievably authoritarian and
cruel and just You really don't think there's going to be
consequences for this? Megor, I mean, yeah, so
obviously. Like murder Kidnap.
Yeah, And. And the precedent being said
that he will murder kidnap you and your daughter.
Yeah, really bad. And balling is like balling
comes from a nobody house. Like this is a landed nightly
House of the storm lands. Like, oh, you're conspiring to
put Jerry's on the throne like he is.
Like how? Like With what?
With what means you know and if you know your Westerosi
geography and or noble house hierarchies, you probably
guessed why this is relevant to us when we're talking about the
high towers. Because the costanes are direct
vassals of the high tower. So this taste stealing,
kidnapping, raping of Eleanor Costane is taking one of their
vassals and you know as the hunter you're supposed to
protect your vassals. But of course, the High Towers
aren't going to do anything here.
They can't interfere. They're not going to stand up
for for Eleanor Costain. They didn't stand up for Cerise
Hightower. They're not going to stand up
for her. But it may be caused some
discussion, right? Lord Martin is still the Lord at
this time. He might have gone to talk to
Lord Costain, or Lord Costain made it.
Come talk to him and confer like, what are we going to do?
Like Cerise. Now, Eleanor, this king is just
stealing our wives and daughters and making them marry her
without any consent or any compliance.
Just so they had this awful thing in common.
Martin. It wasn't Martin Sirise wasn't
Martin's daughters and sister. But still, you know, did they
discuss any possible options? They discussed maybe, like maybe
we could murder the king. Did it?
Did it go that far, I wonder? It's entirely possible they did
nothing right? They're just afraid of Megor and
wanted to just hope that it stopped, you know, hopefully get
away with all this. But it should be said that Megor
and the two Kings guard responsible for what happened to
Cerise did not escape karmic justice.
As we'll see shortly, there was reprisals.
We're not sure from whence they came, but they were pretty
nasty. Worse, Megor just took Eleanor's
three children. Well, maybe not worse, but to
add to it all, to add make the whole thing worse, Megor sent
Eleanor's three children to be fostered elsewhere.
Like you're no longer their mother, you're they're going to
be raised elsewhere. You're basically starting over.
For Megor, one went to High Garden One notable notably, none
of them went to the Three towers where that's house costing seat
and none of them went to the High Tower.
Now also, we should point out, we have seen three towers in the
books. Sam and Gilly see it from the
cinnamon win as they're passing by.
Like, hey, there's a three towers of house.
Costane. But high tower and Costane knew
anyone could be next like Meg or well, like they're thinking,
well, this isn't going to work. He's probably not going to have
children. You know, maybe maybe they kind
of hoped he dead so he would stop.
But they had to consider the possibility that, like, this
dude's infertile or something, he's not going to have any kids
and he's just going to keep trying.
And when will this end? You know, like, who's going to
Yeah, who's next as his rain forward As we said.
As we said earlier, it became clear that he was losing
control, not gaining his brutality.
Was was too often too random. There wasn't a lot of good to
point to. As we said he feared was his
only real trick the one trick pony 1 Trick dragon.
Some might have put up with it otherwise if he had.
He was also building roads and infrastructure but murdering a
lot of people that are like, Oh no, it's not good, but.
I would have. People would have, you know,
people would have accepted it, I think.
But he didn't even bring peace, though.
Like that's one thing you can hope from a strongman leader.
Like, everyone's afraid of him, so everyone behaves like, Nope,
he's basically making war on his own country.
I mean, yeah, So what the high towers and custains and others
of the world might have realized is that the cold, possibly
ruthless way to get rid of Meg, or was just to let him.
Do continue to do nothing. What's that old saying?
Never interrupt your enemy while they're making a mistake.
And if Megor's going to implode, just let it happen, You know,
Just stay out of it. Don't get don't burn your finger
on the stove while the book is finishing the job.
You know, that's not an old saying.
Like, never interrupt. Your.
Anything. I'm making a mistake because the
Megor supporters just start to fretter away and it mostly just
became the ones he could physically intimidate, the ones
who were close to him that couldn't get away, like people
in the Crown lands and all that. He had tortured and killed his
nephew Vasaris by this time. That's that's kids slaying on
top of all the other stuff. I mean, come on.
Which also told the rest of the Lords of Westeros that this guy
murdered a member of the other Targaryen branch.
So maybe they've had enough too. Maybe they're actually finally
willing to stand up to him now that he's done that.
Because of course, no one's going to stand up to Megor
without having some Dragons on their side.
Like, because otherwise those Dragons are going to back Megor
and it's like, well, we're really screwed.
Because that's the thing you sort of that.
The reason you sit back and let them make mistakes, I guess in
this scenario at least, is because eventually they'll have
upset enough people that you'll have enough allies.
You can be confident making a move, but if none of your allies
have Dragons, it's a different scenario.
You know, even like Brin went to say no chance, no choice.
It's really hard, even someone who's like, I don't know,
honorable or whatever in the face of Dragons.
It's hard to to make the move. So that's what I feel like
they're really banking on is eventually the other Targaryens
are going to be so frustrated with what he's doing and or he's
going to start doing things to them that there will suddenly be
Dragons and play on the other side.
That's the thing that needs to happen.
One of the very few factors in human existence that can
overcome mortal fear is zealotry.
If you have a just an overwhelming powerful belief in
the gods, you believe that you're going to a better place
afterwards or that what the gods will reward you or something.
That's one thing that can overcome a fear of someone like
Megor, and that's exactly where we're at.
That's why Megor was fighting against the faithful.
And partly there's a lot of reasons, but one of the main
ones is they were the only ones willing to fight him, right?
Other males is like we're afraid of Megor, but the faith they're
not. So here's a quote.
That the town of Stony Septimoon denounced King Megor's wedding
plans, and hundreds of town folks cheered wildly, but few
others dared raise their voices against his grace.
High Septon took ship at Old Town, sailing to King's Landing
to perform the marriage rights. On a warm spring day in the 47th
year after the conquest, Megor Targaryen took three wives in
the ward of the Red Key. Now that is still the high licks
pedal. Of course, One of the many
reasons why this is notable is Megor killed 12 septons before
finding one who would marry him to Tiana Pentos, his third wife.
So this time they just did it. Then like no one, they knew what
he was willing to do and this is the high licks Biddle, who was
already like a yes man, so of course he didn't have to kill
anybody. But it goes to show how his
intimidation had, in the short term, caused these sort of side
effects. One of the 12th.
Seasons like, a lot, by the way. Yes, right.
Some of those were. Great.
That 11th a dude still? Yeah.
Getting up. Like, man, they better, they
better put his name somewhere. Like write that guy's name down.
Yeah, brave man at the 10th 129. Yeah, like even the first one, I
mean, but but progressively more brave.
Yeah, yeah. So one of the ways Meg or kept
his new wives in line was by threatening their existing
children. You know, there's that fear
method again. He also disinherited his nephew
Jerry's, which obviously that didn't work in the long run, and
named Reyna's daughter Ereya as his heir.
Reyna was him being one of her, being one of his new wives.
However, he had area's twin sister Ray Ella sent to Old Town
to be raised to the SEPTA. So Ray Ella is now in the
possession of the High Towers. Effectively.
Somewhere around this time, Lord Martin passed and the Lordship
of the Hightower passed to Lord Donald.
Lord Donald is an extremely interesting character, probably
the most interesting Hightower Lord we cover in these two
episodes. There's a strong chance Lord
Martin was a bit of an outlier and that he didn't have lots of
children or any children because Lord Donald wasn't young when he
inherited. And the way we do the math here,
I won't go run through the the calculations, but it Serese was
only in her early 40s and Martin and Serese were siblings.
So Lord Donald doesn't. He seems like he's too old to be
Martin's child, and it's possible that he was his uncle
or a cousin or something like that.
So either way, if he was Donald was Martin's uncle, that would
have been. That means he would have been
Lord Manfred's brother. Either way, Donald became known
as the delayer. So this notion of wait and see
and biting your time, like he may have come up in a time where
that was the norm because they were waiting through Megor's
reign. And so he kind of grew up in an
environment where that strategy was prominent and he saw the
value of it and continued to use it.
Which raises the question of did Lord Hightower, either Donald or
Martin, attend this wedding of the Black Brides?
I don't know. I mean, surely he had informers
there. If not, so they they definitely
heard about what happened. I mean, Eleanor Costain being a
Costain, being one of their vassals, like there's be pretty
easy to hide spies in her entourage or just anywhere, you
know? Or it doesn't necessarily even
have to be covert. He could have sent the Lord a
prominent person. He He might have recognized.
We need to have a presence there.
Plus, I want to know what's going on.
So you seven people, you know, take the house guard and the
steward of this house and the the son of this Lord and you
guys go and say I wasn't feeling well.
It's possible they sent no actual high towers to be like,
well, we don't want to give you anyone.
Tape is a hostage because they know Megor's game and well, we
have to go make an appearance, but we don't want to give him an
opportunity. So both Eleanor Costane and Jane
Wesley became pregnant, like pretty quickly.
And Megor became, we see, the rare side of Megor.
He got really happy and he showed his opposite.
Extreme. It showed that he was actually
capable of magnanimity, just didn't last very long.
He gave honors, wealth and stuff to the families and the brides.
So like Lord Costay all of a sudden is like, all right now
he's giving me stuff. Okay, I don't like this, but
I'll take this. You know, I don't like this
arrangement but I'm getting some some benefit out of it.
And but this turned to horror really quickly in all ways.
Queen Alice Haraway had already delivered a terrifying dead
child and Queen Jane's child was an abomination as well.
She died as well and when word spread twice was too much.
She got multiple cases of this and then it became a third one.
So people start talking about Meg or being cursed like openly.
It's easy to see why he had broken nearly every taboo and
law of behavior and faith and custom.
So it's really easy to be like Yep that's what happens to Ken
slayers and ancestors and killers of the faith and Septon
and murderers and Queen Slayer like name the invective.
They probably got real creative like maybe we're probably had a
lot of things said about. Him, a lot of people would have
felt like vindicated. They're like see, see, you know,
people who maybe knew it or thought it or said it behind
closed doors. But now it's like, well,
everyone can see it. I'm going to say it out loud.
Now it's so dramatic. These just deformed children,
they're deformed and not just ways that that we would see This
is, and it's not even quite the same as what we saw from
Daenerys or Rainier, like one of them was, there's one that had
rudimentary wings, but some of the others are just like eyeless
and limbless. And it's not, they're not very
draconic. They're just, you know, scary.
And so that siding with him so not only was Meg or looking like
he was cursed and the gods were taking their vengeance, that
means siding with him would be siding with someone who's cursed
that's going against the seven. So he would lose even more
allies because of this. But again, anyone close to him
would have to do the tightrope walk of well, if I abandoned
him, he might kill me. So I got to, you know, had the
signs that major Lords were having conversations or
entertaining the possibilities of allying with the Faith
Militant continued to increase there's more and more signs of
that. So Meg or losing power, that's
probably what the high towers wanted.
They're probably pretty happy to see this falling apart because,
you know, it didn't work out and they'd be glad to have some
stability and chance to move up in the world with a king that
would actually enable such things.
Someone other than Megor, the High Licks Bill had by then
returned to Old Town after the wedding.
He went back there and this is a real problem with the High
towers because this guy was probably the second most hated
man apart from Megor according if from the perspective of the
Faith Militant. Like this guy is just rubber
stamping everything Megor does and Megor is doing all sorts of
awful things against the faith. It's like.
You absolute traitor. You're supposed to be the
representative of the gods, and this guy is bully against the
gods and you're on his side. I mean, come on, show some fine
man. You know, 12 septons refused to
do this marriage and you're just like, yeah, come on.
So. That's not good.
He's like, yeah, exactly. You want to do this like you
want to murdered like you. See Audrey Places.
So sensing Megor's inability to respond to so much at once, and
knowing that so much of what was threatening him was close by, is
created an open quote. Septon Moon appeared once more,
leading thousands of the faithful on a March across the
Reach to Old Town with the announced intent of bearding the
lickspittle in the starry step to to demand that he denounced
the abomination on the Iron Throne.
And lift his ban on the military orders.
When Lord Oakhart and Lord Rowan appeared before him with their
levees, they came not to attack Moon, but to join him.
These are major houses, especially Rowan.
Rowan is very big, and Oakhart is no slouch either.
Those are important houses, so they're with Septon Moon.
That's pretty brave. I mean, that's very much against
Meg or as well, before the army could arrive, before they had
surrounded or camped outside Old Town, Meg or had sent a rider
down and that rider beat the army and it the rider brought a
command from Meg. Or demanding Ray Ella be headed.
Yeah, beheaded. Ordered the death of Ray Ella.
That's right. He didn't demand her brought to
him. He commanded Lord Hightower to
kill her. This is some John Aaron Airy
stuff right here. I mean, he wasn't a friend of
Ray Ella like John Aaron was to Ed, Art and Robert.
But still, this is who's ever going to send their kid to live
with you if you obey this command?
Like, Nope, You killed a child under your roof because this guy
told you to. You didn't even stand up to him
a little bit. We're demanding the head of a
child. I mean, come on, A lot of
parallels in that moment, right? And it's going to indeed end
with the death of the king who demanded the head of the child.
So. The more history goes, the more
it repeats. Yeah, so this is.
Rules for a king. Number one, don't demand
children be beheaded. Danny definitely gets that.
I mean, queen, not king. The same difference.
But she like, from right away. And Ned Stark gets that not king
at all. But he's like, yeah, we don't do
that. Go, Ned.
Go Danny. Yeah.
And this is further intensified as a point of interest.
Because the reason Meg or demanded Rayella was because he
lost Errea, who he had named Err, or Errea ran off.
Rayna took off in the middle of the night, Took Irea, took black
fire, took the sword, right. What?
Ironically or Blerian stealically, the lightness of
black fire makes it easier to steal.
It's a lighter sword, if that's a full size.
Yeah, it's kind of funny. It's easier to snatch from.
For Megor's POV, He was just, hey, I'm just following up on a
base basic hostage threat. Like Rayella was a hostage, and
Raya ran away. So I get to kill the hostage.
That's how it works, right? Yeah, but we don't even know if
Lord Donald knew that it Ray had gotten away.
All he knows is this rider shows up and demands the head of
Rayela. He might have figured it out.
It's like, well, if he's demanding the head of Rayela,
something happened, and it was probably with the people she was
being held hostage for. It's like I was holding this
person on Megor's behalf to ensure the good behavior of
Rayna. So it's probably Rayna that did
something, so he probably could figure that out pretty easily.
Even if he couldn't figure out exactly what happened, something
went wrong, something bad for Megor Megor's grip loosening
even more. But the spotlight, the Eye of
Sauron is now pointed at the High Tower, even though the High
Tower is probably more perfect place for the Eye of Sauron.
And never mind, this is Donald the Delair.
Probably it's it's actually still possible it was Martin at
this point. But we'll, we'll call it Donald
the Delair, because this behavior looks Donald the Delair
ish. So what he did instead is he was
just like, no, he just imprisoned the messenger.
He's imprisoned the guy, Megworth's messenger was thrown
in jail. It's not just murdering a child
too, by the way. It's murdering a Princess and a
SEPTA. She's a SEPTA at this point.
So it's also killing a young devotee of the gods.
So it's it's triple bad. I mean, it's bad.
Just the one thing is bad enough, but it is even worse.
You know, to the public. Like sometimes something bad you
can understand why. Or something could come with it
to make it not so bad. But this is something bad with
something to make it extra bad with something to multiply.
How bad he is, right? That's right, it's just throwing
like the fire is already raging, but you're just throwing
gasoline on it anyway. Like, yeah, imprisoning a
message is pretty provocative thing to do.
It's not like we're not saying he like refused to meet the guy
like delayed, delayed, which would have been appropriate and
fitting. He would like, I can't see you
today. I can't see you today.
I'm busy. Like if he delayed, he could
maybe like claim later that, you know, I'm.
I didn't even know. No, but no.
He threw the guy in jail. That's that's a little more
direct. And we can guess maybe he knew
what was coming because storms end shortly after this rose for
Gerry's. I got to think that a lot of
these great houses were in charge were were communicating
with each other. They didn't just Are you ready
to go up Like let's let's just hope they're ready to go up
against Meg or two. Let's let's go.
Today's today, and hopefully they follow us.
I don't think you make that move without being pretty sure.
Storms end. Communicating with the high
tower, communicating with the Lannisters, communicating with
maybe the Starks, just seeing who's in.
But, and again, this brings us back to who's the center of
communication? Of the High Tower, probably.
There's almost no way they weren't very involved in all
this. So when Lord Donald threw Meg or
his messenger in jail, he may have already known that this
announcement was coming and they were just, they just few more
days are going to go by a few more weeks, whatever they had to
couple more things to do. You know, they're not talking on
the phone, so these things can't be that precise.
This is also where we remind ourselves that about what
happened with Lady Eleanor Castain, that her husband, who
was executed in that kangaroo court trial, was from the storm
lands. So that's another little
connecting point here that, you know, Storm's End would have
been rogue Arbor Atheon. A brave, powerful kind of a
jerk. But and this at this time, he's
doing good things. Please let us have a jerk
beeking instead of Megor. Yeah, jerk be a huge
improvement. Yeah, and Jerry wasn't a jerk,
as it turns out. Just although Rogar tried to
make Jerry's jerkier. Still, at this point he's doing
good. So that would have been
something that Rogar could have added to a little extra fuel to
the fire. Like one of our houses under my
domain was mistreated and yours was too.
Lord Hightower. And the exact same incident.
What is the reason, by the way? That makes me think that they
might not have had a specific plan or direct communication,
but they might have had this understanding like they'll come
along, you know if I make the first move and and maybe there
had been some communication and coordination among different
houses in the past, but even that even the idea they might
have had some communication, there's certain key moments that
can happen when they'll just know or this is it.
You know, there was the fact that they were entertaining me
before, and now that this happened, they will definitely
follow suit. There wasn't some, like
Tournament of Heron Hall equivalent where the Lord's met
to maybe conspire against Aries and Aries showed up because he
hurt because Varris warned him. That's what would be happening,
Yeah, if something like that happened, Megor would have,
yeah, they knew better than to gather in one place.
I think with Megor, Aries didn't have a dragon to torch them, but
Megor had malaria. Be like be dragon, right?
But also the Theo balding character and I keep coming back
with this kind of unimportant dude.
Like how did he marry a Costane? He's from a lower ranked house,
so I figured he had to be like a good word, like I was one of the
the problem I the best guess is that he was actually a notable
warrior, which would make his his execution all the more
unjust in a warrior culture. Like this guy was a good
fighter. We liked him and he just this
the king just killed him for for nothing.
So here's how things started to break down when Megor's collapse
really under a back going quote. Lord Valerian of Drift Mark was
amongst the first to declare for Jaheris.
As the Valerians were the realms traditional Admirals, Meghar
woke to find he had lost the entire royal fleet.
His high rails of High Garden followed with all the power of
the Reach, the High towers of Old Town.
The red wines of the Arbor, the Lannisters of cash to the Rock.
The errands of the Erie, the Royces of Runestone.
One by one, they came out against the King.
Once that ball's rolling, the rest are even more likely to
join. They're not going to be on the
one to be on the wrong side of that.
Even houses that may have thought they could sit out, they
would maybe sit the whole thing out and be like, OK, now that
Lannister Hightower cast everyone's in, we can join too.
You don't want to, you don't want to be on the wrong side of
of not being on team Anti Meg or that's kind of like yeah, these
high Lords all didn't come to the decision alone.
You know, like we said, they must have conferred somehow, but
they would have been very cautious about what they said to
each other and then how they said it, just maybe not
discussing plans but discussing goals in uncertain terms.
Like, yeah, what kind of, what kind of attitude do you have
towards, I don't know, you know, these marriages, you know, just
like not directly coming to the point, but answering and riddles
and speaking between the lines, things that you can't be pinned
down on, but you can communicate with the sort of diplomacy
doublespeak that we see a lot of.
So it clearly revolved around these storms and and drift mark.
And I wonder if the high towers communicated with Drift Mark
during this as well, or if that was maybe even too far if that's
not in their sphere of of communication.
So we could say that the high towers, if they weren't one of
the first dominoes to fall, they were one of those who sat the
dominoes tumbling in the 1st place.
So they're very, very high on the hierarchy here.
Now raise an eyebrow here because on the smaller scale,
one of the two Kings guard responsible for the series,
Hightower's death, was found dead in a brothel with his
members stuffed in his mouth. Remember how she was killed?
So there's lots of ways to interpret this.
She was killed when he tried to cut her tongue down.
So this is this. This mouth maiming thing is
maybe a little on the nose or on on the mouth on.
The tongue on the Johnson, that's, you know, it's kind of
telling. Like this guy could have made a
lot of enemies, but. You when you're when you have
powerful enemies and you're wondering which powerful enemy
did the deed, you probably start with the most powerful enemy and
then work your way down. Not the least and work your way.
Up and I like I don't probably is about as high as it gets.
Like literally it's in their name right.
So pretty big deal to murder a King's guard.
You don't just do that right. That's I feel like this was
revenge from someone powerful and well high towers are on that
short list and the other night was eventually executed by
Jerry's. We'll get back to that when
Jerry's becomes a king shortly. Here, Megor was found dead on
the throne by Eleanor Costain. Again, Eleanor Costain, by the
way. Her life is really interesting
apart from the all the trauma, which you know that could be
interesting. It's not fun, but her life
continued on in a lot of other ways and she pops up in Jerry's
reign as well. Some even say she pushed him
like she shoved him down and pushed the blade like that
doesn't seem very likely. Like how large was this woman
because Meg were was a giant? I don't know.
I kind of doubt that. It's weird that they even
floated this this theory though, but she definitely had the means
to give access to someone that was perhaps strong enough, like
let someone in. But the IT happened in the
throne room with King's Guard guarding the entrances.
I don't think they were on the inside or they might have been
on the outside of them. Like on the outside of the
doors, rather on the inside. We're not sure about that, so.
Maybe if she or someone gave him some suspect wine.
Yeah, and the King's Guard could have been in on it.
Even though there's two. It would have to be two King's
Guard agreeing to both do it, which is.
Name. I mean that's happened with
Raygar. So I mean not killing Raygar,
but they sided with Raygar and series.
So yeah, these things happen and of course the King's yard split
during the dance. I mean, yeah, these things,
these things do happen. So it is possible.
I feel like yeah lots of time making might have like a partner
on the King's guard. You're like paired with you do
like your guard duties with a lot.
You get to talking and I feel like having a buddy on on there
and it only takes a little bit of this King is horrible to get
the ball rolling on the conversation.
Like what would happen if you know someone came for Mega or
you know, I would I would do my duty but you know maybe my heart
wouldn't be in it as much as it could be.
You know, like I would still do my duty.
He's so he's not talking. Treason would make a superficial
attempt at my duty. Yeah, so like, and that maybe
leads to a more indepth conversation about where they
really lie. Like just kind of feeling it out
and someone's like, no, I would never, you know, just hardcore
like, okay. Well, we're not going back to
that conversation. This guy's not included, but
eventually. The 4:00 PM shift, not the 7:00
AM shift. So if you find 2 of.
Yeah, right. So eventually you find the two
that are good that that that can be in for this.
Eventually those two are paired up on guard duty together.
And that's when you make your move.
Something like that. So this is just one of many
possibilities. Again, just like with Owen Bush,
plenty of people hated Meg, or he had way more enemies even
than Owen Bush. But very few people who hated
Meg or actually have any sort of means or ability to do anything
about it. Only the, like, really rich and
powerful people can really do anything about it other than
like the people who sleep in Megor's bed and can stab him
while he sleeps. But I can understand why no one
did that too, because it's terrifying, right?
So Cerise, Hightower, their families of Cerise and and
Eleanor are possible conspirators.
Not just them, they're entourages.
These are people that you can easily conceal A spy or two or
someone more capable amongst these group, this group, it's
pretty easy to do that. We've seen it in a number of
cases, and we're already pretty sure the high Towers murdered a
high septum, and it may not have been the first time.
So, like, once you have shown that you'll murder, you just
jumped higher on the list of suspect of suspects when there's
another murder that's related, right?
Yeah. I I want to make a maybe a.
Controversial moral statements or defense of Hightower here.
It might not be murder. You could argue that it's he's
being executed for crimes committed and or selfdefense,
right? If this SEPTA is going to get
thousands of innocent people killed, killing him isn't so
much murdering him as defending the other people, and I'm sure
this. May or has murdered multiple
people. You're not.
He doesn't really have a right to life anymore, right?
If there was any kind of trial or justice, he would be
sentenced to death. And this is just someone doing
it without the trial. But we don't even need it
because there's so many witnesses that controls the
trial. We couldn't have the trial.
Yeah, So it's. Just, yeah.
I mean, I guess it depends on how much you agree with, like
vigilantism and stuff like that. Like, if you think he's right,
then yeah, you probably wouldn't call this murder.
Yeah, that's a great point to share to, to mark it down to
vigilantes. Because like, if you don't
believe in any vigilantism, then I guess you have to say like,
this is an example that you have to swallow be like this is
wrong. But like, I think this tells
you, like you got to leave some room for vigilantism when you're
presented with a situation like this, like there is, like what
else could there be? There's.
A lot of like society and government is compromising, you
know, morals and rights. Like we get like you can't go in
a theater and you'll fire, right.
We sacrifice that little piece of right to speech for the
safety of people in a theater, right.
So at some point what we're getting out of this government
that the things that this government is all sensibly
providing for us is not worth it.
When the leader of the government is a murderer, you
know, like there's not a function to have a trial to stop
him. So are we all supposed to accept
this moral and moral action as it really murdered to kill him,
you know? I would say.
I would say the High Towers are heroes.
I would agree. I would agree with you, Sean.
But I would say there are probably some people in world
who are, I don't know, I want to say brainwashed, quite honest,
to believe in the innate. Justice, the innate morality of
the king of the crown, of the godliness that if Meghor said
that this is how it should be, then he's just right.
And there's no I think some people will never be swayed.
Presidents even think that. Yeah, yeah, I'll never mind
kings. Yeah, you'll see people that
will look at like a bunch of dead children and say it's part
of God's plan now, and obviously not nearly all believers.
People who believe in God would say that not nearly, Not even
close. But there it's the same kind of
similar kind of attitude where you're like, Yep, the authority
figure set did it. It must be right?
Whether that authority figure is a king, a deity, your dad, I
don't know. Just anyone.
And that, and that's sort of what's expected from the King's
Guard, right? Yes, there's sort of like you're
supposed to be blind. And I even had that thought that
on on some level. It it's like extra shocking for
Jamie to have killed Aries, right?
Like, but you're supposed to protect.
But in the other at the same time, I almost think it's the
opposite. I think the Kings Guard are
probably the most I don't know how to say the last line first.
Hand witness to it, not so much the last line even.
They're the most aware of how terrible the king.
Yes, they. In some ways, have the most
motivation to stop them because they have the most witness to it
all, You know, That's a great point.
Yeah, Jamie saw things that no one else.
I mean, Jamie is an amazing example there.
Like the wildfire plot. I mean, hello.
Like, no one else knew about that except for like a few by
romancers and stuff. Like that's worse than just
seeing what he's like behind closed doors.
That's seeing his plan to blow everybody up.
Like Jamie, very justified now. I mean, he could argue that he
didn't have to kill Aries. He could have just like captured
him. But anyway, that's another story
altogether. May Gore, that wasn't clearly
wasn't an option with him too strong of a guy.
No one even knows how exactly who did who done it, but pretty
much the majority of the realm was happy that it happened.
Even though they don't necessarily know who did it,
they were glad for it. So Jerry immediately started
making moves and conciliated, starting with those closest to
him around the Red Keep and the King's Landing.
But it was wouldn't be long before he had turned to Old
Town. But all stuff was already
happening in Old Town as Jerry was getting settled.
Septon Moon's army had arrived at Old Town and could only have
felt emboldened at the death of Nagle.
Now a few of them crittered away because Megor is the guy they
really hated. Well my anger is sated for now,
but others were like, well now it's going to be easier.
And with him, dad, they're like. We still want to get the high
licks fiddle and he doesn't have Megor to defend him anymore.
Little both. I want to ask a couple
clarifying questions about this moment.
Right. Sure.
Jaharrius is like a teenager, right?
Yes. He is under, He's young, he is
below 16. In fact, he's not.
He's 14, I believe. Because that is there's 13 and
19, right? So the question 1/2 his father
Amy's is dead. So like, it is on Joe Harris
right now. Like there's like he it's known
there's this pressure. He's next in line.
Like if Megor goes down, it's going to be him, right?
Well, okay, that depends. Because storms end.
Rose for Jerry's is going to be the king.
Jerry's was Megor's heir, but Megor specifically disinherited
him. He's like, no, he's not my heir,
Irea is. Yeah, Megor feminist king Megor
said. We.
Have. Female heirs here, here, and we
can't say a word against him. He was righteous and King Megor.
Now if you go by, there's an argument that Reyna should have
been ahead. It's Reyna's daughter.
So why is Irea ahead of Reyna? Because Reyna had already been.
Arguably, Reyna had already been usurped when Megor defeated her
and her brother Agon and killed Agon.
That was the point of contention for some that especially right
now, that's like Rain is like, I'm ahead of you, Jaharis.
Why are you the king? It's like, well, they rose for
me, you know, they didn't rise for you like the Civil war
rebellion was for me. You were elsewhere, like Rogar
rose with Jaharis and Rayna wasn't even with them.
Rayna was locked away by Megor, or actually she escaped to
Dragonstone when Megor got confused there.
But still. Anyway, that's a whole another
story. I'm on that same line.
I'm wondering who the Hand of the King was at this moment.
And it looks like. It was Ed.
Well, Celtic are. Oh yeah, Celtic are.
Who became to Harris's master coin?
Jerry made Ed well, the master coin afterwards, but.
I was just wondering how prepared for the transition the
leadership was, how how much, how much to Harris is just this
kid getting shuffled along by other, you know, mentors and
leaders or how much? He is taking charge and
listening to the advice of other people.
I just want to know what the relationship with the people are
about to move into power. Good question.
Now this is, we have a very straight answer on this because
it's an important part of the Harry's character.
At first it did appear that way that he was being led along,
They didn't know who he was, that people didn't know much
about his character. But very quickly he impressed
the pants off of basically every Lord that came before him and
got to meet him and talk to him. He did listen.
He did ask important questions. He was respectful, insightful,
clearheaded, even tempered. Like there's a number of quotes
about how they were like, yeah, especially after Meg or they
were like worried like what would be next.
And so there was almost a relief that he was so good and seemed
to be so positive. And it's like the outlook was
great and people were pretty quickly jazzed about the
opportunity once they got to meet him.
And the wake of that, Was there a rise in demand for belt
makers, I don't think. If you impress the pants off of
everybody suspenders more so than than belts.
Bad of the era. One clarification and
correction. Aegon the first did create the
Grand Mason position himself, apparently.
Maybe the histories wrote it differently, but we we
speculated the high towers may have pushed for that, but it
seems that Aegon himself made that move now.
Maybe someone suggested it to him, but we may have less reason
to speculate than maybe I intimated it first.
You asked a question last week, Sean, about whether Warriors
sons give up their lands and titles or not, whether it would
have passed to Sir Morgan or not.
Now I probably wouldn't have passed Sir Morgan anyway,
because Martin had sons or Manford had sons.
Whichever. But they do give up their lands
and titles. That is part of the job.
I should have thought of Landsell, who did give up his
rights to DARE, which didn't necessarily mean it would be the
same, Like he could have given up his lands and titles and
joined the Warriors Sons. They didn't have to be a
prerequisite, but it is. It does turn out to be a
prerequisite. So that's that's important
because there are a few who go from retiring, accepting Jerry's
amnesty, but they have to go join the Knights watch because
they've already kind of surrendered their positions or
whatever. Now that doesn't apply to
commoners as much, but Jerry still sent them to the wall, so
that's that. Darnish Dame wonders if that's
foreshouting for Rowan in our cart, defecting in the main
Series and A Storm of Swords. Rowan is very uncomfortable
about the death of Regar children, and Aries Oakard died
in service of Common. Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah, maybe showing how they're. History is going to repeat
itself. And then other people in the
chat brought up the idea of like Randall Tarly defecting to
which, you know, just, yeah, other reach men that and the the
Sam Tarly. This is the era of Sam Tarly and
that the whole business. So that's Samantha Tarley.
Yes. Not Sam Tarley.
Samantha Tarley. It is a Sam.
But didn't. That was confusing, probably.
Or at least we're about to get to her era.
We're not actually there yet. She was born a little bit later.
Yeah. It's a really good catch to
understand. I like that catch.
Or like that idea. It might make sense.
We'll have to keep that in mind when we see how the Friends in
the Reach plot line goes forward.
Yeah, I want to remind you all that we have our Patreon Bush
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Now, the next few weeks that price will end when we begin
Fire and Blood reread us. Yes, Sir.
Yes, ma'am. Let's go forward with the reign
of the Harris. Before he could get to the
business of Kinging Kingery, he had to take care of many loose
ends left by his predecessor first.
One of them was particularly pressing because Septon's moon
Septon Moon's army still sat outside Old Town, where Donald
the Delayer delayed, right? Of course.
What else would he do? That's here's a quote about what
was going on with Septon Moon. Every day, Septon Moon went
forth to denounce the sins of House Targaryen and the Licks
fiddle. Who permitted their abominations
whilst inside Old Town? The true Father of the Faithful
had become a virtual prisoner in his own palace, unable to set
forth outside the confines of the starry Set.
Though Lord Hightower had closed his gates against Set and Moon
and his followers, and refused to allow the entrance to his
city, he showed no eagerness to take up arms against them,
despite repeated entreaties from his High Holiness.
When pressed for reasons, his Lordship cited a distaste for
shedding pious blood, but many claimed the real reason was his
unwillingness to offer battle to Lords Oakhart and Rowan, who had
granted Moon their protection. His reluctance earned him the
name Lord Donald the Delayer from the Maesters of the
Citadel. It's interesting that the
maesters of the Citadel gave him that name.
I guess they must not have seen it as an insult because the for
them to give him a name like that while he's still alive.
While the Hightower is that he, he little literally holds the
title Defender of the Citadel, you know?
I think it could be a good thing to delay specifically, and they
can recognize that is a savvy move to delay sometimes.
I I'm thinking he didn't mind the name.
He may have even liked it, yeah. But yeah.
In my head, Cannon, this guy's very shrewd and it's a
combination of, as you mentioned earlier, it's been sort of a
precedent set. We're in a weird spot here and
everyone's kind of like, just waiting to see, right.
We're all just kind of no one wants to be the first person to
get their head chopped off. You know.
So everyone's in a state where it makes sense to delay.
So like, if you want to call me Donald the layer, fine.
But like, so is everyone else me.
We're all delaying. Right 1/2 he.
I can imagine him having this idea and like they can think
what they want. I know I'm doing the right
thing. You know, he he might there
might be an honor that. But also, I think, sure, let
them think I'm the delayer. That way, when I move quick, no
one will see it coming. I'll be able to take advantage
of this quote UN quote reputation that I have.
It's just the way things have played out.
But I'm not really a delayer. I'll move quick if it's the
right thing to do. It just hasn't been the right
thing to do. And so it would be extra
advantageous to me for people to think this way when I do decide
to move quick. And if he does move, and anytime
he wants to move slow, he can, people will expect to go.
That's just what he does. And it was.
Not an insult to them. It's the standard.
Oh yes, OP Yeah, OK, that's really good.
I like that. Take quite a bit.
In this case though, he couldn't delay forever because Harry's
had to be crowned at the Starry Sept, which was currently
blocked off. The roads are all clogged with
Faithful and and Sept and Moon's army, including the armies of
Lords Oak Heart and Ron. So how how are you going to have
a coronation now without, you know, it doesn't look good for
Donald, the lair. And last thing he wants is them
to, like, have the coronation somewhere else or something like
that. That's not what he wants.
And back in Kingsling, they had a similar attitude.
They're like, well, we don't want to just attack this host.
Jared's just trying real hard not to be Meg or.
And that's just, this is really the the wrong way.
You're like, that's exactly Meg or so.
You don't want to do that. But the problem seems to have
taken care of itself. Septon Moon was assassinated by
a camp follower. Oddly, his throat was cut and
his wine was poisoned. Yes, both.
That's kind of interesting. I say, taking care of itself,
But clearly there were actors behind the scenes here who paid
for this to be done or who. Multiples if, if, if just like
coincided. At the same time 2 assassination
attempts just to concur happened at the same time.
Was it Lord Donald? Plenty of people had motive, as
we've seen, but he did most of all.
He could easily be argued. I mean his city was losing
wealth and prestige. He again, he didn't want the
coronation to look to be held elsewhere.
He didn't want to look weak. He might be Okay could be called
the Delayer, but he doesn't want to be called Donald the the
weak. You know that's not that's not
Okay Oakart and Rowan could have done it.
Maybe they had Moon murdered to as a way to back down.
But that's kind of hard to swallow.
If they backed him in the 1st place.
Like seems like they backed him because they were so pious.
They're willing to stand up against the High Tower and then
I'll then just back down all of a sudden with a murder.
That doesn't really, that doesn't really work for me.
It's possible. I can't completely throw it out.
But Fire and Blood actually takes pains to point out that it
probably wasn't The Faceless Man because of it wasn't very
smooth. It was kind of, yeah, it was a
little haphazard almost. But there is a supernatural
element and it's definitely an assassination.
I mean, there's a supernatural element suggested.
It's possible. It's it's not guaranteed.
This could explain the delay, You know, setting up an
assassination, figuring out who's going to do the deed,
arranging for this, finding the cat's paw.
And how to do that? That takes a minute.
You know, I don't think he just has assassins at the ready.
Or maybe he does, but still, you got to have over this camp
follower infiltrate the camp and do the things.
Again, if in general the high towers and Old Town are kind of
aware of the power of the flow of information, you might have a
network of informants and spies. Already knows there's a hit out
on him. That's why I'm delaying.
I don't even need to do it. Someone else is already going to
need to wait for it to happen. Yeah, it's a good point.
Yeah. It's like this guy's going to
die soon. It just, I don't know what day
it's going to happen, but any day now, somebody's going to die
and then we'll be ready. Now we said you, Harris didn't
want to be like Meg or, but his mom kind of did want to be a
little Meg Orish to the people who had supported Meg or she
wanted to do. Bring a little of that back.
But Jerry's is like, no, we're not doing that.
Even he's kind of stopped his mother from going too far with
that. He gave her a few things like
the hands of the people that tortured her son.
The series on Megor's orders and the guy, the other Kings Guard
that we mentioned the one that helped Owen Bush kill Cerise
Hightower, that was Maladon Moore, Sir.
Maladon Moore. It's another Kings Guard named
Moore who we have reason to hate.
Just like the one that almost killed Tyrion mended Moore.
So Malad and Moore was executed and his head given to.
No, that's something too that I think makes a lot of sense for
Jahari is like not only sort of a precedent or forgiveness,
right that has a lot of value from like an optic standpoint or
whatever, but but also just the idea that I think you got to be
kind of understanding that like 2 months ago, whatever all of
you were loyal to Megor just now, some of you finally
revolted. These other people just didn't
have the chance, or we were closer to Megor some.
And so it's it's hard to really find them as responsible.
Maybe some people who committed specific crimes, you're going to
have to punish them and maybe even those people do deserve it.
Like maybe they should have stood up to May for or if they
thought they were doing the right thing because it was a
can, they should be willing to face the punishment for you
know, having done that. So.
But I think this is on many levels good to Harris.
I agree with you now. At the time, though, there would
have been some people that were worried because as bad as Meg or
was, it was Anus's mishandling of the faith that got the whole
thing started and he was too soft rather than Meg or being
too hard, right? Jerry's is the son of Anus.
And then some people would have been like, oh, is this kid just
going to be too soft like his dad, You know, Is he too
peaceful? Is he?
You know, So that was a little bit of a worry.
They would have been maybe, Oh no, Is he going to be too soft
on the Faith Militant or Septon Moon or some of these other
rebel leaders? And they weren't wrong in some
ways. They would have maybe seen fuel
for this fire pretty quickly because who is the new Lord
Commander of his Kings Guard, Giles Morgan, nephew of Damon
the devout, the grand captain of the Warriors Sons who died
fighting Meg or in the trial by 7:00.
So that's a guy right there on the other side of things.
And he just puts right in charge of his personal protection.
And then he invites the Red dog of the hills, The one who killed
Morgan Hightower made him a King's Guard.
Super conciliatory move. That was big time.
Wow. Everybody's like, wow, what a
that's brave too. Like giving this dude who wanted
to kill him and his family, letting him stand behind him and
guard him with a sword, you know, like allowing him to wield
a sword in his presence. That's.
And it was. It was, it really worked.
Like people were very moved by that none.
The Red Dog, perhaps most of all because he was a true believer
and wanted things to work out and wasn't just after things for
himself or whatever. Anyway, so we have no idea who
killed Septon Moon. I still think the Hightower is
probably the most likely, but again, we're not sure.
Megor's death caused at least a few to go home, as I said,
because that's the one they wanted.
Now after a brief power struggle for the body of Septon Moon,
which this is something out of the young guy plot.
Remember they strapped Cleon the Butcher to a horse and after he
was dead and had him lead people as a corpse strapped to him.
But now this happened in the real world too, at least once or
twice. But it happened here too. 22
poor fellows named Rob the Starling and another name Lorcas
the Learned took over and claimed the body of Stepton Moon
strapped to a horse and assaulted the Old Town Lorcas.
The Learned was called that because he had the entire 7
pointed star memorized, but it doesn't seem like he he was very
smart. He was getting great memory but
wasn't very smart. Anyway, he.
Intelligent but not wise. He was burned to death by pitch
or oil during the assault on the walls of Old Town, and some of
Lord Donald's Knights then burst forth from the gates, took
Septon Moon's body, cut off the head, and delivered it to the
high licks or bicep. After that, Lord's Oakard and
Rowan were like peace out. They went home and that left
only a few 100 super zealots behind, most of them being kind
of rabble in terms of their fighting skills, unwilling to
give up, still somehow believing they'd win thanks to the seven.
I guess like 7 will be our swords.
Like that's true belief. I guess then Lord Donald Lair is
like, all right now we can emerge with some soldiers and
crush these these rabble that are left behind.
And I guess you want to be thorough.
You can't have all this just here when the King's coming with
his coronation party, right? He could also tout his crushing
victory, his absolute victory. Like what?
We totally took those rebels down, right?
Knows how to play the media after all this, right?
So the equivalent of media I'm using finger quotes a lot this
episode if Lord Donald had concerns about Jerry's reign
regarding the his potential softness because this is still
before the the King's guard thing with Jeffrey Dogger, which
happened during the coronation. So that's that's like right
right now basically. He would have probably acted
quickly though and his nickname does fit.
Of course that's probably more likely what he did wait to see
how things would play out because indeed Jerry's was not
he wasn't weak. It had the his version of peace
had steel behind it, steel and dragon fire, the threat of it,
but he kept it as a threat. He didn't use it, so Donald
Lalare may have been able to figure that out.
If he's a he later, we're going to have people talk about how
smart he is, how cunning he is, how shrewd he is, how disloyal
he is. But no one seems to question his
intelligence. So if he got a handle on Jerry's
with Jerry's there in his city, talking to him, having his
coronation, having dinners and this and that.
And taking the measure of the. Man, as we say, I would think
Donald would have felt pretty good about the way things were
going. Although maybe but he still
would of course wanted to maintain and get a handle on his
ambitions and made sure that yes, this will be a good king.
But how can I make use of that? How can this benefit?
Because it's not just about, oh, he's going to leave us alone.
It's like no, how can this guy enrich us right now.
Of course, though Joe Harris is only 614 at this point, as as
you asked me before Sean. So he's not he doesn't have his
age of majority so he can't just necessarily give orders.
Yet he's he's not 16. So this created a bit of a
problem because you don't want to go against the guy who's
going to be the king at 16 because he might punish you for
not giving him what he wanted when he was underage.
And if you can only delay the inevitable, he's like, well, as
soon as I'm 16, I'm going to do this.
Why? What's the point in holding?
I'll just do it now. Right.
So a lot of people just going to do what he wants unless it's
crazy. But Lord Rogar Baratheon, this
is when he starts to come to the fore.
And it's like, well, I haven't forgotten that you're a teenager
and and there's still a lot of things that Jerry's ended up
doing that worked that might have seemed risky because they
were just over the top, brave, peaceful things to do that no
one had really done before. And well, yeah, you couldn't be
sure they would have worked. And a lot of these guys are very
conservative. They're used to the way things
have been. And Jerry says this vision for
doing things differently, that's it might not have sat well with
some people. Certainly Lord Rogar, one of
them. And Lord Rogar had a lot of
push. He's the Lord of Storms and he's
brave. He stood up to Megor and he
married. Or is about to.
This hasn't quite happened yet. He's going to marry Jerry's
mother, Alyssa, so that also kind of makes him like a father
figureish of sorts. So late in 48 A/C, the
coronation became official. It happened at the starry step,
like the three Targaryen kings before him, the high licks.
Biddle put the crown on Jerry's head.
He immediately rescinded Megor's bounties, but refused to
reinstate the swords and stars. So that's important, he said,
you know, the crown will protect the faithful from here on out.
We don't need the stars and swords anymore.
He didn't say Meg or was right about that much, but he was kind
of saying that. I wonder if Lord Donald wanted
that or not. Lord Donald may have been like,
yeah, we don't want the stars and swords either, but he
already. But he might be like actually we
do want them. I kind of think he didn't, but
I'm not sure because like there was a long so many high towers
had been like grand captains and high-ranking guys in that
organization. I might think they want that
back because it gives them some extra power.
On the other hand, it's not like he lacks for soldiers.
He could still have plenty of men.
The population increase under Giharrius would have given him
just more soldiers. Altogether it it's hard to see
how he would weigh these scales here.
My my thought on this is that it's not want it or don't want
it. It's like it's not like 0 or
100. It's like it might just not
necessarily even zero to 100. It's not necessarily 5050, It
might have been like 6060 like that, I have.
Certain pros and cons to either way and so whatever the King
wants, I'm happy to go along with it because I can make the
best of it either way. Yeah, good point, good point.
So the coronation was a seven day event, big fancy party and
Jerry stayed for 9 days afterwards.
That's when some of these conversations with the Lord of
the Hightower, what happened? Surely one other very
interesting thing that happened during this time was Rayella who
was already give was given to the faith under Megor's rule
remain. She was like yeah I'm I'm a
SEPTA, I'm going to stay that except that she didn't remain.
Aria and Rayela were twins and it appears that Alyssa swapped
them because Aria was had been the soft spoken one and was
quiet and and more suited for being a SEPTA, whereas Rayela
was the aggressive like tomboyish like brave and bold
one. Henceforth those distinctions
are reversed. Area is the one who steals
Balarion and runs away. So that's how we're like yeah,
that well, that wasn't the soft meek one that stole Balarion.
Is that something, by the way, that, like the community has
figured out, must be the case? It's pretty, it's pretty widely
believed. It's it's all but believed in
the text of fire and blood. Yeah.
Do you think though, that the people of this time period?
Realize it. Are they playing along with it
or they covering? Yeah, I think they knew.
Yeah, I think almost everybody knew.
Like, maybe not like the commenters didn't.
I don't think they knew. But the Lords, Yeah, because the
person eyes are so different. And anyone who would have heard
about it would have been like, huh.
And it would have been like a dramatic little rumor spreading
around. And yeah, I'm pretty sure, yeah,
it seems like people knew. And then the Lord of the High
Tower would have known. Maybe not until after the fact,
because I don't think they would have needed his involvement for
this. It just a mother with her two
daughters alone. Tell them to switch clothes.
And then was going to know. I mean maybe some serving
people, which that is that's something you know, serving
people. But but there's no, like, I
don't see a benefit to Lord Hightower here other than like
maybe he could make use of that information later.
It's like I know that there like maybe that could be abuse to him
later to know that secret. But in the short term, there's
something to be done about it. It's just maybe something good
for down the line. Keep that in your pocket.
Keep that on the shelf. So that's interesting.
Now the high licks. Bill himself wouldn't have
complained. Because he's the Highlix bill
and he just goes along with things.
But you know they are swapping a child who's SEPTA, so you can
see why it might have mattered. But they gain a SEPTA, lose a
SEPTA, they break even. And they gain someone who's more
more like willing to be one, too.
Where someone who will be more of what they want from A Yeah,
and it did. As far as we know that did kind
of work out. Look except for stealing
Valeria, that part didn't. But for for Rael, the Sept part
worked out. Something worse might have
happened the other way if they hadn't made the switch, right?
Yeah, or many different things. Maybe not a single thing that
bad, but many different smaller things might have kept going
wrong. It would have added up to work.
Hard to know for sure, but yes, it would have been would have
been different. In the second year of Jerry's
reign the Golden Wedding took place.
That was of course the marriage of his mother, who was also his
Regents, Queen Alyssa, that is, to his hand, Lord Rogar.
Can I say my favorite story about the Golden Wedding
wedding? Oh yes, you should.
Which is that? In our interview with George RR
Martin, we were talking to him and he mentions the Golden
Wedding. We just kept talking to him and
someone in the comments on that thing was like, did he just
mention something and they just like, blew past it?
Like this new What is the Golden Wedding?
Is this something that's happening in The Winds of
Winter, like all this? Like how could they not ask you
more about? That ask you more about it and I
was like, yo. You could have just googled
Golden Wedding and you would have bound that this is a very
real current. But anyways, every time I hear a
Golden Wedding, I think about that person.
What will be the next color wedding too we got?
Golden, Purple, Red, Yeah. Speaking of Red Wedding, I'll
shout out my Friday Crusader Kings 3 stream set in the realm
of A Song of Ice and Fire, which they've added a new DLC that
increases the amount of events and and role play that happens
during social events like weddings and now massacre
weddings are are like a feature. You can.
When you say you want to plan a wedding, it's like a regular
wedding or a you can't just, like, do it.
You have to have certain conditions.
But still, it's like, I was like, whoa, this is an option.
Cool. So I'm, I'm excited to one day
have do that, you know, figure out who I want to do that too.
But anyway, back to this. Lord Donald did come to this
wedding. It's a golden wedding.
We're not sure about some of these other events, but he
showed up with 100 nights, 77 most about, and the high licks
fiddle a major opportunity to schmooze with other elites.
Lord Donald would have had those wanting to speak with him, and
likewise, you know, to get in his good graces in him.
With them, you know, this is tournament of Heron Hall Ish,
with less reason for obvious conspiracies like no one's.
I doubt anyone's trying to overthrow Jerry's at this point.
It's a new round, new reign. It's going pretty well so far.
Who are they going to replace him with?
Besides, maybe Reina. But I don't know why you would
want to replace him with Rena at this point, except for Rena
herself maybe. It's Heron Holish.
And that we have all these key leaders from different lands,
but not Heron Holish. And that they're meeting there
for some conspiracy, right. There's no Aries to overthrow
here. Yeah.
And this is part of around the same time when a lot of Lords
met Jerry for the first time. They come to the Golden Wedding
and they hadn't met him yet because I don't like the Lord
Stark was sick. He was old.
We talked about this in our Under the Dragons episode for
the North and he came and he's one of the most loudly quoted.
He's like I see because he's old enough.
He's like I see some of his grandfather in him hanging on
the Conqueror. So he gave a huge compliment and
a bunch of Lords gave compliments.
We get a list of them in fire and blood of of of high-ranking
Lord saying great things about you.
Harry's Lord. Donald isn't one of them, just
point that out. He's not quoted here.
He is quoted in other places but not his regards to his thoughts
on Jerry's. Seems like the kind that would
keep his opinion to himself on a lot of things, but.
But maybe not. So again, Alyssa wanted revenge
on those who followed Megor, and she had to sort of walk her own
tightrope walk. As we said, she didn't want the
comparisons to Annie's because Annie's was too soft.
She didn't want Jerry to be seen that way.
So she must have been pleased that all this acclaim for him,
seeing all the Lords come and and be pleased.
And that would probably take away some of her worry about her
son being viewed that way, as well as how she perceived what
would be done to Meg or his former supporters.
He wasn't naive about loyalty to them.
Yes, he accepted them back in the fold, but he took hostages
from those families. So that would have been like,
OK, So she would have seen them like, OK, he's, he's no fool.
And I very much wonder what the Hightower thought of this.
This may have. They would have seen the
smartness of that, the the lack of you know, they wouldn't.
There's no blind trust here, right?
They wouldn't. They don't see examples of
foolish behavior like that. If they were involved in any
behind the scenes conspiracies to topple Megor if they had
been, then they would have seen that vengeance had been
satisfied on the issue of Cerise, if he even cared, which
he might not have, but some of the High Towers probably did.
It's a large family and Cerise would have had some, you know,
people that cared and not to mention Eleanor Costain in
general. It appeared Jerry was capable of
of being a just king though handling justice well without
going too far or too soft. Maybe that would have settled
the issue with the High towers and however, there's just little
direct involvement here in this early part of his reign from the
High Towers. There's no counselors or King's
guard that we know of. Now it's easier to to use
nepotism to get your family to have jobs and things like the
face and the most devout things like that that are more
elections and and bribery can be played.
But you can't really do that with the King's Guard.
Can't really just be like hey Jay Harry's here.
Put our son on the King's guard. You know it's not it doesn't
really work like that. So you I guess no one was just
up for it or no one was good enough.
I mean just quite possibly none of the high towers of this era
were capable of being a King's guard.
So they were kind of out of royal business.
At least they kept it at a distance for a little while
here. Now of course, later they're
going to get back into it big time with Auto, but we're a ways
from Auto Hightower still and it seems that the feeling might
have been mutual. Though this quotes here is what
we hear when Jerry's predictably considered the rich Hightowers
for the position of Mastercoin. It looked longer at certain
cousins and uncles of Donald Hightower, for the wealth of Old
Town derived from trade rather than the ground.
But the uncertain loyalties of Donald the Delair, when face was
set to moon, gave him pause and note that he wasn't considering
Lord Donald himself. Even the connection to Lord
Donald gave him pause, as it says gave him reason to second
guess himself. I do want to read too much into
this. I do want to read that he didn't
trust anyone, even other high towers, because of Lord Donald
was like, well, this Lord Donald, as long as he's in
charge, we can't trust any high tower.
I was like, it may not have been that bad, but that's kind of
what this quote says. He's like he didn't want to hire
any of the high towers because of Donald.
I once again want to. I want to read some extra into
this too maybe. He might not have distrusted
Donald or his cohort so much as he knew other people would.
It might have been a bad signal to other people and they just
couldn't do it. Especially if you consider from
either angle, Donald might have already had his hands pretty
deep into the business of master coin.
So, like, look man, I don't need to appoint you, you're pretty
much master Coin anyway. In fact, when I appoint the
master Coin, I'm just going to have him report to you like you
can see how he might have even effectively still been.
Making Donald a master of coin, or indirectly or whatever.
Anyway, one thing Jerry said, I think this was a little later in
his reign. We're not sure when this
happened, and this is maybe something that that the Lord
Hightower would consider an overreach.
He replaced Old Town's harbor master.
That's you would think that's normally something you would do.
The Hightower would be in charge of that, but Jerry's.
Just you think the Lord of Port would be in charge of that?
Exactly. So he also did that in
Maidenpool and Dunscandale. Now Duncandale is in the Crown
Land, so that's a little, but still that's you would think
that the Lord, Lord Darkland would do that and it made bull,
it would be Lord mood. So that was kind of interesting
and and it's not said exactly why, but the strong hint is that
it's for corruption, because of corruption.
You know, that might be seen as an overreach, but once again,
that coming from a different angle.
It might have been a relief to Donald.
Donald might have known there was this corruption.
He couldn't make a move against it.
He would have family members involved or alliances that would
get data. Sorry, the king, the king said.
It is possible? Sorry, dude, I can't help you,
the king said. You know, he might have been
relieved of this responsibility for dealing with this tough.
Yeah, definitely possible. Especially if there didn't seem
to be any negative fallout from it, right?
Not that we know of. Yeah.
One of the mysteries of Harris and Allison's marriage is how
Allison found out that the Regent and queen or the hand and
queen weren't going to allow them to marry.
So Jerry was like, I'm going to marry my sister.
But they found out that they were like, no, you're not going
to do that. We can't have brother and sister
marriage again. That's we're not going down that
road again. That's terrible.
Like we. This is part of how this all got
started. Are you fools?
I throw the high towers in the ring as possible informants.
Allison found out that they were going to break them up and that
Jerry's acted and they ran away together and basically eloped.
And Jerry's because he's charismatic and smart kid, got
his King's guard on his side and the kings were like, no, yeah,
you're the hand, you're the Regent.
Doesn't matter. We follow the king.
Yeah, he's underage, but doesn't matter.
We don't care. We're following the king.
So they stood him down. This was the what, what I call
the new old Tower of Joy, because it was a very, very much
tower of joy. The King's guard, you know,
holding on to a marriage and the defending these guys against the
people, trying to break them apart.
And we have an episode on that none of the top houses wanted to
see another top house marry the throne bypassing the prestige.
Like the hightowers don't want the Valerians to marry the
throne. The Valerians don't want the
Hightowers to marry. None of them wanted that edge to
go to someone else. When you're in that like elite
group of 10 or 12 houses that are near the top none of them
wanted the others to get that edge over them.
So you can see why hey if I'm the Hightower and it's
definitely not going to be us that gets this royal marriage
then let's let it be no one so you can see why they would want
to undermine. Now there's the other great
houses could also be here in this so there's plenty of
culprit to be sure it's just you know we we're we're guessing the
high towers are there are they're on the list
possibilities here but we don't have any direct evidence that
they got involved. It's notable that the High licks
bill had no objections to Jerry's and Allison's marriage.
But a different high Septon might have.
So that's yeah. Now some someone who was
definitely against this wedding was Septon.
Matheus Matheus was a supposed, the descendant of the Gardner
kings who stuck stuck around. He was a big large guy, very
booming voice. He got so loud about it that
Jahari's actually threatened him.
He's like, keep running your mouth about my wife and I'm
going to sew your lips shut. And this is not how Jahari's
normally talks, right. We've talked about how he's like
the conciliator. That's not a very conciliating
thing to say. And then he then he sent him
home. He's like you.
You're out of here. But this is not the last we'll
hear from Matthias. Because where is out of here for
him? Old Town.
He he left for King's land and goes to Old Town.
So he probably immediately starts complaining to the Lord
Donald, it's like you sent me home.
I'm complaining about the marriage.
Like, well, you shouldn't complain about the marriage.
I don't know if Donald was willing to listen to Steph and
Matthias here and Lord Rogar actually prevented the letter
being sent to Old Town. There was a letter being sent to
Old Town saying Do Harris and Alisander get married?
Rogar's like, burn that letter. He went to the Maester and was
like, no, don't send that because he still wanted to
undermine the marriage and not for his own benefit.
He wasn't necessarily trying to gain like a marriage for his own
house. He just really, really wanted to
stop the potential explosion of the realm, finding out about it
because it's still been kept under wraps.
It hasn't been publicly announced yet, and to be fair,
their mom didn't want it either. Queen Alyssa also didn't want
it. She eventually bowed down, back
down, like, look, they've got us, we can't do anything about
it. The Tower of Joy thing she she
gave, she's like, OK, they've outmaneuvered us.
But Rogar didn't give up. So what did Rogar do next?
He sent a covert like commando squad led by his brother Oren
Baratheon to snatch Reina from the Sept and crown her because
he knew that was really Araya. He knew he was in on that, so he
knew who it really was. But it didn't work because what
happened was Oren shows up and he's like, I got a letter here.
I I need rail. The king, you know, the king
demands. The hand demands.
They're like the chief SEPTA who's an older lady is like
where are your papers? You know show me your
authorization. You know papers.
Give me your show me the seal on the.
You know, she's like, I don't know about this.
And this other steward who's there backs her up on this play.
And it's like, I don't know about this.
And this guy used to be a captain in the warrior's son.
So he's he's no slouch. Right.
She goes to to talk to the high licks, Fiddle to get permission
or like to talk to someone with more authority, but the high
lickspittle is asleep and it's this steward guy, this cap.
Former captain of the Warrior son's Casper Straw is his name
responds instead. And so had the high lickspittle
been awakened, he probably would have been like, yeah, go along
with it. I don't, you know, I'm not going
to stand in their way. Send the kid off instead, Lord
Donald is informed and this captain guy takes her.
Or and captain. And here's the quote to give us
the rest of the story. Father of the Faithful managed,
gentle as he was weak of will, heard Orange Baratheon's
confession and forgave him. This did not prevent Lord
Hightower, once informed, from throwing the captive Baratheons
into a dungeon and dispatching a full account of the affair to
both Red Keep and Dragonstone. Donald Hightower, who had
rightly been named on the Delayer for his reluctance to
take the field against Step the moon, and his followers seemed
to have No Fear in offending storms in by imprisoning Lord
Rogar's own brother. Let him come and try to price
him free, he said. When his Mace are worried about
how the former hand might react, his own wife took his hand and
cut his balls off. And soon enough King will have
his head. Yeah, so that refers to how
Alyssa stood down Lord Rogar when Rogar tried to overrule the
whole council. And Alyssa was like, you've gone
too far, you're no longer Hand as Regent.
She has that power. And Rogar was so offended that a
woman took his title away that he just kind of was like, I'm
not listening to you, even though that's his wife, by the
way. But the council was like, we're
going to, we're with the regionals.
Here, including Lord Corbre, who drew the Valerian steel blade
and laid it on the table with its point facing that Lord
Rogar. He took the hint there and just
had nothing to say. And like his face got all purple
and left and he still didn't stop, right?
He still did this other stuff and that's why Donald says soon
enough the king will have his head because this thing, this is
treason, right? This thing that he did here.
Events would seem to prove Lord Donald right.
Mostly he misjudged to Harris who again conciliate.
He forgave Lord Rogar and continue to work with him.
He just punished him. And Oren was exiled for, you
know, doing the, the Commando squad thing.
Donald suffered no reprisals from Hal Farathian, though.
So he was like, yeah, he's not going to do anything.
What is he going to do to me? So he was right about that.
So if those two had worked together in helping Jerry's make
his announcement and move forward against Megor, there's
no love lost here. There's like, Donald Hightower
didn't have any loyalty to Rogar.
They were just allies of circumstance.
I guess this tells us that's a little bit of this pushes back a
little bit against the notion that Lord Donald was overly
cautious. Yeah, cautious perhaps, But this
is he knew what he could get away with.
He he didn't. He wasn't a coward, he just
didn't want to take big risks. I guess he knew he just had his
way of playing the game and involved lower risk profiles,
but not necessarily none, you know?
I'm going to say it like I was, you know, arguing earlier that
he delayed when it was appropriate to delay, and it
happened to be a scenario where it was appropriate to delay for
quite a while. And so he quote UN quote in this
reputation. In this moment where it wasn't
appropriate to delay, he acted right away.
Right. He acted quickly.
You're right. Like he totally acted quickly on
this one. He he decisively imprisoned
those dudes, made this announcement, sent the A report
directly to King's Landing in Red and Dragonstone right away.
Yeah, yeah, that's a very strong point in 54 A/C.
So jumping ahead a couple of years, the high lickspittle died
and Harrison and Allison became concerned that whoever the new
bicepin was would not be so agreeable to their marriage.
It would speak out against them, and they were worried about
specifically Septon Matheus when Septon Matheus was a
high-ranking number, the most devout.
And even though they'd sent him home and expressed their
displeasure of him, he was still very popular in high-ranking
among the most devout and he might win the election for High
Septon and they did not want that to happen.
This is around the time the doctrine of exceptionalism was
developed and spread around. So what did they do?
They got on their Dragons, Jerry's and Ellis, and both flew
to Old Town to cut a deal with Lord Donald Hightower, which did
not please small council. They did not like the idea of
them alone in Old Town quote. When the king insisted that he
would have the protection of the Hightower, uneasy glances were
exchanged. Lord Donald is a schemer and a
sulker, said Manfred. Red red wine.
I do not trust him, nor should you.
He does what he thinks best for himself, his house and Old Town.
And cares not a fig for anyone or anything else, not even for
his king. And I must convince him that
what is best for his king is what is best for himself, his
house and Old Town said to Harris.
I believe I can do that. So he ended the discussion and
gave orders for their Dragons to be brought forth.
Even for a dragon Flight to King's Landing is a long one.
Yeah, so to Old Town, it's that we don't need to talk about
that. But I wanted to make note of
that last line about This is a loose, useful logistical data
point to show. Like, yeah, he he, Jerry stopped
twice on the way to Old Town. He didn't have to necessarily,
but he did at least probably have to stop once, I guess.
I don't know. Anyway, so Jerry's was right.
Apparently the deal was completed.
Quote. High towers of Old Town were an
ancient family, powerful, wealthy, proud and large.
It had long been their custom for younger sons, brothers,
cousins, ambassadors of the house to join the faith, where
many had risen high over the centuries.
Lord Donald Hightower had a younger brother, 2 nephews and
six cousins serving the seven in 54 A/C.
The brother, one nephew and two cousins wore a cloth of silver
of the most about it was Lord Donald's desire that one of them
become Highceptin. So we know what he wants, so we
very clearly get what he wanted here out of the exchange.
The deal was thus Alfon. The guy that we haven't
mentioned yet, just a member of the most about would be the next
Highceptin because he was a proponent of the doctrine of
reception. He was that was already known in
return the next high step. Then after Alphon and Alphon was
old, so all everybody knew he probably wouldn't be and he was
also like and and not in great health either.
So after Alphon dies, the next high step would be Lord Donald's
brother. But the high towers, all of them
would have to support the doctrine of exceptionalism as
well. That was part of the deal.
They have to back the back. That, and indeed, not only did
they back it, it became an official written tenant.
With the Faith of the Seven like it's in the rules, it's.
In a Geneva Convention. Look it up.
So Lord Donald then they accepted the deal and they
celebrated it with a feast. He had a feast where all the
high towers were there, this huge family.
And Lord Donald gives a speech about how great Harris is, how
wise and wonderful, and how much he's looking forward to his
reign and how all the high towers should feel the same way.
So it was very much marriage ceremony of sorts without an
actual marriage, you know, and and of course, you know there's
some, some appropriate cynicism is warranted here because Donald
is obviously just being political here.
He's surely willing to turn on a dime if the circumstances
warranted. But the circumstances don't look
like they're going to. That's what Jerry said.
Jerry says I'll make him see that this is his best move.
And he was right. At least it seemed that way.
Just look how callously look how easily this was pulled off that
Lord Donald could just promise Jerry's through the next high
step and would be and vice versa.
Kind of just gives us perhaps our starkest proof that the high
Tower pulls the strings here. It wasn't a question of can you
rig the voting, but a statement, I need you to rig the voting
right. And and it was okay.
Yes. We'll give you that in exchange
for the back and forth. And these things were just items
in a negotiation line, items to be added or subtracted.
There wasn't seeming any seeming worry about well, maybe we can't
pull this off. No, of course it'll work.
Septon Barth is our source for all this and he just in his
writings he just rues this corruption.
He's like it stinks that the most of out are so easily
swayed. But he also is frustrated that
what choice do they have. The gods are silent on the
matter. He's like why don't the gods
weigh in and and do something about this.
So his fresh he's a he's a believer and so his some of his
frustration is aimed at heaven. And I wonder as well how much
this negotiation between the high Tower and the king set up
future relationships. I mean, this is kept them on a
lockstep, at least at least in a few matters for quite a while,
and it enabled the two to get to know each other.
George Harrison, Lord Donald took each other's measure even
more. But also it didn't imply trust
just because this arrangement happened.
Lord Donald was passed over for consideration as hand to the
King. He still wasn't fully trusted.
Never would be. And why would he be?
He's still the same guy. Just because Jerry's convinced
him that in this matter, the high Towers interests aligned
with Thrones, that doesn't mean that it will.
And other matters. This isn't some oh, everything's
good for forever. Now that we've agreed on this
one thing, a couple random notes here that I found entertaining
before we move on to some of the meteor parts here.
Allison spent three days straight reading at the Citadel
during this time, during the time of these negotiations and
tried to get the Arch Maestris to admit women.
But they just sort of like, sure, we'll we'll consider that.
Yeah, we'll, yeah, we'll, we'll take that under advisement.
They didn't take that under advisement.
While Reyna was hunting area and Valerian, she came to Old Town
on dream fire and asked around, but of course they hadn't come
there. But still that's another dragon
that's been to Old Town. I like keeping track of that.
Also our further our earlier question about whether Valerian
could have landed on the High Tower, and I'm thinking no
Vermethor, didn't we? I remember Silverwing did, but
Vermethor landed in the big Plaza outside the starry set I
remember correctly. Definitively not on.
It's ours. So again, might be too big.
I mean, it'll be too small for Vermouthor, and if it's too
small for Vermouthor, definitely too small for Balerian.
At near the same time that this was happening, that she was
looking for Balerian. And in fact it was helpful to
Alyssa Farman that so many people were distracted looking
for a Ray and Balerian. The Sun Chaser docked it Old
Town. Of course, she was not known as
Alyssa Farman. Here she was, Alice West Hill
using that alias, and she began recruiting sailors.
Now much of her story involves knowledge, challenging of
existing knowledge, and the rejection of superstitious
beliefs about the world being flat, or that that there's just
like a giant waterfall at the end of the world that you just
fall or whatever. The people believed that there's
just boiling seas out there, just bizarre, unfounded,
unproven things with no evidence to back them up.
So I really wonder about how much they say the Citadel wanted
her to succeed, to expand the knowledge of the world.
Because a lot of the Citadel are like, we'd love a little more
evidence to throw in the face of these idiots who think the world
is flat because this is like the real world.
You know, there's this is a thing in Westeros too, of people
being like, yeah, I mean like sailors of this era, No, like
they can see the horizon curving there, don't they?
Don't think the world is flat. At least experience oneself.
But plenty of other people know nothing about sailing or like.
Yeah, of course the world's flat.
Someone living in the Hightower would not think the world is
flat. I could clearly see.
Like when I'm on the ground I can see this far up here.
I can span. You can see the curve, yeah.
There's other things in the real world too that they're able to
figure out, like shadows and shadows in different locations
at different times if you do calculations.
There's a lot of lot of evidence and and it would have maybe not
only wanted this knowledge. But there it would have brought
fame and glory to their home for them to get this new knowledge,
you know? Yeah, so this is pretty
interesting. So I really wonder about that.
Like what people in Old Town who were in the know what they
thought about this quest of hers.
Like, I think a lot of them just wanted her to succeed.
Some of them probably would have been like she's not going to,
but they would have still wanted her to or hope for new
discoveries or new anything. Just probably was pretty
exciting now. This is a whole untapped
resource rabbit hole thing, which is that the high towers
are a Mariner family. They've got a lot of seafarers
in their history, but we just have very little information on
what that has entailed. Except for in this case, where
there's a very strong and long story that we covered in our
episode on the Sun Chaser, because she was also a great not
only did she have this grand vision, she was really good at
explaining it and winning people over with the force of her
charisma and speaking ability. She won people over through
this, her expression of this grand vision.
And in two such people were Eustace and Norman Hightower,
grandsons of Lord Donald. These two were quote noted
Mariners, which is part of this, this rabbit hole.
That's the allure of this idea. Well, where did they go?
Where else have they been? There's never been a sea snake
or an Oaken fist or Alyssa Farman type Hightower and then
that famous. But there have been apparently
plenty of great high tower sailors and they were certainly
well equipped, right? They had their ships were nice,
their crews were well paid, probably.
At least they could have been. You know, they should have been,
and some few may have dared all the more boldly.
Because this is, they have like this rich guy confidence that
you can have from everything kind of working out for you or
your whole life's kind of expect everything else to work out for
you. Bolstered even further by maybe
being believers, worshippers of the faith, and believing that
heaven will protect them in their quest to, I don't know,
spread the faith to new lands maybe if they feel like that's
what they're doing. I don't know.
I don't know what they are, what what their motivation
necessarily is, but that that could have been one of the
possibilities. And recall to what we said about
the safety of the seeds relative to before, they aren't thrown
like more exploration and trade was happening because of the
tampering down on the ironborn, which is a relatively new thing
historically. So this would have been be going
even farther. Let's have a quote about this
business here. Slowly, she began to gather
willing hands. Inevitably, word of her efforts
came to the attention of the Lord of the Hightower.
Lord Donald's grandsons, Eustace and Norman, both noted Mariners
in their own right, were sent to question her and clap her in
fetters if they felt it prudent. Instead, both men signed on with
her. Fudging their own ships and
crews to her mission after that, sailors clambered over one
another in their haste to join her crew.
If the high towers were going, there were fortunes to be had.
The Sun Chaser departed Old Town on the 23rd day of the third
moon of 56 A/C, making her way down whispering sound for the
open seas in company with Sarah Norman Hightower's Autumn Moon.
And Sarah Eustace Hightowers Lady Meredith.
I wonder if Lady Meredith was the bride of one of the other
Hightower, feeling like a member of another house that married in
to the Hightower family. Or maybe an actual Hightower
mother? Yeah, I was doing, yeah, I was
doing with the mother. Yeah.
Like maybe, maybe Eustace's mother, because Eustace.
Yeah, as a grandson of Lord Donald.
Not that we know who Lord Donald's life was either, but.
Yeah, I mean, certainly they were Wretch enough that he could
have had a bride and named it after his wife, But I'm going to
guess it was a mother, not of life.
Yeah, I agree. The.
Lady and I don't know, Lord Donald.
The delay received word from King's Landing to arrest Lady
Alice because Jerry's figured out that it was her.
Apparently, and and the reason they wanted to get her was she
had stolen three dragon eggs. So that's a pretty big deal,
right? But either she had already left,
or Donald simply delayed and allowed her to leave and then
pretended to chase after because he supposedly sent out his
twelve of his fastest ships to catch her.
But he probably didn't expect them to succeed.
And indeed, Sun Chaser was wicked fast.
So yeah, they weren't going to catch her and they weren't going
to catch the Eustace and Norman either.
And they had a head start. I mean, and they like, what
direction did they like? They all.
Know where how you going to catch the open sea?
Like you're not going to catch them.
Three years later, Eustace returned.
It was the year 59 A/C Norman did not that.
The details of there are included in our discussion of
the episode. I certainly wonder what Lord
Donald thought of the three small islands they had found,
though it's dubious you saw them with much value.
There were some interesting fruits there, and some maybe
some unknown animals, but nothing like super valuable.
But still, it's a good example of him having control over
information. The high tower controlling what
goes in the history books and what isn't.
The maps we see these days don't usually bother to include those
3 little islands. It's just like you'd have to
make the map so much larger just to include three tiny islands
way out in the middle of nowhere.
You may have, like, kept this knowledge.
You may have just been like, I don't want anyone else to know
where this is, you know, let's keep it, keep it for ourselves.
Don't put it in the history books.
Don't talk about it. Now you can't entirely conceal
it because the sailors, a bunch of sailors went there.
They're going to talk about it like there's no way to keep all
this information down. But still, for him to decide
what's in the official record and what isn't, it's A to a
certain degree. Now, this is also the 10th year
of Darius's reign. There's 10th anniversary
festivities. No word if Donald actually
attended or not. Not at all.
Later in the year, though, came the shivers.
Same year the Shivers hit. Westeros was really bad.
One of the few good things about the Shivers is that because it
was spread by rats, there was a proliferation of cats around
Westeros. Cats kittens became very
valuable. People wanted to buy cats,
people wanted to spend. The price went way up.
Doesn't really affect you when you're super rich, so I'm
guessing the Hightower was full of cats like the Red Keep is.
Now, probably might still be as well because don't want those
rat, like any plague rat could get up to the top of the
Hightower. Like that's the thing that you
can keep the doors closed and everything.
Like those rats can still get to you, but not if you have cats.
Well, lot less likely if you have cats.
Here's a quote about how the city itself was affected outside
of the cat population. The great port city of Old Town
was especially hard hit, losing 1/4 of its population uses.
Hightower, who had returned alive from Alice Westfield's
illfaded voyage across the Sunset Sea, survived once again,
but his wife and children were not as fortunate.
Nor was his Grandsire or the Hightower.
None of the Delayer could not delay death.
He died shivering. So did the High Septon to score
the most devout and fully 1/3 of the Archmaesters, Maesters,
Acolytes, and novices of the Citadel.
Well, we have to consider this. If we think about the fact that
over the entire reign of Jerry's, the population of Old
Town like or the reach of Westeros in general double.
So we can presume that this was a big setback in that.
And then throughout the rest of Jerry's 44 more years or 45 more
years, then it recovered and and prospered and all the all these
good things happen. Now we're not sure if he,
Eustace's father died. He may have already died and
we're not sure who became Lord Hightower next.
We don't have the name it would have been, you know, because
other high towers likely died as well because of the shiver.
Just really throws the whole family tree for a loop here.
Whenever a major disease strikes like that, it makes it harder to
follow what happens next when multiple members of the family
die, especially when it's a large family to begin with.
That isn't fully charted. But Eustis didn't become Lord,
as far as we know, even though he was one of the survivors.
And I kind of doubt he would have been allowed to go on this
really dangerous voyage if he was, like in the line of
succession. But maybe not, Who knows?
It says the High Septon die. Now we're not sure if this was
High Septon Alfon, which would then enable Lord Donald's
brother to become High Septon as had been agreed on, or if this
was that brother and that Septon Alfon had already died.
We don't. We don't know about.
That which? Which?
Which answer is is true here? It's too soon afterwards for us
to be able to guess yet again. The high towers were considered
and discarded for the master coin position once the death of
Rigo Draz happened. But what they may have wanted
more, despite the lessons of the past, was a Targaryen marriage.
Terry and Alison had a lot of children.
Of course, it's over time. This wasn't something that
happened overnight. But you know, we're talking
about 50-5 years and, you know, a lot of kids.
Again, they didn't get their wish until later, but they.
Did get it, as we see with Otto. So that's it's still coming, but
we're getting close. In 70 A/C, Sir Hobart was born.
That's the Hobart from fire and blood.
That's. The Hobart.
Not the Hobart TV. But although that Hobart may
have these roles combined into one because they make it simpler
in the show, most mostly this is the Hobart that drinks with the
with off the white and joins the cow drops.
Later. There's a He dies.
You know he's like 60 when he dies, and so he's 70 or so.
This is 70 A/C, so the dance is still 60 or 59 years away from
this point. At the Citadel, there's a Plintz
commemorating Jerry's Great Rd. Project, and we don't know when
that was built, but it probably was built around then because
the road project started well before this.
In 73 A/C, Darius and Allison's daughter Magell became the next
Targaryen to join the Faith, and she goes there to become a
SEPTA. Five years later, her brother
Vagon did two to be an Archmaester.
Now, somewhere around this time, Otto was born.
It's 70 to 70, sixish. We don't know his exact age, but
it's before 76 A/C. So before Vagon comes to the
Citadel to be an archmaester, Otto is born.
We don't actually know otters otters.
We don't actually know Otto's brother's name in the show.
He's Ho Bear, right? But we don't know his.
So that's a perfectly promulent choice for them to make him a Ho
Bear, because there's plenty of Ho Bears out there amongst in
this family. But but yeah, we don't actually
know his book, the book version's name and we also don't
know their Lord father's name. But we do know.
Important reminder, Otto is not the first born.
Otto is second to his brother who became Lord.
And this, this phase, of course, it's their father that would
have been in charge and Viscera himself.
The eventual king was born in 77, by the way.
So that's another thing that maybe people forget is that Otto
is at least a year or two, maybe maybe 5-6, seven years older
than Viscera's. Otto was quote famed for his
learning according to Master Master Pylos.
Master Pylos tells this it's a Davos when Davos is like oh I'm
not good enough to be hand. I don't even know how to read.
I don't even know how to do this and that and I'm.
And major pales give pilot gives him the lesson about lots of
hands We're we're did this and that but sucked at being hands
and meanwhile we have this guy and this guy who were nobodies
that we're great except in Barth.
You know so Davos don't don't be down on yourself.
You might be great actually I don't know about might be Davos
you're great. So given this it's a pretty safe
assumption he took advantage of his house's proximity to
citadel. Right.
He's described Otto is as methodical.
He's may have had the makings of an archmaster if not for his
great ambition. He was also a knight though we
don't know anything about his martial skills.
It's probably one of those barely earned things or
something. He doesn't really.
Yeah. I got to be a knight.
But really I'm more interested in books and stuff like that.
Auto on TV is pretty subtle in a lot of ways.
Sometimes he's got his, like the way we've described Donald.
He's got different modes. He can be blunt and aggressive
and and authoritarian, but he can also be really subtle,
especially when talking to the Sheris.
The book version of him isn't quite like that.
The book version of him is more straightforward, a little blunt.
He's described as blunt and domineering.
That doesn't mean he wasn't clever or cunning.
It just means that it's just one of his modes.
My read on him is he's one of those guys that thinks he's
cleverer than he actually is. Like he is clever, but he thinks
he's even cleverer. He's got a really high
confidence in himself. I feel like a lot of what you're
saying is similar to Tywin. Like Tywin is want and
domineering but also clever, But maybe not as clever as he
thinks. And maybe that's why the show
wanted to make Otto a little difference.
Like this guy is a little too much like Tywin.
We want to make it. We want some variety, which I
can. I can understand that and.
It's not like they changed heads on.
Right. Yeah.
It's not a fundamental change to plot points, but I think it also
does add more nuance to this scenario.
You know, I think so too. Yeah.
It opens up more possibilities, more.
We can use our imagination a little more as to what he might
have been doing and what you might have been thinking and how
soon his ambition began. So he comes off as someone who's
who knows he's richer and higher status than you, but also thinks
he's smarter and knows more than you.
So it's like, I'd just better you and everything.
A really pleasant person, in other words.
Yeah, still these qualities especially the famed quote UN
quote learning skills or surely what got him noticed in the 1st
place. The along with his birth
obviously gave him huge leg up. Was he living at court ahead of
his appointment? I don't think so but maybe but
maybe his Lord father saw his potential and foisted him on.
The red key was like hey my son, take my son.
He's great, he's great and we have to push back a little bit
against him being too domineering and once, because if
he had been just rust with everyone, he probably wouldn't
have gotten away with so much, it probably wouldn't have risen.
Quite so high, you know. In other words, if he was
domineering and haughty towards the king all the time, he would
have been fired. Well, fired sooner than he was.
Because he was fired, let's not forget.
Or or he might not have been hired in the 1st place.
But of course Becerris didn't hire him.
That was Harriss. Harris may not have made the
right call. We'll get back to this in a
minute because this isn't what yet.
When he was hired, I just wanted to spend a minute on auto.
But let's come back to him after dealing with some other bitness
of the era. I I will say real quick
hindsight's 2020. Just because auto didn't end up
working out doesn't mean it wasn't correct to hire me.
That's a good point. Yeah.
Like he may have seen more promising and he may have, yeah,
they may not have process, may not have been flawed.
And Viscera could have handled things differently that it
wouldn't have turned out bad with auto right.
Like there's a lot of things could have gone.
You can't blame auto for everything.
Viscera explain blame In 85 A/C, Sarah Targaryen, another of the
princesses from Jerry Snell Sand, was sent there to join the
faith. Unlike Magell, she was.
She didn't go voluntarily. She was forced there as
punishment, but she ran away. She escaped.
Lord Hightower, whose name we don't know.
This is probably Otto's father sent men after her but failed.
In this case, we think it wasn't like Lord Donald.
He actually wanted to succeed in this case, probably, but didn't.
Sarah flees overseas and does her business and it doesn't have
much to do with the Hightower. After that in 86 A/C Allison
announced that their other daughter Viscera would marry
Theomore Manderly which may have disappointed the the Hightower
like that's to them that's that's one of the five cities of
Westeros is White Harbor. But Old Town is far more
prominent than White Harbor far older, and the Hightower see
themselves as a bigger deal than the than the Manderly's.
And in a lot of ways they're not wrong.
But they may not have had an available daughter, you know, I
mean available son for this. And Theomore was believed in
line to inherit that marriage never even took place because
the Sarah, you know had her drunk driving accident in the
King's Landing before she left for White Harbor in 88.
A/C Allison was born, which gives us a clue as to Otto
probably being born more than a couple years before age for
AC-76, because otherwise he had Allison to age 12.
Which, it's not impossible, but that's it's unlikely.
He was probably around 20 when Alison was born, safer guests
than him being 12. Anyway, In 89, Lord Hightower
staged attorney for the king because the king was traveling.
There. He did.
He was kind of doing his own sort of royal progress, but by
himself he was kind of sad. He and Alison had been fighting.
They had their quarrel. I forget if it was the first or
second quarrel. I think it was the 1st and 89
A/C happened to coincide with basically the 40th year
anniversary of his reign. So they had a tournament and
celebrated him and Ryan Red Wine won the tournament.
And just to give you an example of how many things were not able
to touch on in this episode that I want to touch on, like the
relationship between the Arbor. Old Town, it's like a completely
untouched thing. Like they're both really
powerful, they're right next to each other, both really rich and
have the means to just relax and do nothing all day if they
wanted to. You know, like the ones didn't
charge of all the wine. One's charge of you know
everything else and yeah, like, but they're not like the Old
Town isn't doesn't rule over the Arbor.
I mean they have in just long past but not recently.
So it's got to be a lot of back and forth between those two, not
just and I don't just mean trade and marriages but yeah, in 96,
grayscale came to Old Town and Magell was among those who died
and she died because she was working with before, working
with the sick, doing great tragic work.
So you can see we're moving through time a lot faster here.
This is just kind of the way the narrative work for us.
There's a lot of unexplored stuff in the second-half of the
Arias's reign. The the the focus in our sources
is on the early part of it and the same is true for a lot of us
arises reign. There's a lot that there's a
hyper focus on court and a little bit less elsewhere.
We can infer a lot than we have, but what I'm saying is there's a
lot of room for additional stories to be told Here.
I'll have some more thoughts on that.
In the outro, Prince Bailon died in the year One O 1, and that's
when Otto became him. Jerry said shown better judgment
with counselors in early life. And again, Sean made a good
point about maybe this isn't bad judgment, but he had made other
bad choices like Ryan Red Wine as hand.
Ryan Red wine was a quote, UN quote.
Disaster as a hand. Amazing King's guard night,
amazing warrior, but a terrible hand.
I don't know. We don't know whether that was a
good process or not. I was like, no one could have
seen that coming. I kind of feel like that one was
kind of an obvious mistake but I don't know for sure.
Well, I think it's possible Bailon was murdered.
I doubt it. And I doubt that if he was, it
was the High Towers. Even though Otto became Hand
because there's how could they have known who would be chosen
his hand unless there's some details, some data we don't know
about, like Otto was just become really prominent and just showed
a lot of promise for that regard.
Like he's a candidate for being Hand and there's just pretty
much no way they could have known out of all the like
literally dozens of candidates, maybe more than that Jerry could
have named his hand. How could they have known?
It would be odd, especially because Jerry had shown that he
wanted his hand to be from his house.
He his first hand was when his son Eamon was old enough to be
Hand. He was Hand.
When Eamon died Bailon became Hand.
So like how would they have known he would even choose a non
Targaryen anyway? It's important to note that the
Great Council of One O One came before Otto was named Hand, so
there was no Hand of the King during the Great Council of One
O 1. That's the important little
detail that I think a lot of people overlook.
The High Towers, of course, voted for Vince Harris and well,
let's have a quote about what came next.
As his new hand. He called upon Sarah Otto
Hightower, younger brother to Lord Hightower of Old Town.
Sarah Otto brought his wife and children to court with him and
served King Jahari's faithfully for the years remaining to him.
As the old King's strength and wits began to fail, he was off.
Confined to his bed, Sarah Otto's precocious 15 year old
daughter Allison became his constant companion, fetching His
Grace his meals. Reading to him, helping him to
bathe and dress himself, the old king sometimes mistook her for
one of his daughters, calling her by their names.
Near the end he grew certain she was his daughter.
Sarah returned to him from beyond the Narrow Sea.
In the year 103 A/C, King Jahari's the First Targaryen
died in his bed as Lady Allison was reading to him from Septon
Barth's Unnatural History. Some people have glorious deaths
and battle. Tyrion has his lusty version
that he wants to be his but reading a sweet book, not the
worst death ever. Kind of like it actually, minus
the dementia part. He was like 69 years old by the
way. I mean that's not particularly
old. This is another rabbit hole.
But not suggesting he was murdered, although it's
possible. Just for another example of a
Targaryen just not making it into old age very well.
They just their mental decline. Seems they do pretty well young
if they don't have the instability from birth, but
mental decline seems common amongst Targaryen's.
Allison didn't seem to have the same decline, but she did die
before him, so she did have. She broke her hip when she was
in her 60s, and yeah, so she didn't live super long either,
although she didn't seem to avoid the mental decline.
Still, maybe she had some that wasn't well documented.
It's part of maybe why they ceased to get along as well, but
there's lots of reasons why they didn't get along that we don't
have to chalk up to mental health issues.
We know that Otto effectively rule along with Allison when
Viscera was ill near the end of his life.
That's well documented in Fire and Blood and we all saw it on
TV. Well, assuming you watched that,
but it was well documented on TV and that was pretty similar in
both book and show. It was extended a bit in the
show, but either way, it tells the story pretty well.
But that's a quarter century from where we are now.
We're still at the beginning here.
We're still Jerry's is still alive where we're at.
You recall that Otto also effectively ruled around for
those two years before Beseris was king.
Otto ruled for dying to Harry, so this is when he did that for
Beseris. It's it's easy to forget that he
had practice ruling for a king that was bedridden, and so he he
kind of had insight on what he could do, like what his
limitations are and aren't this basic.
It's a lot of experience here. I think this is kind.
Of what people he could count on.
He he had the right contacts. He knew the star channels of
communication and and had started to dig in like started
to get his hooks into this, into this office and develop a
network and have spies, people that would report to him,
establish relationships for trading information for, for
money or whatever. So yeah, the the longer he's
entrenched in this job, the more he's able to do with it.
Especially when you have a king who's dying followed by a king
who just kind of doesn't really care that much.
A king was just like he just doesn't.
He wants to keep his work to a minimum and his partying to a
maximum, which gives Otto a lot of room to just do what he's
doing from his perspective, while the Harris mostly just
kind of ignores it. So Harris, of course, isn't
paying much attention because he's dying, and as his brain is
not what it once was, there's a lot he could do.
And meanwhile, his brother back there, the Lord of Old Town, is
his gobetween or his helper, his backer or his advisor.
All these things they're plotting together, and he's got
the resources of the Hightower to facilitate whatever networks
he wants, to build his hand to the king, to make these things
work super well and to connect them back to Old Town.
Doubleedged swords here, really powerful.
I mean, we think about spy masters like Boris and
Littlefinger who are really effective and really smart, but
consider how little they had to start with.
They had to work their way up. Auto just has all this and he's
not as clever as them and he and there's something to be said for
having to work your way up gives you a lot of qualities that you
wouldn't have if you were just born with all this wealth.
But there is certainly other advantages to be had by just
starting with all that wealth and prestige and being able to
just kick it off. Like look what happened when the
high when people found out the Hightowers were joining Lady
Alyssa Farman on her voyage are like, oh, the Hightowers are
going, we're in. So just that the name carries so
much weight to it. Like, oh, Otto Hightower, eh,
he's the Hand. Let's go chat with him and see
what we how we can both benefit from this arrangement.
And he seems like the kind of guy that would play ball
without, you know, but keeping it subtle, he was still pretty
subtle in this regard, even though he was dominant and hard
and haughty and all that stuff, the massive resources coming
back from Old Town to assist him in whatever business he was
getting into, I think it was a pretty big deal.
Now, the show gave us some ideas as to, you know, his brother's
pushing him for this and that, and we don't know for sure that
was happening in Book Cannon, but it's a reasonable facsimile
of what we would expect. Like, I agree with the show's
imagination to, you know, as far as going there.
Like, yeah. That's very believable.
It's it makes sense that this is how it would go.
Yeah, I was going to say I don't think it's a stretch at all.
It's probably the most likely. It doesn't mean it is, but it.
It seemed like the most likely little things, like hail, hail,
egg on the Conqueror babe, like that little thing like that was
really funny. But like I kind of think they
would do things like that, like that.
That's I thought it was a nice touch Like that is little things
they would do to push the opinion towards their son, their
kid, their Hightower child, the Hightower Targaryen rather than
Rainera. Again, there's some other
Hightowers that we mentioned Again, Sir Hobart's around in
this time. Otto's nephew Ormond.
That's his brother's son. Ormond is the one who eventually
becomes Lord during the dance. Or not during the dance.
Well, he is Lord during the dance, but he becomes Lord
before the dance. We just don't know exactly when
Otto's brother dies and Orman takes over.
There's also Brendan Hightower, who's a badass warrior with a
wielding a long axe in battle for Lord Orman much later, and
in the show, Otto is only given one son, Gwayne.
In the book he has Laurel Son. We don't know what the Gwain's
the only one we have the name for though and Gwain in the
books is is not the eldest. And what is?
Let's talk a little bit. Here's another quote about Otto
talking about how he transitioned from one king to
the next. Sir Otto Hightower had continued
in that office, serving the grandson as he had the Grand
Sire. An able man, all agreed, though
many found him proud, rust and haughty.
The longer he served, the more imperious Sir Otto became, that
was said. And many great Lords and princes
came to resent his manner and envy him his access to the Iron
Throne. The greatest of his rivals was
Damon Targaryen, the King's ambitious, impetuous, Moody
younger brother. Yeah, of course we're going to,
of course, some of this. We've covered a lot elsewhere,
so we're going to try to keep this from the perspective of the
high tower. Of course, it's hard not to
overlap some here and there, but yeah.
Anyway, just a little. Yeah, one thought I had here was
just thinking about something you brought up, I'm pretty sure,
in the last episode. The idea that we got to take a
lot of perspectives on the high towers with a grain of salt
because they control so much of the history writing that it's
going to be more self preserving.
Is that right? Like they you know they're going
to make themselves look good in history.
But this is an example where auto isn't.
Look, now this is maybe a time when their control over history
is slipping a little, right? But it's still worth noting that
he's. Not being presented in the most
positive light year, especially considering he does seem to be a
competent hand, you know, so I think that's noteworthy.
It's also noteworthy that whatever angle this is is
portraying the negative bits to him is being pitched against
Damon, the ambitious, impetuous, Moody younger brother likeable.
It makes sense that maybe he's not going to get along with that
guy who is, you know? Yeah, that doesn't sound like
someone who gets along with a lot of people.
Either way, the Hightower saw the potential in this access to
the Iron Throne, and these other Lords saw it too.
They saw they were, they were jealous of that.
They obviously they were jealous of it because of its value.
And you can. It also really tracks, just from
human perspective, that the longer he served, the more
imperious he became. The more he had his hooks dug
into the throne, The more his position was established and
trenched, the more he could do with it, the more arrogant he
got. That makes total sense now.
And of course, his access and his attitude surely jumped
massively when Allison married the king in 106.
I mean, that just made must have made him felt nearly
bulletproof. Like how is he going to not have
huge influence now his daughter has married the king.
Now that this is kind of unusual, right?
This is a good example of soft power.
There is pretty much no way Allison marries the king if Otto
Hightower isn't. There's almost no way he even
barely takes notice of her otherwise.
Now of course part of this also started with Allison being at
court for Jerry's and getting ingrained in the family, being a
familiar face around court and all this stuff.
But it started because of Otter was hand that was the hand under
Jerry's just as much as Jerry. So and it said he brought his
family to court as soon as he was hired as Hand.
So Allison had been there quite a while like good.
A good portion of her upbringing was at the Red Keep, and we can
only imagine that his hottiness, like I said, it jumped even
more. And his, his.
He said he maybe wasn't so domineering toward the king and
maybe he reserved after everybody else.
It seemed like he started to get hotty and a little bit
domineering even towards the king, because this is when we're
going to go down, when he get he pushed too far and got fired,
Nina writes. And remember, no one was holding
a gun to Beseris's head and saying keep Otto Hightower's
hand. He didn't.
He could have named a new hand when he came became king.
But he as Beseris's pattern seemed to be it ain't broke.
Don't fix it. And you it's really hard to
convince Becerras it's broke. So he thinks things are fine
most of the times. He rarely thinks anything needs
fixing and no one forced him to marry Alice.
These neither of these things were.
We want to blame Otto's ambition for some of these things and and
that's fair. But Becerras had to accept them.
He could have easily said no to any of these things or chosen
someone else or any of that. So yeah, you got to blame
Becerras a lot here. Nina's points out that, yeah,
the high towers were doing things that are unethical, but
every Lord, every house would have done the same, pretty much.
They would have all wanted the same things that Otto got, and
they would have not necessarily thought his methods were wrong.
They would have just been jealous.
Not like, oh, he was dirty to do that.
No, they would have tried to get their daughter married to the
king, too. They're like, fair play, you
know? But ultimately, yeah, yeah.
And people were upset like that. Just like in the show we saw,
the Valarians especially were upset by the Ceres's decision to
marry Allison. There was pride involved.
But also, it's just probably shouldn't have remarried.
You know, he just take a lover. Sure.
But the wife, the stability, the problems, Yeah, but it's for
Ceres, for you. So back in the saddle, it's
interesting to compare this situation to what they had with
Nagor. Both.
Times they're married to the secondary branch.
In Megor's case it became the first branch because of him, but
in this case they're the reason it became the primary branch or
tried to become. They tried to push their branch
above the Rainiers branch. That's Les Visaris's fault and
more his just in action, right? Which is partly his fault.
But this is more about the conniving of the high towers.
I think during Viscera's reign as we said, Otto's brother dies
and Ormond becomes Lord. We don't know when as I said
before, but I'm suspecting it was sometime around one 18120
maybe. I'm sure pretty much a pure
guest though. Lionel Hightower, who is Orman's
son and will be the heir of the Hightower during the Dance of
the Dragons is born around one 14115.
Also Ormond has Bethany, Martin and Garmin and those names may
or not mean anything to you, but Bethany is very important in the
some drama afterwards and Garmin well Garmin gets the Targaryen
marriage. How do I push for Ray Nira?
Because he feared Damon would be another Megor which is a really
interesting thing to consider given what we just said about
the Hightowers. Having had this experience with
Megor very personally before, how did they feel about that on
a personal level? We know maybe how they felt on a
political level, on a realm level, but like, this is
personal. Megor was an inlaw of theirs
only 40 years or 60 years prior, 4050, whatever.
And we know Otto did various things to undermine Damon and
Damon to him. They had their back and forth as
we see. He removed him as Master of
Coin, he removed him as Master of Laws, and then he became Lord
Commander of the Gold Cloaks, which kind of backfired because
then he had a bunch of armed men under his command right there at
the Red Key. So a good example of Otto maybe
not making the right choices for his own benefit.
As the quote notes, Otto was off putting too.
Damon was off. Maybe not as bad as Damon,
although maybe he was as bad, depending on who you're who.
You're speaking to some people like Damon Moore and people like
Otto Moore. Some probably hated them both.
It's highly notable, though, that in terms of how likable
Otto was and how the Hightower was seen in this era, that
Costane, Mullindor and Beesbury, those are all vassals of the
Hightower. All of them fought for the
blacks. None of them stayed loyal to the
High Tower. And they all have reasons, very
good reasons. Of course, the Beesbury is kind
of straightforward. We see like Lord Beesbury is
murdered in that council scene near the end there.
So that's kind of, that's almost straightforward.
But we also have the example of Morgan Hightower and that may
have caused some issues. The costains, well, we talked
about Eleanor Costains. So we kind of have an
understanding there as to why that might have been a split
Mullendor. I'm not sure what their deal
was, why they fought for the blacks, but I.
Think they just mulled it over? That's a good point.
They mulled it over and decided to fight for Rainier, but either
way it's very notable they didn't fight for the high
towers, especially with the high towers being really close by.
Much more able to punish them if something goes wrong, versus
King's Landing being almost as far as away it is as it is from
Old Town now, Nina says. We should consider the other
angle here. It's not possible to hit the
high towers were villains to their vassals simply because
their vassals fought on the opposite side of the Civil War.
The Black Fire rebellion gives us a ton of examples of houses
joining with Damon over the Red Dragons and that includes going
against their overload, so it it's not super uncommon.
Robert rebellion, same thing. There were standis talks about
what a difficult choice it was to fight for your family or for
your your king. So lots of Lords and ladies have
had this difficult decision over time.
It just so happens that we have some reasons that it may have
been personal between. High Tower and one of their
vassals, or multiple vassals. But before that, it happened
before the war breaks out. We got 30 years of maybe back
and forth of Lord Hightower and his son Ormond, and maybe even a
little bit of Otto. Because remember, Otto was
fired. So for a while he was back in
Old Town. It was 10 years of him being
back in Old Town. They would have maybe been
trying to negotiate with their vassals, being like keep them on
their side because they may have been seeing they're still
angling for an eventual conflict, although they're
hoping it won't be a con, They're just hoping that they
win the throne. As bloodlessly as possible.
But they have to know that it might not go that smoothly and
to prevent that outcome, they want to have.
You saw what they did. They tried to just win through
sheer force, like you don't even want to fight us because half
more than half the realm is already on our side.
They wanted to try to keep the blacks from even trying.
They're like, look, there's 80% of the realms on our side.
You're not going to, you can't win, don't even try.
That's they wanted to overwhelm them before it even got started.
So you would think that. This would include trying to
make sure their own vassals were on their side for when that
moment eventually came, if it came.
I also wonder if Auto had anything to do with Vasaris not
claiming a dragon. I wouldn't think he would push
Vasaris to not claim a dragon. You might push Vasaris to claim
one, and Vasaris is like, Nah, I don't want to, I don't want to
have a dragon. But it's kind of interesting
that to wonder if there had been any conversations of that
regard, because Targarians usually have Dragons and Vasaris
was like, yeah, Valerian died, I'm good.
I wonder, yeah, I would have pushed that.
Way I can imagine him maybe not pushing him to not get a new
dragon, but not pushing him to get a new dragon.
No, the serious is finding that happening.
Hey, I was happy with him not having it too.
Yeah. And I also wonder later remember
Rainier Rainier's children, their their eggs hatched.
Their Valerian children, their eggs hatched.
And that was for a lot of people who didn't expect that to
happen. I wonder if the Hightower
expected it. We know Allison expressed that
she was surprised it would happen and kind of frustration
that those eggs hatched. I wonder if the High Tower
expected that. Did they consult the books?
Were they like, yeah, we don't think they're going to hatch.
And Allison was acting on that. Maybe she was.
Maybe that came from a point of knowledge rather than just
wishful thinking. It's like, well, of course those
eggs won't hatch. They're not true Targaryens.
But maybe there was some real, like, lore behind that belief
rather than just a, you know, petulance, which it may have
been. So that's that's interesting as
well. You know, in 109 he had.
That's when he pushed too hard, was fired.
About the matter of succession. But by then Allison was well
established. So it's almost like he maybe he
could afford to take this risk because even with him gone,
Allison was still had her hooks and Becerras by this point and
had a lot of sway over what he was doing.
Remember this is a much older, wiser and angrier version than
the show gave us. She had a following and A and a
not just Kristen Cole. Although she didn't have Kristen
Cole in 109, she had a lot of people that.
Supported her because of her dominance, because of her strong
personality and her high place and high station, we can assume
there's a lot of correspondence. Otto sending letters to Allison.
Allison Lennon sending letters to her back.
Other high towers Getting involved, maybe talking to his
brother, Getting his advice before sending things to
Allison. Allison might not always do what
they thought was best, however. She may have her own ideas and
who knows? For example, here's a good one.
In the show we saw Otto make the very odd offer of Agon to to
Rainier. Now it's even odder in the show
because Agon's 2 and Rainier is like 16.
In the books. It's a little less weird because
Agon's 6 and Rainier is 16. Still pretty weird, but a little
less weird. But the more important point
here is that Allison makes that offer.
Not Otto, but it may have been Otto's idea but it doesn't have
to have been like it easily could have been Allison's idea,
like they're look they're going for the same goal.
But it's interesting to note this is a point of as an example
of Allison. May have made the offer, may
have wanted to make there, but she may have consulted with Otto
1st and like well, what's the best way for me to bring this
up? Maybe is there anything you can
suggest for me to like how to approach the conversation or
something I can say to Anyway, she may not have needed that,
but it's entirely possible she was, and I think Hightower Pride
might have mattered a lot here too.
Sure, the ambition is huge, but. If they lose to House Valerian
in this sort of competition for Vaseirs, that's one thing.
But if they lose to bastards, I think that actually mattered.
Like we sit here going on, we don't care but yourself in the
shoes of these super high-ranking nobles.
To them bastards are just so wrong, you know, they're like,
oh bastards. All they do is steal land from
entitles from trueborn children who really deserve it.
And they it's it's wrapped up in the faith like they believe
these bastards are are. Born of lust and our bust
themselves spoiled goods, you know they're spoiled by the gods
haven't blessed this union. This this child isn't born under
the auspices of the 7th, so something's wrong with them.
This belief might be a little bit more prominent in high
towers, or at least the way they want to present themselves to
their constituents and vassals because they got to keep up
appearances that they're believers in the faith.
Which brings us as well to how much the faith started to move
in. At King's Landing during this
era, we see Damon and Rainier, like, what is all this stuff?
What are all these seven pointed stars doing here?
Man, like that. That also happened in the books.
It didn't happen quite the same way, but yeah, there's a lot of
them cloaking themselves in the faith to make their actions look
justified, and that includes Haroldry and iconography and.
Speeches and performances and meetings with the High Septin
just public events to show their piety and in addition to that it
may have manifested its false confidence.
Like high towers are proud and pride leads to confidence in a
lot of ways false confidence. In this case, as I'm saying
surely that woman will not become queen over the boy agon.
That kind of attitude that like self perpetuating belief that
because it's. What they want It's going to
happen. And maybe Allison didn't need
their advice on handling her own husband, but she may have wanted
advice on how to split Damon from the how to put a wedge
between the two, or how to keep Rainier up from gaining powerful
supporters. Or how do you more ways to use
the faith to their advantage to make to rise their branch of
House Targaryen above the Valerian side?
Remember, Sarah's considered marrying Rainier to the Prince
of Dorn at one point. I.
Wonder if Allison weighed in on that one way or the other.
Like no, don't or yes do or I don't know.
I'm not sure whether they would have won.
I think, no, I don't think they would have want Dorn brought
into the realm at this point. But maybe they maybe they would
have seen a benefit to it. And I think if you think that
there's a risk of of of you not wanting Rainier as queen, right,
you don't want her married to the Prince of Dorn because then
you're just going to lead to her having like a whole Kingdom able
to defend her. That's true.
About Kingdom. It's a whole other.
That was so for her being king specifically, they're more used
to the woman being in charge, right?
You're right. Dangerous.
Like if you you marry her to the Prince of Dorne.
If you think she should be king. I mean, it should be queen.
That's the only way. I think you're right both of
y'all. So I think Allison probably was
like, no, like let's not do that.
And she may have written Otto and been like, well, how should
I best? Talk him out of this.
Like I'm trying to talk him out. And like, I'm not saying Allison
constantly needed advice from her father.
She could have done a lot of the things on her own, but that
option was always there. She might have wanted him to
weigh in. Just maybe he says something she
didn't think of. Maybe he has some advice like
he's been. He has a lot of experience, so
you can see why she might. He's her father, you know.
She might be getting advice from her father one way or the other.
Where she wants her asked for tonight, he's still is probably
giving it to me. He's domineering hot, he said.
He may have been sending her unsolicited advice and some of
it may have actually been useful or.
Okay. Well, you make a good point
here, Dad. I'll do this.
Grand Meister runs that are died in the year 112 and was replaced
by Grandmaster Melos. Interesting point.
Did the high towers weigh in on who was going to be chosen as
Grand Meister in such an important time?
Or did they not care that much because the service is already
kind of a pushover and they're kind of getting what they want?
I don't know Melos. May not have been if they chose
him. I'm thinking they didn't get
what they wanted because Melas encouraged the match between
Leonor and Rainera. He encouraged the valerian match
here, but he knew. But everybody knew Leonor was
gay, so maybe he was doing that to encourage a dead end marriage
like they were. Maybe they were thinking there
wouldn't be kids here. Maybe that's what they thought
would happen. They're like Leonor is going to
marry and ERA and they won't have any kids and that's our
chance. We'll be, you know, we we get to
inherit that way, it's a better opportunity for us to usurp
their line if it has no descendants.
It's a really good flaw to expose in a bloodline that it's
going to die, it's going to end. So they may have thought they
could sneakily end Rainier his line by marrying her to a gay
man. It obviously didn't work because
they got around that with a a certain strong method.
Mellos was also considered a friend of the king.
But this is a. Weird point, they say.
Beserra's considered Mellos a friend, but Mellos actually
floated. In.
His histories, that Beserras might have been the one to
murder the Strongs sound like a friend would do openly accuse
you of murder? That's kind of an odd moment,
but but Beserra's considers everyone his friend.
You know, anyway. He was not particularly
successful with his treatments and the show dragged this out a
lot longer. But in the book, remember
Viscera's hand injury occurs much later in his reign and he
is unsuccessful with his treatments.
And it's Girardi's brainer is Maester who comes and amputates
the fingers and that actually seems to do a decent job.
Allison complains and is like, no, you maimed him.
Call my Maester from the High Tower instead to replace him.
And Brainerd's like Girardi already did a good job use him.
And Beser is like, I don't choose the Grand Meister.
You don't choose the Grand Meister.
The Senatel chooses the Grand Meister.
And Allison's like, yeah, my family is like, but they sent or
while or while seemed to bow to Otto on most wishes.
So it seems like maybe Allison got kind of got what she wanted
even though it wasn't precise. Meister she named.
She got someone that mostly did what Otto wanted.
And of course by the time to 127, Otto is backed by that.
Now, I would also want to know the Hightower reaction Otto's,
especially when Damon had children with Lena.
Whose daughters would they marry?
I mean, who? Who would those daughters marry?
Rather? Whose sons would those daughters
marry, They'd wonder. Maybe they even considered
marrying them into their family, but nothing really ever happened
there except. When it did, way, way later in
114, Daron who became Daron, the Daring was born.
So that's important because Daron's going to live in Old
Town. We'll come back to that in a
minute. It was the year 120 when Otto
came back to the Red Keep to become Hand again.
I'm assuming his brother was dead by this point, and so he
had probably been in Old Town when his brother died and Ormond
became Lord of the High Tower. So this changes the dynamic a
bit. Instead of brothers working
together, Lord Hightower and his brother Otto, you've got the son
and and his uncle or uncle and nephew.
So that's just a different, like different personalities involved
here. Maybe Otto and Ormond don't work
together as well as Otto and whoever his name was, Ho Bear in
the show. So a lot of other things that
happened in there, like this is the year of the Red Spring, so
this is a very eventful year. Payment, claims Bagar.
So the high towers are like. Yeah, we got.
That that massively increases our fortunes.
Not to mention they had other Dragons in general.
The blacks had bigger Dragons, even with Bagar on the other
side. But but given time right, small
Dragons become big ones. Big Dragons only get a little
bit bigger, so these time was going to be on their side.
In terms of Dragon growth, of course, there wasn't quite as
much time as Otto may have hoped for.
Or maybe they hope. They.
Of course, I don't really hope that there would be no war at
all, but the years weren't ran on.
Not only did the number of Dragons on both sides grow, so
did the number of just outright children.
They're just the factions just grew and grew and it had a
second generation. Now.
Aegon and Helena had Jerry's and Jara and then Maylor and 123 and
127 respectively. In 126, they inched closer to
having. Dragons be a familiar sight in
Old Town, which I think was probably a goal of theirs in the
long term. Of course it was never fully
manifested, but Prince Daron and his dragon to Serion the Blue
Queen went to Old Town not just to like live there, but to
Squire for Lord Orman. How often is a dragon Prince a
Squire? Well, actually a few times, but
not many times. In fact we hear loose
Arisenville and Aries for Squires.
But to who? I'm not sure to who this may
have been to Damon. Which which is like okay, you're
a dragon Prince Squire. For another dragon Prince,
that's more appropriate. But putting this kid below Lord
Hightower is this kind of an interesting little dynamic
there. And he's not just a Squire
though he's his cup bear, but that as far as I know he's not
heard of. For a dragon riding Prince, not
a Targaryen that we have seen. But the dragon riding Prince to
be a cup bearer for a Lord and he's there for three years
before the war breaks out. That's three years of.
Ormond and Daron getting to know each other, Of Ormond being in
the authority position over Daron.
Daron's a good kid, but not a not a, not someone who pushes
back against authority. Dutiful Squire, we told someone
who took orders and followed the noble hierarchy as as bit of a
conservative in that regard, I suppose.
But this whole thing about Dragons being there and it
getting normal and normal. More normal for Dragons to be
there and this dragon that lived there, that's.
We've had Dragons visit there, but this is the first dragon to
live in Old Town. At least unless maybe you go
back thousands, thousands of years.
There's maybe some ancient times and things were different, but
obviously that's got nothing to do with.
Now. There's that letter Otto sent
his brother that we cited earlier about how he was worried
that Damon would become the next Megawar.
I wonder what he and his nephew, Lord Armand and Allison,
discussed like in advance. They've been angling for the
throne this whole time. All the way back from when the
first kids were born. For when Agon was born, they
were like, as soon as they had a male heir, they're like he
should be the next king. After the series, they've been
pushing for it for 20 plus years.
What preparations do they make behind the scenes?
We know a few of them. We know some of them come out in
that council scene and those, those mirrors, some of the
things that happened in the book when Allison's like, you did all
this without me, like what the hell those planning happened,
right? That that planning started way
before that. Like it started like years
before that. Some of it anyway.
How far in advance did they decide like that?
If it came to it, they were going to full blown usurp.
If if Becerris never agreed, well we're still going to do it
When he dies, whenever that is, I don't know that's when it's
going to be, but they could. They knew he wouldn't live a
long time. It was pretty that that writing
was on the wall before he cut his fingers off.
But it was really on the writing on the wall after when he did,
because he was already like someone partied too hard.
It wasn't very healthy, drank a lot, gained a lot of weight,
wasn't, you know, his face was red all the time.
Yeah, just an unhealthy guy. And again, Nina points out that
this is still yes, they did this.
Yes, it's the same kind of maneuvering.
But any this isn't Hightower specific, necessarily.
Pretty much any house would have done this.
There's a few exceptions, but that's mostly going to be about
the character of the Pete, the individuals that happened to be
a line at this time. Even aside from Hightower, do
you think that the other members of the small council and other
Lords nearby or around the realm didn't have contingency plans?
You know, I'm sure there was, you know, some plans maybe are
too risky to talk about, right? If it's heard someone you know,
it could go bad. But some people were probably
had enough confidence in each other that they would discuss
the contingency plan. You know that maybe even some
things don't need to be discussed.
They just like, yes, obviously XYZ is happening.
You know what I mean? Maybe the details of Z1 Part 2,
you know, haven't been spoken out loud, but Z is happening.
Yeah, you know. It says just another Westerosi
aristocratic family in a world which operates on diagnostic
ambition. Yep and yeah, absolutely.
And to be fair, they they're more positioned than most houses
to be able to facilitate some of these things, which isn't in
itself evil. It's just they know that they
have more means to do this. We also wonder as well just how
many other houses just reached out to the Hightowers and said
yo, you can count on. If it comes down to it, yeah, we
don't want a woman on the phone. We'll we'll support you because
you're the Hightowers. We don't like those Valerians,
We don't like the Valerians. We want the faith, we want a
man. Whatever their reasoning was,
whether it's they don't like women, whether it's they don't
like Valerians, whether they do like Hightowers, whether they
want their reach house and they prefer this.
Prestige to be closer to them. A lot of reasons, but the high
towers would be going around and like sounding that out like.
Hey, you know what? If things were to come down, you
know, what's that you're like? What do you think of a queen
like? What do you think of?
What's your opinion of us having a queen you're like?
Oh. I hate a queen.
You know, like, OK, well, maybe we should, oh, maybe we should
talk to you a little more than because we also don't want a
queen. And if they're like, I think
Queen Rainier would be just fine.
They were like. Next, you know, moving on.
OK, write them down in the no column.
Watch out for this house later, you know, and unless there's a
change at the top, you know, like the son takes over for the
father, Maybe they check in again.
Maybe this new maybe the new change of leadership also
involves a change of attitude about whether they want a king
or a queen or whether they prefer one or the other.
So near those near the end when Becerras was sick, they knew
their chances were peaking because not only was Becerras
not long for this world. As they saw, they probably see
like he's maybe got a few years left in him, but they they knew
that he wouldn't be around 10 more years most likely.
So they had to prepare for the inevitable.
And at this time, it was easier than it might have been, because
with him being sick, they're given control of the daytoday
operations of the Realm show did a pretty good job of showing how
back into a corner this put Rainier's faction when the high
towers were basically. Getting to make the Viscera's
decisions for him. So of course they're going to
make decisions that are in their favor whenever it comes to that.
This is why so many people suspect Viscera's was was
murdered, and of course the show doesn't give us that.
But that's not important. The the book maybe suggests the
possibility. I don't think they did, but it's
definitely possible because man, the timing is pretty good.
Nina doesn't agree with me, so this is a little give you a
counterpoint here, she says. While it may have been somewhat
immediately logistically convenient that Rainier was
pregnant, the Green Faction was not in any sort of complete
control of power, nor do I think they gained by killing off the
Cirrus. So long as the Cirrus remained
alive, there was a chance that he would change his mind and and
just name the son instead of his daughter.
Maybe Rainier would do something to piss him off, like she had
done things to piss him off or so.
Maybe she would change her mind so it's again that soft power
angle that if all they need is the king to change his mind and
it avoids so many problems, so if they kill him, that chance is
gone and it almost certainly turns to bloodshed and then
anything can happen. Not to mention, in the meantime,
they're basically ruling in his stead.
Like they would love for him to stay alive, incapacitated as
long as possible for a bunch of different reasons.
I'm, I'm very much, I mean, OK, great.
OK, that's good. I'm, I'm glad to hear that.
I think you guys have a very strong point here.
Now they may have seen it differently.
They may have thought look this is our best chance.
Yes, it's it might be better if we weighed, but they've been
trying to convince this guy for 20 years and he still says no,
Like, maybe they just had given up on him changing his mind.
So there's that possibility as well.
But I still agree, I don't think he was.
The timing was quite interesting, though, that the
Rainier is like at her most laid up.
She's most at her least able to react.
But of course, Rainier is not the one they need to worry
about. It's Damon, you know, And some
of these other Rainier's orders are important, but she wasn't
going to hop on a dragon and burn them anyway.
That wasn't really her, her thing.
She's not really a warrior. Yeah.
So there's not the the fact that she's laid up may not be that
big a deal. Like, well, payment's not laid
up. You know, like he could hop on
crack season, get the business room right away.
So they they wouldn't have thought it was necessarily a
window where he was out of action.
And he's kind of the one they really worried about, Yes.
There are some arguments that the high towers poisoned for
serious like. I can see some reasons why they
might have done it right. But I could see some reasons why
Damon might have done it. But I don't think anyone really
believes or expects that because there's so many reasons why he
wouldn't have done it. And that's kind of how I feel
about the high towers. There are some reasons, but I
think the reasons against outweighs cool.
So whether or not they helped him along or not, and I think
they'll make great points, I'm going to, I'm going to say head
cannon. He didn't or they didn't.
They were definitely ready for it though.
They knew that he was, he was going to die.
They were prepared for the eventuality like when he dies
XYZ all kick off. The first of them being the
servant that found him dead immediately went to Allison and
told her and she almost certainly went and told Otto
next and they did their enacted their plan.
Now remember that book book version.
There's none of this Allison being left out of the advanced
planning stuff. So we can we can discard that
notion. It just looks like they were
ready to go along with it. Most of them like Otto had
already suborn of them. Allison probably as well had
already won them over. And let's not forget, Lord
Commander Kristen Cole had had that role for 15 years at this
point, whereas in the show he wasn't Lord Commander at all
until Harold Weschling walked out.
So they had more hold over the court.
At this point, There wasn't, remember that how Allison got
what she wanted a lot of times because Kristen Cole is standing
behind her and threatened being like you don't give her what she
wants. You got to be with me.
That wasn't the dynamic in the show as much because of Harold
Weschling being a counterpoint. It was the dynamic.
But Harold was there to kind of balance that out.
In the book, there's none of that.
There's no one to balance out Kristen Cole at court nearly as
much on the day-to-day. There would be times where
Damon's at court or whatever and other people maybe, But she had
a lot more weight behind her for longer and she was older and
wiser. So this is pretty important.
Other than Beesbury, the others were just kind of like, Yep,
let's go along with it. Orwell claims he was against it,
but that's most likely post facto.
He's like, after the fact. He's like, yeah, I tried to
stop. So what could I do?
Like, yeah, did you or while did you.
So it seems like they mostly were ready to go along.
Otto and Allison had discussed this in advance, probably with
Laris as well. And Laris is the one who said,
let's take a blood oath to make sure we all are together and do
all that business. What other high towers were
included? There's a lot of ways we can
look at this and look at the preparations, but I'm curious,
like, Dwayne out his other sons. Were they in?
On where What about Brendan and Hobart and Ormond's children?
How many of them knew this was the plan?
Dwayne was named almost immediately to be second in
command of the Gold Cloaks, but that doesn't mean he knew
anything ahead of time. That just means he they had a
plan for him. Doesn't mean he was included in
the scheming. Hang on the second wasn't even
included in the scheming until the last minute.
They're like, we'll come up the Hey dude, hey dude, time for you
to be king. He's like, what?
What kind of a brother steals his sister's?
I was like, you, you know, Amond wasn't included.
Probably. Or he may, but he may have
wondered. Amon may have figured it out or
figured something out because he asked.
He's like, well, who do we kneel to, Rainera or my brother?
Of course, he put it more rudely, in a word I choose not
to use on the show. Yeah, still.
So the the different children were were not in on it, but they
were at least Eamon's suspected something, you know and the
writing was on the wall for a lot of.
It's not like he figured out something that was really well
hidden. I expected there was plans were
made without explanation per se. Does that make sense?
I imagine Otto was sending messages back to her Old Town
saying like. They make sure there's X number
of swords set aside in the Armory.
Make sure there's X number of horses in the stable and this
grain and I. Yeah.
And and probably the people getting those orders, at least
some of them were like, I see what's happening here which then
they can start to make their own plans and contingencies are war
preparations. Yeah.
This is this is they are making plans for war like that.
That's what that looks like. Some people would do it.
It's a great point. It also shows just more to what
you're saying. It seems like they prepared very
well for the moment of Asseris's death, but they did a terrible
job of preparing the rest of their family for it, like Aegon
preparing him to be a king. They did a horrible job of that.
That was true. We talked about that a lot on
the show. Show coverage.
Same goes here. They did not prepare this dude
to be a king. Although once again, not unique
to the high towers, not unique to the very.
Few kings were probably prepared to be a king, Yeah.
I mean, yeah, Becerris did not prepare.
Serious and still wasn't. He wasn't preparing air for like
on and Becerris wasn't prepared to be king either.
They didn't really do that for. Yeah, like, yeah, it's a
recurring theme. Again, High towers, not
particularly unique in that regard, but it is fair to say
the high towers can't help themselves.
They're like a lot of these houses.
They they are not this thing saying that they're not that
different. Well, but they are different in
their means, their ability to force these issues, their
ability to take a small crack and widen it to a size large
enough that they can squeeze through themselves.
Not everyone can do that. You need a lot of wealth and
power to do some of these things.
Some houses want to do it, but they can't.
So yeah, you know, they just have to have to be involved.
Seems like they can't stay out of it.
They have to be involved in the fiddle, the faith, trade, war,
exploration, even knowledge and yeah, royal power and Dragons.
They can't be excluded from that.
Sean, you had another example from from years ago, 500 years
ago or something like that. Yeah, approximately 500 years
ago at the Wall there was a Runsell Hightower who was Lord
Commander. And he was angling to get his
son to take over for him, rather than the standard election that
the Night Watch holds, Which very few details on this.
But he didn't succeed. I don't know if he was executed
or ousted, or if they just didn't let his son take over.
I don't know the details, but it's just another example of an
ambitious Hightower angling for power that is not really his to
get. Yeah, like they're more
comfortable with nepotism. I think the Hightower has been
so much of it in their family, they may not realize how
egregious that is, how bad it looks.
So that is feels like kind of a Hightower thing to do.
Like most other houses would not try to name their son as the
next Lord Commander of the Knights watch.
I assume his son was already in the Knights watch.
Would be even weirder if he was like.
It's possible he even did it and and you know a technically
legitimate way, right? He might have just like had his
son enter the election and pumped it up and maybe even try
to. The worst that people to go to,
like even if he was doing it in a way that ostensibly was
technically okay, it's still didn't go.
It didn't get looked at very kindly like.
And also once again like maybe if he had been a great Lord
Commander and his son was a great leader on the watch, then
it might have just happened anyway.
But if he was kind of a mediocre Lord Commander and his son
wasn't even on the watch. Yeah.
He was saying like, he was like, yeah, so many details.
We don't know, but it does spit the mold, you know?
All right, folks, the simplest way I can put it.
It seems like things went well for the high towers when they
stayed out of House Targaryen's business, and poorly when they
did. It's definitely simplifying, but
that seems to be a pattern. Aiming for royal power, aiming
for the supreme executive power has not gone well for them, but
there's so many of them. So it's like it's hard for them
to imagine. Hard to imagine them going
completely extinct or something like that.
I mean, we'll see, but there's a lot of room for future stories
in The Song of Fire for High Towers at Old Town about the
high towers, or in the high tower at the Citadel in a number
of different timelines in the future.
It's extremely fertile ground because of the combination of
population points, of interest, already named supernatural
elements. Just so many things that could
be in these books. I mean books at the Citadel, not
just George R Martin's books, but looking ahead to future
productions and other books and things like that that will be
made available to us. There's so much more history
than the other cities like White Harbor.
Just I want to know more about White Harbor's founding.
It sounds super interesting and creepy, but it just isn't
anywhere near as old as old. Town and has old tennis, has so
much more history and goes all the way back thousands of years
to perhaps to the time of the long night and probably before
that. I mean, it's always been a very
beneficial geographic area for a port to exist, so part of why
it's been such a booming area for so long.
So despite the prominence of the Under the Dragons era, there's
just so much more potential here.
I think in the very long run we're going to learn even more
about what happened in this era and elsewhere.
We're going to become more familiar with it because
there'll be more stories told in it.
It's a place with a lot of unknown past and future.
I mean to recap a few of the things that we didn't need that
we barely touched on. House, high towers, Naval
adventures, hardly any of that. Autos.
Spy games. We inferred a few things
suggested possibilities but there's a lot more that could be
said on that Allison spy games too.
Less of that in the show probably.
But we don't. We're not really.
We're not talking about that here.
We care about the books here and there's plenty of that for her
that we could get into. And some of that will come up
when we cover Fire and Blood. The high Towers have a Valerian
Steel blade Vigilance that I didn't mention until now.
I mean what the hell. Like that's another interesting
point. So yeah, there's just so much
going on there, let alone how little we know about the actual
Hightower itself. I mean fertile.
Yeah, that oily black base. That the idea that it seems like
even the origins of Hightower are unknown.
It's just or Old Town. There's just been there as long
as anyone remember. There's no, there's not even
like a myth to where it came from, right?
Like maybe like a hint of a myth or something, but it feels like
a common thing that I feel at the end of an episode.
Here I'm like we covered so much and didn't cover so much.
Yeah, and that's another thing that I I was taking away from
this episode. I'm trying to decide if it's
like, I don't know, recency bias, so you know, just what
we're covering right now. But I, I, I.
One of my biggest takeaways from this for me, if I'm wrong, is
that the High towers maybe were the most important House of
Westeros before the Targaryens came.
It's like, if not the most important top three or four,
right? Yes, I agree with that.
Yeah, it's there's a very to be made for that.
And even once the Targaryens came, you know, depending on
exactly what time period you're talking about, still still top
three or four ish. And in this current song of Ice
and Fire, it's it. The amount that they're covered
or mentioned makes me feel like they're not even a top ten, but
but I just just from what we've gone over here I think.
No, the high towers probably ended the the main series time
period are still probably more important to house totally.
We're just following house totally more because of the
relation to Ned and Caitlin and all that stuff.
But when it posture I feel like is a petty Lord compared to the
the Lord of Old Town. You know what I mean?
Like the guy who. Hasn't descended to the High
Tower in 10 years, yeah. Yeah, so.
I don't know, given that it makes you feel like there's got
to be more in store. This this house has been so
powerful for so long and really is more powerful than comes
across and in the main series it's probably going to play out
more. The fact that as he's written a
main series, George also wrote this Fire and Blood, these other
works that have pumped up high towers more and more and more.
It I feel like that's some amount of study at the stage for
how much more they're going to come into.
I agree with you and I'm really looking forward to hopefully
getting as the high towers become prominent as long as I
inspire. We talk about how there's the
stage is set for stuff to happen at Citadel with you're on with
this Old Town in general etcetera.
That could with the way George writes and describes these
events that could he could have reason to refer to events in the
past so connect the dots or to say this last time this happened
at the high tower with blah blah blah.
You know, that's the kind of thing how a lot of these
anecdotes come to us and casual conversation between characters
or something. Someone points something out,
someone learn it points something out in the
conversation, that we take that to heart and use that as a data
point. I'm.
I feel like, well, that's going to be fertile ground for us as
fans and as podcasters to learn more for to fill out some of
this information. Yeah, I can't wait.
It's very exciting. Trivia answer, trivia answer.
The question was, what are the I gave you six of the seven titles
of The Lord of the High Tower. The missing one.
I was going to guess at first Warden of the South, but I
realized that's probably the reach, that's probably the
Tyrell. So it sends me back to like me
and Barry, unsure. What is it?
Beacon of the South. Beacon of the South.
Kind of random, but it is, it's like a light you know,
lighthouse thing. Yeah, I.
Was Warden of the South. What's?
That say that Lady Bay was the first one to get that other
people guessed that Keeper of the Faith.
Oh, it's a good guess too. Yeah, Peak end of the South.
We like the way the High Tower, Yeah does It is fitting.
So yeah, next week is Craster. Folks, send your thoughts on
Craster questions if you have any things you want to cover.
It's a very wide open topic. So it's a it's a place for us to
use a lot of imagination and do quite a bit of theorizing, but
we'll start with rooting ourselves what we know as always
and work from there. If you are wanting to listen to
another episode of History of Westeros after this one because
you're so dialed in right now, you like to stay in Westeros for
a little while longer, but you don't know where to go, I
recommend the new old Tower of Joy Sun Chaser episode, The
Shivers and the Winter Fever episode.
We covered those two things together.
The Winter Fever was right after the dance, and of course The
Shivers was 70 years before it. And of course, our Dance of the
Dragons episode with Radio Westeros.
Those are scripted and we have done five of them so far out of
planned 7:00, so that might be right up your alley as well.
Or just pick any other episode from our catalog.
I'm sure you'll have a good time with it, especially if you
haven't heard it before, but even if you have, thanks
everyone for coming. Thanks to anyone who supports us
on Patreon or the Spotify subscriber or send donations
through our website which is. An option as well if I mentioned
that before, but should throw that out there as well.
Thanks to Nina for her great notes and advice helping me talk
through some of these points. Thanks to Joey, Jesse, and Brand
for our music and intro. Thanks to Michael Clarfeld as
well for the maps and our original video intro, and to our
engineer for sound engineering. As a engineer would be engineers
got a engineer. Also, our next patron hangout is
at the 27th at 9:00 PM. If you're hearing this later,
join our Discord or our Facebook group or our patron and you can
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Keep you all informed and you know what to do.
Until next time, boats, Bella rereads.