You have questions, we have answers, you have theories, we
have opinions. There's news about upcoming
shows, multiples. 2026 is going to be the year of Game of
Thrones on HBO or Game of Thrones related shows on HBO, so
we're going to talk about that a bit too.
And we also have pictures and anecdotes from Dragon Con 2025,
which happened just a few weeks ago, including a Shaya dressed
up as Oscar Tully with the rest of the Muppet Tully crew and
myself as Baylor the Blessed and Damon Targaryen.
I still have the hair as you can see.
Or maybe you can't see because you're only listening, but trust
me, I still have the hair. Is that like a Fry from Futurama
situation where you're your own grandfather?
Oh, yes, I am. Yes, because Damon is
grandfather to Baylor. Yeah, and.
Fry is his own grandfather. That's right.
I played my own grand. I did it in the right order,
too. I started as Damon, then I was
Baylor later. I didn't do the in between.
I wasn't Aegon the Third at any point.
Maybe I'll have to do that some other time.
Sorry, Aegon the Third anyway, folks.
So that's a we've got a different kind of episode today,
kind of a laid back fun one for you and kind of a grab bag.
Lots of different things we'll cover.
So let's get to it. We've got all that and more on
this episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Hello and welcome back everybody.
It's a bit of a special episode combo episode here at our usual
time slot of three Eastern on YouTube.
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If you have questions for us, this is a good time for them.
You can hit hit us up live, send them to us at our e-mail
account, Westeros history@gmail.com.
We'll catch those as well. And I've also just pulled a lot
of questions from the past several months, YouTube
comments, questions you've sent us, things like that.
Also, if you've any corrections you want me to issue, feel free
to drop that in too. I know there's been, of course,
we make mistakes every once in a while, we cover so much
material. But I, I didn't make that a
focus on this one. But if you want to shout one of
those out and point something out that I did wrong or that we
got wrong, be happy to make that correction as well.
We have an Instagram. We if you can't see this
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It's it's nice that you can do that these days.
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And it's also has our also our Facebook page, which has even
more photos. It's like a basically the
Instagram has some selected photos.
The Facebook page has all of the ones, so lots of photos.
We took lots of probably more than half of them roughly, or
Game of Thrones related, certainly all the ones on the
History of Westeros Instagram. Yeah, all the ones on the
History of Westeros Facebook page are all from the World of
Ice and Fire. Shoot.
So yes, they're all Song of Ice and Fire related.
I take thousands of pictures over the weekend, but I only
post the A Song of Ice and Fire ones to history of Westeros of
course. Right, right now, we originally
did not expect to be going to New York Comic Con, but things
have changed. So we're, we are going, we're
going to go October 9th weekend and that's going to be the night
of the Seven Kingdoms panel is going to be there on Thursday
and then there's a George Martin panel on Saturday.
So shout out to our friend Alexis for giving us a place to
stay. And we got press passes at the
last minute. So that's why we're all of a
sudden going as before. We weren't planning on it so.
Long drive, but worth it when you have free New York
accommodations and a Free Press pass.
So that's what's up there. We hope to bring back some good
news or at least some fun anecdotes, hopefully both, and
we'll report on that as part of a future episode.
I doubt we won't dedicate a whole episode to it, but we will
talk about what we learned or heard in the in a in a future
episode this year. For what it's worth y'all, when
we go to cons and we get press passes, we have to cover it.
We enjoy covering it, but we do have to cover it.
Yeah. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to
get press passes. So that's how that works.
You're all pretty straightforward.
Makes sense, doesn't it? Intuitive, right?
Yeah. So we'll, we'll cover a couple
things today. Like I said, we'll start off
with the TV stuff. We'll talk about what's going on
with Night of the Seven Kingdoms.
I've been looking through doing some rereading and imagining
some things and how they'll do and, and pairing that with some
news we've gotten and got some ideas there.
Plus besides the news, House of Dragon season 3, couple updates
there. We'll talk about that.
Then we'll spend just a minute on what might be connective
tissue between the two shows. There will also be a little bit
of connective tissue with the original show, but less of that
because, well, in the Night of Seven, King of timeline, none of
that's happened yet. It's 100 years before Game of
Thrones, but it's about 90 years after, well, 80 years after
House of the Dragon. So that is more recent history.
So there's a good chance of some connective tissue there.
I've got a pole to start us off here.
If you're watching live, you can participate.
Will Knight of the Seven Kingdoms use the same theme
music as the first two shows? The Ramen Jawadi awesome theme
music. I, I would vote yes on this.
I I'm going to guess yes, but it's definitely no sure thing.
It's not. And I figure if they do it for
this show that's just locked in forever, they'll probably do it
for every show that they ever do it.
The standard Game of Thrones theme song, which is great
because it is a fantastic theme song.
I'm also very curious how they'll do the intro because it
certainly will have some new graphics and and whatever they
do with that it should be interesting.
And for History of Westeros Watchers, you might have the
question of how Bran will do our Night of the Seven Kingdoms
intro. That's right, which he has been
working on. And can I say it's going to have
puppets? Puppets are cool and we know why
it's going to have puppets because, well, puppets are in
the hedge night. It's a big part of it, right?
And that's what starts all the, the, the to do, you know, Aryan
and Tanzel and all that. Then we'll talk a little bit
about Dragon Con in the second-half.
It just mostly focused on the ice and fire stuff, but a couple
other things and then we'll get to some Q&A.
So if you have questions that you haven't submitted, you got
plenty of time to get them in because we're going to start
with that in the second-half. Let's get to it.
I'm excited for next year. I'm excited for the rest of this
year too because we've we've been doing a mini topics moot
and getting a lot more episodes ready to to roll since since
that's because Night of Seven Kingdoms isn't this year.
We originally planned on it being this year and made our
schedule accordingly. But since it's been moved to
January apparently, well that gave us a little extra time in
2025 for deep dives on other topics.
Now, HBO won 30 Emmys this last Emmy season, tying Netflix for
the most, which is a good sign overall for the studio.
Of course, what matters more to them is the bottom line.
Obviously, that's always what matters most.
They are a business. We have to be realistic about
that. But it's still Emmys help them
make money, I suppose. Critical acclaim is is certainly
connected to success. Not, not one to one ratio or
what have you, but certainly there's a connection there.
And HBS has been going through a lot of changes.
The TV industry as a whole, it's gone through a lot of changes.
We've seen the sort of the end of the golden age of fantasy on
television, but it's still going pretty strong for Game of
Thrones, right? Like a lot of these other shows
didn't get to finish or they didn't get going at all.
But that's not really a problem for this universe, right?
Like, we're kind of lucky that our favorite fandom is a step
above, I guess, because of its success and the other shows are
trying to be like it. Well, I guess one thing you
could say, there's really nothing like the original.
Of course, the the book's more so than the show, but really the
show's success, it's unparalleled, really.
So it's not a surprise that other shows haven't been able to
follow in that footstep in those footsteps. 2026.
Now, we predicted this a while back.
It wasn't quite how we thought it would be, but we did predict
that there would be two Game of Thrones shows in 2026 at the
same time. We actually thought it would be
Night of the Seven Kingdoms season 2 by then.
We thought it would be season one this year and then season 2
that year. Obviously that didn't happen,
but it's still going to be the year of two Game of Thrones
shows, which has never happened before, so that's really cool.
We got House of the Dragon around June and Night of Seven
Kingdoms in January. I'm going to guess that it's
going to be the 25th of of January.
That's a Sunday. Certainly the 18th is possible.
Sunday, February 1st is also possible.
They said January, but I mean, if they did Sunday, February
1st, I wouldn't complain. You know, I wouldn't say, oh,
you said January, but you know how these things work.
They can't be precise. So if it turns out to be
February 1st, that's that's basically January the January
32nd we'll call it. So that's cool.
I think that's my guess. Do you is do you have a guess, a
share or you think does that sound about right?
For you, I think the 25th is more likely, but it could be the
18th or the 25th. I don't think it's going to be
the 11th and. Yeah, it's too early.
Yeah, I mean, we have convention that weekend, so I'm really
hoping, but I really can't imagine it would be the 11th.
Yeah, that's they said late January.
So that's that's early January or mid January, so first half of
January. Anyway, something pretty cool
that for me personally that some of y'all will find cool as well.
Is that Tanzen Crawford who is Tanzel too tall?
Yes, Tanzen is Tanzel. How cool is that?
She is a climber, which is great.
I'm a climber and I've followed her Instagram.
Now I get to see her climb some, but that's pretty cool.
I like having something in common with one of the actors on
the show. That's neat, especially Tanzel
because she's such a fan favorite And I'm I'm expecting
Tanzen Crawford to do a great job in that role.
And Shay, you noticed that she's friends in real life with the
actress who's going to play Black Alley, Annie Shapiro, and
Shaya has a picture of them together.
Yeah, I was looking at Instagram and I saw that they had a photo
of them in an event together, which I have on the screen.
And then I saw that when Annie Shapiro announced it, Tanzan
commented and said 8 down. And then she said we family now.
So that's kind of fun. Anyways, I just I like being
that a whole lot. 2 of my favorite women in all of A Song
of Ice and Fire. Actually, I would say Tanzel too
tall and black Alley. Thinking about it while you were
talking just now and her role, I wonder and think, and then what
I just said about the intro, I wonder if they'll be a little
puppets on strings in the intro. That would be a that's kind of a
cool like visual, you know, intro ish kind of thing to do.
Well, that was what we were guessing, but if they did that,
they would probably change it for other seasons.
But that is what we're doing for our Night of the Seven Kingdoms
intro. Like that's what Bran is doing.
So if he does that, he's just doing the same thing that they
did. I don't think they will, though.
I think they'll do do something that translates across all three
seasons of the show. Yeah, yeah, they might.
They might do that. I mean, they did that.
They did things that are only one season in House of the
Dragon 2 with the new with the new tapestry and all that.
But you're right, like that's not that's still a good theory.
We'll have to see. One of the producers Night of
the Seven Kingdoms is T McHale, who is also an important part of
House of the dragon. You'd see her name in the
credits frequently and she kept a lot of the lore a lot of she
did a lot for House of the Dragon and now she's a producer
for Night of the Seven Kings as well.
She also has her debut novel coming out.
As some of you may remember, she was George's writing assistant
for quite a while now she's moved up in the world, not only
as a producer and keeper of the lore for these shows, but
getting their feet wet as an author as well.
And then that's that's great. Congratulations to her.
The book is called The Archivist.
It's not out yet. We have an advance copy, a
reader copy, you know, and, and we're I'm almost done with it.
I'm enjoying it. And when it's out, we're going
to have an interview episode with her on here.
And we'll also get to talk a little bit about House of the
Dragon and Night of 7 Kings. While we're at it.
We'll focus on the book, but we'll get in some some Game of
Thrones style questions as well with her.
So that's going to be fun. So later this year, I think
that's going to happen probably October, maybe November.
And we expect to see her at New York Comic Con as well.
So interesting news about filming and a couple other
tidbits. Some things I've been thinking
about. The actress Chloe Lea is going
to play the character Rafe. Now this by itself takes us down
a path of, well, theorizing and production guessing because,
well, Rafe is 1 of Dunk's friends from when he was a
child, an orphan child growing up in Flea Bottom.
So immediately that tells you there's going to be flashbacks,
which that makes a lot of sense. I mean, Sir Arlen has been cast
also, so, and they cast a major actor for him.
I doubt they did that just for a body, just for a corpse like
this really famous actor just to have him lie there dead.
So there's a multiple pieces of evidence here that there's going
to be flashbacks. And that makes a lot of sense.
If you read the Hedge Knight Sworn Sword Mystery Knight Dunk
does think about his past from time to time.
Occasionally he thinks about it a lot.
And I pulled a few examples here, actually, some anecdotes,
some quotes from his youth that helps us understand what's going
on here. Now, Rafe is generally a boy's
name. Chloe Leah is not a boy.
So they may have gender flipped this character.
But if you listen listen to these quotes, it's not actually
100% clear that Rafe is a boy in the books either.
It's not an important thing to gender flip one of well, it's
generally not important anyway. It's just a fun thing to do to
change things up or to get better representation to mix
things up a little bit. In this case, it's just Dunk's
childhood friend and most of them are going to be boys
anyway, so maybe make throwing one girl in there.
As you know, that seems that makes sense.
So anyway, let's let's get to these quotes here.
This is pretty cool. The when they see the septon's
head, the preaching septon that's preaching against
Bloodraven. Well, here's what happens.
Quote. Dunk had seen such sights
before, Back in King's Landing, when I was a boy, I stole a head
right off at Spike once, he told Egg.
Actually, it had been Ferret who scampered up the wall to snatch
the head after Rafe and Pudding said he'd never dare.
But when the guards came running, he'd tossed it down,
and Dunk was the one who caught it.
Some rebel Lord or robber knight it was.
Or maybe just a common murderer. A head's a head.
They all looked the same. After a few days on a spike, him
and his three friends had used the head to terrorize the girls
of Flea Bottom. They'd chase them through the
alleys and make them give the head a kiss before they let them
go. That head got kissed a lot.
As he recalled, there wasn't a girl in King's Landing who could
run as fast as Rafe. Egg was better off not hearing
that part, though. Ferret, Rafe and pudding.
Little monsters, those three and me, The worst of all his
friends. And he had kept the head until
the flesh turned black and began to Slough away.
That took the fun out of chasing girls.
So one night they burst into a pot shop and tossed what was
left into the kettle. Good Lord, that's gross, Tossing
A rotting head into the bowl of brown or whatever that is.
Yikes. That'll turn you off bowls of
brown quickly, knowing that there could be rotting human
heads in there. So he thinks of Rafe one other
time as well, just in passing. It's not worth quoting.
It's, it's very similar to this quote here, and that's neat.
I wonder if they'll do something like have him encounter one of
them later in life. Of course, none of the three
stories have them in King's Landing, so I don't know how
they would do that. Or maybe they would.
Maybe they would go to King's Landing as part of one of these
stories, as a side quest or something like that.
I think they'll show them later. I think they'll show one of his.
One of the people from his past will come up later.
I think that's likely, yeah, I would.
I would agree with that. I would bet on that too.
And I think maybe there's a chance that we'll get more
information about how he transitioned from an orphan to
Sir Arlen. Like we're pretty much just told
Sir Arlen found him was like, you're big.
Come be my Squire because my Squire died in the red grass
field. There's probably more to it than
that. But.
And so that might be something the show decides to explore that
George maybe was planning on exploring in a future Duncan egg
novel. But they may not be planning on
getting any more novels from George.
So they may just try to do what they can now.
We'll see. Now again, we know, since we
know Sir Arlen is being cast, he is certainly going to be part of
somebody's flashbacks as well. And there's a few lines here and
there from Dunk that sparked the imagination.
At least they sparked mine. I suspect a lot of y'all's will
be sparked as well. When you consider some of the
things that Sir Arlen taught Dunk, A recurring theme or
recurring device is Dunk thinking about things Sir Arlen
taught him, often at very key moments, thinking about, you
know, like he's in battle or he's about to go into battle.
He's thinking about what Sir Arlen taught him and remembering
his lessons and all that. Sometimes it's stuff that
doesn't have to do with combat, just survival.
I mean, a hedge knight has a tough life out there.
So sometimes he's just remembering philosophy, like the
philosophy of being a hedge knight or what kind of attitude
is appropriate for that and how you have to manage yourself and
how you have to work twice as hard being a hedge knight
because people will look down on you.
And that's why it's so important to be honest and true, because
people are going to be suspicious of you.
So you really have to have a good reputation.
And these are not things that all hedge Knights do or believe,
or there's no central authority or central philosophical body
for how a hedge knight is supposed to behave.
Everything Dunk learned from is from Sir Arlen.
And from all accounts, from what we can tell, Sir On was a good
hedge knight like meaning. Quality person.
As far as his fighting skills, he seemed like he was competent
at least, maybe even a little better, though maybe not at the
end when he was getting up there 'cause Dunk said he was maybe
even 60 years old. Dunk thinks when he's burying
him. He thinks at least he lived to
see another spring, which is an important thing because the
summers have been shorter since the last dragon died and the
winters longer and crueler, right.
So that's an important like tie into the whole supernatural
aspect, the whole overarching ice and fire theme that's going
on in the background that they'll never get directly into.
But they will say things that are very relevant like that,
talking about the distance and the change in the the season
since the Dragons died, like connecting the death of the
Dragons with the seasons, which is a a an indication of the type
of things they can fill in the gaps for here.
Sir Arlen saw the last dragon. I don't think we'll get a
flashback of that because Dunk wasn't there for it.
So that's unlikely that we'll see it.
But wow, that would be pretty cool to see that.
There's a a couple other things he says Dunk remembers that he
had been to many a market town with Sir Arlen.
Maybe that'll come up. Maybe he'll remember some of
those. It's a little too vague, though.
I'm not sure about that. He also thinks about a a few
different outlaws he's encountered over the years.
With Sir Arlen, he thinks about one really nasty one who stole
rings from people. He would bite the fingers off of
women, cut the fingers off of men.
Just a creepy dude, you know? So that kind of thing.
There could be some anecdotes he remembers about other bandits or
outlaws or something. So maybe maybe someone we've
even heard of like the at one point Egg thinks of the song the
night they hanged Black Robin and he was got him thinking
about good outlaws. You know there's no good outlaw
when you're a king, though. See Egg, they would you're the
rich they would steal from to give to the poor.
And it's the black black Robin. It sounds like it's just a Robin
Hood thing because he's sounds like he's stealing from the
rich, giving to the poor. That vibe is there little
stories like this. You never know what will become
a flashback and you never know what they could expand that into
to make it more meaningful, more poignant.
Another one Sir Allen says that Dunk remembers is a knight has
to learn to live with aches and pains.
Pretty similar to what Arthur Dayne said to Jamie about
Knight's bleed right when he dubbed him Sir Jamie with Dawn.
And it made his shoulders bleed because the sword was so darn
sharp. Arthur's like, well, that's
you're going to be doing a lot of that as a knight, so get used
to it. It made the occasional cut here
and there. Just you're better off learning
to just ignore that. There's also the example of Sir
Arlen jousting with Baylor Breaks Beer at Storm's End.
That's also not something Dunk witnessed, so it's unlikely to
be a flashback. But you never know, because in
that scene we also get Dunk telling the story of the
Dondarian sigil, the purple lightning, and where that story
came from to demonstrate his knowledge to Sir Manfred.
Which, you know, it doesn't get him anywhere, but it's a good
story and it's the kind of thing that you could see now Game of
Thrones doesn't usually do this kind of thing, but we can't
assume it's going to be the same where someone starts to tell,
starts to tell a story and the screen fades and you start to
get that, you start to get that story, you get to get visuals of
that. That's something I would like to
see. I don't know if they're going to
do that, but I really hope they do because in the long run, if
they don't do it now in the season, in season 1, they're
got, they got to do it for season 2.
And what I mean is they're going to talk about the Blackfyre
Rebellion's substantial amount. Dunk wasn't there.
Don't they want to show flashbacks of that?
Don't we want to see the red grass field?
Don't we want to see Damon Blackfyre charging?
I think they would want to show us that, you know, and I hope we
get it, you know, so that's a strong possibility.
So I'm I can't. So when I say that maybe we
won't get flashbacks that Dunk wasn't party to, well there's a
strong counter argument against that with the whole Blackfyre
angle. So maybe we will see things that
aren't just from Dunks POV just because all the novellas are
from Dunks POV. Well this is one of the major
changes with any sort of adaptation.
This is no longer POV style. So we will see different things
like that. Yeah, I think we might get
flashbacks that aren't from Dunks POV later and like in book
2 or or three, you know, season 2 or 3 because they'll have more
budget and more trust and more abilities that, you know,
because they'll have built their world already.
You know what? You know what I mean?
But the other thing I want to ask about is whether we might
see flashbacks that are like egg, egg, eggs, back story egg
in the castle, you know, or if they're or if they're
effectively flashbacks because we they're flashbacks because we
never see them on screen. Right, right.
Like there's off page. They there is some logic or good
reason for them to show eggs dreams as well.
Maybe set up? Maybe set up some wildfire stuff
or. Do you think they would show
Deron's dreams? I wrote that in the notes that
if anyone's dreams come out, he's a very strong candidate
because he's going to going to sit up in a pool of wine and
point a dunk and be like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You know, I saw you this and that they might show it, you
know, because that would be a really effective story device to
show the dreams that way. They can do a lot with cold
opens too to in terms of the it's hard sometimes to to insert
something like that midway through an episode, but when it
starts as like the prologue cold open to it, you can kind of do
it more seamlessly. That's a good point.
Now when he arrives at Ashford,
Dunk thinks how Sir Arlen knew some of the night's present
because he had talked about them.
Dunk wasn't there to meet them. He just, we're talking about Sir
Arlen's whole life and as I said, he lived to be 60 ish.
So he got around. He did.
He had a full life. So Dunk knows a few things about
some of these people because Sir Arlen told him others he has no
idea. And then a few others, you know,
EG is telling him this sigil is this person, this sigil is this
person. So it really, really helps him
get his bearings, so to speak. Returning briefly to the subject
of the last dragon, well, he remarks, well, all he remembers
rather that Sir Arlen told that story half 100 times.
He told the story of the last dragon many, many times, which
is maybe soft evidence that it will be brought up a few times
or maybe it's be portrayed via flashback or something like
that. So that's compelling, I'd say.
Now here's a particular quote from Sir Arlen, rather dunks
memory of Sir Arlen, I think is very, very likely to get
something like this, maybe even episode 1, maybe episode 2.
But I think very early because it's a it's sort of a mission
statement for what Dunk is, for how Sir Arlen taught him to be
what he is. And Dunk is a good enough person
by nature to want to follow along with this, to live up to
this. So here's what I think we'll
get, or some version of it. Quote A hedge knight is the
truest kind of knight, Dunk, the old man had told him a long,
long time ago. Other Knights serve the Lords
who keep them, or from whom they hold their lands, but we serve
where we will for men whose causes we believe in.
Every night swears to protect the weak and innocent, but we
keep the vow best, I think. Queer how strong that memory
seemed. Dunk had quite forgotten those
words, and perhaps the old man had as well toward the end.
Not only is it just a great quote, a great thing to say,
it's, it's beautiful, it's meaningful.
It's a little bit tragic because of how he, he, he sort of hints
that maybe Sir Arlen wasn't such a great night towards the end as
he was getting old and, and weaker and not able to, he
couldn't afford to be as good as he was.
I suppose you could say he was a little more desperate, perhaps a
little more realistic in that sense.
So there's a, there's a, a tinge of realism in here, dark realism
perhaps, but but the core of it is, I mean, this is like
Brienne's attitude later. And of course, most of us
believe that Brienne is a descendant of Dunk because
there's a lot of clues for it. So this is who Dunk is.
And I think a lot of the audience members who aren't as
well versed in this as we are, this is a great way to introduce
them to the concept of a hedge night, which they've only kind
of heard of a little bit. Like the phrase has been tossed
around, but you don't really hear hedge night that much in
Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon.
Certainly in the books you do. But the TV show audience, they
don't necessarily know what that means.
They've maybe even heard, they've maybe heard the phrase
once or twice and maybe not have heard it at all.
I don't actually recall if it's how often it's said in the show,
maybe not ever so. But but everybody knows, whether
whether they've read the books or not about what nights are
supposed to do, how they're supposed to protect the weak.
We all know, even people who are barely versed in this series
know that it doesn't actually work that way.
Most nights aren't so great. He even indicates here, we keep
the vow best. I think it's kind of a nice way
of saying that a lot of them don't keep the vow.
Some of them don't keep it at all.
Like they're not even trying. But it's super important to
Dunk. And Dunk's not just going to
like relay that to Egg. He might say something like it
tell him, but this is this is has flashback written all over
it. Danny Webb, the actor plan Sir
Arlen telling him this. It would be it would hit so much
harder than dunk being like walking down the road talking to
egg and me like so Sir Arlen taught me this.
You know, hygenites have to be true.
That would be cool too. But I just think it would hit
really hard as a flashback. Arlen also taught Dunk a lot
about jousting and of course, sword fighting.
So there's a lot of these lessons that, as I alluded to
earlier, Dunk often thinks of these things as right as he's
about to go into action or he's thinking about that He remembers
the lessons of Sir Arlen. Some of them are very fresh in
his mind. Remember, he's only 16 or 17
when Edge Night begins. So yeah, it, it's, it's only
we're talking about the last few years.
And those are his most formative years because he was an orphan
in Flea Bottom before that. There's a repeated line that Sir
Arlen says. It just shows his character and
his positivity and just the fact that he's a good guy, right?
Even though, even with this, this comment that maybe he
wasn't quite as good near the end, still he's, he has this
line that he repeats. I wonder what the marrow will
bring. It's a very positive outlook.
He's not saying he's not scared of what the marrow will bring.
He's not worried that bad things will happen.
It's a positive outlook. It's, it's, it's a pro thing.
He's like, hey, what fun thing, What wondrous thing will happen
today? It's good to be alive, you know,
And Dunk takes that up. He, he, I believe the hedge
night ends with him saying that to Egg.
And I don't remember if he tells Egg that something Sir Arlen
says or not. He certainly thinks of it.
There's also dreams we talked about, yes, Darren's dreams and
Egg's dreams. But Dunk has dreams too.
He can have dreams that matter. He has the the very sad dream of
burying Chestnut and remembering that and remembering both the
reality of it and then the dream version of that where the sand
keeps pouring in and it it's not exactly what really happened,
but it's telling us that he really cared for his horse and
he was sentimental and the Dornish men were like, what are
you doing, man? You're crying over a horse.
You know, in the desert. We can't wastewater like that.
They're they're laughing a little bit, but they're also
confused. But dunked is he's not
intimidated or embarrassed at all.
He's going to do what he's doing.
He's going to be loyal to his horse.
It's easy for us to when we think of dreams, to think of the
prophetic dreams, the flashback slash, flash forward dreams, but
this one matters a lot too. Things like this just dunks.
Regular dreams can matter quite a bit as well.
Now, another topic that we've just touched on briefly here,
but I want to get into a little more thoroughly is the idea of
the black fires because as we all know, the hedge and I does
not mention the black fires. George had not finished
developing that. So they don't get mentioned
until the sworn sword and they're very prominent in the
sworn sword. So George is this, this is some
back fitting, some retro fitting is required here.
And one of the most obvious characters that needs to be
introduced a book sooner is Blood Raven.
And I found what I am almost positive will be the basis for
Dunk remembering Blood Raven. We don't even have to see Blood
Raven in season 1 on, you know, live and in person there we can
have him seen as a dream or a flashback.
And here's the best example I think from the Sworn Sword
quote. Six years ago in King's Landing,
Dunk had seen him with his own two eyes as he rode A pale horse
up the Street of Steel with 50 Ravens teeth behind him.
That was before King Aries had ascended to the Iron Throne and
made him the Hand. But Even so he cut a striking
figure garbed in smoke and scarlet with Dark Sister on his
hip. His pallid skin in bone white
hair made him look a living corpse.
Across his cheek and chin spread a wine stained birthmark that
was supposed to resemble a red Raven, though Dunk only saw an
odd shaped blotch of discolored skin.
He stared so hard that Bloodraven felt it.
The King's sorcerer had turned to study him as he went by.
He had one eye and that one red. The other was an empty socket,
the gift Bitter Steel had given him upon the red grass field.
Yet it seemed to dunk that both eyes had looked right through
his skin, down to his very soul. Despite the heat, the memory
made him shiver. And it's a significant shiver.
AG even notices. He's like, are you OK?
He's like, yeah, I'm fine. Blood Raven sensed him right,
like yeah, right like he had to sense his importance in history
as. Something about that seems
supernatural. Yes.
It's not. It's not, like, obvious.
But yeah, it could just be how Dunk is like he's so intimidated
by, but why would he turn to look right at him?
That's hard to mistake. I think it's like a you.
You meant to think he's just intimidated by him, you know,
and that, but then when you realize that Blood Raven really
is this magical, powerful being, you're like, no, I I actually
think he was seeing you dunk. And it's it's a classic George
set up here where blood Raven could just be noticing dunk
because he's freaking 7 feet tall, you know, like that's that
makes you look like I would double take if someone that was
that much taller than everybody else, you know, so it could be
that. But the magical angle here is
too strong to just dismiss. It could be both.
It could be he noticed the big dude and was like, then he
started to focus and imagine the his history, his future,
whatever kind of supernatural thing he's doing there.
And this description is so, so vivid, right?
The way he's dressed, his hair looking like a corpse, his his
bearing his 50 Ravens teeth behind him, the birthmark.
It's it's a lot, right? The description is very strong.
So it's such a great basis for a flashback where we get
introduced to this character on screen.
Again, a lot of people don't know who this guy is, but if
they do it right, they'll recognize the figure from
Damon's dreams in House of the Dragon because they made him
pretty distinct. Blood Ravens, awfully distinct
character going by this description, seeing him on
screen in House of the Dragon for a minute there, not even a
minute, couple seconds, but it's a distinct few seconds.
And I think a lot of people will catch that.
Certainly it'll be on a lot of analysis, a lot of a lot of
channels will be making look at this guy was in the dream, you
know, the same guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know.
So this scene happened, it said, six years ago, right?
Six years ago in King's Landing. So this is before Sir Arlen
found him. He was really tall then.
He's already a a big kid, so he's probably 10 or 11 years
old, right? So that another reason why it's
a little weird that Bloodraven's staring at him.
Like yes, he's tall, but he probably isn't full grown.
Then I maybe need to correct myself.
He probably wasn't 7 feet yet at age 11.
No, he probably wasn't because most boys have their growth
spurt, you know, a little bit later than 11.
Yeah, he was probably very big by then, but he probably didn't
like stand taller than a lot of tall men.
At that point, I would agree with that and I the thing I
think is interesting is that he probably was a big guy in
general because just things about Dunk, I don't know.
I would guess he already was big, but not everyone that grows
to that tall is that tall when they're that age.
I'll give you the example of my brother is 6 foot 8.
He's a huge guy. He had his growth spurt between
the age of 6 and 16 and 17. He was not over 6 feet before he
was about that age. So when he was 15 he was below 6
feet and then when he by the time he was 18, he was 6 foot 8.
Yes, so like he was, he had terrible growing.
Pains that would. Be painful.
Yeah. Anyway, so like, if he's not
normal, he is an inspiration to every short boy who's entering
his freshman year advisor like you.
Really. There's a chance you really
could have your growth spurt, like, and get real tall man.
But unlikely. He probably was a tall boy.
Yeah. Yeah, I would agree.
So maybe his hands were bigger, you know, just like signs that
he would grow into a. Large.
Yeah, like our. Signs.
Yeah, you like you had. You had big hands, big feet.
Big whiskers, Yeah. Big ears.
Like that cat's going to be big. And he was or is, Yes.
So that's really cool. I love, obviously we love
talking about Bloodraven. It's exciting to think about how
he's going to be portrayed and. And we don't even know what
actors playing him yet. I kind of hope it's the same
one, perhaps with the dragon. I don't know that I think it's
the most likely thing. I hope so.
I think it's going to be the same guy because I don't think
he's going to do much but walk around and stare.
I don't think he's going to be talking yet.
I think we're going to get him talking in season 2 or season 3.
Definitely season 3, maybe season 2.
So I think they can avoid that's, that's what we often do.
They, they use an actor that's not the one who's going to be
speaking the lines. If they don't have that need and
then they transition to someone who's going to speak the lines.
That's, that's not an uncommon thing.
We saw that in Foundation. And I'm, I think of that because
it's Pilo Asbeck is the character that was brought in to
be the speaking role of a character who's only seen in
dreams. It wasn't him when he was seen
in dreams. One thing that I'm really
looking forward to that is a big distinct difference between
mediums. And by that I mean books and
shows. One that shows have a big
advantage on is we've already briefly touched on this music,
the theme song we touched on, but in the show we're going to
have in world music and the first show we had Baron the
maiden fair reigns of Castamere Jenny's song just really good
song. These were successful pop like
went did well in the mainstream, did fairly well even outside of
the fandom. Like these were hits almost our
close to you can call them hits. I don't know if they were
technically hits, you know, but they were successful.
Game of Thrones universe has a history.
Only 10 years or so, but it's got a strong history. 12 years,
1515 now. Wow.
Yeah, 15 years of quality music, right?
And there's some great opportunities here in season 1.
A good way to introduce Blood Raven to retrofit Blood Raven is
just Dunk could be walking by looking at Ashford Meadow,
taking in all the sights and sounds and what does he hear?
Someone singing 1000 eyes and one some bar just singing about
the thousand eyes and one song. That's a song, right?
That's a song in this era. We've never heard it.
I bet we will maybe not Season 1.
I hope season 1 'cause I I'm enamored with this idea that
Dunk could just like hear it in passing and we we're like, oh,
that's, that's thousand eyes and one, that's the blood Raven
song. That'd be pretty cool, right?
But yeah, maybe they won't do that till till season 2 or
three. I've I'm going to bet season 1
though. But that's not the only song we
could hear. We could hear the hammer in the
anvil, which is the Makar and Baylor break spear song.
How Makar was the anvil, Baylor was the hammer broke the black
fires at the red grass field. Lots of songs were made about
that. Well, that a song was made about
that. A popular song was made about
that. And so we could hear that song
too. You know, those are the two that
I could think of. I'm sure there's there's
probably a few other examples, but those who really stand out.
And I'm excited to hear what they do.
The bar is high because of, like I said, they've been very good
with the music, turning them into real world songs.
And I'm excited to hear what whoever comes up with.
I don't know. House the Dragon even made their
own songs up, like with Nymeria's song for example, that
T wrote. So you know.
Oh yeah, T wrote those lyrics. Yeah, another shout out to T.
Or Vermithor Lullaby. Vermithor Lullaby.
Yeah, good point. I forgot about that one.
Yeah, So there's yeah, there's just a lot of songs.
So this is a big part of it. I mean, it is a song of ice and
fire. Y'all Like it's it's, it should
be. And it's trying to portray a
realistic Kingdom. You know, music would be a part
of it. Like, yeah, people are going to
sing. People are going to.
It's going to be songs. The actor playing Arian Finn
Bennett, he won a Chopart Award. It was a very prestigious acting
award. He's one of the youngest people
ever to win it. I believe, if I read that
correctly, he thought he flubbed his audition for Arian.
He called his agent was like, yeah, that's that's not going to
happen. Well, he was wrong.
He got the role. He said he had never ridden a
horse before, which is kind of baffling to me.
Like, you're an Englishman who's like, comes from like a rich
background and you've never ridden a horse that's just all
right. Well, he loved it, though.
He his horse was named Zandor with an X.
I'm glad you added the rich background, Parks.
I was like, what do you mean? He's an Englishman who hasn't?
OK, yeah, he's a Rich. A wealthy Englishman that hasn't
ridden a horse is is a little odd to me.
And an actor, too, like, you would think it may have come up
before. Like, he's won awards and he's
been, yeah. If I'm a British actor, you
better believe I'm practicing my horse riding for any role I
could get. See.
Yeah, you know what I mean. Exactly what you're saying,
yeah. Hints are that they're not going
to go past what George wrote for The Hedge, Night Sworn, Sword of
Misrenite, that right now they're saying three seasons,
which corresponds to the books. If George puts out a fourth one,
then maybe they'll add a fourth one.
But I don't think they're just going to go all the way to the
end of Duncan Egg's life, which is that's a mixed bag.
We want to see the whole story, but it wouldn't be written by
George. So yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, I'm not sure about that. We'll have to see.
That's kind of a wait and see type thing.
But season 2 is already filming so yeah like there isn't a whole
lot of time for George to put out much more.
And obviously they can't exactly shelve it and come back to it.
Not very easily given the mostly due to egg.
You can't have a nine year old actor that is big and full of
personality. Dexter Sol Ansel is just
crushing social media with his adorableness.
He's just wedding so many people over without having even
appeared on the show yet. He's the cutest.
He's so. Cute.
His parents, I mean, know exactly how cute he is.
But you can't recast him. That's his.
Parents crushing social media. Yeah, that's true.
By knowing when to have him, like wish happy birthday to
George RR Martin. Like, it's really obvious to do,
but it's really sweet. It's just genuinely sweet of
him. Yeah, yeah.
It's it's, you love to see it. You love to see it.
So I know we've gone through some of these before, but let's
just go through it again real quick.
In case you all missed it or have you forgotten, we've got
Duncan Natal is Peter Claffey. Peter Claffey also doing pretty
well on social media, but he's interestingly he's a former
footballer. Can I tell you about Peter
Claffey? He loves actors.
He just, on his stories, he's just constantly sharing, like
his things he likes in pop culture, like actors he admires.
He likes sharing stuff from like the Always Sunny cast.
Like, I don't know, like he just clearly likes media.
I don't know how to say it. He's a fan of he's a fan, if
that makes sense. So we so Danny Webb is Sir Arlen
of Penny Tree. As we mentioned, he's an elder
actor, been around a long time, huge number of credits, just
really, really well known guy, very successful.
Tenzin Crawford, as we mentioned, is Tenzil too tall.
She's a bit of a newer player on the scene.
Young woman doesn't have a whole lot of acting credits, but
obviously she's good to have won this role.
That's that's says a lot. Daniel Ings is the Laughing
Storm. Sir Lionel Baratheon.
You look at the picture of him and it's like, huh?
Is this guy bigger than he seems?
I don't know. He must, because the picture of
him doesn't look like a big guy, but it's he's.
Not a big guy. I love this actor.
He's one of my favorite British like comedian actors.
Yeah, he was. He's been in a number of shows
that I liked. But he's not a big guy.
He's an, he's an intense guy though.
He has a certain intensity and he has a really askable, likable
mate. Like the Laughing Storm.
Like, I think he's going to be very funny.
That's that. Seems like it's important to
have to have that aspect of his personality come through.
Yeah. We have Steve Wall as Leo
Longthorne Tyrell. Now, this is a an actor who's
played a lot of villains, which is interesting that Leo
Longthorne is going to be portrayed this way.
A Longthorne doesn't have a huge role in the Hedge Night, so I
wonder if they've boosted that a little bit.
But if I recall correctly, he's only got like a three lines.
So it's a usually characters that only have a few lines like
that aren't listed so importantly here.
So I I have a I'm going to guess that his role has been expanded
a little bit, if not more than a little bit.
Henry Ashton is Daron Targaryen, the dreamer, Daron the drunkard.
Ashton Ashford. Yeah, right.
That's close. Right.
We've talked before about Sam Spruell, who was make our
Targaryen. That is one of the most exciting
castings that we've seen here. He was in the most recent season
of Fargo. Good Lord, he was good.
He stole every scene he was in. And I'm looking forward to him
being Makar, a very different character than the character he
played in Fargo, but he really just nailed it, so that's
exciting. I think he'll be one of those
stand outs of the whole season to me.
Yeah. I'm I'm kind of expecting that
with with it's a little maybe it's a little premature, but I
am expecting it. We have Bertie Carvel as Baylor
break spear. That's exciting.
Baylor, I feel like they're going to is really going to
captivate audiences. He's he's I mean, he is the
princely version of Dunk himself.
He's a true knight of that came from wealth and privilege.
So it's almost like get taken Sir Arlen's quote that hedge
Knights are the truest of all because they're they're less
distracted by the wealth and status and privilege they
weren't brought up to. As Dunk says to Makar, Aryan
never had a cut of beef that wasn't bloody and rare, and
Deron never slept in ditches. So I think this is a super
important character. He's a good Targaryen.
Like unabashedly good, which is who other who else is like that?
I mean, even Danny has some darkness with her, right?
She's at least controversial. She is good overall, but you
know, there's there's other stuff going on.
It's it's less straightforward than bail or break spear.
I think it was just a, you know, he's able to stand out.
He's a war hero. He's in line to be the, the,
the, the king. He's already the hand.
He's beloved. He's considered the best knight
of his age. I mean, yeah, just shining star.
I think we're all going to love him, OK?
I think we are. I think Brody Carmel's going to
do great. This is the one character, the
one role that I'm personally disappointed with the casting
in. Yeah, he's not half Dornish.
He's just not visibly Dornish to me.
And maybe they play it up in some way, but I think it's a
miss. But I still think we're going to
love him. I'm going to cry.
I think he's going to be great. However, missed shot.
Do you think they're going to do the Rainies thing where they
don't give? They took away her Baratheon
colored hair to not confuse the less educated audiences.
Maybe they took away the silver hair.
Maybe they'll give him Targaryen hair to Soap.
They don't have to because they can have him dressed up and
Targaryen gear and everything, but they don't do the purple
eyes. They're not going to start doing
that suddenly. So there's there's just one less
sign that makes them, there's one less feature that makes them
look Targaryen. Yeah, and so that's maybe why
they could have done it. But all the more reason to make
him look half Dornish with silver hair, because people
would still be like, oh, he's darker skin.
Like there's if they're going to do that, I think they maybe they
just get rid of that that issue, that conflict entirely.
I don't know that it's really that necessary to the Knight of
the Seven Kingdoms to the Dunkin Egg saga.
It really, but I would be disappointed if it was gone.
Maybe they'll do the Valor thing where he has a streak of silver.
That would be cool. I like that because that's
pretty like distinct or like the Dark Star thing too.
But like, Dark Star obviously is a much different character, but
Baylor's own son has this. So that could be a way to maybe
they could have all of that branch have hair like that, you
know, that's where it's mixed or something like that.
Christina Kay says, I think they could open the show with Arlen
telling the last dragon story to set the scene for there not
being Dragons in the series. That's a very good point because
again, we have to put on our new audience cap to to think about
what they're going to do to make sure the less deep in the fandom
audience members understand what's going on.
We're all deep in this fandom. We know so much about it.
We're all excited about these hidden details, the Easter eggs.
But we got to back up every once in awhile and think about if
we're going to be realistic, we got to be like, yeah, they're
definitely going to make sure these things are clear.
We got to make sure that the audience is taking into account
when we're making predictions. Dom Tartaglia, shout out the
Folk Wise channel over on Twitch.
Folk Wise, great show. Also under the post rider strike
rules, you have to renegotiate with your riders after three
seasons. That's a good point.
So they would be able to do three seasons of Duncan Egg
without having to renegotiate and say hey, well, yeah, we
don't have any more material. Yeah, we have to stop now like,
oh how convenient. Yeah, so we'll see what that
that's, it's a, it's a bit of cynical realism there, I think.
In other words, I fully agree. Also, Dom says Bertie was Missus
Trunchbull in the Matilda musical and was iconic Miss
Trunchbull. Yes.
So Bertie was a playing a woman, eh?
Have you seen? That's a really good.
Movie. I don't know anything about
this. I don't know this character or
this musical. After the stream, I'm going to
look up Miss Trunchbull for you so you can see what she looks
like. OK, Matilda movie has Danny
DeVito by the way, and is he's heavily involved and there's a
lot. I'll tell you more about this
after the show, but it's interesting tale.
OK, if you are available and wanting to travel with us, reach
out to us and let us know because we are planning a group
trip maybe to England, northern Spain, maybe Ireland.
It's probably those are the in that order are probably the most
likely destinations were still in the discovery phase, but it's
going to be sometime April, May. So right after nine of the seven
kingdoms and right before House of the dragon.
So great timing, right right between the two seasons, right
at the hype, the maximum hype point.
And we have so much fun. You, you all have probably seen
our social media, us traveling to these different places and
having so much fun taking pictures and reliving some of
these scenes and just exploring new countries.
So if you are interested and have the means, contact us and
we'll give you more information. We're still working through some
of it. And like I said, it's still
several months away, more than six months away.
So if we get enough people, we're going to do it.
If we don't, then we just won't. But hopefully enough of y'all
want to do it and hang out with us in a group of maybe 10 to 20
folks. Not a big group, but enough to
have a meet some new people and have have fun and group
experiences. And yeah, let us know if you're
interested and we'll we'll continue to nail down more
details about it. Also, make sure you catch my
Twitch streams on every Friday at 6:00 Eastern.
We are getting close to the end of our Osgrey stream.
Speaking of Dunkin Egg, House Osgrey, we took House Osgrey
from a small power at the beginning of the Century of
Blood to King of the Reach and with and we've subjugated the
West. Even so, the Casterly Rock is
dependent on us as a vassal of ours and we are King of the
Reach. So that's pretty fun.
We've been playing that for several weeks every every Friday
on Twitch. And when you the way the game
works is when you die, you take over as your heir.
So it's very dynastic. Each character has all sorts of
different personality traits. It's very detailed, very, very
deep, complicated game. Very fun to watch and to
interact with fellow W Dorians during Let's Talk about House of
the Dragon Season 3. They said just outside the Emmy
window, which means June because the Emmy window is May or early
June. So but maybe July.
So just outside the Emmy window, they could mean July, but it's
very unlikely to be August because that would be well
outside the Emmy window. So again, that's pretty
interesting, right? We'll have a show in January and
another one in June and it's really the end of January.
It's more like basically the beginning of February and June,
maybe the middle of June ish because we've had the middle of
June before. House of Dragons season 2 was
June 16th if I recall correctly. Certainly mid June.
So it sounds like we're about to do a very similar start time.
Now. We've heard that they're doing
an experimental episode this season.
I have no idea what that means. The the guesses could be all
over the place for this. Who knows what that means.
Experimental episode. It could mean of strange POV,
like we're seeing things from the POV of a a dragon or a
common person or some other animal.
I don't know. Some.
Other animal, I mean like a dragon animal.
Sorry, common. That came out so badly.
You common people are animals. Yes, I'm a common person.
So. Right now you do not look like.
AI do not I look like a Targaryen Yes it's true a she
ATV show Targaryen making. You so uppity.
Yeah, it's right there. It's going to my head.
Hair is supposed to go to your head.
I've seen Nate Sleeper in the chat, says musical episode.
I was going to say make that same joke a musical episode like
Dan Damon just dancing in the Matt Smith.
He's got the chops for that right.
Can you can you get Alison Hart? Can you get Amon dancing and
singing? You know, like that would just
ruin that character. Having him dancing around and
tap dancing, tap dancing Aimond, even better.
Tap dancing Veigar, Aimon, tap dancing on Veigar, like on
Veigar's head. Just they, they do.
Yeah. Anyway, try not to think about
that too much. So there's that's just a
bajillion possibilities. They have no idea what that's
going to mean, but curious to know.
We'll see. We'll see what happens.
New characters of note, shout out Radanian Intelligence.
Great source of information there.
They've pretty much risen to be #1 these days with such things,
show rumors and set notes and just things like that.
Radanian, you're doing great. By the way, that's a Witcher
reference for Danian. Intelligence is the intelligence
service of. Wait, what nation?
It doesn't matter. I forget.
I'm forgetting my Witcher lore right now.
Anyway. New characters that have been
cast. Charlie Gordon is Deron.
Wait, which Deron? We just had a Deron and Deron
the Drunkard. Now this is Deron the Daring,
not Deron the Drunkard. Rider of Tessarian.
We saw Tessarian at the end of season 2.
You could barely make out a rider on his back.
That was probably just some rando.
And now we have an actual actor cast.
I wonder if they'll do the same thing here.
Will Deron have, will he look really Targaryen?
Well, is that it's less necessary when you have a dragon
to ride to, to look Targaryen. It's like, OK, well, that's a
Targaryen. They're riding a dragon, but
obviously ahead, and I can't do that.
No Dragons. James Norton is Lord Ormond
Hightower. That's cool.
Ormond. We know he's part of the he
leads the Reach forces to Tumbleton, so that's crucial.
We don't see a Brendan Hightower cast.
They may not have bothered with him.
Brendan's the one who gets his arm chopped off by Roddy the
Ruin before Roddy also kills Ormond.
So that law of conservation of characters, they probably are
just making Lord Ormond and Lord and Sir Brendan 1 character.
And we do have Adam Brown, who is Lord Glendon Footley.
And if you don't remember who Footley is, well, that's the
Lord of Tumbleton. So there you go.
Adam Brown was Ori in The Hobbit films, one of the one of the
dwarfs. We already mentioned Annie
Shapiro as Black Allie Blackwood because of her real life
friendship with Tanzel or Tanzan Crawford.
Well, yes, Tanzel, also. Can I say, do you remember a
dragon con? I took a picture of our black
alley with Hannah. A game of owns is Tansel making
that pairing weirdly real to life.
That's really cool. But also, Deadline said that
Black Alley Annie Shapiro will appear in five of the 8
episodes, despite not being a series regular.
And there's a photo of her and I think she looks great.
Yeah, we have Tommy, Tommy Flanagan or Flanagan, probably
Flanagan as Lord Roderick Dustin.
So we do get Roddy the Ruin. So they didn't combine him with
Kragen. That's good.
I didn't want them to do that. I did worry about that.
But I'm glad we get an actual Roderick Dustin.
Dan Fogler is Sir Toren Manderley, so they probably did
do the law of conservation of characters here 'cause they're
supposed to be Toren and Med Medrick Med.
Yeah, his brother. Dan Fogler, too.
Oh, you know Dan Fogler. Yeah, Dan Fogler.
Well, one, I knew him from back in the day, from the movie
Fanboys, which is kind of a raunchy, nerdy, like sex comedy.
I don't know. I really love that movie,
though. He's also in Balls of Fury,
which is a funny movie, and he was in the Fantastic Beasts
franchise. So you know him because you saw
the first Fantastic Beasts and then we stopped.
But you did tell he was in that as the lead.
Right on. So that's cool.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.
We have Tom Cullen as Sir Luther Largent now.
Tom Cullen's an intimidating looking guy.
Luther Largent is supposed to be an intimidating looking guy.
He probably isn't a 7 foot tall actor like Luther Largent is
almost in in Canon. But hey, these super tall guys
use, it's hard to match them in height in the real world, like
Greg or Clegane, for example. So Tom Collin was in Downton
Abbey and Nightfall. He was head of major role in the
show Nightfall. So he's got experience with, you
know, horses and armor and all that.
So, and Sir Luther Largent is, is probably going to ride a
horse or maybe he'll just walk around King's Landing.
But so he's the he's one of the leaders of the gold Cloaks in or
the the Lord Commander of the Gold Cloaks at a certain point.
So that's important. Joplin Sibtane, which is
definitely the coolest name out of all these is Sir John Roxton
Bold Sir John Roxton. So he's a wielder of orphan
maker and a very well his bold is right for him.
He's also kind of a a bad dude, not a good man.
We have Barry Sloan as Sir Ardrian Red Fort and that's one
of the Rainiers Kingsguard, one of the later joining, so not
currently one of her Queens guard, one of the ones that
joins after she takes King's Landing.
She gets a she, you know, refills her Kingsguard out at
that point in the book. So presumably that's going to
happen in the show as well. So with Dunkin Egg less than 80
years after the dance and Sir Arlen having seen the last
dragon, lot of opportunities for correct connections.
We touched on this briefly earlier.
Let's get into it a little deeper.
I don't know there's been anything too major, but maybe
there is, you know, like name drops are a guarantee
differently. Some references here and there,
Easter eggs, eggs, Easter eggs, get it, Easter egg ONS.
Lots of different opportunities for him to talk about Targaryen
family history and maybe some other things they could mention
their ancestors like other Aegon's could come up like Aegon
the Unworthy in particular, since he's the most recent Aegon
to sit the throne during this timeline and he's the reason for
the Black Fire rebellions. Aegon the Unworthy, There's a
lot of reason to talk about him, but also Baylor the blessed
Daron the first because of, you know, the Baylor's peace
efforts, Daron's war efforts before that.
Now, what's what I don't know that they'll do is talk too much
about Damon and Raniera and Aegon the Second and Amon and
all that, because then it would be it might be spoilery to just
discuss those to say if they reveal that Egg is a descendant
of Damon and Rainier. Well, that kind of isn't that
kind of telling. I don't know if they want to do
that. Obviously it's easy to look that
up and know it. But you know, for the for the
generic show audience, I don't know if they want to go there.
One prediction that I would bet a lot on a lot is that Baylor
Break Spear will have the dagger when he shows up to adjudicate
and watch the tournament. He's going to have it on his
belt. I would bet so much money that
he's going to have that dagger because Deron, King Deron won't
appear. He probably won't appear in any
of them because he's going to die of the grand Spring sickness
between the 1st 2 novellas and he doesn't have any.
He doesn't go to the tournament. So we'll probably never see him
on screen so, but we will certainly see Baylor.
He's been cast. So yeah, that dagger, I would be
so surprised if he doesn't have it.
So that's let me check to see if any of y'all have some questions
related to that. Here's one from S itazin games.
Gerald White Bull Hightower. I think his hair is white slash
silver as his hair color is never mentioned and most
nicknames stick before any appointment.
Hightowers may have had some Valyrian ancestors.
Yeah, there's a nice running theory that because the
Hightowers are so, so, so ancient that they could be
connected to, if not the Targaryens, that another
Valyrian family or the great Empire, the Dawn.
There's not a lot of examples of Hightower hair color.
And in in a case like this, I don't know if we can take the
White Bull to mean a hair color, then we could.
But he's in he's a Kingsguard, he's in white.
So that that could be why they call him the White Bull.
Maybe he was just the Bull and then when he became a
Kingsguard, they called him the white Bull.
But I think it's a good point to consider what a Tasman Games is
saying here, because most of the time you have a nickname
beforehand. Like you prove yourself and then
you get invited into the Kingsguard, not after.
Like Barrison was Barrison the Bold long before he was in the
Kingsguard. Jamie was Kingslayer after.
But that's, you know, that's not an that's not, that's an
insulting nickname. That's not, that's not.
Also, he was just so darn young. So he's a little bit different
that way. So yeah, so that's tricky.
I do think it's possible though. I, I wonder if they will explore
any of that with Ormond. Some of the others, who knows?
But I'm always curious what they're going to do with the
hair colors. Obviously Allison's red haired.
So they didn't, they didn't go go that way with her.
And that's a smart thing because they don't want to confuse the
audience is to think, oh, is she Targaryen too?
You know, so I can see, I don't think they'll do that on the
show, but that doesn't mean the connection isn't there.
And the books, for example, a lot of people thought that's why
Jaheris got Allison confused, you know, because they she would
have had silver hair. So there is evidence in the
books that she might have had blonde or silver hair.
Very true. Yeah, that's very true.
And if you don't know what anecdote or Shea is referring
to, when Jaheris, the old king was dying, he Allison was
helping take care of him and she multiple, he apparently multiple
times mistook her for his missing daughter, which yeah,
why would he do that if she has brown hair, you know?
He could. He's senile also.
Yeah, it's it's possible. It's definitely possible.
And she could have blonde hair, but not silver.
And she doesn't have purple eyes, you know.
Yeah, that's true. Too.
But yeah, she could have light colored hair and not like she
probably didn't have red or brown hair in my guess, but you
know, yeah. Let's talk about Dragon Com.
We've got a lot of photos. This is really cool.
Yeah, I just accidentally skipped that in the document
here. It's funny because it starts
with the comment, the hugeness of it all, yet I somehow skipped
it. How did I skip the hugeness of
it all? I don't know what's wrong with
me. But yeah, Dragon Con's a lot of
fun. Every year it's Labor Day
weekend. I've been going since the 90s.
It's here in Atlanta. So it's it's always been close
by. It's really easy to attend and
we have press passes these days, so we don't even, we don't even
pay to go anymore. But shout out to Dragon Con for
keeping their ticket prices low. I got to, I definitely
appreciate that. Even though we're not paying for
it anymore, I think that's worth shouting out because so many
things in this world have gotten so much more expensive.
Just in Atlanta alone, the parking for Dragon Con has just
shot up. Every year it goes up and it's
like again, it got it went up. But Dragon Con itself very
affordable surprisingly for it's like $160.00 for a five day
pass. What?
I think it's 110 or 115 if you buy it ahead of time like now.
That is unparalleled value for a convention in 20/25/2020 as
well. 2026 by the time it rolls. Around Comic Con's like 280 for
the weekend. Yeah, and the the last kind of
Thrones on that didn't actually happen raised its prices to like
600 or some crazy thing like that, which is just no wonder
that got cancelled. I.
Was like their VIP that wasn't their base price.
I think it might have been, it went way up.
Maybe I'm maybe I'm remembering Ron.
I thought I thought it was I could be, I could be remembering
Ron. But I know I do recall the base
price going way up. Maybe it wasn't 600, but it went
up a lot. It was it may have I feel like
it at least doubled. Anyway, it was not cost
effective. So yeah, let's start with the
world of Ice and fire. Shoot, that's the main ticket
here for y'all in terms of Dragon Con, because Dragon Con
is a multi fandom sci-fi fantasy anime.
Everything you can name it is just a festival of cosplay and
love for various fandoms, for imagined mash ups, everything.
It's just a a host of creativity.
It's amazing. It's gotten so big that I think
you have a photo of of Wednesday night.
Do we have a photo of that now, the Wednesday, just in one hotel
looking down from the first floor on the atrium area where
there's all the fans are gathering.
Dragon Con doesn't even start on Wednesday.
It starts on Thursday. But I swear there were more
people on Wednesday before the con started partying as if it
already had, already wearing costumes, already hanging out,
already doing all these things. Then most conventions have at
their peak. There's it's just it's really
something it's it's really grown into its its own thing.
You know, it's very it's it's like a customized experience
that's just made for geeks and nerds like us.
So you shout out to Britt and Emma for hosting the world of
ice and fire shoot again. They do it every year and it's
always so much fun. It takes place on Saturday at 5.
I believe that's when it's going to or 430.
I believe that's the, we've had that spot locked in for several
years now. I believe that's when it'll be
next year. We had a really great mix of
returning cosplayers who did a similar costume as last year or
like a classic look that they've that they love to do every year
and a bunch of new ones that we hadn't seen before.
Some new ideas, some characters, people just hadn't been there
before. For example, a Shaya mentioned
it earlier, Zach and Hannah as Darren the drunken in Tanzel too
tall. That's our game of owns friends.
They dressed up as characters that you never see.
I had never seen either of those characters before in cosplay and
we got them both. That was great.
Let's Shay, of course, ran back the awesome Muppet Tulley's
cosplay. I believe she's got that on
screen or we'll have it in a second.
It's super cool. Shout out to Chuck Lazaral for
making these and he built these himself and it's not so easy to
walk around and that is it a shaya?
No, I'm very encumbered in fact. And I thankfully had Dom as
Damon and he was pajamas Damon and he was able to handle the
DSLR because I really cannot. I take photos with those hands,
with the Oscar hands. Yeah, exactly.
I can't. But so he took all these
wonderful DSLR picks for me. Very grateful to him for that.
Hopeful that next year we aren't Muppet Tully.
So I'm less encumbered, but I love being it.
I would never not heed the call. I would never not heed the call
because, I mean, I also couldn't.
Like we had Tommy Pappas as our Grover this year and and.
Michael G is our as coming back as Elmo.
Yes, exactly. So, yeah, we had our our group
of us. Yeah.
I, I love being Oscar. You do have to wear like a fan
inside your suit. Though, and people's reactions
are always so fun to see. People.
It's educational. It's educational.
That's right, The Muppets are always educational.
Shaya also loved this closeted Housewives of Westeros.
Allison with her kids and vacation fits this I tell.
What was I saying about the creativity here?
Y'all? This is just so fun and and
imaginative and hilarious all at the same time.
Yeah, they're all in. You know, their Hawaiian print
shirts and whatnot and casual clothes.
I saw them just walking around, not at the shoot.
Oh, right on. And we have this Aegon the
Magnanimous you got. That was the name they gave.
I didn't know about that name. You didn't.
See this, this this Aegon the second had magnanimous.
I'm trying to find the photo written on their ass like juicy,
like juicy pants. You know, they had a full
tracksuit and Aegon like a greens theme tracksuit and they
wrote magnanimous and they had like a those deal with it
sunglasses. I have a picture of me as Oscar
with Aegon. I'm going back and forth.
But no, I just thought this was really really really funny and I
kind of want to do some kind of of of tracksuit type hot hot D
cosplay now because I found it very inspiring and funny.
Heck yeah. Shout out to Kathy like a
Looking Glass cosplay. She did a fantastic Chapel roan
of Arc mixed up with Targaryen accoutrement and it looks
fantastic. A lot of Chapel roan mash ups
are just Chapel roan straight up at Dragon Con this year.
She's got such long. Hair.
This is specifically Chapel Roan's look for I guess the
VMAs. That she did OK.
Just to be clear, like I guess like she was inspired by Joan of
Arc, like Chapel Roan originally was inspired by that.
Oh, OK. But Kathy is doing a a great
rendition of her VM as look, specifically with the Targaryen
wig to be like a rain. I think she's meant to be like a
rainy smash up. Right on.
Yeah, definitely. You can see the Rainy's vibe
there for sure. Great job, Kathy, and of course,
you can just see from these some of these group shots that Ache
has put up. There's just so many cosplayers
here, which is great. We love to see how many people
are participating and how many people love to dress up as the
House of the Dragon or Game of Thrones character.
Lots of Rainieras, lots of Damons, both those obscure
characters and popular characters.
We'd love to see the mix. There's a Grey Worm, there was a
gender flip Masande, there was what I'm forgetting.
There's a lot of other good ones.
There was a Hodor that was amazing.
He was as tall and big as Hodor and had the perfect outfit and
was in character and everything there's.
I saw him walking around elsewhere, not as Hodor.
And I was like, that guy is Hodor.
And then I saw him at the, you know.
And he really was. He's like, yeah, there were some
great Jon Snows. There's always some great
Tormans. There's a really good a grit
there was. I'm trying to think once they
were just one of there's not like there's not a lot of those,
I guess, but they're definitely quite, but not a lot of those
they can remember. There were a lot, but there's
just so many total. I love the Olenna always.
Yeah, the Olenna. Yes, it was.
Tell them it was me. I want them to know it was me.
Yeah, with the glasses and everything, with the like.
Yeah, I did it. Glasses and well, myself.
I was Damon. Earlier in the week I dressed up
as Damon in his court. Fit, I guess you could say and.
You were able to use our forged by foam, a Targaryen shield,
always nice to bust out. And then you lynch that to Zach
the next day for his dare on the drunken to kind of pull it
together because he his dare on the drunken was him in casual
clothes with a a sign of of alcohol.
So, you know, and a shield and it works.
It I mean it works. Every photo he's in, he's
drinking too. He really, he did it just right.
It was really fun. So Damon was pretty fun.
I got to, you know, it's a kind of less of a costume and more
just like kind of being dressed up, but in a way that fits the
convention really well. So that was kind of nice.
And I kind of ran back like a upscale Damon later on Sunday as
well when we all had a a birthday dinner to go to.
So I kind of just did like if Damon was going to a party like
a red dragon scale shirt and still have the purple eyes and
of course the hair, but Baylor was much more of a thing.
Baylor is a lot harder to cosplay, a lot more being in
character and just kind of more fun in that because of that.
Shout out to our friend Taylor, who got my beard silver for it.
I wasn't, I didn't have a silver beard most of the days because
it's a bit of work to do that, but I did have the silver beard
for the day I was Baylor. Basically that's just like a
bathrobe I'm wearing but with a rope belt.
And of course I had the flowers in my hair with the vines
because that's the Baylor's crown is a flower and vine crown
and still have the purple eyes and had the seven pointed star
chain there or necklace there. I was really more of a choker
there, but you know, hey, you got to suffer, you know, it's
like wearing a hair shirt or something like that.
Got to be in character. I I guess the the most in
character thing I did well, two things I did in character in
particular stand out as I walked around to anytime I saw a Damon
or Raniera, which of course I saw a lot of them at the photo
shoot, I said, hey, grandma or hey, granddad.
I think of some people were confused by that because they
don't really know who Baylor the Blessed is because she hasn't
been on TV. But yeah, it was still fun for
me to do that. And I didn't wear shoes the
whole day. My Baylor did his walk to Dorn.
Hey, I got to do something like that.
I didn't walk to Dorn, but I did walk through downtown Atlanta at
4:00 in the morning without shoes.
Hate that I wouldn't brag about it.
Am I bragging or just kind of explaining?
Can I say? You learn a lot about what's on
the ground when you walk around in barefoot.
You were the rawest dog, as they would say.
In Always Sunny terms, Baylor is a raw dog.
I was a raw dog, a raw dragon. Yeah, raw dragon.
So who's the raw dragon here? I want to say I also really like
our friend Ash did a Starion Targaryen mashup that was pretty
cool. I like seeing the mashups and
John our our friend and listener John did a grown up rago again
ran that back. I love that Rago cosplay.
Cool. Yeah, Yeah, I like, I like it
when people get a little inventive and speculative with
it like that. It's pretty fun.
Oh, and this Helena, this this not, sorry, not Helena, this
Rainier who had a sign that said crying in High Valyrian.
I like it when they have a prop as well.
Crying in High Valyrian, What does that sound like?
So really it's just a it's so much fun to see everybody's
creativity. We saw a couple good Kristins
and a Gwain. There was a really good
Christian. I did not see the Gwain.
I saw the Kristen. He was really good.
Christy Cole. I have a picture of the Gwain up
now that Gwain we took a picture of and featured on our show last
year. The year before he did Damon in
armor. He took a picture and shared it
and he had a friend that went hey man here on history of
Westeros. So that happens to him again and
now I forget his name unfortunately.
But I love his armor. Love to see the greens
represented. And there's also a really good
Viserys with all the prosthetic work, that really cool.
Yeah, so just, it's just, we can't say enough about how fun
it is to see people's creativity and their hard work.
I mean, it's it's hard just to nail a show version of a
character without adding any of your own touches.
That's already just kind of hard to pull off a lot of times, even
if your character doesn't require shoes.
But it's it's so there's just so many possibilities.
You never know what you're going to see.
And I'm I'm never not just over the moon with with excitement to
see what people come up with. OK, let's, let's talk questions
here. Pulled some questions and from
recent episodes and a few others from here and there, maybe a few
of those that you all have asked Live Today.
I have these mostly sorted by episode.
So from who knows the song of Ice and fire, our most recent
episode besides this one and a couple of comments there from
John Rowe, 1547, he says, I feel the only way to hear the song
again is from Tom O Sevens, maybe as a child in the
Riverlands. And what I'm what's that?
What that's referring to is the question, will Danny hear the
song that Rhaegar is playing in her dream that she hears in the
house the undying? And the reason that's
significant is because she still hears the music.
Even after the vision of him fades, She's still hearing the
music and. And we wonder if that is
supposed to be like. The Song of Ice and Fire or just
Rhaegar's version of it, something that's significant to
Danny that she could hear later and be like, oh, that song.
So Thomas Evans is a possibility for someone that might have
heard it because Rhaegar was around the Riverlands.
He went to he went maybe met the ghost of High Heart, though that
probably would have been at Summer Hall, not the not in the
Riverlands, but Thomas Evans could have heard it elsewhere.
So yeah, maybe heard Rhaegar perform it or something like
that. Pie Guy 34 O3 says you touched
on the Red priests. Got me thinking of Thoros and
Don and Derek Darien. Where did they fit into the Song
of Ice and Fire and then Stoneheart.
What about her? Her strength was given to her by
Don Darien, whose strength is from Relor, but she is cold as
stone. Where did she fit it?
Yeah, I really don't know. It's a great question what
George is doing with the undead characters outside of the Others
in the long term. I just don't know.
I think part of it is to show that the Summer That Never Ends
concept from relore isn't good either.
That's bad. Just like In the Winter That
Never Ends maybe not quite as bad, but they're both just the
end of humanity. And maybe to show that balance,
that bookend that both sides of the ice and fire magic have
people returning from the dead, but that it can't be just that.
Though I feel like there's more to it that maybe just hasn't
been revealed. Is the return of the Dragons
part of why this is possible, or is it something else that also
enabled the Dragons? Right.
These things are all happening together.
The dragon might be a symptom rather than a 'cause that's
pretty tricky. Yeah, I'm.
I'm not really sure. It's a tough question.
And it's something that George really keeps close to the chest
because he doesn't want to give us a lot of explanations about
how some of these things work. He doesn't want to really get
deep into the nature of relore. His deities don't directly
intervene, right? That's just not how he does it.
So yeah, Stoneheart of all of them is one of the trickiest
too, because she was original. This is George planned this, not
this way, but he had Catlin dying beyond the wall in his
original outline and probably resurrected by the others,
probably turned into a a zombie there, a white there.
And that's a much different version of her story, but it
still is this same core idea of her dying and returning as
something else, something dark. So, yeah, I, I, I think it's an
an idea that he that really grew from its original incarnation.
But I just, I can't, if I'm being honest.
I just, I don't have takes that I'm really confident in with
that regard. I'm I'm really just kind of
like, well, we'll have to see. Also from Pie guy, what other
faiths could know about the Song of Ice and Fire?
Maybe not by that name, but by some.
Some they may call it something else.
And how does it fit into their belief system?
If so, we could theoretically go through every religion and try
to guesstimate how that would work.
Like, you know, how does the Black Goat of Kohor, what do
they think about the Song of Ice and Fire?
That's one word. I would think that they don't
have much knowledge of it or any knowledge of it, but relore or
House of black and white, they might have some familiarity, if
not a lot of it. House of black and white, not
just from history, but from the fact that Sam just blurted out
everything about it in front of faceless Pate.
So if they didn't know about it, well, they might soon because
that information could be delivered to them by one of
their own. From our Ryan red wine episode.
Shout out to Nina for right now 1 great job Nina debunk your
mind says just to point out a couple key issues with Sir
Lukamore regarding his secret wives. 3 secret wives debunk
your mind wants to emphasize that this was not just this is
really not comparable to Prince Lewin or Baylon or Boris blunt
people who just like have a lover.
This is 3 wives, which is a step beyond just having a lover and
16 children. That's yeah, it's not really
comparable to any other Kingsguard vow breaking thing
with women who aren't like a queen or something like that.
Like obviously that's a bad one too, but that isn't really
comparable to this like what Kristen Cole and Rainier may
have done is a different sort of bad than this.
This is involves way more people much harder secret to keep.
So the bunky minds bottom line is that Ryan's own honor would
have been forfeit if he kept Luca more secrets.
It would have been like a how could you not have known this
was going on? Like, he's he would maybe get
pulled down in the scandal too. He'd be like, what kind of a
dummy are you? If Lukamar was able to get away
with all this and none of you noticed y'all were covering for
him. You must have been covering for
him If he, if you didn't notice this, like how you're not fit to
be a Kingsguard if you didn't catch that 3 secret wives.
Come on, y'all. Like, how did you know 16 kids?
Really. How did you not catch it?
I mean, it's one thing if the king doesn't catch that, the
queen doesn't catch that. But his fellow brothers, Yeah,
let's just yeah, that's a good point.
It's a good point. This is it's it's a very it's
kind of in its own category in terms of because just sleeping
with a random woman or having a lover that's more like moles
town. That's like it's one of those
that can turn a blind eye to that one because it's like
that's is that really causing a big problem?
Yes, it's a violation of your oath, but it's like when it's
come on, come on, come on. Is that really so bad?
This one, however, yeah, it is that bad, Brandon Lord,
Baltimore 5182 says. In my humble opinion, Ryan
either had feelings for Lukamore's current Paramore
himself or just felt honor bound to avenge for one of Lukamore's
past conquests. Yeah, it's it might just grate
on him if he was like a real a stickler for the rules, which we
don't know that for sure about him.
It's just a valid theory, but it's an interesting angle that
maybe he was jealous. I honestly hadn't considered
that. But we should be considering
things like that because even though Ryan's reputation is so
clean and spotless, that doesn't mean it's true.
This is Jar Jar Martin we're talking about, Like, is he
really that good? Isn't there?
There's got to be a little bit maybe that's not so great about
him. We just know him 200 years later
and all the good things that were said about him.
That doesn't mean it's all really that true.
Was he really that good? Maybe he was, but it's fair to
be skeptical that he was really, was he really that perfect?
You know, Eric Rodriguez, 248 says as far as epic modern day
sports matchups go, this is referring to the extremely long
legendary bout of rhyme red wine versus Clarence crab with a
broke, absurd number of Lance 30 lances or something like that.
And we mentioned that in terms of, well, what's a sporting
event or sporting achievement that's similar to that?
Here's a good call. Eric Rodriguez says in two or
any 10, there was a match between John Isner and Nicholas
Mahut. Mahut Mahut, I don't know how to
say it. The match lasted 11 hours and 5
minutes over the course of three days.
Now, having it take over the course of multiple days is a
little different, but still, that's an insane amount of
tennis. And he says that these two
weren't at the top of their game, whereas red one and crab
were. So maybe this pure display of
skill wasn't quite as impressive, but still, that's
impressive. And yeah, that's a, that's a
good one. That's a good example.
I like that. That's, that's a, that's a very
impressive 11 hours of tennis at at an elite level.
Yeah. I mean, the stamina, the the
conditioning, you would need to run back and forth that much and
swing that racket so much probably wasn't cool those days
either. From our Alyssa Farman episode,
Laughing Chicken 177 says As an Aaron, this was so funny to me
or for me. And what that refers to is how
there's so many different ways to spell Aaron.
ERRONERINAARONERINNERYNERYNE. This is an infinite number of
ways to spell Aaron or. Did you even say ARRYN?
No. House Aaron No AERON like Aaron
Dampair, which that one's really just Game of Thrones, but still,
for us, that counts right in our world.
Even the name Alyssa Farman from Alyssa Alyssa, There's a lot of
ways to spell that one too. Not as many as Aaron, but still
selling Zorro 8732. Says another way that Jon Snow
could learn the lesson of duty over honor would be if he ever
finds out that Ned's not his father, that he comes to realize
that Ned sacrificed his honor in order to protect Jon, Will and
Leon. So this is from our Rob's The
Riddle of Rob's Will episode. That's a very good point.
Like I do expect Jon to learn that.
I think we all do at least probably.
So when he pieces all that together and he realizes, wow,
my father was lying, but it was well, or that guy who's not my
father, my uncle was lying. And he always thought that Ned
would never lie. I was like, well, I guess he
would. And we do know that this is
something that Ned absolutely would lie about.
And we've seen it and we've seen him do it for Sansa.
We've seen it when when virus said, well, your honor, what
about Sansa's life? And he's like, OK, my honor's
nothing compared to her. I'm going to I will absolutely
sacrifice my honor to keep my daughter alive.
So that goes the show. It's not Ned's number one thing.
His family does come first. He, if he was a Tully family
duty, honor, that's the right order for Ned.
And so if John figures that out too well, that's that could take
him to a lot of places and would help him understand what Ned did
for him. And would he would very much
honor that sacrifice. Even though he might be like a
little stunned at first to find out that Ned lied about this, he
would probably pretty quickly come around to realize that it
was a good lie, that it was one of those things that he had a
good reason to do. Not all lies are bad, Jon Snow.
Sometimes you tell lies to for good outcomes for and you you
know that it's just the world isn't that simple, that all lies
are bad. So I think that's something that
that Jon is going to maybe come around on, soften up on a little
bit. Yeah, that's a good point.
Balganese says, come on, guys. He's clearly going to kill Dark
Star, proclaim himself King of Torrentine just like his
ancestors Mary Daenerys, and then kill others with Dawn.
It's so obvious that is a comment about Edrick Dane from
our Dark Star episode. So Edrick Dane is going to kill
Dark Star, Dark Star is going to come for him, but Edrick Dane
will pull a fast one and be the winner there.
King of the Torrentine, Wow, that's great.
The War of 6 Kings, yes. As an aside y'all, I said that
we were doing a secondary topics moot over on our Patreon page
and we have two winners so far. Two more episodes that are going
to be made. One of them is Edrick Dane.
Edrick Dane is is has won a topic Smoot poll and we're going
to make that before the end of the year.
The other winner so far is called 3 Baratheon Bastards, and
it's an episode dedicated to Gendry, Maya Stone, Mia Stone
and Edrick Storm. A stupid ID says I would love
the Great John to be the one that kills Walter Frey.
Yeah, like, Walder Frey is going to die, most likely.
A lot of phrases are probably going to die.
I don't think we should be looking at the TV show.
I mean, like, oh, yeah, Ari is going to do it.
She might. I'd really doubt it, though.
I really doubt that. She kills a bunch of all those
phrase, like anything like the way the show portrays it.
I really don't think so. She sort of has the phrase on
her list. She doesn't know which names to
put. She's like, I would put the
phrase on my list. I just don't know their names.
So that's possible. She gets involved in that plot,
that revenge, that justice, whatever you want to call it.
But the great John is someone we do expect to be a, you know, Act
Three player. He's been, he was a big part of
Act One. Then he got thrown in prison.
And I suspect he's going to get, he's going to break those
chains. It's like those that umber sigil
and he's got several people are going to have to have a
reckoning. And Walder Frey might be #1
maybe Roose Bolton, but I have a suspicion that Bolton may
already be dead by the time Great John gets out.
And also Great John, if he gets out, it'll be in the Riverlands.
That's where he's imprisoned. He's either he's at the Twins
right now. Jamie ordered him sent to King's
Landing. If he escapes at King's Landing
or on the way to King's Landing, or is freed from the Twins, all
those are near, in or near the Riverlands, nowhere near the
North. Le Corbusier says Theon of all
people, mentions that dire wolves had not been seen South
of the Wall for 200 years. Assuming the Wall has magic
negation properties, maybe other Starks could not make a
connection to more magically inclined animals like direwolves
until now. If Bran or a Bloodraven tipped
John off the Ghost, who doesn't make a sound but was heard by
John. I love that take that that
catch, by the way, Maybe one or the other.
Both Bran and Bloodraven influenced the stag and direwolf
to go South of the Wall for the kids.
Yeah, it's an interesting theory, The idea that Bloodraven
sent those direwolves. I think it's a very strong
theory because of this, this tip that direwolves haven't been
seen South of the Wall in 200 years, yet Winterfell is very
far South of the Wall. It's like weeks by travel.
Remember how long it takes Tyrion and John to get there
when they leave Winterfell, It takes a while.
So it's not just South of the Wall, it's very South of the
Wall. So it's peculiar.
And the idea that there was a human involvement is worth
considering, if not likely, possibly the stag itself.
That's interesting. Yeah.
That's a little like the actual way they were found, with the
direwolf mother being dead and all that killed by the stag.
It's obviously important symbolism for this, this the
stag, Baratheon sigil and the antler going in the wolf's
throat as a hint of for what's going to happen to Ned and maybe
some other Starks as well. But I don't have a stronger
feelings on that part. But it it makes sense.
I mean, it blood Raven could do that.
It's not out of it. It's not like imagining some
power that we haven't seen. That's just pretty basic skin
changing, right? If you it's kind of weird to
imagine a skin changer having two animals fight.
Like Can you imagine Varamir had sticking one of his wolves on
one of his other animals? But they're not he's not blood
Raven wouldn't be bonded to these animals.
It would just be, you know, I'm going to skin change into these
because I'm a green seer and can enter any animal I want.
I'm going to create this situation near Winterfell for
them to find. Yeah.
I I don't think that we should be looking at that as mundane.
We don't. We also shouldn't assume that it
was just blood Raven and that's it.
But I do think it's very likely he was involved.
A few questions from the Benjen, the Book of Benjen Stark
episode. Well, first one from Ben Jay.
Yeah. Is this Benjen asking about him?
Listening to The Avengers Dark episode, the fact that Mance is
at Winterfell during the feast when when Robert and Cersei are
visiting doesn't make sense. He should be either fighting
other leaders to become leader of the free folk or looking for
that horn on unearthing graves and trying to find that.
That's not a bad point. I don't agree with the first
part because by the time Robert came to visit, Mance was already
King of the Beyond the Wall. He'd already subjugated the
other leaders, so that had already happened.
So that's in the past. But they were actively looking
for the horn. That is true.
They still were doing that. They hadn't stopped.
But I could see Mance just, you know, pausing that effort or
letting or having his subordinates continue that
effort while he goes S to check out Robert.
It's not. So I see what you're saying that
there's a maybe a little bit of overlap on what Mance is doing
here and how could he be doing all this at once.
But I don't think it's quite as quite as bad as what you're
saying. I think it just requires a
little explanation. But it's not.
I don't think it's like a plot hole or anything.
Here's a great name, Tosh Furatu, of course, that's a play
on Nos Furatu and I assume a Peter Tosh, the reggae legend
who was had a great solo career after being one of the Whalers,
as in Bob Marley and the Whalers.
Yeah, I know my reggae a little bit.
Not not Tosh point O. It could be Tosh .0.
I guess it could be that. That might be more likely,
actually. I know I think of Peter Tosh
first, even though, yeah, Tosh Three 2.0 is probably more
famous the in these days. My head's in the 80s, y'all,
Because Peter Tosh definitely more popular in the 80s.
Yeah. So the question is, I have a
feeling Benjin is alive, living in a cave like a hermit while
secretly watching over important events as they happen.
And of course, the nearby Wildling village children refer
to him as Old Ben. Nice Star Wars reference.
Yes, because, yeah, he probably calls himself old Ben.
You know, he changed his name, but he still calls himself
Stark, right? It's just like, yes.
Ben Kenobi. Oh, what a what?
A disguise boy, that Ben Kenobi. Obi Wan Kenobi.
Duh. There's that's him.
That's two. There's no way those are
connected. Yeah, So he'd be like Ben, you
know, Starkish or something like that.
I was like, Nah, I can't be the same guy.
Merkel. John says if Ben found out the
prophecy from Liana via Rhaegar, regardless of who the child was,
be it John or Danny or whatever, knowing they had to save the
world from north winds rising without Dragons, one could see
how he felt obligated to make the fight a priority to her
legacy by joining the Night's Watch.
That's true. Yeah.
Like if Benjen discovered some things, like if Liana told him
things that Rhaegar was convinced of, which then she
would have been convinced of, and Benjin would have been very
young and very, as we talked about in the Benjin Stark
episode quite a bit, Liana and Benjin were very close, the
closest pair of those siblings of all those Stark siblings of
that generation. And she had a big influence on
him. So she could convince him of a
lot. He really looked up to her, it
seems like. So if she believed something
very sincerely, he would probably believe it too.
So I could definitely see this, that he, she learned things from
Rhaegar about the prophecy, passed them on to Ben, and he
took that to heart and was like, yeah, I should join the Night's
Watch. I mean, we are.
He was already kind of interested in that.
Like we we hear when he was younger, it was already
something that he was kind of drawn to.
That would explain the the last bit of push that he needed.
He was already considering it. And then he finds out there's a
supernatural prophetic reason that his sister, whom he loves
and trusts, sincerely believes in.
Yeah, that would move him. That would that would definitely
have a big impact, Chatty Lumpkin says.
Well, here's an idea that's way out there.
What if Benjen received aid from the Children of the Forest?
It was traditional at one time for the children to gift the
watch with 100 pieces of Obsidian.
Did they find him and did he take refuge in The Cave system?
Did has he had contact with Bloodraven who could potentially
instruct him or direct him as a previous Lord commander of the
watch? Is Benjen acting on Bloodraven's
orders? And could Benjen be instrumental
in brand and companies escape back to Winterfell?
Well, obviously in the show they had Benjen helping Bran get
away. I feel like that's not unlikely
to be something in that regard, like Benjen helping them that
might that's a not an unlikely way for him to reappear.
And I definitely like the idea of considering him being
connected to children this way. Because when we discussed the
last hero story, it's not a prophecy.
It's a story that feels like foreshadowing, but still is a
story. Bran lines up very well with
that story about fitting with it, but so does Benjen.
He's the second best fit for that.
And if we're going to have multiple people that fit Azora
High, if we're going to have a couple of people maybe who check
off some of the other boxes of the prints that was promised,
even if Danny checks them off the best, John does a pretty
good job too. Couple other characters, maybe
not not as much, but point being there's a lot of times multiple
candidates for some of these prophetic figures, especially
Azora High. So maybe this one's, maybe
there's multiple Last Hero figures, maybe multiple people
fit into that. If so, this theory has a lot of
legs, and without knowing what else is going on with Benjen, a
lot of thoughts are valid here. A lot.
There's a lot of valid theories in my opinion as to what it
could be. Abduction of Liana from a couple
questions about that one, Adam Sarkowski says how the news of
her abduction spread out to Brandon and others.
Related to that, I'm of the opinion that it was no other,
none other than Peter Baelish, who somehow managed to master a
plan to throw a spanner in the works.
Is it likely that unknowingly, he was the one who started this
through all all through chaos? He wanted to kill Brandon after
losing his duel. And he knew then that in order
to beat stronger men, he had to do it another way.
That's a good point because we know that Littlefinger learned,
you know, he did think he he was thinking like he was in a song
or something like that. He was thinking he had to be
brave and do all these things. And he learned that life is not
a song. And he became very cynical after
that when he was already kind of a, you know, a shifty kind of
dude, very clever. Obviously, this isn't, not to
take anything away from this, but this theory has been around
for quite a while. It's certainly makes some sense.
It's the part that is tricky is you say yourself, somehow he did
this. The trick is how did he do this
when he was severely wounded and laid up in bed and only about 15
or 16 years old? I wouldn't put it past him.
He's so clever, so capable of, as you say, throwing a spanner
in the works. But there are some hurdles here
given his age and his he wasn't established as some kind of spy
man. He didn't have some sort of
network of agents. He didn't even have money.
So he couldn't have had that because like what?
He doesn't have any money to pay people to, to give him secrets.
He's a 16 year old, you know, Foster at River Run, you know,
of, of a family that's being a favor is being done to them
because they're not so big, you know, they're not a really
powerful family. It's he was kind of up jumped in
the 1st place based on their social mores here.
So it, it's very possible, though, that he found a way to
send a message to Brandon or send someone out there with
false information or with true information that was just
exaggerated. Like, yeah, Leona ran away with
Rhaegar, but let me treat it like a kidnapping.
Let me tell everybody it was a kidnapping.
You know, even if he might not be, he might not know the truth,
he might not know what circumstances Leona left with
Rhaegar on. He just decided to make up that
it was a kidnapping. And that is what fired Brandon
up and had predictable results. Because that is, that is
predictable if if Brandon is convinced that Rhaegar kidnapped
Leona, which is the, which is what he operated on.
We don't know exactly why, but it is what he was thinking
happened. He thought that Rhaegar
kidnapped Leanne. So yeah, it's entirely possible
that someone gave him that idea falsely or just pushed him in
that direction. He may have started thinking
that way and someone else pushed him the rest of the way towards
believing it. Maybe.
Maybe gave him a false clue. Just a little something.
Something to get Brandon, who's already hot about it, to get him
fully aflame and ready to go tell Rhaegar to come out and
die. Which, again, is also going to
have a predictable result. If you're someone who
understands people, you don't have to be that good at
understanding people to understand how the Mad King is
going to react to having his print, having his son and heir
threatened. Sam Claus, too, says my head
cannon is that she had a stronger connection with horses
than normal. Yeah, you know, that's a valid
possibility that that Liana had minor skin changing talent just
enough to maybe just like sort of have a better connection with
horses than a regular person would without it being enough
for her to even realize it's supernatural or for her to not
be able to parse it because she was only 16 when she died.
So maybe maybe if she lived longer, she would have figured
out that there's a supernatural angle to her connection to
horses. On the other hand, it's maybe
better just to believe that she's just really talented with
horses. I don't know if we want to make
it supernatural, you know, I don't know that we need that.
It's doesn't mean it's not true. Doesn't mean it's not possible,
but like personally prefer that she was just really talented and
that there wasn't a magical angle here, but I I certainly
can't dispute the possibility. San Klons too also says I've
never understood how Rhaegar went from wanting to depose his
father to being willing to die for his wrongs in the field.
Well I don't think he was willing to die for his father's
wrongs. I don't think he was willing to
die for his own family. Like, because he's still next in
line, if Rhaegar doesn't step in and fight Robert, they might
lose the rebellion and then Rhaegar isn't going to be king
either. So I don't think he was doing it
for his father. I think he was doing it for his
family, including himself. He's he's the heir to the
throne. So it's still it's, it's still
in his best interest to keep his own status as heir.
But that said, I think Sam Klons raises a good point that quite
possibly some of the things that Rhaegar learned through prophecy
might have guided his actions vis A vis the battle to Trident
or facing Robert or whatever he may have believed as Aegon the
Conqueror did, that a Targaryen has to sit the throne for now.
That's a show invention. Let's not forget that.
As far as we know, that's a show only invention, not Aegon's
dream, that's from George. But the idea that there has to
be a Targaryen sitting the throne, that's House of the
Dragon for sure. It might be a song of ice and
fire also, but we don't we we're not sure of that.
If it is A Song of Ice and Fire, if that's also part of it, then
it fits a lot. It fits neatly.
The rigor's like, well, yeah, we can't lose the throne because
that's part of the prophecy. We have to keep it so that that
would fit very well. Couple questions about both the
House Fray episodes and the Winterfell murders.
There's some connection here between because they're raised
were involved in the Winterfell murders.
JCFTWZMOFGWTF which is Jesus Christ for the win.
ZOMF. Oh my God, what the Yeah that's
great. All the expressions in once.
I got you swear any. Oh yeah, you got me.
Swear. I was like the first time I did
that right. Yeah, I know you're normally so,
so good about that. And I'm the one who slips up and
who have to censor. Well, the FCC is getting looser
these days. Not that we're not that we're
guided by the FCC at all, but like now you can say the F word
like once per movie. That's like PG13.
Like what are we going to use that F word on?
They like think about like, how are we going to, you can only
get one. Where are we going to put it
anyway? This.
The question is, or the statement is, I don't have many
theories that I will stand for against all odds, but one of
them is that Big Walder will become Lord of the crossing only
for the long Night to hit and the Blue Fork to jump its banks.
And he's left with a toll bridge and no river, thus leaving house
for a where they started 600 years ago.
I think you meant the Green Fork.
But either way, point stands. Yeah.
What happens if the the Trident freezes and it's like, well we
don't need a bridge You can just walk across?
The idea that Big Walder will become Lord of the Crossing is
pretty funny, right? Isn't Big Walder the one who got
killed? I always get that mixed up.
No big one. Yeah, little one.
The little sneaky 1 is Big Walder and Little Walder is the
Big Less. They're all backwards, yeah, so.
That's how I remember. I'm like, it's not the way I
would think. He's like 40th in line now a lot
of phrase might die. So maybe he'll go from 40th in
line to like 15th in line and just with a just a Red Wedding 2
point O or something like that. But he may just also not get out
of the North alive. Noi metal 4440.
Is that Donald Noi metal, like the true steel and the bronze
and everything? Yeah, that's cool.
Here's an alternate theory about who killed, about who killed
Walder, thinking that maybe Ramsey put him up to it.
Right? That Ramsey put him up to the
murder and threatened him with death if he didn't do it.
I can't argue against that. I still think it was Walter
killing his own brother, but and I also don't know why Ramsey
would want to do this. That's my argument against This
is why would Ramsey want to kill this young Frey?
What's his what's his benefit? What's what does he gain from
this? On the other hand, Walter
killing his own brother also like what does he gain from
this? He moves up one spot in the line
of succession from 40 something as to still 40 something.
If so, the motives aren't that clear either way.
So I don't know that I can say, oh, Ramsey doesn't have a motive
because neither does the brother doesn't have that strong of a
motive either. So it is a little peculiar.
So that's that's a fairpoint, You know, if he.
Has that strong of a motive, huh?
You don't you don't think Big Walter is that strong of a
motive? He has a huge motive.
What is it? He's just trying to make it.
He has to take his shot when he can to make his way up in line.
That's the only way he's going to make it is if he every chance
he gets to eliminate someone, he does it.
I think that's that's what he was thinking is like he's never
going to be lured unless he kills him.
This is when's he going to have the chance again?
Never. I think.
That I think it's just this kid is has the law he's.
Like I got to kill 30 more of them, but I got to start now.
Yeah, I mean, maybe he's like, I don't have to kill 30 more, but
every time 1 is in my has, I have a shot, I got to kill him
and maybe he kills 10 more and the rest just get killed.
I don't know. I think we have his motive, I
guess. Clearly.
And one tell here is that or two tells here that NOI Metal 44
points out is one of them is that Ruth's remarks that to
Theon that Ramsey fights like a butcher and we're told that
Walder was butchered like a hog. I like the word play connection
there. Obviously that's not foolproof,
but Oh yeah, you're right. Sorry, Michelle Miscellaneous
says aren't they cousins? Aren't we?
They're not brothers. They're absolutely cousins.
They're not brothers. My bad.
It's so funny to think about that They're they're like nearly
the same age. They have the same name.
They're from the fame family. But yeah, they're cousins, not
brothers. So the other clue is that the
moments before the corpse is brought in, Ramsey is the one
who walks in, is the last one to walk in before that, and he's
just buckling his sword belt on. So maybe it's a clue that he had
just been up to no good or something like that.
It's a decent theory. Yeah.
I mean, a sham makes a good point that yeah, it's just him.
He's taking his shot when he can, even if he has to take 40
more shots later. Or maybe he doesn't.
Maybe he only has to take 20 more shots or 10.
Either way, yeah, it's not an open and shut case, let's put it
that way. Will Dane says the hooded man in
Winterfell. It says, it says, it says he's
wearing a hooded cloak flapping behind him.
It doesn't say the hood is up. And this is in reference to me
saying he might not be able to identify who the person is
because the hood is over. So that would preclude him from
necessarily identifying the person on site.
That's a good point. I went and reread the the
passage. It is not explicit that the hood
is up. I would guess the hood is up
because it's really damn cold and the the snow is blowing
around. You would think the hood would
be up. But yeah, it it doesn't have to
be. It doesn't.
It's not an automatic. From our Quaithe episode,
Aramka, 87, says Danny's isn't much of A reader, according to
George. That's a good point.
And and this is in reference to Danny picking up some of the
books that she's been given and learning some more about her
family, learning more about some of these other things that are
relevant to her arc, which George is saying, man, maybe
that won't happen because Danny isn't just isn't very bookish.
Good point. Good point.
Jay from nowhere says perhaps even Dragons must sleep refers
to the death of the Dragons, whether that means they must
sleep before being woken again or that they must return to
their slumber again. Interesting.
Yeah. So certainly metaphorically, the
sleeping of Dragons, you could say that they've been, they were
asleep for 150 years, sleeping in stone or whatever.
It's, it's maybe stretching the metaphor a little bit.
But Bran did see Dragons in ash eye in his, in his dream that
looked like they were, you know, they're kind of hidden or
concealed or whatever. And you could you could argue
that they were metaphorically sleeping, waiting for their time
to return because obviously Bran was seeing if he was seeing
actual Dragons, then the Dragons weren't extinct.
But it seems like that was more of a symbolic image or seeing
the future. But yeah, I like the idea of
slumber mixing up slumber and and death.
Maybe they've woken up for this purpose, woken up metaphorically
in order to fight the others, and then at the end of it all,
they'll be gone again. In reference to Quaithe being so
cryptic, Barris Aurelius says one possibility is she might be
afraid of being overheard. She might be not in a place
where it's entirely secret. She might be.
There might be She might be worried people are listening to
her or spying on her, and thus she speaks in language that
maybe isn't so easily understood by people who might be spying on
her. Yeah, that makes some sense.
And another person, Beatay Bredtastic, agrees with this and
says, I assume Quake talks and riddles because someone else
could be listening. And Danny might be able to
figure these things out because she has some of the clues where
some random listener might not have all the context to be able
to figure out what's being said. It's certainly possible.
That's a pretty solid idea. I don't have a great answer as
to why she talks in riddles. My best guess, as I said during
the episode, was that she was trying to get Danny to figure it
out on her own. It's it's a it's a lot to take
in. If you just say, hey, you,
Danny, you're the prophesied savior of the world.
Let's go save the world. Like, is she going to believe
that you got to bring her along slowly?
That's a lot to put on someone right away.
Braun Holler says, also elected goes to high heart.
She speaks what she sees rather than trying to interpret and
risk interpretation like Melisandre and Cersei do.
They both misinterpret some of their dreams, especially
Melisandre. But yes, Cersei does it too with
the with the Maggie the Frog stuff.
But that's a good point because if you're just trying to give
the straight dope like this is what I saw in my dream, I'm not
trying to interpret it. This is straight up what I saw.
You interpret it. That is how the ghost of Hire
communicates. She says exactly what she sees
in her dreams, even when it's really obvious to us what that
means, and she still speaks directly to what the images are
in her dream. She does not translate it.
She just says what she sees. So maybe that's what Quaithe is
doing too to a certain degree. And of course Quaith isn't
giving straight visions and predictions, so there's a little
bit of difference between them in terms of what they seem to be
capable of. But still, I like the idea.
It's certainly possible giving the direct take rather than
doing the pre interpretation so to speak.
Magmafrost 13 Magmafrost. That's a good ice and fire name.
It seems pretty unlikely to me that Sorella is actually the
sphinx that Eamon was dreaming about.
It seems more likely to me that his dream was about the Valyrian
Sphinx, which is a dragon with a human head.
And the Riddle is with regards to the nature of Dragons.
I agree with that. I do think that there is a
mystery behind Alerus the Sphinx.
But the whole Valyrian Sphinx idea, the symbol, the symbol of
a dragon with a human head. Or even even taking that even
farther, some of the Valyrian sphinxes are said to be
specifically the product of blood magic, that they were
actually creatures that were made in the time of the
freehold. They could have a lion's body, a
Griffin's head, Dragon's scale, all sorts of different weird
combos that they would call sphinxes because the sphinx to
them is just a, it's kind of like a chimera, like a a being
that has the parts of several animals, and in this case, like
supernatural animals. So, yeah, absolutely possible.
And it's one of the thing. It's one of the mysteries that
really gets me. Like, what the heck is up with
Alaris? Like, I really do not get it.
I've never heard a theory that I'm like, oh, that's got to be
it. I've heard some good theories,
and we talked about some of them in that episode.
But that's one that really gets me.
I just really don't feel like I have a strong guess on that one.
Merkel John also says, So that just struck me that Danny says,
but my Dragons are roaring in the darkness, right?
That's when they're imprisoned and that could be why Quentin
tried to release them because maybe he was sent to dream by
Quaithe or somebody. If Quaithe can send glass candle
dreams to Danny, which definitely seems to be
happening, why not someone else that's involved?
Why not to Quentin? The problem with that, which
Merkel John acknowledges here in the comment, is that remember
that Danny was touched by Quaithe on the wrist and she
felt that later. And we we we theorized that that
sort of a Geo tag like she blocked her, added a, you know,
marked her and could come back to that somehow.
Like I can detect where you are because I Geo tagged you.
How if that's the case, you didn't do that to Quentin.
So it wouldn't really be as as possible.
But I like the idea. I like the idea in theory that
someone was pushing Quentin to do this.
I kind of think there would be clues in his chapters, though,
that something else was going on, that something was pushing
him. It seems to be just he just
wants to impress Danny. I think it feels like the vibe
we get. All right, just a couple more
and we'll wrap it up here. From the Ragnarok episode.
A lot of y'all had fun watching me fail to pronounce Idrisil.
Igdrazil. It's Igdrazil.
Someone even spelled it out for me, so there you go.
Kept adding another syllable. Yeah, because I've heard other
people say it that way and I couldn't remember exactly how to
do it, but either way, I was wrong.
So Danny the Dana, the Dreamy 905 three says great video in
German. We have a female sun and a male
moon as well. So that's a good example of it's
unusual. Most of the time it's the sun
that's male and the moon that's female in most myth traditions,
but not all as we can see here. Dana expands saying just talk to
my husband about it in the context of Roman languages last
week. So your timing was perfect.
I guess we got it from the same sources.
Then you also talked about the Indo European roots.
So what are the pronouns of sun and moon in Farsi?
That's a good question. I don't know.
That's something we'll have to look up and go a little deeper.
And I'm curious now, how many other myths, traditions or
legends would ever have the sun as feminine?
In which you would think if the sun is feminine, the moon is
masculine. I wonder if there's any that
have them both feminine or both masculine.
Probably not, but that would be an interesting variation if it
was that way. Randomly generated username
says. I think it's worth mentioning
that Tolkien borrowed from many different mythologies, including
Catholicism and the old Anglo-Saxon beliefs, but also in
lesser amounts the good old Greco Roman, and in a
significant amount the Finnish mythology, which is distinct and
separate from Norse equivalent that I was aware of.
All of those except for the Finnish mythology.
I don't know anything about Finnish mythology.
I'm sure there's some connections to Norse mythology
because, well, Scandinavia includes Finland and Norse
mythology includes pretty much all Scandinavia, so there might
be some overlap there, something for me to look into more
thoroughly at another time. So I'm glad for the tip there.
They also add, unfortunately, little remains of the old
beliefs of the ancient Britons before the Roman period.
But there were Tolkien had other British epics to lean on.
So yeah, it's true the the Romans were pretty thorough in
getting rid of a lot of that old stuff.
That's why we don't know anything about the Druids for
the most part. For example, Khaled 91 says how
come whenever fantasy is discussed, people never bring up
the completed memory, Sorrow and Thorn fantasy series by Tad
Williams. I have actually brought up Tad
Williams a few times throughout the History of History of
Westeros podcast, but Khaled 91, unless you've listened to like
every episode of ours, you could easily have missed that because
we've got like 500 episodes and I've probably mentioned it like
four or five times. But I think Tad Williams does
deserve a huge amount of credit for being one of the main
inspirations, not just for A Song of Ice and Fire, but for
the structure of A Song of Ice and Fire.
Tad Williams did POV style for Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, and
George was struck by that as a great device for what he wanted
to do. Obviously he's not the only one
to do POV style, but I believe it was George's first time
reading POV Silence fantasy. I could be wrong about that,
check me if I'm wrong. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm
pretty sure that's right. I I have read all of the Tad
Williams novels in Memory Sovereign Thorne, plus the
trilogy quadrilogy that comes after it.
That's a funny anecdote. Memory Sovereign Thorne was
supposed to be a trilogy. It was 4 books.
Tad Williams. Like yeah I couldn't finish it.
I had to do longer because George would understand that
too. And then he did a second
trilogy. But at the beginning of the
third book, it says he wrote an author's note that says I have
once again failed to write a trilogy.
So both trilogy's are actually four books.
So Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is a great series.
You will recognize a lot of the Easter eggs from George.
You will. You'll catch a lot of
references, a lot of things that he nodded to or borrowed.
And that's fun by itself, but the story's actually quite solid
on its own. LED 91 says maybe this is a a a
no one mentions him as a possibility to finish the
series. If, if, but I don't know if we
need to go there right now anyway.
Certainly a better choice than Brandon Sanderson.
But I also recommend the second quadrilogy.
It's it's set 30 years after Memory, Starwin Thorne, a lot of
the same characters, obviously the same world.
It's really solid. I liked it a lot.
So I recommend that you can always go to our web page and go
to our Amazon links and buy the books through there and let us
know what you think. If you enjoy them as much as I
did, I would love to hear that. You could e-mail us or or jump
on our discord and and tell people what you thought.
Two last comments from Jay from nowhere.
One is thank you Jamie Lannister and that's in reference to the
burning of King's Landing, obviously for being a King
Slayer. Good job Jamie.
And then the lack of unbiased, empirically factual histories is
what makes this universe so fascinating to discuss.
I thought that was a very good comment to end on.
I fully agree 110%. It's great, George's craft.
It's such a wonderful world. It's why we're able to keep
talking about this stuff. Where are we able to just, we
have endless topics, endless connections to the real world,
endless parallels, endless fun. So thanks y'all for
participating. Thanks you all for sending
questions or responding or just being here and supporting us.
There's a lot of ways to do that and we appreciate whichever
one's worked for you. We have an Instagram.
Don't forget the history of Westeros and make sure to take
our survey bit dot LY how survey history of Westeros survey, how
survey bit dot LY how survey. It's in the description.
You can also we'd love it if you take that survey.
It'll help us improve our show, get feedback as to what you guys
like or maybe don't like, and it helps us fine tune things a bit.
It's great data for us as a as a podcast to understand what you
guys prefer and it's just really helpful.
We'd appreciate if you could spend a couple minutes taking
that. And once again, if you're going
to be in New York for New York Comic Con, make sure to hit us
up. We'd love to say hi.
And that's about it. Let's look at the poll.
What happened there? What, what did most people think
is the, is the show going to use the same music?
Michelle is looking that up right now.
Looks like not nearly as many said yes as I thought.
It was almost an exact 2/3 split.
Two people, two out of three people said yes, 68%, almost 2
out of 3, and 32% said no. So I'm in the yes category.
What do you think? So you think they'll keep that
music? No.
You think they'll change it?
OK, I don't know. I think, I think people said
Ramin Jawadi wasn't probably doing the music for Night of the
Seven Kingdoms. I saw her.
I don't know. So if he doesn't do it, then
maybe he won't. But I don't know, Maybe I'm just
wishful thinking. I really want them to let go of
the song. Right.
OK. Well, we'll see what happens.
Obviously time will tell. By January or so, we'll know.
Maybe they'll maybe it'll leak before that, whether there's
something new. But yeah, lots to look forward
to, lots more to come. We will be getting back to just
regular book topics and then the and the throughout the end of
the year. And you know what to do until
next time. Thanks on behalf of Ashea.
I'm Aziz. Don't forget to check out
Michael Klarfeld. KLARADO x.de is how you spell
it. Clara dox.de.
That's you can get with these maps.
You can download them yourself and get them printed out.
And we love them. We love ours, and I'm sure
you'll love them too if you get them and you know what to do.
Until next time, my friends. Valar Riritis.