300 years ago, before the start of the books, Torin Stark knelt
to Aegon the Conqueror rather than face his Dragons.
This decision was made after seeing those Dragons, and after
seeing what Valerian in particular did to Harrenhal.
The North joined the Seven Kingdoms, the fledgling 7
kingdoms as it was in those days.
Yet despite the Seven Kingdoms growing closer to one another
under 1 banner or under 1 crown, the North has remained fairly
separate in many ways. Different religion, culture,
history, even values. There's some overlap of course,
but there's substantial differences.
One major thing is there's much less influence from the Andals
even in day-to-day living and long term philosophy.
Yet the north is large. It's not a monolith.
Though the North remains northern.
Certain areas are arguably less northern than others.
White Harbor in particular has a lot of the South in it and a lot
of southerners coming through and back and forth people from
other places. Barrowton is large.
It's not a city, but it is urban or semi urban.
The Kramnig men of the Neck are northerners, but they're not at
all like those city dwellers or the ones to the extreme.
N even Winterfell has changed over the years given its
dealings with the South. Things like that.
But the houses farthest N closest to the wall, closest to
winter, These are the houses that most firmly keep the old
ways, the ones that are still the most northern.
Sometimes they have to do these things in secret though, given
how the ancient rites and beliefs are seen in current
times. You can be proudly northern, but
some of the old ways are not things you can really be proud
of, even if you still practice them.
Now if we accept the Wall and beyond and Skagos, which has no
castles at all, Last Hearth, Seat of house Umber is the
farthest northern castle. Everything about the region
speaks to extremes. Last Hearth gives the impression
of a dangerous frontier place, and rightly so.
It is. Living is harsh up there.
If the Raiders don't get you, winter will.
The umbers, thus, to survive this long and thrive even, are
very tough, very proud, very capable.
It's impressive to make it this far, this long and and still be
doing what they're doing. They have little room for
weakness, little margin for error.
With so many foes and threats nearby, as we'll go through in
this episode, they can't really afford to be any less than
vigilant. They can't afford to not be
strong. For these reasons, the Umbers
have long been powerful allies and vassals of the Starks,
sometimes a second or even first line of defense against the fury
of the Free Folk and worse. It's also For these reasons that
Great John Umber became a kingmaker.
No one calls him that, but he is the man who lived farther north
than other Northerners. It's fitting that he and his kin
have the least regard amongst northerners for the doings of
the South. They're the farthest away from
it. They have less respect for that
relatively soft way that they live down there.
As Lord Umber said famously, even their gods are wrong.
Beyond this well crafted world building and character
development, George has also done something sneaky with house
Umber in terms of the story. Nearly everything to do with
them, everything they're involved with plot wise is still
ongoing. All the major umber characters,
save one who was killed at the Red Wedding are still in
progress. Great John Crow food, Hor's
Bane, They have plot still going.
Revenge to claim, ambition to fulfill, and who knows what
else. We haven't technically even seen
a single umber fight someone, right?
This is a proud, vigilant, warlike, not afraid to throw
down house. But we haven't seen a single one
of them fight. You might think, wait, is that
true? Aziz?
Haven't we seen the Great John fight?
No, we have not. We've heard talk of it, We've
heard accounts of it. We haven't seen it on page now,
unless you count him punching Lord Rickard Karstark, which I
don't. That's not really a fight.
He didn't fight back. It was just one punch.
So we've, again, we've heard a lot of it, but we haven't
actually seen it. And that's interesting.
Not even during the Red Wedding isn't that interesting.
So George has mostly kept them in his back pocket or at least
kept them on delay, like in a stasis where he's holding it
back for later. There.
There's definitely going to be an unleashing, or rather with
respect to their sigil and unchaining yet to come.
We don't know exactly when, but it's coming.
Today we discuss these possibilities, where they could
lead and why. Theories and foreshadowing umber
history and lore. All that and more on this
episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Hello and welcome back everybody.
We are live streaming at our usual time of Three Eastern on
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And the same goes for our podcast version, which you can
catch on any platform that has podcasts.
But if you sign up to be a patron, you can get it ad free.
Shout out to our good friend Nina Krusling who's latest blog
post over on goodqueenalley.tumblr.com.
That's with 1L and Ally is very much related to this episode.
It compares a famous scene in The Accursed Kings.
Yes, her favorite The Accursed Kings.
This famous scene in that book, or in that series rather, that
is very reminiscent of great John's king making scene at the
end of Game of Thrones. It may have even been an
inspiration for George, who knows?
He's certainly read the series and speaks highly of it.
We can't be sure, but there's definitely some parallels.
It's it's a great read. Highly recommend it.
If you have questions for us, make sure to hit us up at
westeroshistory@gmail.com, comment live, hit us up on any
of our socials. We're pretty much everywhere
that you can find us, that you can find social media stuff.
And at the end of this episode, I'll mention episodes that
relate to this one. If you want to stay immersed, we
got you covered. Let's do a trivia question also,
which the answer will be at the end of the episode.
What was Lord harmond Umber's nickname?
Hint. He was a contemporary of Artos
the Implacable. Like I said, answer at the end.
Let me read you all the sections that we have today.
Get that primed up. We've got first mention and 1st
appearance like we often do for episodes like this.
Then we'll get into ancient history, Last Hearth, neighbors
Umber culture, the old Gods that Last Hearth, recent history
under the Dragons, Prius, Song of Ice and Fire.
That means recently, before Song of Ice and Fire.
House Umber in A Song of Ice and Fire, John and John great and
small, early battles, the kingmaker in the North, War of 5
Kings, the Harvest feast at winterfell Umber Lumber Kingdom
in Jeopardy, Red Wedding, Gray beards and green boys, Hor's
Bane and Bolton, Crowfood and Stannis on the way to Skagos.
Our quote of the week sigil is coming, Fallout zone, hard home,
and we'll end with down but not outro.
We also have a pole for you. All those of you live can catch
the pole and if you're catching it afterwards, you, especially
if you're on Spotify, you should be able to see the pole if you
click through. The question is will Great John
meet his end? Meaning will he his death in the
South, in the North versus human foes, in the north versus
supernatural foes, or he will survive?
He won't die at all. Four choices, SN versus humans,
N versus supernatural foes, or he will survive.
Despite their placement in the extreme N, there isn't much by
way of foreshadowing to suggest the Umbers will be involved
against the Others. But how could they not?
I mean, they're right there, but Great John is a prisoner in the
South, far, far away from the North.
What's he How's he going to fight the Others when he's down
there, especially in prison, but there and there's a lot of
people he wants to kill down there, assuming he ever gets out
of prison. So he's got well, there's just a
lot of people he wants to kill North and South.
And you know, if if we're talking about the others,
they're not people, but still they need killing.
John Merkel sends a super chat, says and Aziz flew the horn of
YouTube notifications and woke giants from a lazy Sunday
afternoon. Nice.
That's a good call. Actually appreciate that John
and y'all could click that notification bell that you
should see in the bottom right near where you click like and
and share and all that to make sure you get notified whenever
we go live. Let's get right to our first
mention. The first time we hear the name
umber in A Song of Ice and Fire is right here.
Quote. Now he could only watch, peering
out through Maester Lewin's lens tube.
The Maester had taught him all the banners, the mailed Fist of
the Glovers, silver on Scarlet Lady Mormont's black bear, the
hideous flayed man that went before Ruth Bolton of the Dread
Fort, a bull moose for the Hornwoods, a battle axe for the
Kerwins, 3 Sentinel trees for the tall Hearts, and the
fearsome sigil of house Umber a roaring giant in shattered
chains. I always love when we're
presenting a house and it's they're the one last listed in a
paragraph like this that really sets it up nicely for us.
When they're in the middle, sometimes I cut it off so it
acts like it's the end, but this one was just perfect.
And these aren't just for fun. These descriptions.
This is setting us up to understand who these houses are.
There's a lot of characters being introduced and a lot of
houses. And these houses have, you know,
they have attitudes, they have themes, they have parallels
within, within themselves. They have consistency of
Physiology, villainy, goodness, etcetera.
There's, there's patterns. And of course the pattern with
the Umbers, well, there's several of them.
They have many themes and recurring characteristics and
traditions and, and patterns. And they, so they check off all
those boxes. The most obvious is just how big
they are. Every Umber we've seen is big.
We haven't seen a ton of them. Maybe Hor's Bane isn't huge, but
he is tall and all the others are like listed as giants or
called giants. So that's definitely a factor
that's notable and one of the first things you would see.
And it's also a sign that the Umbers belong to the highest
levels of Northern aristocracy. They're fierce fighters, but
they're very devoted to the Starks and Winterfell and have
been for a very long time. They've they've held their place
in the hierarchy for thousands of years and it hasn't really
been challenged as far as we can tell.
Now here's one of their now here's the first appearance.
We had the first mention, but there was no actual character.
We just saw a banner and marching and all that.
And this is one of the best, or at least most bad ass
introductions for a character in the entire series.
Quote. When Lord Umber who was called
the Great John by his men and stood as tall as Hodor and twice
as wide, threatened to take his forces home if he was placed
behind the Hornwoods or the Kerwins in the Order of March,
Rob told him he was welcome to do so.
And when we are done with the Lannisters, he promised,
scratching Gray wind behind the ear, we will March back N root
you out of your key and hang you for an oath breaker.
Cursing, the Great John flung a flagon of ale into the fire and
bellowed that Rob was so green he must piss grass.
When Hollis Mullen moved to restrain him, he knocked him to
the floor, kicked over a table, and unsheathed the biggest,
ugliest great sword that Bran had ever seen.
All along the benches, his sons and brothers and sworn swords
leapt to their feet, grabbing for their steel.
Yet Rob only said a quiet word, and in a snarl and the blink of
an eye, Lord Umber was on his back, his sword spinning on the
floor 3 feet away and his hand dripping blood where Grey Wind
had bitten off 2 fingers. My Lord father taught me that it
was death to bear steel against your lead, Lord, Rob said.
But doubtless you only meant to cut my meat.
Gran's bowels went to water as the great John struggled to
rise, sucking at the red stumps of fingers.
But then, astonishingly, the huge man laughed.
Your meat. He roared his.
Bloody tuff. And somehow after that, the
great John became Rob's right hand, his staunchest champion,
loudly telling all and sundry that the Boy Lord was a Stark
after all, and they damn well better bend their knees if they
didn't fancy having them chewed off.
Yeah, a bit long, but so epic. Which is the actual first line
here, Threatening to take his forces home.
There's no actual words there. He just says threatened to take
his forces home. So we don't actually hear what
he said. It's just a description.
Or was it Rob was so green that he must piss grass?
Same thing. That's not an exact quote
either. It's it's just a recounting of
the words. Could it be your meat is bloody
tough? Then the first exact quote.
What is it doesn't really matter.
All these are part of the picture.
It's just fun. It's a big picture.
Big quote, big man, big introduction.
Now something a little odd here, it says all along the bench is
his sons and brothers and sworn swords left to their feet.
There's no other mention of any brothers that he has.
They he probably has them. We just haven't seen them.
They're definitely there. I mean, the the appendix has
them. There's no names for them.
His other sons, well, we know Small John, we saw him and he
dies, but we know he has other sons.
We even know he has daughters, but we don't know any of their
names. Also kind of interesting here,
we should keep track of how he presents himself this issue of
Pride. Is he really that upset about
the possibility that he's going to be behind the Hornwoods and
and Kerwin's? Or is he just testing Rob
because of how he just flipped immediately?
Given Rob's reaction, it's almost like, yeah, he wasn't
really. He didn't really mean that he
was testing him. And then when Rob passed with
flying colors at the cost of some fingers that he may not
have expected to lose. Great.
John's ready to say, OK, well, you passed that test.
I'm, I'm happy about that, even though it cost me two fingers.
It's funny how it says he's then he's Rob's right hand.
Right hand with three fingers, you know?
But anyway, Rob tells Bran that he was actually terrified in
this moment. Later he's like, did you see how
big he was? I kept my cool, but barely.
He managed to be brave. This is a really subtle,
important moment. This is exactly playing out in
real time right in front of us. The lesson Bran learned in
chapter 1, how a man can only be brave when he's afraid.
Rob did that. He was perfectly.
It was a perfect demonstration of that concept.
Great John terrified him, but he kept his cool, acted like a
Stark and projected bravery. He was brave.
He he conquered his fear in that moment.
So this so much about Bran's arc is learning and being taught and
he's seven years old. I think this is a teachable
moment that escaped a lot of our notice on 1st read, second read,
third read even. Honestly, I didn't catch it till
this episode to be to be honest. So Nina adds this moment with
the great John comes in the context of Rob's bannerman
trying to intimidate him. They're trying to it's these are
games of power. They're not going to follow
someone soft. He has to be tested.
It's better to test him now in peace, you know, and they're
just hanging out at Winterfell and in battle, like that's not
the time when you want to figure out what he's really made of.
So these things have to be figured out ahead of time.
And if he is weak, well, then what would they do about it?
I'm not sure exactly how they would they would behave.
They would do something about it.
It wouldn't it would not be they wouldn't necessarily even mark
South and be like, well, we're not going South with this weak
leader to, you know, that's that's not a good idea.
But Rob proved that the North, in a lot of ways, is kind of
like the Free folk mentality or the Dothraki mentality.
There's always this, a bit of this in all the Seven Kingdoms
where, yeah, ultimately a lot of things come down to following
strength. Sometimes you don't know how
strong someone is when they're new on the scene, as Rob was in
this moment. Great John tested him.
He passed again with flying colors.
But of course, this is important.
But Great John is not the only umber in the story.
We already saw several unnamed ones in that scene.
He's just the first one to appear.
Let's keep moving, moving back in time to ancient history.
Now there's a variety of terrains and neighbors that the
Umbers have that really shape them and make them what they
are. Having to deal with these
different geographical features, the the harshness and the
people. There's the wall nearby, of
course, just north and north and West, the Bay of Seals north and
east right there on their coast, Last River just to the South,
sort of marking the barrier between them and the Boltons,
along with the Lonely Hills. That's also between the two.
There's also Long Lake, which is the other side of Last River.
So it goes Last River, then Long Lake, then Lonely Hills,
although the Long Lake is a little over to the West.
And the Long Lake is important because it feeds the White
Knife, and the White Knife is the biggest river in the north.
There's also the northern mountains to the West where some
of the hill clans live. And that's the basic area that
we're talking about here. Now, in the wildest unknown
times, ancient, far back before written history, the Umbers
emerged as an early power among the First Men.
At least that's what we're told. They became kings.
They crowned themselves, held their territory.
We don't know exactly where their domains stretched.
Probably included a lot of those features that we just mentioned.
They may have, you know, run into the Boltons in the South,
and that would have been a barrier.
The the sea would have been a barrier.
Obviously the mountains are another barrier.
But before the wall was there, it's interesting to think that
they would have had a lot of contact with the tribes and
clans that lived a little farther N before.
There is a big ice wall barrier there.
They probably even controlled the the region that is now ruled
by Carhold because there's no other major castle there and
it's closest to them. They're the biggest Lords that
are close to that region. It's a pretty substantial thing.
Let's talk about Last Star specifically.
As I said, the intro is the farthest castle to the North,
other than the Night's Watch castles of course, which by
extension means some of the worst winters that any of the
North has to face, generally speaking.
Now, this has a large impact on their culture and how they view
the rest of the Seven Kingdoms. Even in the North, they're as
far from the Kranigman in White Harbor as King's Landing is from
the border with Dorn. It's really far.
So we have to not think of, even though we do think of the North
as a monolith, rather we can't think of it internally that way.
It's so vast and the cultures of the southern part of the north
versus the northern part of the north, there's substantial
differences. Now they do have this coastland,
the the Bay of Seals. There's a lot of coastland they
control. There's no port, no major port,
but surely there's some minor ports.
There's got to be places to park a ship and bring cargo in and
out, but nothing major. Last Hearth itself is very well
inland. It's even not on the last river.
It's got a bit of distance from that Even.
So it's a little unusual spot, not quite typical for what you
would think. I'm sure there's reasons, but
probably like just a good forest and good hunting land.
I don't know, maybe there's some reason they built it away from
the river anyway. So having a kingship in your
past, any Westerosi house that's been kings in the past, it's
like an extra point of pride. They're they're never going to
forget that. They're like, yeah, we were
kings a long time ago. It's just a little thing that
gives them a leg up with other nobility.
You know, they care about those things.
It's like, yeah, we got a little extra standing because we were
kings one day. But like all the North, they
were eventually made subject to Winterfell.
Must have been pretty interesting before that
considering the there's buffers between them and Winterfell sort
of either geographically or you know, the Bolton's are there and
so they may have been one of the last houses to fall.
I think they they fell before the Dread Fort did though I
believe as, or at least depending on what you count,
because the Dread Fort rose up several times and we don't hear
about the Umbers ever rebelling against the Stark.
Now there's a lot of unknown history out there, a lot of
northern history that we aren't Privy to, but still, as best as
we can tell, the Umbers have been extremely strong, loyal
vassals. Now there's also a suggestion
during the books that the Umbers are less likely to engage in
infighting than most houses. Maybe this is just a current
thing. The current Umbers say that, but
it's a recurring feature of houses that exist in dangerous
places, frontier houses, border houses, houses with a lot of
violent neighbors because you just can't afford to fight
yourself when you have all these dangers at your door.
Like you damage yourself and then the enemy takes advantage
of that weak to say, hey, they're fighting each other,
let's get them. You just can't afford that.
There's just no room for it. It's just you do that and you're
all done for it. It's suicidal, so that doesn't
just make it a thing not to do. It's like taboo.
It's a deeper taboo. You know, there's already this
taboo, right? It's already a kin slaying is
already a major taboo and so is guest right, which can relate
to, you know, family squabbles. You're not going to just stab
someone over dinner if they're your guests, not in the north
anyway, or if you do, you risk serious social consequences, if
not more. So that's interesting to note
that how kin slaying in this their situation as it exists vis
a vis so many enemies around them.
They just that makes them more whole.
You know, they can't afford infighting, not that they don't
ever, but it's just really not pragmatic for them to do so.
Arguably the safety and security of the Iron Throne would
actually ironically give them more ability to infight.
They're less worried about what's around them, but not that
much less worried. Sure they're maybe no longer
worried about the Bolton's, but they still have Skagos and the
Wall beating free folk Raiders and whatever else.
So it's not like the dangers vanished just because they went
under the Iron Throne. Think about this.
The Starks, when Rob marched S that he left, they didn't leave
that many men to guard Winterfell.
I'm not saying this was a mistake, but it did backfire.
They weren't like who were they worried about?
The Sirwin's attacking them? White Harbor, that's just not
feasible. It wasn't like that's not their
enemies. That would be crazy for them to
do that. They didn't see the Ironborn
coming. To be fair, Theon's plan was
dumb, or at least it would at least the full extension of it
was dumb. If he had just captured the
Stark airs and ran away, that would have been pretty smart,
but then he wouldn't have held the castle and we wouldn't be
having this conversation. So that's the idea is that the
North a lot of times is it's been so safe within itself for
so long that these houses can feel like they have that
security. And this plays out, we'll see a
little later. Great John takes too many men
South and that might cause problems down the road.
So Winterfell didn't really have dangerous neighbors in current
times, unless you count, you know, far to the South.
The Bolton's had been peaceable for hundreds and hundreds of
years. So even even they weren't
considered a danger at this time.
So let's go through some of these neighbors, a little more
specifically the wall. Well, the Free Folk Raiders are
going to come from the north and the northwest, mostly the north.
Like they'd skirt around the wall.
They get those little, small little boats and, and either if,
if they're not climbing over the wall, they're boating around it
and landing right in umber territory.
So the umbers are very likely the northern house that hates
free Folk the most. There's lots of evidence of
this, lots of little anecdotes here and there.
And it just stands to reason they are the northern house that
would fight the Free Folk the most.
The wall isn't a house, right? They would fight the free folk
more, but of of actual houses, the Umbers would see them the
most. They're right there.
They're the closest to them. It's it's pretty much just
proximity. Skagos is right there too, to
the northeast. Skagos is part of the Seven
Kingdoms. There's no castles there.
Maybe now it's not such a problem.
It probably was during the Skagosi Rebellion that we
covered in our Barth Blacksword episode fairly recently.
But in current times, I don't think the Stoneborn raid them
very much. I don't think it's a problem
anymore, but I bet it was a problem in all times.
And a little later, we'll discuss the possibility that
there's a genetic, if not cultural, connection between
Skagos and Last Hearth. So South, of course, is the
Dreadforth. That's one of the scariest ones.
But the Umbers aren't going to be scared of the Dreadforth.
They're not scared of anybody. That's not the kind of energy
they project. They have to be tough, strong,
and and they can't share that kind of weakness.
Still, it's scary to have the Boltons right there.
I'm sure there have been some untold stories that would be
very entertaining if we had them between those two houses.
There's a lot of terrain between them that keeps them a little
somewhat separate. There's again Last River and the
Lonely Hills. That's a pretty substantial
border. Winterfell, of course,
eventually dominated them. We don't know when it's to their
southwest from Last Hearth, but it's safe to say it's been
thousands of years and they've been a good vassal ever since.
To the West is the Glovers. But in between that is a lot of
hills and mountains and hill clans.
So I don't know that the Glovers are really a neighbor.
They would be maybe the closest house to the West, but that
doesn't necessarily make them a neighbor.
So I'm not sure that there would be enmity between them.
I would guess there isn't. But you know, we're talking
about 8000 years of history. It's this isn't a monolith
either. Maybe some border scuffles, but
who knows. This is so many mounds between
the two. Maybe it's just not a problem.
And again, as I said, in those mountains between them, there
are hill clans and hill tribes and, and some of that.
So those may have been Raiders in old times.
They're even, they have less stuff even than some free folk
do. If humans even lived up there
back then, they probably did. Nowadays it's more peaceful.
The umbers graze their sheep up in those high meadows.
They take them up to those hills and it's good grazing land up
there. And of course, car hold was
eventually added roughly, you know, 1000 years or so.
And that may have taken some umber land away from them.
There may have been a little bit of, hey, we're not really using
that land, but we don't want to just give it up for nothing.
Maybe they got a little kick back from the Starks for giving
that up. Who knows.
But it's that very likely was a, an interesting episode when that
when the car when car hold was founded.
Now, of course, the Free folk, out of all these enemies and
neighbors, it's the free folk we hear about the most.
And a good example would be 3000 years ago, the story of Gendel
and Gorn, those famous Free Folk brothers who led the the Free
Folk as kings be on the wall, the joint kings be on the wall
and using tunnels to get under the wall.
It's interesting anecdote because it suggests maybe those
tunnels are still there. Maybe they connect to those worm
ways where the there's all that storage down there where they
keep a lot of food. But the Umbers and the Starks
defeated Gendel and Gorn together.
As is often the case, this is more examples where it's not the
whole N that fights the Free Folk, it's the Starks and the
Umbers. No one else is even part of it.
There's a couple of examples like that, and we got to assume
that because there's a couple that we do here and so much
untold history. There's probably a lot more
examples where it was just Umbers or just Umbers and Starks
fighting. Free Folk can be on the wall or
otherwise. Let's get into who they are as a
people umber culture. According to Elio Garcia, their
motto is Death before chains, and it's probably these are from
George but not published. Usually when Elio gives US1 like
that, you can generally assume it came from George, although
that doesn't mean George settled on it.
So this is not unlikely what their words are, but we're not
100% sure. Nina, who loves to do house
words and does a great job of it, came up with only loyalty
can bind. They're very loyal.
The chains thing is the bound part, the binding, and how
that's the only thing that they're willing to be bound by.
Anything else they will not. They will break those chains,
but loyalty to the Starks, that will bind them, but nothing
else. That's pretty clever.
I like that. Certainly gives a good summary
of their vibe in 4 words as best as 4 words could do.
Remember the old relativity comment that comes in both book
and show. And by the way, there's going to
be almost no mention of the show in this episode. 1 little thing
at the end and that's it Where and this is true and the reason
I point out the show here is because it's such a true
comment. It's like, well, the South is
relative to where you're standing right?
Like it Grit tells John that he's a southerner.
He's like what? I'm not a southern.
He's like you are to me, you know.
Well, the free folk might not consider umbers Southerners may
be very in the strictest sense, but the umbers could consider
every other Westerosse southern to them, except maybe this could
go see, and of course the Night's Watch and even them they
would consider maybe equal, not more so northern with that, with
all the pride mixed in. They wouldn't easily let go of
that title, but they have a strong claim to it without the
pride. Toughness is emphasized in their
culture, size is emphasized, and this is not uncommon for real
world things. You got people in harsh wintery
climates, animals to not just people, they tend to be larger
because you have to be bigger to survive in those climates.
It's like the survival of the fittest kind of thing.
Larger animals survive in wintery climbs because they have
more mass to protect their internal organs to keep them
warm. It's just as simple as that
really, you know, in terms of evolution and things like that.
So the Umbers are big in part because of where they live.
They face winter from all directions that the the younger
kids that aren't strong enough just don't make it.
Pre Stark conquest they would have been even tougher because
they would have been defending their own lands and there
wouldn't have been this unity in the north, let alone the Seven
Kingdoms. It's tempting to connect them
with giant's blood. Here's that thing I mentioned
earlier about Skagos, the Stoneborn.
The Skagosi have a maester have maesterly support for the idea
that there's giant's blood or at least Ebenez blood, which might
be the same thing because the Ebenez might have giant's blood
in their ancient history. So that makes it by itself, that
makes it not tinfoily right. They you have majorly support
for at least the concept, if not the truth of this.
And the Stoneborn are just right next to the Umbers.
They're just a short little hop over the sea there.
It's a not very far at all. You, you can probably see Skagos
from the shoreline of Last or from the shoreline of Bay of
Seals there on their coast. So it may even be that it was
early people in the region of Last Hearth that first took that
journey. Like, hey, we can see that
island. Has anyone ever gone there?
Some great people finally went there and started living there.
I, I kind of imagine that's how Skagos was first settled because
I doubt people just started on that island.
I mean, unless people were on it when it's separated from the
continent and during continental drift, who knows how long ago.
Doesn't seem very likely in the real world.
Most islands get are empty to start off with, except maybe
animals, and then people move there and then they have people.
See, it's hard to say islands start with people on them.
So yeah. So Skagos probably was populated
by the closest population group, which would have been the same
population group that became the Umbers or was already the
Umbers. So yeah, giants blood in that
area. I mean, it fits for a lot of
reasons. You do.
Giants live right there to the north.
And we already know that it's possible for the two species to
breed at least a little. But so yeah.
But yeah, but but supported by what we know is interesting.
Thinking of yourself as more Northern is kind of an
interesting concept. It's like it's a, it is a point
of pride. You think of yourself more
Northern kind of is code for tougher.
But it's fun to think of the few things that they do like about
the South. They're like, yeah, you know,
they're soft, they're weak, they can't handle cold or toughness
or anything like that. They do like the wine though.
Like y'all do make good wine now, man.
That's one thing you guys do, right.
We see Craster when he gets wine, he just gets completely
drunk and passes out and he's hungover the next day.
They don't get enough of it down there.
And of course, there's a lot of drinking in northern climates.
That's a frequent thing. You know, there's a lot of
drinking in a lot of real world places that have cold weather
year round. It's just just kind of goes with
the train. You can't go outside as much.
And yeah, you don't have a drink.
You know, it's just, I don't exactly know why it works that
way, but it is a thing. And a lot of the Umbers drink a
lot, so that very much fits. So they're isolated.
They live in relatively untamed lands, but don't make the
mistake of thinking of them as rustic or simple.
They're powerful Lords with a lot of land beyond that
toughness that they bring to the table too.
So they don't necessarily have a high population, but the
individuals in that population count for a lot in times of war.
And there's got to be some level of savviness to managing their
their territory. They've been running it for
thousands of years. They have to have a lot of
closeness to their own land, a lot of familiarity, a lot of
experience, and just a lot of know how that they've built up
over the years. Arguably, I think they have more
in, we're talking earlier about the differences in the North and
how there's different like subcultures within the N, big
differences like White Harbor compared to Last Hearth or the
Kranigman compared to Last Hearth or even White Harbor.
I would say the group that the Umbers have the most in common
with is the hill clans. The hill tribes of the farther N
they're closer to the ancient North than most of the rest of
the North. And the Umbers have that same
sort of thing going on when Arya sees them at the Red Wedding,
the umbers are sitting with the car Starks and the hill clans.
That's who they dine with. That's who they are closest
with. You can tell a lot by who people
sit with when they're, you know, having down time, like where the
groups gather, like who do they who sits with who?
You don't see the the malasters or the other rivermen or any,
they're not sitting with the umbers and carstarks.
You don't see the the White Harbor men sitting with the
umbers and carstarks. It's details like this are
really important. And George is so good at filling
in all this important detail with little moments like that.
Like it's easy to just look at that and see it as its general
description. Are you looking around, seeing
things that she recognizes? But seeing them grouped together
like that is telling. Cannibalism is practiced a lot.
Well, not a lot, but compared to anywhere else, it's practiced a
lot in the North. And you we can see why it
happens in the extreme N there's just deprivation, there's
starvation, there's risk of complete food scarcity.
And so well, as has been said a few times, disgustingly, but
truly, men are meat. Yeah, not the kind of meat I'll
ever eat, I hope. Same with you all.
But we can't deny that it's a thing in the extreme N that's
not a thing that happens in the Kranigs or around White Harbor,
at least not in current times. But it might still happen on
Skagos beyond the wall. It definitely happens in
Stannis's army. Like it.
It's a good example of people that don't have a practice of
doing that. They aren't like used to
cannibalism. They just got that desperate
living in those climates that these people live in all the
time. You know, the, the, the
Stannis's men were not used to that.
But anyone that's freezing and starving, whether you live there
or not, is going to be faced with a similar, you know, issue,
similar conundrum. You know, do I, do I eat this
dead person or do I risk dying myself?
It's a horrible place to be. I also am curious about how the
Umbers relate to the Night's Watch.
We, of course, have no doubt that they are very supportive of
the Night's Watch. They, as we said earlier, they
are very often help the Starks fight kings, be on the wall.
There's been several examples of that, but I almost wonder if
Umbers are less likely to join the Nights Watch for the simple
fact that they already are doing a lot of what the Nights Watch
does. They are the number one.
I don't even call it second line of defense.
They're like the 1 1/2 line of defense because free folk can
easily skirt the wall when they're on the coast with those
little rafts and boats. So they're already just fighting
the free folk constantly. They're already dealing with
them, which is most of what the Nights Watch does, except in the
very narrow period of time when the others are active.
So I don't know, I think maybe the umber's like, yeah, well, my
life would be like, why would I join the Nights Watch when I'm
already doing that here? And I can, you know, have a
relationship with a woman and, you know, or multiple, whatever
to do the things that, well, how would I sign my life away when
I'm already kind of doing that? Like, I'm already providing this
service to the north. I don't need to join the Nights
Watch. So they would support it, but
they, you know, I don't know that they would be as keen to
join. It's kind of an interesting
little irony there. I could be completely wrong, but
it just occurred to me that, yeah, wow.
You know, they were already kind of doing that.
And given this, given all these northern values that you'd think
would be closerly closer held to them, they would be more
traditional about a lot of things.
Kinsling guest, right? Things like that would matter
more to them than it would to others.
Which keep in mind when we discuss the potential revenge
for the perpetrators of the Red Wedding, 'cause that's a
violation of guests, right? Right.
So like, the Umbers would be more mad about that than most
houses. And this is of course, rooted in
belief in the Old Gods, which they also keep more closely to
the chest or to the heart, to the heart tree, ha, than a lot
of other Northerners would. Because they still keep those
old ways. There has been less Southern
influence on them. Like there aren't, you know.
Lots of southerners coming and going and interacting with umber
lands and, you know, spreading, amalgamating and conglomerating.
It's just the umbers are isolated.
They're remote. There aren't lots of people
coming up there to hang out and spread stories and share news
from elsewhere. It's just not a place people go.
It's not a tourist stop. It's not a destination that
people travel for fun. Yeah.
So they're they're a bit that's that's where that isolation
comes from. Let's talk about the old gods at
last heart. Let's get deeper into that,
because this was a good set up for that, talking about the
nights watch and kinsling and guest right and all that.
Roose Bolton claims the umbers still practice first night.
Not that he's the most trustworthy source, but this is
a comment he makes to Theon. I don't know that there's much
reason he has to lie about that. Now.
Maybe Roose Bolton could just be one of those guys who just lies
for the hell of it. But I don't that's a little
weird for an author to do for for Roose to like say that to
somebody without a good reason to lie and it not be true just
to throw us off. Like, why?
Why would he throw us off about that?
It seems that this is an idea that he's building in our minds
that yeah, the Umbers, there's a dark side to them, just like
there are to a lot of northern houses, especially in ancient
times, but also in current times.
Maybe he but he doesn't just say it's the Umbers.
He says it's a lot of houses that are farther N the ones that
are still the most northern to keep continue to use that term
are the ones that are most likely to still practice first
night and other banned or frowned on rituals.
Maybe this is part of why they are so big still.
They constantly have children with the biggest people around
they can find. I don't know.
It might be rooted in rooted in our theory that we first
published I think in like 2013 or 2014, that it's the heart
trees that have a supernatural effect on the House that they're
closest to it. It helps explain why so many
northern houses, especially, but also some southern houses have a
look that has perpetrated and existed for so long.
Obviously George has changed how his genetics work.
But still, even with that, it's like, well, how does how do they
still look like this thousands of years later?
Well, if it's a supernatural reason, it could be the very
thing that has always been a part of their house, always been
a part of their castle. This heart tree has been there
forever and it its powers go farther back.
Its memories are infinite. I don't know relating that to
first night is well, first night is no matter how you look at it,
it's a disturbing subject. But magical bloodlines adds a
fantasy element to that. That is curious, shall we say,
because if you're going around first knighting a bunch of women
in your domain and you have like magical giant's blood that ever
that anyone you have children with is going to pass out, some
of them might actually want that.
Because it's like I'm going to have strong giant sons like how
some of the free folk women talk.
Of course, a lot of them would not want that at all.
It's just that's what makes a disturbing subject.
But the fantasy element is what makes it really like, I don't
really want to think about this, but there is some validity to it
in terms of a world building subject.
The tales told of the Raiders from the White Knife and Brandon
Ice Ice Stark that before White Harbor was a thing indicate that
sacrifice to heart trees and bloody similar rituals like
hanging entrails in the trees was sort of normal.
And if it was sort of normal back then, only a 500,000 years
ago, and we're told that certain northern houses, the most
northerly, still practice some of the old ways.
This might be one of them. We might still have umbers or
umber subjects who are sacrificing to their heart,
trees, people, animals, I don't know.
But still, the idea is strong. They're not going to care about
the the Seven Kingdoms mainstream culture.
They're hardly exposed to it. They don't give a crap about the
Seven, specifically the gods. Why would they?
When winter comes, what good are the Seven?
The Seven don't even. There's nothing in their
literature about preventing winter, about dealing with it,
you know? And not even that they care
about the literature. Most northerners and umber
people wouldn't even be able to read.
The Seven aren't being forced on them like and all culture didn't
get that far, especially not to Last Hearth.
But there's still obviously still aware of it and would look
down on it for the most part, and it certainly wouldn't appeal
to them as a choice. These are stoic, hardened,
stubborn, proud folk that have lived a certain way for
thousands of years, and they'll be damned if they're going to
change. For some Southerners, right?
This is a this, all this stuff with the Sacrifice and the First
Night and the maybe the Bloodlines and some of this
other dark stuff. This gets us into a different
genre. George always plays with horror,
but this becomes more like folk horror.
This gets to be like that rustic horror that you see, like the
people that are far out in the country that are doing dark
things. You know, you occasionally see
that in TV or movies or books. This is some of that vibe.
It's not just the straight horror, supernatural horror
vibe. It gets into that.
Like, what are these country bumpkins doing behind closed
doors? They're not really country
bumpkins, but you could see my point.
That is how they're portrayed often in these stories.
Well, what else do we have here? What other Northern concepts
haven't we touched on? Skin changing is 1.
What do they think of skin changers?
Southern Northerners maybe shun skin changing more than
northerners. Northern Northerners do.
The closer to the Free Folk, the closer to the wall you get, the
less they have a problem with such things.
Generally speaking. We certainly don't have any
examples of umber's attitude towards skin changing.
Of course, they're certainly happy to have Greywind alongside
their king there, and they might be.
It might have occurred to them, you know, that there might be
something going on there, but they wouldn't have a problem
with it. Not at least not the Umbers or
the Carstarks or the other extremely northern ones.
Maybe not any of them, but certainly not the Umbers, right.
That seems like something they'd be like, well, that's just a
part of living up here, skin changing.
That's something that happens. That's part of the North.
It's, it's a factor here. We don't deny that it exists.
We don't necessarily shun it or embrace it.
It's just a fact of life. Let's move forward in history
towards more recent times umber's almost certainly marched
with King Turin, as we said in the intro, saw the devastation
of Harrenhal. It's pretty important to take
note of that, though, because it's the Great John who undoes
it, right? He's the one who boisterously
and enthusiastically and suggests the restoration of this
Kingdom that ceased to exist when King Turin knelt. 300 years
later. It's the Great John of all
people who undid that kneeling of King Turin.
And as I said, there must have been Umbers present for that.
The Umbers partly. I'm so sure the Umbers were
present for two reasons. 1 The Umbers are very loyal to the
Starks that have been for a long time.
That's the vibe we get. 2 Turin Starks's army was huge.
It's almost impossible that he marched S with 40,000 men and
didn't have the Umbers with him. It would be very weird for the
Umbers not to be present with 40,000.
Implies pretty much everybody, all the soldiers in the North
went. Now what Great John says during
his Kingdom that we should be independent speech.
He says it was the Dragons that they married.
Now he's using the term loosely. But back in the day, oh man,
that word got generated so many theories.
We didn't know who Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters
married besides each other, you know, or if he had daughters,
which he didn't, But at the time we were like, well, he might
have. George didn't suggest that Aegon
had daughters for a while. Then he changed his mind on
that. It was never official.
It was just something he said behind the scenes.
And then when he set it on, he was like, Nah, but that phrase,
it was the Dragons. We married.
It was like, wait, married. Did a Stark marry a Targaryen
back in the day? That was all these theories that
flew out there. Maybe it was a mandolin.
Maybe it was someone in some Northern.
It probably would have been a Stark.
But who was it? Or was it the other way around?
Was it a Targaryen Princess coming N Whoa.
Yeah. These theories were gone crazy
back in the day. But of course, that amounted to
nothing. But the point is when Great John
says that he's like, you know, it was the Dragons we bent the
knee to. Why are we still bending the
knee to them? There are not only are there no
more Dragons, literally there's not even Targaryens.
So they would follow how Stark, but Starks bent the knee to the
Targaryens. They didn't.
This is the Baratheons. We never lost to the Baratheons.
We never were outmatched by them.
I don't know that we, you know that maybe our kneeling is
invalid because we didn't ever kneel to them.
When we get to deeper into the rule of the Dragons here, we'll
call this Under the Dragons, as we've done many times, the theme
of umber isolation continues. They're not part of the big
global events. For the most part.
This is usually a good thing, or at least often because a lot of
times there's war umber just aren't a part of it.
The whole N sometimes isn't a part of it.
Very often there's a lot of Targaryen civil conflicts and
other wars that the North just didn't participate in.
Also, that includes things like plague.
There's been lots of plagues throughout the Seven Kingdoms
throughout the years, throughout the decades.
And the population centers, the places with the most traffic
always get hit the hardest for obvious reasons.
You know, more disease carriers going back and forth, more
people to get infected. Well, what did I say earlier
about how little traffic there is going up there?
So that's just not as likely to hit like, you know, something
like the shivers or grayscale or whatever.
It's just a lot less likely to hit up there because there's
just people aren't going there. In the year 58, Queen Alice Anne
visited Last Hearth and other castles, like on the Wall and
all that was around the same time that Queen's crown got its
new name. Now, under most circumstances,
the Umbers might be a little surly about the Targaryens.
You know, like, yeah, who are you, soft Southerners?
You know, they may not love the idea of a queen in the 1st place
thanks to, you know, the patriarchy or whatever, which is
fiercer in the North, especially the extreme North, right.
But they would have probably been curious to see her dragon.
I mean, like, yeah, I do want to see the dragon, but Alison was
just so charismatic and a genuinely good ruler and she
supported the watch, which probably sat very well with a
lot of the northerners. And later, you know, a few years
later, the kings Rd. would be begin construction, and that was
probably a positive for the umbers as well.
So ultimately they may have still like they their natural
inclination would be to dislike the Targaryens and dislike
Queens and and any kings too really that aren't Starks.
But you know Alison being who she is and given the thing the
services they did for the North Bay, she might have won them
over. Don't know.
Certainly the the Targaryens won over Alaric Stark, maybe the
embers followed that lead, don't know.
So the Kings Rd. did start building 4 years later in the
year 62 AC. The Kings Rd. was meant to
increase trade and traffic and to make the Seven Kingdoms a
little closer to itself. Like each region would be less
separate, it'd be more amalgamation, more
homogenization of cultures. But Last Hearth still remains
very isolated in some ways. A lot of that amalgamation would
happen. The center of the Seven
Kingdoms, places like the Riverlands, the Crown lands, a
little bit like the Vale, certainly the Reach are all
growing closer to each other, whereas the North less so.
It's, it's not on that boat. They're all getting more like
each other and the Umbers and some of the other far Northern
houses are getting less and less like them.
The isolation might be increasing, the differences
might be growing. The Mormont's come up a few
times as a good comparison because they're also as far
north and arguably even more isolated because they're on an
island. This is one of those times we
compare them. I think they're a good parallel
for a lot of reasons. Similar harsh environments, you
know, Winters got to be really terrible.
They have to face Ironborn Raiders instead of some of the
other foes. They don't want to face
Stoneborn over on on Bear Island, for example, the King's
Road, when it was finished, it actually goes through
umberlands. So that was cool for them.
They're like, hey, we've got a road going through our territory
now. I assume they liked that.
It's possible they didn't, but it's most likely that was a good
thing. And then once it passes N, it
goes into the Gift, which then of course then it hits Castle
Black. So to be clear though, the road
doesn't actually go that close to Last Heart, Last Hearth
itself, but it's still a big Rd. relatively near it that wasn't
there before. And that would help travel
between it and other northern destinations.
Still doesn't make Last Hearth like a place people want to
travel to for vacation or just to see it for the heck of it.
It's just too remote for that, too dangerous.
Now a little more specifically in terms of wars of the South,
perhaps there were Umbers with Roddy the Ruin and or Craig and
Stark during the Dance of the Dragons.
Seems likely enough. There's probably some people
from all over the north that were in those armies.
May not have been any actual umbers, just umber men umber
vassals, lordlings, peasants, etcetera.
But there may have been a few actual umbers, who knows.
They weren't named. They're not a lot of other
northerners named in that group. Craig and Roddy the Ruin and
that's about it. And the year 170.
So jumping ahead past the dance by several years with O'crake
and Stark was still the Lord in Winterfell.
There was a great melee at Last Hearth.
We're told the melees of the North are very vicious things,
and they're the equivalent of tournaments of the South.
They don't do jousting and things like that, but they do.
They do like the melees, and this melee was vicious.
Not 18 people died in this melee and about 30 more were maimed,
badly hurt and perhaps permanently hurt.
And apparently these happen every once in a while.
And this is obviously during the time under the Iron Throne.
You wonder if the great Malays of priests Targaryen times were
even worse. I I guess they probably were
around this time. This is when we get into the the
trickiness of the Stark family tree in this era.
Kragen's the mess that is Kragen's three wives and the
inner marrying between his own descendants and the many deaths
and remarryings. And it's very confusing.
We it's something we've talked about in a few different
episodes, most recently again the Barth Black Sword episode
'cause he is one of those many heirs of Kragen and his
different wives there. So Kragen Stark's first heir
from his first wife Aronori was Rickon Stark.
Rickon, of course, died famously in one of the last battles of
the conquest of Doran under the Young Dragon.
But before he died he had two daughters with his Manderly
wife. Those daughters were Sansa and
Serena. Serena married Lord John Umber
but he died without issue. They didn't have kids, and the
lordship seems to have passed to an ozrich Umber.
Ozrich would have either been Lord John's son with a a
different wife that he married before Serena, or perhaps more
likely an uncle or a brother. Brother more likely than uncle,
but you never know. Anyway, at some point there was
an attempt to unite the Stark branches, these three different
branches that emerged from Kragen, right?
The middle branch was the kids with Black Alley Blackwood, and
we can kind of ignore them for this purposes of this
discussion. It was the match with the first
woman and the last that things got complicated with.
So Edrick Stark, second son of his third marriage, married the
same girl, Serena, after Serena's husband, Lord John
died. Now Serena and Edrick had four
kids of their own, Kregard, Torin, Arana and Erigel.
Kregard and Torin, you can forget about them.
They appeared to have died young.
They don't have no story with them.
Erigel by the way married the Lord Robard of how Sirwin he
either became the Lord later or was the heir at the time.
So there's a strong connection there.
A good example of northern houses intermarrying and they
got also a reminder that there's not that many northern houses
overall. Like if they're intermarrying
each other for thousands of years, there's a lot of they all
have each other's bloodlines basically.
So Arana is the one we didn't mention here.
Edrick had Crigard tourn Arana and Ergal Arana is the elder
girl she married this ozrich Umber who took over Last Hearth
after the death of Lord John. So in other words, a daughter
from the marriage of Edrich and Serena produced Oh girl that
married ozrich Umber and Serena had already been married to John
Umber the previous Lord of but they had no kids.
So it's all like so basically this was a redo of the John
Serena marriage. Like, we really wanted to have a
Stark married to Lord Umber That didn't work out.
We're going to try again. So they did, and it must have
been politically important or something.
It must have been expedient. It had a reason to be like,
whoa, this didn't work out. We need to do it though.
We need to start married to an Umber.
Now. Arana and Azrich inherited the
Last Hearth and their descendants continued house
Umber So just like I was saying, all these houses have each
other's blood. This looks like less than a
century ago the Umbers got had a Stark bride, and thus the
current Umbers probably have fairly recent Stark in them, and
that certainly helps explain some of the closeness.
Great. John's love for Rob and all
that. Not that he probably wouldn't
have been loyal anyway, but yeah, it's it's nice to have
some confirmation here. A similar conclusion should be
reached with regard to the Black Fire rebellions, which is that
the Umbers had little reason to participate because the Starks
didn't seem to. If the Starks aren't going to
join the war in the South, Umbers are like, yeah, well, why
would we do that? Maybe a few individuals just
really wanted to fight and they went, but in terms of like a
real army, nothing that we heard of.
It's possible they did fight and just overlook where it isn't
mentioned. But and I would assume that if
the Starks supported either side would be the loyalists because
that's just generally how they operate in 226.
So we're only we're less than 80 years before the start of the
books here. There is the famous invasion of
Raymond Redbeard king be on the wall.
He was the most recent king be on the wall before Mance Raider.
Now, Raymond Redbeard's efforts were aided by the shoddy work of
the Lord Commander at the Times, Jack Musgood, who was named
Sleepy Jack after this. But Lord Willem Stark and his
brother Artos the Implacable, along with harmond Umber the
drunken giant. He and the Starks came at the
Free Folk from two sides. They trapped them next to the
lake and kind of pincer moved them, right umber's coming from
the east, the Starks coming from kind of South and West.
Yeah, Lord Willem was killed. Artos then killed Raymond
Redbeard, and Raymond Redbeard's brother led the retreat of the
free folk back to beyond the wall.
John Merkel super chat says my tinfoil is a children work
giants to build the wall like Brandon Hodor.
Maybe a deal leads to house umber Make those words and sigil
fit. Yeah, I like that theory.
We posted it ourselves. We suggest that same theory in
our Brandon the Builder episode and maybe one other a couple
other places, probably Giants and chains.
Yeah, that one. And I could see, I could see
that being part of the whole connection between house umber
and the wall being built and their bloodlines.
Like, yeah, if, if this state of affairs existed, there would
have been more traffic between these areas without a wall.
Giants were just in the North, right?
That's that's how it was back in the day.
So it's very, it's very possible that the children or the power
of the old guys enabled that 'cause you know, if Bran can
skin change into Hodor feels like it's got to be at least
possible that a powerful enough green seer slash skin changer
could take over a giant previous Song of Ice and Fire.
A possible exception to the rule that the OR to the idea that the
Umbers didn't participate in the Blackfyre buildings is the 5th
because it was an internal struggle so much as a straight
up invasion. The 9 penny kings invaded
Westeros, this is not picking a side, this is defending Westeros
from an outside invader. So the North would be a lot more
likely to get involved in something like that which is a
threat to everyone. And you know, they are, it's
their Kingdom, you know, these are foreigners, etcetera.
So however we don't hear about that specifically.
So we have nothing to go on other than it seems probable
jumping ahead to Robert's Rebellion, which would have been
about 20 some years later after the 5th Blackfyre Rebellion.
The Umbers absolutely supported Eddard Stark, no question that
we know about that. We don't know if Great John was
Lord yet. Probably a good chance he was,
but maybe not. He was almost certainly old
enough to fight by then though, so it's it's possible he fought
in Robert Trebullen. Again, we don't hear about that.
This could indicate his grandfather hoarfrost Umber was
Lord at the time, but we don't know what Great John's father
was. His name is missing.
We don't know whoever Hoarfrost's heir was.
We don't know what that was so great.
John's younger great. John's father is unnamed, but
his younger brothers, his father's younger brothers would
be Morris, Crowfood, and Hoth or Horsbane.
The name Hoarfrost, by the way, hoarfrost Umber makes sound like
a very old man. Hoarfrost is a name is a.
That's a thing you associate with age.
Hoarfrost is white. Hoarfrost is white from age
specifically. That's what it means.
So my guess is this means this guy ruled for a long time, like
he was an old, particularly old Lord umber that probably means
he also ruled for a long time. But it could also just mean he
inherited it, you know, later in life and held on to it for a
while. He could have even been harmond
Umber, the Drunken Giant's grandson.
That's roughly the the timeline that would be supported there.
So we actually have a decent bit of that family tree in terms of
past numbers of of recent generations, even though we
don't have much for the current one.
We just have sons, daughters, brothers, just unnamed.
But we also know Moore's Crowfood fought in the war.
So Moore's definitely fought in Robert's Rebellion and it did
not go well for him. Well, him personally maybe, but
his family terribly. He had sons, we don't know how
many, but plural sons. They died of the Battle of the
Trident. Maybe that's where Great John's
father died too. Maybe he died alongside them,
but he could have already been dead.
Who knows. You'd think that if the Great
John's father died in that war alongside Moore's sons, they'd
get mentioned. Like, why would Moore's sons get
mentioned as dying but not Great John's father, Moore's older
brother? So that's a little unlikely
umber's also very likely fought in Baylon Greyjoy's rebellion of
the two 90s because the Starks were big on that one.
But again, no detail. There's a, there's a lot of
missing detail in that war. It's just a safe assumption that
there were Mormons Starks. Well, definitely there are
Mormons, Dora, we know for a fact was there safe assumption
that Umbers were there too? We are nothing without you all.
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of Westeros. Don't forget also to check me
out on Twitch on Fridays twitch.tv History of Westeros
where we do playthroughs of different dynasties.
Very detailed game allows us to play the current Lord or lady or
king or queen. Play them out role-playing by
going through a lot of different scenarios, intrigue, wars, kids,
marriages, murders, whatever. And then when the character
dies, you take over as their heir and just keep going.
So we're currently we're playing House Osgrey, but guess who's
next? When the House Osgrey campaign
ends, we're going to do house Umber so keep an eye out for
that. Now, real quick, just about just
a little thing about Long, like this has less to do with the
Umbers, but it's related to their territory.
When Melisandre has that vision of a girl in Gray by a body of
water, a deep lakeish thing man traders like, ah, Long Lake
probably is. But of course it was Alice
Karstark, not Arya. So what Alice must have done is
fled West from Karhold, a long last river, maybe 4 to the last
river at some point, then went past Long Lake, which is when
Melisandre's vision is. And then when she got far enough
W, she hit the Kings Road and then she just went straight N on
the Kings Road to get to Castle Black.
And that, that does sound right, because she did arrive on the
Kings Road. And it would make sense maybe to
cut through, cut W past Karl. Otherwise, she has to go through
umberland completely, which maybe she didn't want to do
that. Maybe she wasn't so sure about
them either. House Umber and A Song of Ice on
Fire. All right, let's get into more
current times. We've set the stage, we've
talked about the past. We've hopefully painted a good
picture of what the Umbers are, what their vibe is all about,
how they behave, patterns, things like that.
As I said before, the Umbers have the distinction of plot
lines that are not finished, a lot of them only small.
John is out of the narrative now and his father temporarily, So
how long will he be out of the narrative?
I don't know. He's in prison, but as we'll be
talking about shortly, I cannot fathom him ending the story in
prison or dying in prison. I just don't see that happening.
So I'm going to act as if it's not going to happen and describe
what I think will happen, or at least some ideas as to what I
think will happen. This next section is called John
and John, Great and Small real. Briefly, let's describe these
two, the Great John and Small John, and later we'll talk about
some of the other numbers as we get to their as as we get to
their storylines. Great John is described as as
tall as Hodor, who is 7 feet tall, but twice as wide, which
is like, whoa, that is a huge man.
I think he's probably the largest living person in
Westeros because Gregor Clegane is not living.
He's walking around, but he's not living.
Obviously Gregor is bigger if we do count him.
So it's more like when you think who's the largest person in
Westeros besides Gregor. So that's I think it's great.
Sean, I think he might be the biggest dude other than Gregor
Clegane. And since Gregor's dad, he, he
has a claim to be the biggest living person.
Now again, we don't know how old he is, but he has a lot of
children and his heir was old enough to be 1 of Rob's personal
guards. And most of Rob's personal
guards, if not all of them were like around his age.
They were like mostly younger heirs, Lucas Blackwood, Torin
and and Eddard Kar Stark, Daisy Mormont.
These were mostly people who were like 19 to 21, a little
older than Rob. You know, Theon is one of them.
Theon's 20 at this time. So that seems to fit Small John,
something like 19 or 21 as well. That's, that's my best guess
because they also say that small John's not finished growing,
which that means he's not going to be like 25, let alone
something like 30. So, yeah, it's tough to say, but
that's a good range to put him on.
When Jamie is pondering who he who he thinks is stronger than
him. He's like, there's only a few
people in Westeros stronger than me.
And the first person he thinks is is Great John, the person he
thinks that is. I hardly even need to mention
the Mountain. It's the same thing.
He's like, wow, that goes without saying.
But it's neat that the Great John was the first one he thinks
of. He thinks of Strong Borer and,
and the Cleganes, of course, and Great John, not many names.
He's like, Jamie's like, I'm stronger than all of them except
for these guys. And even those guys I can beat
because I'm faster than them. Obviously Jamie's very
confident, if not cocky. Clearly these are thoughts he
had before he lost his hand. But yeah, there's very
entertaining examples of, of Greg, of, of, of umber strength
here. The way he pushes down Hal
Malin, knocks the table over, pushes a bunch of people around
the, the way the thing that happens to him at the Red
Wedding, He's just immensely strong.
But again, we have not really seen it deployed.
We've just seen little tastes of it, little flashes of what he's
capable of. We have not seen him earnestly
unleashed, Unchained. I love that Unchained is so
perfect. He's like, George is like early
telling us something, isn't he? So don't be.
Don't be fooled into thinking that this is all in the past.
This is set up, set up that has not had its pay off yet.
Small John was nearly as tall as his father, but yeah, he just,
he died at the Red Wing. One kind of funny thing about
Smile John is I'm pretty sure he never said a thing.
We have no lines from him. He, he was present in a lot of
things, but I don't think he ever talked, which is kind of
funny. He's great.
John talked enough for everybody, for his whole family,
So loud and talkative that no other umber could get in a word
in edgewise, A weird and not great feature of the Umbers in
The Song of Ice and Fire is the complete and total lack of
women. Not one.
I mean, we know they exist, obviously, because I pointed out
earlier that Great John has daughters and Small John has
daughters and they have wives, clearly.
But just like the children, the the wives aren't named.
We don't know what houses they married into, other than those
stars we mentioned from, you know, 100 years ago.
Poor Frost's wife, no idea. Great John's wife, no idea.
Small John's wife, no idea. Morris Crowfood had a wife who
died in childbirth, No idea who she was.
One reason this is odd is that the Mormons have prominent women
and we talked about how there's should be a lot of parallels
there because they both live in sort of frontier situations
where there's a lot of danger and it's an all hands on deck
situation. If you can fight, you fight
because we need everyone to fight.
So maybe that's a thing we just haven't heard about it.
I I just find it hard to believe that Last Hearth women aren't
called on to fight. It's possible.
It's possible I'm wrong. I got to be open to being wrong
about that, but it really just seems unlikely.
So that does make it a little unusual that we haven't seen
them. But maybe they're back defending
the home like that. They're the men all marched.
So the women are defending the the hearth and home mostly by
themselves. Entirely possible.
I don't think they'd leave it, you know, completely undefended.
There is the mention by Moore's Crowfood or maybe it was
Hawthor. It doesn't matter.
One of them pointed out great John took too many men S it
harmed their ability to do the harvest and it might leave them
vulnerable. So it would make a lot more
sense if the women are capable of fighting and, and pushing
back against some of that vulnerability.
So the fact that small John is dead might mean other, another
umber comes onto the scene because great, John has a new
heir, right? He has sons, plural.
So small John had sons, plural. So you'd think the small John's
eldest son would be the new heir to Last Hearth.
But again, we don't know who this person's name is.
I, I kind of feel like we'll get that eventually.
It's kind of too important to just ignore entirely.
You could see some sort of Last Hearth succession issue, right?
Like maybe, maybe a brother of Small John tries to claim it
ahead of Small John's son who's too young.
Makes the case that we can't have a boy umber Lord right now
it's got to be me. Might have support for that.
Maybe Moors or Hothor will make a play.
Probably not, because Great John trusted them and they didn't do
it yet, and they seem to be doing good umber business.
Maybe. More on them later, though it's
certainly possible their place in the hierarchy is shown pretty
early on. Obviously Great John is Rob's
right hand man very early on and he holds tight to that position
that holds when they first camp at MO Kaelin.
There's only a few towers available for the Lords and, and
the Umbers take one of them. There's only like 2 other towers
available. I think the Bolton's get one and
obviously Rob gets one of them. So that just kind of shows how
they're higher where they stand in the hierarchy among other
northern houses, which is very high.
You know, they're not obviously not number one.
That's Stark. But they they might think
they're next. They might have a claim to that.
It's hard. There isn't some list that tells
us it's not a it's not a running competition, but it is to them.
But it isn't like some there isn't some central authority
saying, yes, the embers are in the lead right now.
So we get to the battles of the, of the end of Game of Thrones.
There's before it's officially the War of 5 Kings.
Mostly it's about the battles in the Riverlands between the
Northerners in the River Landers versus the Lannisters.
The Whispering Wood is the first major battle and the umber horse
is huge in that battle. It's the Great John, along with
Theon, who drags Jamie to present him as a prisoner.
It's not 100% clear who caught him, who took him down 'cause
remember Jamie when he was, when he realized he was losing, he
made a attempt to go right for Rob and kill him.
Didn't happen. Killed Torin Karstark, Eddard
Karstark and Darren Hornewood in the process, three of those
young heirs that were part of his personal guard.
So I don't suppose Great John was right there for that because
he was busy attacking, leading his men into fighting Jamie's
forces. But maybe Great John was there
and actually was part of the team that subdued Jamie.
We don't actually know who gets credit for that.
It was it was a group effort, apparently soon after the Battle
of Whispering Wood with the Battle of the camps that begins
with the Blackfish leading a sneak night assault.
And then when the Lannisters figure out that they're being
attacked, the hue and cry is raised.
The other two camps that are on other sides of the river start
to get there, start to wake up and start to try to help.
And that's when Rob with Umber and Malester Horse Great John
leading his contingent attack from the West of the Battle of
the Camps and hit one of the other camps in surprise.
While Blackfish has led the distraction by attacking from
the north portion during the attack, it's the Great John who
leads his men to the assembled Lannister siege towers which
were being deployed against River Run.
And he burns them, him and his men, burn them, take them all
out. So well done there.
Next section is called the Kingmaker in the North.
So they win these battles, they're happy.
They're like, yeah, we did our job, we're victorious.
We beat the Lannisters and then they find out Eddard was
executed by Joffrey. It's like, what?
That's deflating. They thought they were winning.
They're doing great. They were defying the odds.
They out thought Tywin Lannister.
They freed Ed Muir, they undid the siege of River and things
are going great. They captured Jamie, then this
happens. Great John.
But prior to this, Great John boasted, yeah, we'll be freeing
in after this. We'll we'll beat Tywin.
Then it's off to the Red Keep to free Ned, you know, and but of
course, that doesn't happen. Instead, what we get is a very
moving scene of a bunch of northern Lords gathered in
silence, praying to the river Run.
Hartree Catlin is the witness to this.
It was, of course, very surprising too.
They were like, what? Joffrey killed Lord Etta?
They realized how stupid that is.
They realized what a bad move that is, how it means they can't
bend the knee now. Like we can't just accept you.
You killed our Lord. We that's that's, that's a act
of violence that escalates things.
It doesn't bring it back down. Even Tywin called it stupid.
If Littlefinger was the man to convince Joffrey, which is the
operating theory, I certainly believe that.
I don't think it was Joffrey's idea.
I think Littlefinger got him to do that, which means he had a
huge finger, not a little finger in that plot line.
And the Great John just did Littlefinger's work for him.
Littlefinger wanted to do that, to cause chaos and strife
between these houses, and it worked way better than he could
have possibly guessed. He he wanted Stark and Lannister
to fight each other, but he probably didn't imagine Stark's
succession, that they would secede from the Seven Kingdoms.
And he was probably like, yes, perfect.
So if any Littlefinger has anyone to thank, it's the Great
John. First, Catelyn makes her speech
about peace and be like, look, no matter what you all do, it
won't bring Ned back. This is too much.
We can't fight all of them. The the whole S Yeah, it's a
point of pride and honor, but it's just a we can't win.
But Great John and others are like, Nah, you know, you don't
understand. You're a woman.
Yes. What some of them say they don't
understand a man's need for vengeance.
She's like, I just addressed that, but they're not hearing
it. They're not having it.
He so he responds with one of the most memorable speeches in a
Game of Thrones, if not the entire series.
This is another big quote. We didn't have a lot of quotes
in this episode, but the few that we have are big.
And this is as big as the man doing the talking Great John
himself. Let's go.
Monumental quote, my Lords. He shouted, his voice booming
off the rafters. Here's what I say to these two
kings. He spat.
Renly Baratheon is nothing to me, nor Stannis neither.
Why should they rule over me and mine from some flowery seat in
High Garden or Dorn? What do they know of the Wall or
the Wolf's Wood or the Barrows of the First Men?
Even their gods are wrong. The Others take the Lannisters
too. I've had a belly full of them.
He reached back over his shoulder and drew his immense 2
handed great sword. Why shouldn't we rule ourselves
again? It was the Dragons we married,
and the Dragons are all dead. He pointed at Rob with the
blade. There sits the only king.
I mean to bow my knee to my Lords, he.
Thundered the. King in the North.
And he knelt and laid his sword at her son's feet.
I'll have peace on those terms, Lord Karstark said.
They can keep their red castle and their iron chair as well.
He eased his long sword from its scabbard.
The King in the North, he said, kneeling beside the Great John
Mage Mormont stood. The King of Winter, she
declared, and laid her spiked Mace beside the swords.
And the river Lords were rising too, Blackwood and Bracken and
Malistor, houses who had never been ruled from Winterfell.
Yet Catelyn watched them rise and draw their blades, bending
their knees and shouting the old words that had not been heard in
the realm for more than 300 years, since Aegon the Dragon
had come to make the Seven Kingdoms 1.
Yet now we're heard again ringing from the Timbers of her
father's hall, The King in the North.
It's so epic, it's perhaps only overshadowed by Danny's Dragons,
which is the next chapter of them being born.
But this one seems to put the participants in much more
immediate danger. Danny's Dragons are like, well,
that's going to matter in the long term, but it's hard to
perceive exactly how right this is immediate.
And of course, Danny and Danny's Dragons, they have to grow
before they'll be a threat. So it also seems like it's a
little farther away, right before this.
Catelyn is thinking, I almost had them.
I almost had them. Agreed.
I don't think she really did. I think she's kind of.
Exaggerating in her own mind how close they were, never going to
accept peace. But it does believe she does
believe that she believes it was close.
And and whether she's right or not, it's still tragic because
she is like the only person with sense in the room at the moment.
She's the only like lucid thinker there.
She's like, y'all, this is dumb, this is death, this is folly.
You know, she's the only one who realizes exactly how big of a
bite they're taking here and how hard it will be to swallow and
chew that. It's in this moment too.
Nina adds, that the Great John slices through the Gordian knot
of Stark Tully Sovereignty problems.
Let me lay it all out, because you might forget some of these
details. What's the problem here, first
of all? Well, they don't want to bow to
Joffrey because he just killed Ned, but they don't.
But then there's like, well, Renly is the other power and
they're like, well, Rob is like, I can't bend the knee to Renly.
He's not lawful. Like Stannis is next, but they
can't sign up for Stannis because Stannis hasn't done
anything yet. Stannis is at this point,
Stannis is just sitting on Dragonstone.
He hasn't launched anything. He hasn't made anything known.
He hasn't announced anything. He hasn't taken Storm's End yet.
So they can't side with him. He's not an option.
So the, well, the one guy that they might have is an option.
They can't choose. They might have chosen him
anyway if they knew what Ned died for.
They don't know yet about Joffrey being not a Baratheon.
They don't know that yet. Otherwise that would make it a
lot easier. They could be, Oh yeah, let's
even though Stannis hasn't done anything yet, he's the guy, He's
the lawful heir, and we can see that clearly.
But they don't have that information here.
That's part of why they're so confused.
And they have no answer. They're like, no one's got an
answer. Catelyn says peace, he's like
look, that's the answer, you can't bow to Joffrey, you don't
want to bow to Renly 'cause he's not lawful.
Then peace. McGrady was like Nah.
The better idea is none of them right.
It's the perfect solution even though it's actually extremely
dangerous. And I wonder how you all first
read this chapter. Most of you have read it
multiple times. When I read it, I wasn't really
on Catlin's vibe. I was like, yeah, no, this is
more exciting that they're cheering for this, The King in
the North, you know, this is just so epic.
I'm caught up in the moment, like the northern Lords and
river Lords were. George is such a great job, but
that even we miss the point a lot of times, which is that this
is a bad idea. Yeah.
It's pride. It's honor.
And we saw how proud the great John was.
This guy was mad about marching behind certain Lords, right?
Like, yeah, great warrior, great fighter, tough guy.
But yeah, he's got that pride and that pride continues from
here. Wait, you know, we're move
jumping ahead a little bit. Great.
John's going to be very proud of this new Kingdom.
Won't brook any slights to his new King's honor.
He's all about like, no, you call him king, you don't call
him boy. He's like all about the the
proper language and all that. This is his pride following
through after this moment here. So great, John presented them
with the only palatable option, even though it was a bad idea.
They were like, oh, yeah, what a great idea.
Screw the screw the Lannisters and the Baratheons and the, the
the High Gardens and the Dorns. Like, we don't need them.
Even their gods are wrong, right?
It's such a great speech. It's perfectly delivered to his
audience and to us. And, you know, on rereads, it's
only when you start to maybe realize, at least my experience,
we're like now I'm more with Caitlin here, you know, like now
I get it. You're like, this is George put
us in her head. But he made it so contempting
from from a reader's perspective to be like, yeah, this is
awesome. But then, you know, when you
read the rest of the book, you're like, oh, no, it's not.
It's it's it's a great story, but it's not awesome for the
people who did this, you know, like it didn't end well.
And George was telling us it wouldn't end well even back
here. So it's also, besides it being a
solution, the Gordian knot, as Nina puts it, they can't decide
who, what to do until someone gives them a great solution,
which is to do with themselves. It is.
It does come off as ideological, right?
It isn't like great John's like, oh, I can profit from this.
There's money in this for me. There's power in this for me.
I'll make this suggestion. I'll get everyone's bite.
I don't think it's the level he's thinking on, even though
Bolton at one point says the Umbers are more cunning than
people give them credit for. He's obviously speaking
generally, but. Let's.
Look at this a little bit cynically just to see how it
feels. Was is great, John thinking
ahead? Is he thinking?
Yeah, well, I'm the guy who suggested this.
If it works out, I'm going to be really high in the esteem of the
North. The Umbers will be sitting
higher than they were in this new regime.
They might be the number two house in this new set up, this
new Kingdom, because they had so much to do with making it happen
in the 1st place. Great.
John's been in Rob's right hand for so long.
Presumably he expects that to continue and it does.
So he might be looking at the rewards ahead of time.
But yeah, maybe one of my daughter's will marry one of
Rob's daughters or Rob's sons. Maybe all you know, he he's for
now, he's got to marry the. The phrase.
Well that that hadn't been that had already been arranged.
So he already knew Rob was going to marry a Frey, so he didn't
have that option. But he might be thinking, yeah,
when Rob and his queen have kids, mine might be Next up.
The number marriage could be next.
He's his first marriage was to a Riverlander.
The second one should be marrying the loyal Northern
houses. He might be thinking very far
ahead here. Possibly not.
Possibly. He's just acting in the moment.
He's a headstrong guy. You know, we don't have to.
We don't have to assume he was thinking beyond that, but we
shouldn't assume he wasn't either.
OK, so the War of 5 Kings, let's get to that.
Rob, of course, becomes one of the five kings.
And Great John, doing his cheerleading as he does,
declares the red comet is a symbol of Northern vengeance for
Ned. When we did an episode on the
comet, it's almost entertaining. Well, it is entertaining.
It's almost funny is what I meant to say.
How many people just say the comets for them, you know, or
for one of their friends or their king or whatever?
Like, yeah, it's for me. It's for him.
Theon's the most ridiculous of all.
I think it's about him. He's like, yeah, that's that's
me. That's about me.
What? The comet's for you?
That's so crazy. But this is also kind of ironic
because he's declaring the comet a symbol of vengeance for red,
for Ned, from the red Ned comet. But he's part of the problem
when it comes to prioritizing the danger facing the Seven
Kingdoms, right? OSHA says to Bran, your
brother's marching the wrong way, talking about Rob, of
course. And who's who's marching right
at Rob's side on his right hand is Graychon.
In fact, OSHA tries to get, tries to talk to Rob and he's
like, hey, I, I, I want to tell. Graychon shoves her out of the
way, like don't listen to that. And she thinks a man that won't
listen can't hear. It's a great quote, but it's
it's it's aimed not just at Rob, but at Graychon.
Like they don't want to hear it. They're focused on the southern
issue. Their their eyes are pointed
South. Even Ned was the same way.
They're not thinking about the threat to the North.
And maybe that'll change in the long run and maybe they'll
regret that. But it's telling that even the
umbers aren't looking N even the umbers are only focused on the
South, right? That's so that's emblematic of
the problem that the North is undergoing here, not just the
fact that they're outmatched by the Southern armies in terms of
quantity, but they are not perceiving this Northern threat
of the Others at all. So he remains one of Rob's
generals throughout the war. He's not always at his right
hand going forward because they their forces split sometimes,
but he generally remains in that spot.
He participates in the Battle of Oxcross, which was the sneak
attack on Stafford Lannister's new host near Landisport.
That's the one where Greywyn found a goat track and enabled
them to evade the Golden Tooth, and so the Lannisters had no
idea they were even nearby. And yeah, so Great John was part
of that. After that victory is when we
see the army separate a bit. Temporarily.
They got to start to capture some of the nearby prizes.
After that, with no Lannister army to oppose them, they start
to seize some of the nearby territory.
In Great John's case, he seizes some gold mines, Castamere Nuns
Deep and Penderkills. It's where do they call gold
mines a Castamere? Because we thought the Castamere
gold mines were played out empty, but maybe they didn't
even know that we captured the gold mine.
Oh, there's no gold there. Anyway, a small point, not that
important. So here's a here's a bit that
comes from when Rob is sending Sir Cleos with terms to King's
Landing. Coming back to some of our
patterns that were reinforcing here.
Quote. The night scrambled up, edging
away with such alacrity that some of the watchers laughed
aloud. Thank you, my Lord.
Your Grace. Sparked Lord Umber the Great
John, ever the loudest of Rob's northern bannerman, and the
truest and fiercest as well, or so he insisted.
He had been the first to proclaim her son King in the
North, and he would brook no slight to the honor of his new
made sovereign. He can detect a little sarcasm.
Maybe that's not the right word from Catlin here.
She's not like, she's not so happy about it.
He's like he's the fiercest, or so he insisted.
He's not. She's not happy that he's the
one that declared her son King. She's not happy that that
happened at all. So she's not going to, like,
give him credit for that. This again, it comes back to
this pride that is, if anything, that would be great.
John's downfall or has been, is his pride.
He's just makes too much of these things now, making Sir
Cleos call Rob, Your grace is no big deal.
This is Morris a symptom of a bigger problem than a particular
problem in this in this particular case, because that
pride is very dangerous. It allow it, it may it leads
them to take on dangers that they should probably not take on
or at least take on differently. It's like we're indestructible.
We're the best. We can't lose.
It's good to have good morale. But you got to you got to add a
little sense into that. You know, a little little
reality needs to to make its way.
Let's divert away from the War of 5 Kings back to Winterfell,
because where Bran is the Stark in Winterfell, there's still a
lot going on up there prior to Theon, you know, taking it over
and then Ramsay and all that. So before that happens, we have
the harvest feast at Winterfell, and this is where we first meet
Moores and Holther, the younger brothers of Great John's unnamed
father. Let's describe them both
individually real fast here. Moores Crowfood is the elder of
the two. He's the one missing an eye.
The crow thought he was asleep and pecked his eye out.
He then ate the crow, biting its head off, hence the name Crow
Food. He's at least 60 years old,
probably older. He's huge, white, bearded,
either wears. He has a snow bear cloak that
also has the hood so he can put the bear over his face.
It looks pretty fearsome on addition to him being big and
intimidating. He's got that, but also he's got
that missing eye. Sometimes he wears an eye patch,
sometimes he wears a chunk of dragonglass in his eye, which is
really interesting to consider. Like can his corpse be raised by
the others if it has a dragonglass chunk in it?
Can anyone who has a dragonglass in them be raised by the others?
I would think no Being interesting, like, you know,
inoculation against being made into a white like Nope, as long
as that chunk of dragon glass is in your face, you're just going
to sit there, you know, either going to be alive or be a
corpse. You will not raise, you know,
unless the others come along and pluck that right out, which I
don't think they can do that. They can't touch that.
So that actually could be a little subtle plot moment or
plot mechanism, something that teaches us a little bit about
how the others work and how the undead work.
Maybe, maybe could be a lore moment there.
Now, as we said, his sons were killed on the Trident and his
wife died in childbirth. Those we mentioned already.
Also his daughter was kidnapped by the Free Folk in the year
270, so about 30 years before the book started.
So this man has lost his whole family.
Obviously there's still other Umbers, but he lost all his
children and his wife. So that's, I mean, this is this
is one of those guys. He has nothing to lose.
You know, the proverbial, you know, it's like you can't
threaten or scare this man. He's suffered way too much.
He's too old. Winter's coming.
Like, you cannot. This guy's, Yeah.
You can't intimidate a man like this.
He's also drunk all the time, we're told.
That might explain why the Crow thought he was dead.
He was just so, so passed out drunk that the crow's like, this
dude is dead. Daniella Hornewood, the a very
unfortunate widow of Hornewood who Ramsay does awful things to.
She calls Moore's Umber A drunken brute.
So because Moores wants to marry her, and she's like, no, like, I
don't want to marry him. So Sir Roderick responds to this
by saying, you know, I'm a little worried.
You know, we got to find out. We got to find someone to rule
the Hornwood lands. And it needs to be someone
capable because with men like Moore, Zumber and Ramsay out
there, he could be in trouble. What?
Sir Roderick is comparing Moores to Ramsay.
All right, take a step back. This is not yet the point where
we know what we're dealing with with Ramsay.
Sir Roderick does know Moores, he's as old as he is.
So he would know this man's reputation.
He would know a lot about Moore's Umber but he doesn't
actually know Ramsay that well. So this is, this is more of a
like a jarring comparison. That's just Sir Roderick doesn't
know what he's talking about. Sir Ramsay hasn't done anything
at this point. All we've heard is like a couple
of bad things, but he hasn't. Even the Hornwood thing hadn't
even happened yet. So there's just like a few
things like he's just coming on the scene basically.
Remember, Ruse didn't raise Ramsay.
Ramsay was raised by his mother until only a few years before
the books start, so his he's kind of an in no unknown
personality at that point. Still, it's like whoa comparing
Moores to Ramsay, that's crazy. Anyway, Hawthor Horsbane is his
younger brother. He's also really old.
He's gaunt. Maybe not as big as the others
because he's gaunt, so he's not as thick wide, but I think he's
as tall. His his face is described as as
hard as winter frost and his eyes are described as flinty and
flinty is George often associates that with like it's a
kind of a negative thing. I think, you know, it's like
they're it's like a dark view of their eyes, like shifty eyed and
small eyed, like squinty, like they're staring through you.
Maybe I get that wrong. That's kind of how I see that.
He got the name Horsbane around the year 250 or 251.
So about 50 years before the book started, he went to the
Citadel, the Saudi as a maester, A hoarfrost Umber thought that
he would be capable of that. Well, maybe early in his career
down at the Citadel, he disemboweled a male sex worker
who tried to steal from him. This is why people don't talk
about it as much. Even it's kind of it's, it's a,
it's a balance here. Morris Crowfood loves to tell
the story of the of his eye. But people don't talk so much
about this disemboweled male sex worker because, well, that means
he was with a male sex worker. And that's apparently not
something you you, you want known in the North, I guess, or
just in general, I don't know. It's not the same as the way you
know, our world looks at at homosexuality.
It's not me this is we can't look at it the same way.
Don't don't listen to the way the show did it.
The show made it almost the same.
But that's not silly. Still, it's a little bit taboo,
I guess. Anyway, he is clearly
intelligent, despite maybe not working out as a maester.
There's some things he does that show this is this is an
intelligent guy. He's perceptive, he's
thoughtful, he's cunning. Doesn't mean he's a good man,
but he is. He's not dumb.
He's not rustic, urban, whatever.
The the he's not a country bumpkin like some people would
think he is. He's going to sign his name
later. He signs his name on a document
that the that ruse has issues to the other northern Lords with
him. He signs his name as a he draws
a giant. He doesn't actually write his
name, which that's interesting. This is a guy who was going to
be a maester. You telling me he's illiterate?
I don't think so. So he might be just playing it
up. He's like, oh, I'm not literate.
I draw a giant. I think he might be snowballing.
He's faking it a little. He's like, no, I'm more capable
than you think. He's just playing illiterate.
Maybe not, but I think there's a good chance of that.
Theon first sees Hor's Bane along with Arnold Karstark in
chapter his first chapter of A Dance with Dragons.
Arnold doesn't catch it. He's like, who the hell is that?
Why do we have to smell him? But Horsbane immediately
recognized him. He's like, oh, that's Theon.
He's even though his hair is white, he's missing fingers,
he's all messed up. His teeth are missing.
He recognizes him. So that's a good that's a sign
of his intelligence right there during the so back to the
harvest feast, Mores and Hothor play a drinking game.
They're like slamming their horns together.
They're yelling, they're loud. It's sort of like the great Sean
in that they're loud and drunk and and boisterous.
Definitely umber vibes here. You know that that something
that runs in the family and there's a singer there for the
Harvest piece. He sings the song The Night That
Ended, which is the song about the Long Night.
And during the song, during a climactic moment of the song,
Hothor pulls out a silver horn and blows it as a war horn.
Like to add emphasis to the song, Is this supposed to be
like a little foreshadowing? Is this a little clue that
Hothar is going to blow a horn? Is that going to be is he going
to be fighting the others? Is this like a horn of winter
thing? I don't know, probably not.
But definitely made me think put that file, that one in the back.
Like maybe that was a little tricky moment by George Hothar
had was married at 1.2. We don't know.
We don't know anything about that.
He didn't apparently have any kids, but both of them want to
remarry. So far it hasn't happened, but
hey, you never know. Now this is going to come up
really interestingly when we compare umber to Karstark later,
given what the castellan Karstark given Carhold tried to
do versus what these two tried to do with Last Hearth when they
were given Co castellanship by Great John, it went very
different directions. The guys here who were kind of
considered, you know, untrustworthy.
The Umbers actually seem to have done right by everyone, whereas
it's Arnulf Karstark and Craig and Karstark that were
villainous and and evil almost. Rob briefly considers marrying
Hoth or umber to a fray. Whoa.
What would have happened if that went through?
I don't know, but that would have been awkward.
Next section is called umber lumber.
Now, as I've said a few times in this episode, there's all these
plot lines that the Umbers are associated with that haven't
finished yet. Here's a smaller example, one
that's maybe flew under the radar, but I think it's
important. It's during these brand harvest
feast chapters. Here it is quote.
Hoether wanted ships. There's wildlings stealing down
from the north more than I've ever seen before.
They cross the Bay of Seals in little boats and wash up on our
shores. The crows in East Watch are too
few to stop them, and they go to ground quick as weasels.
It's long ships. We need aye, and strong men to
sail them. The great John took too many.
Half our harvest is gone to seed for want of arms to swing the
scythes. Sir Roderick pulled at his
whiskers. You have forests of tall pine
and old oak. Lord Manderley has ship rights
and sailors in plenty together. You ought to be able to float
enough long ships to guard both your coasts.
Manderley Moore Zumber snorted. This is umber prejudice against
Manderley. The Manderley's are southern
ish. Lord Manderley personally is not
a hard man, given his weight as something that the umbers would
look down on. They think he's soft, they don't
think he's capable. They don't like, I don't want to
work with him. He's, you know, he's no good,
but Roderick gives them a stern talking to them.
They're like, OK, all right, we'll do it, we'll do it.
There's a great route for this trade.
The we earlier pointed out that Long Lake feeds the White Knife
so all the umbers can chop the trees down and put them in the
water and they just go downriver and they can be picked up down
there. So it's really easy, easy,
relatively easy timber shipping mechanism that they have.
It's kind of built in. Now, later we hear that Lord
Wyman mentions he has indeed built ships.
This has happened. We don't know if it happened for
the Umbers too. It probably did if the agreement
was, hey, we'll give you the wood.
You make some ships, send them, send a few of them to us.
And remember, Rodrick says he's got sailors, that Manderly has
extra sailors too. So at first I was wondering,
well, where they don't have enough men for the harvest,
where are they going to get men to man these long ships?
But this quote indicates that Sir Rodrick is telling them
manually will give you some sailors as well to defend your
coast. But this still, as far as we
know, hasn't happened. Because think about the Hardhome
incident, right? All those ships that go there
and they, you know, it's not going well.
I mean, there's just no word of umber ships around the area or
so it might have happened. It might have been happened off
page, but I mean, neither Hoth or Moors or even at Last Hearth.
So, yeah, it's interesting. It's it could be some coast
guarding going on there against the Free Folk, but this is by a
clash of kings. Fast forward to Dance with
Dragons. I don't know that they're going
to be raiding around the wall anymore because the free folk
have all passed through the wall to join Stannis, you know,
forcibly somewhat, but to escape from the other.
So I don't know that those raids are happening anymore.
Maybe they're a little bit because they're not all the free
folk joined, but the ones at Hardhome things went bad.
So more on that in a minute. We'll come back to Hardhome
briefly now. Either way, whatever theories or
guesses we have, we don't know what's going on here.
It's definitely a good example of a plot not finished yet.
Manderly built the ships. He may have built ships for the
Umbers, too. We haven't seen those ships
deployed do anything. They haven't done a thing yet.
I kind of doubt that that's how it'll end.
I've met those ships will probably do something, maybe not
a lot, but something. Maybe a lot.
So this leads us to an important conspiratorial idea.
If the Manderlys and Umbers were working together on this
project, maybe they work together on some other things.
Thinking about anti Bolton stuff, anti phrase, a little
more straightforward, but anti Bolton's important too.
That's a little more. That's a bigger problem because
the Bolton's are in charge in the North.
But yeah, think about it that way.
It's it's they had they were forced to work together, they
might realize they have more in common than they think.
They might realize they have plenty of enemies in common.
They both presumably wants the Starks back in charge and
Manderley is all for he's working with Glover to bring
Rick on back and get Davos to go do that.
Manderley goes to the Winterfell for the wedding of fake Arya to
Ramsey and hatha Umber is there too.
Maybe, yeah, maybe they communicated.
Maybe they are working together in secret.
They do have a lot of the same goals it it's definitely stands
to reason. Let's go back S though, while
this is happening up N, things are continuing in the South and
they are taking a downturn, shall we say.
This section is called Kingdom in jeopardy.
Great John. Of course, no change in him
being Rob's loud right hand man, but his mood sours like it like
so many other northerners do because things are going wrong.
It's not going so well anymore. They were all it was all cheers
and success early on, but things start to turn against them.
He's still loud and boisterous, but you could tell he's not that
that the mood has shifted even for him.
He's the one that delivers the news about Brandon Ricken.
The message comes to him first, or he's the one that receives it
through whoever there at the crag.
When that happens, that's of course when he makes the big
mistake with Jane Westerling. So they make their plan to take
the North back. They're like, OK, Theon ran,
they did all this stuff, but here's what we're going to do.
Rob comes up with a battle plan. That battle plan involves
attacking MO Caitlin from multiple places.
Great John's going to lead to distraction coming up from the
South and great John's excited. He's like, yeah, no problem.
Of course we're going to win. He's still very positive.
He's very confident. He never wavers on that.
He's like, y'all better do, you're better be there on time
or I'm going to already have taken it by myself.
You know, very, very boisterous, very you got to like that.
I mean, his positive attitude is, is infectious.
And then of course, though, the there's the Karstark incident,
the Karstark riccard Karstark leads his men to kill the two
Lannister prisoners and in the process they injure some
Mandrill, some umber men. When the when the Umbers come
to, you know, arrest them for that and Karstark calls Rob boy
during then on and umber punches him for that.
He's like don't call him boy. You know, it's so it's the
Umbers who capture the murderers, the Umbers who hang
the murderers, and then they all end up facing the consequences
when they lose the lose the Karstarks.
And just before that, right when they when the phrase find out
what Rob has done with Jane Westerling, they leave angrily
and great John is like attacked them like that would have been
dishonorable. It had a certain sense to it,
though, because obviously the phrase are going to bite back
later, but that's not what great John saw coming.
I don't think he's he didn't suspect Frey treachery.
Honestly, even though he in the moment thought Rob should attack
them because he, you know, he sees them as traitors.
He still had no idea the Red Wedding was coming.
He he may have been one of the least aware of it, which is
where we're going now. Let's talk about the Red
Wedding. There's a very important detail
that gives us a clue to how George plans to place Great John
in the narrative. This comes back to what I was
saying in the intro, the episode, which is that he has
not actually fought anyone with a weapon that we've seen.
We've heard of his success in battles.
He's been at Rob's side several times.
He and his men burned those siege towers.
He's been in other battles and skirmishes, raids, what have
you. But it's all off page.
The one time we see him draw out his sword and anger, it's when
Graywin bites off his fingers. And all along we've seen how big
a drinker he is, right? And that's on full display at
the Red Wedding, more so than anywhere else.
This is a sadly humorous moment here, when Catelyn is before
things really get bad. She's just checking out the
festivities, you know, observing what's happening at the wedding,
and we get this quote. The ale, wine and need were
flowing as fast as the river outside.
The Great John was already roaring drunk.
Lord Walder's son Merritt was matching him cup for cup, but
Sir Waylon Frey had passed out trying to keep up with the two
of them. Catelyn Wood sooner Lord Umber
had seen fit to stay sober, but telling the Great John not to
drink was like telling him not to breathe for a few hours.
So yeah, This is why you could tell he suspects nothing.
He's just partying as if there's no tomorrow.
He's he. He's drunk really early in the
festivities and kept on drinking.
Remember, that was the Frey plan, their idea.
They wanted to capture him. They knew that capturing him was
important, so they had that. They specifically had a plan for
him. You guys drink him under the
table. Didn't work.
He's just too. You can't drink him under the
table. He's also the one that carried
Rosalind to the bedding when the betting ceremony was happening.
He didn't take note of her crying.
No one did, really, except maybe readers.
Catelyn didn't even hardly perceive what that meant.
So when things did pop off, when the violence began, the Great
John wreaked havoc. Even though they had this
specific plan to immobilize him, they just couldn't because he's
just, they underestimated how much he could drink.
Like, wow, this guy, It's astonishing.
His tolerance was just too high. But we don't see this on page.
This is something we hear about after the fact, way later, the
last chapter of A Storm of Swords.
The Red Wedding's like close to halfway through, but we don't
hear about this bit until the epilogue.
Merritt Frey is remembering it, and that's when we learn quote.
You shall have one task and one task only, Merritt, but I
believe you are well suited to it.
I want you to see to it that Great John Umber is so bloody
drunk that he can hardly stand, let alone fight, and even that I
failed at. He'd cozened the huge Northmen
into drinking enough wine to kill any three normal men.
Yet after Rosalind had been bedded, the Great John still
managed to snatch the sword of the first man to accost him and
break his arm in the snatching. It had taken eight of them to
get him into chains, and the effort had left two men wounded,
one dead, and poor old Leslin Hay, short half an ear when he
couldn't fight with his hands any longer umber had fought with
his teeth. There's a certain level of
subconscious understanding there.
First of all, he's just super mad.
He's super ferocious. He can't believe what's
happening and he's super drunk, but also he maybe on some level
perceives that they're not trying to kill him, that they're
trying to capture him so he could just keep fighting because
they're not going to. They're not going to kill him.
So yeah, we didn't see that. This is just Merritt's memory of
it. When when all the Red Wedding
things are happening. Catlin doesn't see this.
He's in a great John is elsewhere.
He's not in the same room when this happens.
So yeah, again, I got to come back to this.
Is George going to end this character without letting us see
him in action? I mean, you could call this
action, but this isn't sufficient action really.
Right now, Small John acts quickly when things turn bloody.
He's not drunk. He's one of Rob's guards.
It's his job to stay sober. But of course it's not enough.
There's so many murderers here and so many of the Starks and
Umbers and Car Starks, etcetera are partying and drunk and not
ready for this Small John. When the crossbow bills start
flying, he throws the table on top of Rob to shield him from
crossbow bolts. It's a one of them, probably the
most effective move any of them could have done.
Like the guard, his guards had little they could do.
This was the only thing remotely close to effective that anyone
did, so good on him. But he goes for his sword belt,
which is hanging on the door. Gets hit by a crossbow bolt,
drops to his knees, gets beheaded by a Bolton man with an
axe. An unknown Bolton man So when
we're considering all the things great John is going to be mad
about like when he's mad in that moment he's killing because
they're trying to capture him. He doesn't even yet know exactly
what's happened. He can make some assumptions
like they've probably done something to rob.
He doesn't know what's happened to his son.
He might find that out in prison or at some point.
But so he's going to be mad about not just the killing of
Rob, not just this, the killing of the Kingdom that he put the
wheels into motion for, but the killing of his son in heir
that's probably bigger than either of the other two, if not
as big. And this is again, bringing it
back to manderly Umber connection.
What happened at the Red Wedding on the Mannerly side?
Willis Manderly was killed. Willis Manderly was the heir to
White Harbor. So Willis Manderly killed Small
John, killed the heir to those houses.
Both of them killed, both survived by their fathers just
as Manderley is playing nice. Remember Manderley acting like
I'm on your side ruse. I'll make a few snarky comments
here and there, especially at the phrase.
But hey, I showed up with my man.
I'm you know what? If I I'm I'm with you, right?
Yeah, we're on the same team. Umbers are doing the same thing.
Hathor Umbers doing the same. Yeah, we're on the same team.
Sure, I brought my men here, but in in their head, they're
thinking, just give me a chance to kill these phrase or these
Boltons. They're just waiting for their
opportunity, whether it's baking them into pies on the on the, on
the sly or, you know, waiting for an opportunity to do things
in the open if the political situation shifts.
So Great John's in prison. We'll come back to him in a
minute. His uncles are the ones that are
chained as well, the giants that they are chained by his
imprisonment chaining The Great John put chains on his uncles as
well, Not literal chains, but it limited their movement and they
knew that that was the point. That's why they didn't kill
Great John. They wanted to cripple,
immobilize the rest of the Umbers like, well, none of the
Umbers will act as long as we hold their Lord.
Even if they want him dead, Even if they want him dead like they
the the uncles might be like, yeah, well, if he dies, maybe we
can seize Last Hearth for ourselves.
They don't want to do that openly because that's just looks
bad. So they might, might want it to
happen, but they're not going to make it happen.
They're not going to let anyone know that they wanted that to
happen. But maybe they don't want it at
all. Maybe they're loyal.
So let's talk about them. This is the section.
It's called Greybeards and Green Boys.
When Lewin is dying, when they find Maitre Lewin dying after
the sacking of Winterfell, he, he's like, you got to take the,
he tells OSHA, You got to take the kids to safety.
You got to get them out of here. And he's like White Harbor or
the Umbers again, Manderly and umber Right.
Like one of those two. You know, like, he named those
two as the best shot. So, so much makes sense that
they would work together, given they are sort of aligned like
this. They have so much in common
here. We know they're working together
in the matter of the ships. Yeah.
And again, what did we say earlier?
Hoth or Umber complained that Great John took too many men S
for King Rob's war. That's why this section has the
name it does because Hoth or Umber he his army, his
contingent of about 400 men is made-up of Gray beards.
And Moore's doesn't even have that.
He's got green boys with spades, young men and dudes who were
maimed in previous battles. So there's just not like this is
not the the cream of their fighting force, but it still can
be effective. So this is I want to, this is I
mentioned this earlier, I want to draw this comparison.
It's a very different the comparison between Great John
and Last Hearth versus Carhold. These are two houses very close
to each other, right? Their castles are maybe as close
to each other as any other. So he trusts his uncles.
You know, there's a lot of people out there that are like,
you know, Roderick isn't keen on Moors.
Daniella Hornewood calls him a drunken brute.
Catlin calls both of them old Horry briggins.
So there's a lot of like mistrust of these guys from
people who would know, yet great John who would know even better,
makes them Co castellans like he trusts them.
And this is the opposite of the car stark situation where
Alice's uncle Rickard's brother was left in or great or yeah, or
his uncle, I forget which. It might be Alice's great uncle
doesn't matter. He's left in charge of car hold
and instead of doing right by his family, he tries to take it
for himself. He tries to forcibly marry Alice
or Craigen does he tries to help his his son Craigen do that.
The great John's uncles could theoretically do that too.
There's great John's daughters are there and they, one of them
could try to seize Last Hearth, but not only did they not do
that, they go out and do other things.
They're not even at Last Hearth. So it worked out that there's
two of them because they can do the whole both sides thing.
One joins Bolton, the other drones Stannis, you know, and
they probably talk this out. They're like, you go do this,
I'll go do that. And they have like a plan to
meet in the middle somehow, right?
Like, I'll betray Bolton eventually, you know, and, you
know, wait for the right moment. They, they're not against each
other. These are two guys that were
drinking together, hanging out together, having fun together.
They're, they're brothers. They didn't just suddenly decide
to take different sides. No, this is an act.
This is all part of playing nice, letting Roose Bolton see
the alliance, seeing the loyalty.
At least one umber with soldiers is on his side.
But he also says hey Umber won't fight umber you know, he says
that very clearly he will. They won't fight each other.
And that's something that both leaders Stannis and Bolton have
to contend with. Dionne tells Asha when he's got
Winterfell that the Umbers are massing men to take back
Winterfell, but he's either mistaken or they just don't
come. For one thing, again, it doesn't
seem like there would be enough men to mass because so many went
S. But on the other hand, hawthor
Umber brought 400 men to MO Kaelin and then to Winterfell.
But those men did not show up to help Roderick and Clay Serwin
take back Winterfell. They weren't part of that group.
The group that Ramsay snuck at, sneak attacked and and
slaughtered. There were not Umbers in that
group. So what happened to those?
So what happened to their? Why weren't why didn't they show
up? Was Theon wrong?
Did he lie? How did he even know that they
were doing that? Maybe they're maybe someone told
him that hoping it would scare him.
I don't know. It's still just just curious
though. I don't really have a complete
answer, but I wanted to draw your attention to it.
Now, Horsbane and Bolton, let's talk about the two individuals
and how they're relating to the to these two leaders.
Davos, when he goes to White Harbor and starts to learn the
lay of the land and hear the news, get the rumors in that bar
he goes to, he hears that Hothor, that Horsbane is riding
with Bolton to Moat Kalin. And it's true.
And that's where we get those numbers, 300 Spearman, 100
Archers. These are greybeards.
The men aren't needed though, thanks to Theon's diplomacy.
He cons the Ironborn out of MO Kalen and then Ramsey flays
them. So there was no, no men lost on
the Bolton side there. And then Hothor goes to the
wedding. He's there for everything.
He's he's in Winterfell for the wedding, for all those murders,
the the eventual launching of the troops to go tax Stannis.
All along he's hating the phrase.
He says a few things here and there.
He doesn't say anything negative about the Boltons, probably
because he's keeping quiet, playing smart.
He jokes here and there, He tells him, he laughs here and
there, just acting like he's not a threat.
You know, Hey, I'm part of the part of the crew, you know,
like, I'm just another Northerner like the rest of you.
But this is almost certainly a distraction from what he's
really after, which is an opportunity, a way to get rid of
the Bolton's, a way to restore the Starks, perhaps.
Maybe there's other ambitions. Maybe he's got some personal
notions in there. He wants to get married again.
If he performs good service, maybe he'll get a a Good Wife
with some of some noble woman that the king will give him or
the Starks will give him. That might be what he's
thinking. He jokes with Roger Rizwell.
He says a couple of things that maybe you're throwing that are
causing confusion. You know, that are very sly.
Theon at one point sees him talking to Harwood Stout.
Quietly, as if they're maybe conspiring now Harwood Stout is
the guy who Ramsey is forcing him to throw feasts when we see
him and Roose early in A Dance with Dragons, when Roose has
this totally takes apart Ramsey and he's like, don't make me rue
the day I raped your mother, all that, that scene.
That's when that happens. That's Harwood Stout's castle,
which is near Baraton, like in next to Baraton, basically.
So that guy doesn't like the Boltons.
He's a a candidate to turn on them for sure.
And so I think that might be what George is suggesting here,
that maybe those two are conspiring, or at least we
should be thinking about that possibility.
It's what Theon is. It crosses his mind.
So now Rose is no fool. He may have bitten off more than
he could chew, but he hasn't forgotten who these people are.
He doesn't think Horsman can be trusted.
He's right. Lady Dustin says he definitely
can't be trusted. The only reason we can keep him
in line at all is because the Great John's a captive.
If we lose that, we can't expect anything but him to turn on us.
She points out that to Amy's and Sir Hostin, she's like, look, if
if Great John wasn't being held, Hoth or Umber would pull your
guts out and feed them to you. He she says that and Amy's and
Sir Hostin are like, well, they should learn who they're learn
who's in charge here. You know, they you know, blah,
blah, blah. They're they get all uppity
about it. So everyone's blaming the
phrase. They're all pointing it out.
The phrase are not having a good time in the North.
We covered that thoroughly in the Winterfell murders episode
and and elsewhere. But there's no fool in here.
Hor's Bain knows who killed Small John.
It was a joint effort. Bolton's and Phrase killed Small
John. Bolton's and Phrase captured
Great John. That's who the vengeance is
pointed at. Give him his chance.
Give his brother the chance. Give them both the chance.
You'll see what happens on the flip side.
Stannis asked John, can I trust crow food umber we got Bolton
knows he can't trust horsbane, but Stannis is like, well, can I
trust Moore's crow food? John says he doesn't say no.
He doesn't say yes. He says have him swear his oath
before a heart tree if you want him to, if you want to have a
chance of him trusting you, if you want a chance to trust him,
that's your best bet. Make him swear before a heart
tree. That might keep him in line, but
interestingly, Bolton doesn't do Bolton doesn't have anyone swear
in front of a hard tree to him would have been an interesting
thing for him to try. Would they have done it?
Would they have lied? Maybe Bruce doesn't really
believe that is binding. He's like, I don't I don't trust
that either. You know, I'm I'm Roose Bolton.
That doesn't people don't an oath.
What is that? You know, even to a God, even to
the gods. It's more as who tells stannis
Umber will not fight umber for any cause, which I'm again, I'm
guessing that this is maybe a value they already held, but
it's something that Hother and Moores talked out ahead of time.
Like, hey, I'm going to join him.
You're going to join him. We're not going to fight each
other though, even though we're on opposite sides, we're not
only going to not going to fight each other, we're going to tell
our leader, you know, Bolton and Santis that we're not going to
fight each other. So you got to manage that.
That's the that's the condition of our support.
So the, this is the Moores. Remember, Moores is the elder of
the two and he's the one who got the younger men, though he got
the green boys. Hother got the the 400 grey
beards. And this is part of why maybe
Bolton accepted it or the status quo because Hother joined him
and Hother had the men. All Moores has is the green
boys, and not even a lot of them.
So that's not as worrisome to Bolton, even though Moores puts
them to maximum use. When he gets maximum benefit out
of those green boys, he digs holes, he has them dig pit
traps, he has them blow horns at night to make the morale in
Winterfell even worse, to make them think Stannis is here.
They're like those horns. It means Stannis, right?
But it's not. It's just just, it's just green
boys with horns. And it works 'cause they they
lose sleep, they get uppity, they get mad at each other,
everyone's, everyone's distrustful inside the castle.
And then they ride out to scout and fall in the pit traps.
Anise is killed, Sir Hostin's horses killed.
Horsbane inside the castle. Like probably had a hard time
concealing his smile when that happened.
He's like, yeah, that's my brother doing that.
He probably knew. He doesn't think it's Stannis
out there. Or if he does, he's like, sure,
bring it, Stannis. I'll stab these Boltons in the
back. Give me a chance.
Coming back to the Free Folk. There's a real irony here, A
potential irony here. Anyway, remembered Mores
Crowfood lost a daughter to the Free Folk 1 was kidnapped about
30 years before the start of the books.
They already hated the Free Folk.
The The Umbers have hated the Free Folk for a long time, but
Morris has more reason than Morris has more reason than most
to hate the Free Folk because they stole his daughter.
And that's why Mance Ryder has to be in disguise.
One of the many reasons Mance Ryder has to be in disguise when
he goes to Winterfell is 'cause he can't see the he can't have
the Umbers recognizing him. In fact, besides Moore's saying
hey stannis Umber won't fight umber that's one of my
conditions to joining you. The other condition is I want
Mansrater's skull for a drinking cup.
So what would Moore's do or hother do if he found out
Stannis was actually using Mansrater?
That he concealed his death to keep him alive to do a this
commando mission? What an irony.
Theon and Jane escape because of Mance and the spear wives.
And who gets them as soon as they jump over the wall?
Moors. So they only escape because of
Mance, the guy that Moors once. It's a skull to drink out of,
the guy that he wants to kill more than anyone else in the
world. That's who helped Theon and Jane
get to him, and then he delivered them to Stannis.
There's even a theory that one of the spear wives, Rowan in
particular, is that kidnapped daughter.
There's not a whole lot to go on on it.
It would fit because of her age, but that's really all there is
to it. It's it's kind of shot in the
dark, but it's possible. Now.
Also, Moore's is the one to run into the banker Tycho Nestoris
because Tycho thinks Stannis is at Winterfell.
He's like, I'll go to Winterfell and find Stannis.
Moores is like, wait, don't go there.
There's Bolton's and frays in there.
Let me guide you to where Stannis actually is.
And so he delivers Tycho and Theon and Jane Apul all at the
same time to Stannis, which just, that's doing good service
for Stannis. And then I presumably he just
returns to his position outside Winterfell blowing horns and
digging holes 'cause they're not.
Again, Stannis is not far. So he doesn't have to go that
far to get to deliver those 3 to Stannis.
Then they can come right back when the Frey armies March or
with them on the March. He might continue to hassle
them, like maybe night ambushes, more horn blowing, more just
ways to throw off their morale. Anything to help the coming
battle be won by Stannis. We also don't know if Ramsey
went or if the Manderleys are there.
We're not exactly sure which armies March for the coming
Battle of Ice. Clearly the phrase did.
But was it all of them? Was it most of them?
Who else went? You know it's not.
Not 100% sure of that. And that may affect what Moore's
does. If the Manderleys are with them
and they're working together or he suspects they would be on his
side, then he might sneak into their camp and be like, hey, I'm
here. What's the plan?
Let's backstab these stupid phrase.
The commander's like, yeah, I mean, we were already planning
on doing that, So you, you want to help us?
Yeah, let's do it. You know?
And And the whole idea of Moore's digging pit traps is a
maybe reminder or suggestion of how Stannis is going to win the
Battle of Ice by digging or making pits in the ice that that
the phrase will fall into. So it's another pit trap
scenario here, but these are pit traps with frozen water beneath
them where you drown and freeze rather than ones you fall into
and break your neck. Effective either way though.
This next bit's called on the way to Skagos.
OSHA LED Rickon and Shaggy Dog to Skagos right after that
conversation with Lewin and and telling them they needed to
split up. Don't have Brandon Ricken in the
same place. And, and from the North
Remembers chapter with Davos and Manderley and Robert Glover, it
seems that happened. It seems they did get to Skagos.
We'd be curious to know a little bit more about how, like, if you
look at the map clearly from they wanted to go to Skagos, it
looks like they'd have to go through umberland and take ship
from there, which means they might have interacted with
Umbers or they may have avoided the Umbers.
I'm not sure which. But since Lewin said the Umbers
would be a decent bet for safety, maybe there's a lot more
going on here in terms of OSHA and Rickon are known by the
Umbers to have gone there. Or maybe they're going to tell
them later, but they may have just avoided them because
they're just, they're not sure who they could trust.
It's like it's better just to not let anyone know who or who's
here. But it also begs the question,
who's actually in charge at Last Hearth right now?
It's not the Great John left Moors and Hawthor in charge,
It's Coca Silan's. But they both left to go do
other business in the North, you know, join Stannis, join Bolton,
you know, do all these other things.
They're not at Last Hearth. So who's actually in charge?
I don't know, there's a lot of umber still out there, younger
ones, so maybe it's just some cousin.
It's not like a super important question, but it is relevant
that it's not Moore. Zerhother, Sir Godrey, the giant
Slayer, that Knight of Stannis's who's a real loudmouth, the one
that taunts John. He has a dim view of the Umbers,
though he doesn't actually know them personally.
He just thinks of them as, you know, hairy, uncivilized
Northern savages like so many of other Southerners do.
He doesn't believe Moores and Hoth or actually care about
Great John. He believes that they're just
putting on a front to because it would be dishonorable.
It would make them look bad if they didn't act like they were
trying to rescue their nephew, but he believed they actually
want him to die. This is what he says quote.
That is his pretext, not his reason, declared Sir Godrey.
If the nephew dies in chains, these uncles can claim his lands
and lordship for themselves. The great John has sons and
daughters both in the North. The children of a man's body
still come before his uncle, Sir.
Unless they die, dead children come last everywhere.
Suggest that in the hearing of Moore's Umber Sir Gaudry and you
will learn more of death than you might wish.
I have slain a giant boy, why should I fear some flea ridden
northman who paints one on his shield?
That giant was running away. Moore's won't be good one John.
He wins that war of words. Would be funny if this is some
kind of foreshadowing for Moore's actually fighting Sir
Gaudry. I don't.
I don't know why Moores would fight one of Stannis's men
though, because I think in the long run Stannis is is someone
they like and want to help restore the Starks.
Maybe Hawther would though. I don't know.
Maybe Hawther since he's currently with the Bulge.
Maybe that's some way he has to prove himself.
I don't know. Probably not, though.
But it would be not funny but dramatic if Godrey's actually
right, if his cynicism is on point, that one of these uncles
is looking for a way to seize Last Hearth for himself, just
the opportunity hasn't yet presented itself.
I don't think so, but it was certainly like the way George
had characters refer to them earlier in the narrative kind of
indicated that might be coming. But more lately, it seems like
they're doing right by the Northerns and the Starks, even
if they're being really cunning and underhanded about it.
So all I have to see it's George is definitely keeping, you know,
the scales are like, well, it's hard to tell which way that's
going. Are they dark?
Are they not? Or is it some of both?
It's hard to tell. And I, I, I do like that it
keeps keeps us guessing. Here's our quote of the week.
Appropriately enough, it's the book Last of the Wine by Mary
Renault, and I say that because we talked earlier about how it's
the one thing or one of the few things the extreme northerners
like about the South is their wine.
Last of the Wine is set in Athens during the time just
before the Peloponnesian War and then during the Peloponnesian
War, which is a great long 30 ish year conflict between Athens
and Sparta that embroiled much else of the Greek world.
Lots of other city states got involved and it was really bad.
Here's the quote. It was not that we were in love
with the past. We were of an age to feel the
present our own, and to suppose it would never outstrip us in
painting and sculpture and verse.
The names we grew passionate overlook to us as big as those
of Pericles Day, and it still half surprises me when I'd find
them unknown to my sons. But we seldom stood to enjoy
good work as one stands before a fine view or a flower, and
simple greatness that it is. As we held each new artist, we
grew angry with the former ones, as with false guides we had
caught out. We hastened, though we knew not
where, to. Freedom, we said.
The sculptors no longer proportioned their forms by the
golden number of Pythagoras and Pheidius and Polyclitos did and
art would do great things. We said now it had cast off its
chains. So what's going on there is the
he's describing how they got arrogant, they got cocky, they
got they forgot where they came from and they started to look at
the originators of these art forms as weaker as less than,
even though they're the ones who invented it and were part of the
chain that comes to the current times that they were Speaking
of. Art builds on art, right?
Art imitates previous art. Everyone learns from previous
generations. And this speaks to the the level
of arrogance within Athens that led to taking on a military
power like Sparta when both they both tore each other apart.
It was terrible for both of them.
I really love this book. I read it a long time ago.
I've read Mary Renault's entire catalog, so I really think she's
great. She's had a hard time as an
author. She lived in the 70s, she's a
lesbian and that was not a good time to be in the UK as a
lesbian. So eventually she left and lived
in a commune in I think South Africa or somewhere in Africa
where it was just in it like they had their own space and
they were away from all the, the hate and she was able to be an
author and peace. Anyway, you can get that book or
other Marinault books or any book, whether on hard copy or
through Audible. You can get an audible
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a free download, free book, maybe this one.
Go to historyofwesteros.com. You can also shop through Amazon
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This next section is called Sigil is Coming, and it is the
climax of this episode because as I said at the beginning, we
have big unfinished plot lines with the umber with house umber
and this is where we talk about that.
What I mean by Sigil is Coming is that their sigil is a giant
breaking its chains. Almost every umber is described
as a giant. Almost every umber is in chains,
literal or figurative right now. Great John unleashed from prison
could be quite a sight right? That ferocity pent up added in
the mix you add his righteous vengeance slash justice for Rob
and the Kingdom he inspired and his son.
It could have a domino effect though, because the unleashing
of the Great John will unleash Mores and Hawthor there wearing
chains of their own because they can't act as long as Great John
is in prison. So once he's out, they're out.
His freedom to act is their freedom to act.
They no longer have to worry about consequences to him if
he's out and free. They can do whatever they want.
So we could have a whole bunch of Umbers Unchained at once.
Let the Great John free Great John, and that frees Moores and
Hauther. We could have Unchained,
unrestrained, unashamed, right? They're they're Dornish too
right now. They want to, they got, everyone
gets their own version of unbowed, unbent, unbroken.
Right now, the uncles, this, this unchaining of the uncles
could turn dark. Maybe Sir Godrey's right.
Maybe there's early warnings from Sir Roderick and maybe Lady
Donnella, maybe even Catlin. Maybe those will prove true.
Maybe these uncles aren't trustworthy.
Maybe one of them isn't trustworthy.
So we can't just assume that just because the Great John is
safe, that they will just immediately become Stannis's
best warriors or best commanders or something like that.
Most loyal. They they might go the other
way. We don't know.
I do think they're likely to help.
I think they're likely to be most on the side of good, on the
side of the Northerners. But we got to consider the
alternatives now. Jamie ordered the phrase to send
all their prisoners to King's Landing.
That includes the Great John. That is 1 particular way that he
could get free because the Brother Without Banners have
been watching every bit of movement of Jamie's men, of his
army, of him particularly. Obviously, he's already been
captured by Stoneheart, so there's a that's one way he
could be freed. There's other ways too, and the
most fitting place for his return to seek vengeance justice
would be the theorized Red Wedding 2 point O, which might
take place at River Run or the Twins.
The first one he's captured at the second one he's unleashed
on, right? He's the victim of the first
perpetrator of the second. That would be very fitting,
right? Great.
John gets his revenge at Red Wedding 2 point O.
The ones who to the frays, The Lannisters, the ones that did
this. He'd have to get some Boltons
elsewhere. There won't be any Boltons at
this wedding, but he won't forget.
The North remembers, and he's as northern as they get.
What have we been saying all along?
The embers evoke Northern, you know, vibes more than any other
house in the North. Or at least tied for, right.
So man, few he's been, few men are capable of doing the kind of
damage he is, right? We talked about how big and
ferocious he is. He's probably the second or the
largest living man in Westeros right now.
An avatar of vengeance, a giant of justice, the living
embodiment of the North. Remembers.
Yeah, lots of things. He has to go.
It was. And again, it.
OK, I already pointed out Rob the Kingdom, his son, But all
those men, he brought more men than he should have.
According to his uncle's South, those men are pretty much all
dead too, though a lot of them would be men he had fought with
many times as like cousins, maybe distant cousins, trusted
loyalists, families that have worked with the Umbers, been
vassal to the Umbers for thousands of years.
These are, it's very personal fallout zone hard homes.
This is a real brief section, just a theory or an idea that I
wanted to present nights watch ships that are having all those
troubles. You know, one or two of them ran
aground on Skagos. Another one like went under.
Maybe that happens on umberland. Maybe they crash into the umber
shores there. They're not that far away.
And the disaster at Hard Home, the fallout there, what's,
what's it going to lead to many refugees fleeing around the
wall. That some of the ones that
didn't go to join Stannis didn't go South.
There's still at least some of them there.
Some of them survived. A lot of them died at Hardhome
when with that big accident or whatever happened, whether the
others did that or who knows, something's happening there.
Dead men in the water, dead things in the water, you know.
But Umbers aren't going to be keen on Free Folk refugees.
They just, that just doesn't fly there.
Stannis will take them, but the Umbers, I don't think so.
But it's not just Free Folk, right?
Remember what happened with those giants and their mammoths?
They couldn't fit through the wall, they didn't want to leave.
They're like, we're not going to abandon each other.
The mammoth can't fit through. What do they do?
They went E, they were going to go around the wall that would
put them in umberlands. Would the Umbers be mad about
that, or would they be like, hey, I kind of like mammoths.
Whose side are you on? You know, I don't know how to
predict what would happen there. I'm sure they're used to free
folk Raiders, but what do they do about giants who aren't
actually doing violence? They're just fleeing from the
others. I have no idea how they'd to
react to that, but it's not the same as the free folk.
Give me your prediction on that if you care too, because that's
a tough one. Or anything else you've you've
got predictions on here. There's a lot of room for theory
work here. Would love to hear what you have
in mind. So this last part, just just to
summarize here, the umbers are down, but not outro.
They're severely depleted in manpower, but most of the
leaders are still around. Only Small John was killed and
there's a lot of moves they can still make.
There's a lot they're going to want to do, especially Great
John. The whole idea of vengeance.
What about if Stannis wins? What are we looking forward?
If Stannis wins? Does Rickon show up?
Do the Umbers start cheering for him?
Do they do other things? Does Great John even live that
long? This is where I very briefly
mention the TV show. Again.
I don't think there's any merit to what happened in the show
with Small John turns evil and works with the Boltons.
Like I don't know how to reconcile that.
Like small John obviously isn't that in the in the books at all.
Are we supposed to assume that's that's one of the uncles that
would do that that would help the Boltons?
I mean, they're already planning on turning on the Hawthorne's
going to turn on the Boltons most likely so, or at least
scheming to. So why would he?
Why would he stay with them when their star is falling?
So I just don't think the show's version of events with regards
to the Umbers and even Ricken are is very valid for us to make
predictions in the books. So I just throw that out.
The trivia answer, what was Lord Harman Umber's nickname?
I gave you a hint that he was a contemporary of Artos the
Implacable. And the answer was in the
episode. If you are, if you didn't know,
you may have heard, if you were listening carefully, but you may
have already known the answer, which is the drunken giant, yet
another drunk umber yet another big umber very consistent, these
guys. At the beginning of the episode,
I posted a poll or Shay, I posted a poll and I read you all
the questions. Here's the result.
The great John will meet his end. 6% said in the South.
So very few of you believe that he will die in the South.
I tend to agree with that. 21% of you think he will survive the
series entirely. It's fairly optimistic.
I like that. I hope that happens.
But you know, given how aggressive he is, you know, he
might be, he's putting himself in a lot of danger, let's put it
that way. 23% of you think he'll die.
Two other humans in the North, it'll be human means, you know,
regular battle versus human foes. 47% of you think so.
Almost half think that it's going to be the supernatural
that he meets his end with. So fighting the others, fighting
the whites, the great battle at Winterfell, maybe he'll be part
of that. Hopefully he doesn't rise again
as some dangerous foe as a white.
You know, I don't want that to happen.
We can't have the great John turning on his own men or on the
Starks. Hopefully if he does die to
them, they burn him or get that dragon glass in his chest or
whatever it takes. We bet you a lot of episodes
today that were led to this one. The Battle of Ice, the Red Kings
of the Dread Fort, the Karstark episode, the Skagos episode, the
Hardhome episode. We have a Craster episode.
We have the Theon Winds of Winter chapter episode that that
contains a lot of these events. We have our Weirwood tour
episode, actually a pair of them.
There's a few others I mentioned that I'm that I didn't mention
here too. There's just too many, so many.
This one overlaps with a lot of them.
So we brought a lot of new information here today, but it
definitely ties into a lot of things we've said before.
It's a big world. This is a song of ice and fire.
Thanks everybody for hanging out today.
We appreciate your support. We appreciate you watching and
listening and sharing it with your friends.
Thanks to Nina for her great notes, for getting me some good
ideas to vamp on and to explore further.
Thanks to Joey Townsend for our music.
Thanks to Michael Klarfeld for our video intro.
Get his maps at KLARADO x.de claredox.de.
Very excellent maps. Hang them on your wall like we
do. Look cool like ours do.
That's it everybody. We'll see you next time.
On behalf of Ashea, I'm Aziz, and you know what to do.
Valar reread us.