Hello my fellow W Story and greetings and welcome back to
our occasional Saturday live streams.
We have an excellent episode planned today.
We are finishing up the awesome Ninepenny Kings War, which we
got started a few weeks ago and covered a lot of the back story,
a lot of the characters, a lot of the preparations for war, the
setup in terms of politics, and how all the band of nine came
together. We talked about the strange and
interesting Tree of Crowns, whatever the heck that is.
We talked about the unusual, to put it mildly.
Maley's the monstrous. So with me as always is Ashea
and returning for Part 2 because he was such a big part of Part 1
is Steven Atwell. Hey Steven, welcome back.
Hello. Right on.
So tell remind everybody again about your excellent blog and
pod race for the Iron Throne. Sure.
So I write at Race for the Iron throne.wordpress.com where I go
chapter by chapter through Song of Ice and Fire.
I also do some other essays. I've just started my run through
of Duncan Egg for example. Nice and relevant and.
Yes, very relevant. I also just in general write
about sort of the intersection of history, politics, and pop
culture. You can also find my stuff at
Twitter at Steve Natwell, or on Tumblr at Race and Furniture.
Cool, right on. Yes, very highly recommend
checking that out y'all. And let's let's get to it.
A couple of patrons to shout out at.
Of course, we have our wonderful history of Westeros's first
sword. That's Jeff Gnarly, the long
snapper. And we have Telanis the Talon,
king of Gagasos, rider of Telerius, the red dragon with
scales, horns and talons of midnight black.
Would have been useful for melees to have a dragon, but
that's why this was a tough conflict.
No side had Dragons. Dragons have been gone for a
while. We this of course is Part 2.
Part 1 was released about a month ago I suppose, so
hopefully you check that out, but if you didn't, it's not a
big deal to catch this one first.
The the information is all it. It's better taken in Part 1
first, but this stuff is really good on its own.
We covered a lot of the events there.
Now we've we've just recently released House Blackwood Part 1.
It's our first scripted episode in a while, so if you haven't
checked that out, I highly recommend it.
And let's get to it. We left off with just before
just the outbreak of war, really, where we have the band
of nine beginning to make their first moves, beginning to start
their conquest plans. And that really starts with the
taking of three main places this the step stones, Thai Rosh and
the disputed lands. And it's funny to think about
the disputed lands. What a name, right?
I mean, I wonder if the locals call it that.
Yeah, I live in the disputed lands.
So it's kind of a conundrum because it's fought over so much
that it's surely war-torn. On the other hand, it's got to
be worth fighting over a little bit.
It must be some reason to to hold it.
There must be some value to it. And Ty Rash has been fighting it
over for centuries. What do you think about the
disputed lands in general? What do you think they're the
benefit to the Band of 9 was? It's just something where I, I,
I don't know, I go back and forth on and I, I think that I'm
somewhat in disagreement with George RR Martin because he, he
sometimes refers to the, the disputed lands as desolate.
That doesn't make a lot of sense because no Renaissance city
state was able to feed itself, right?
They all required an agricultural hinterland, and
that's territory that would be worth fighting over, right?
They are also mostly run by merchant Princess, so you tend
to have a more kind of economic motivation for war, right?
You know, why if the land is worthless, why fight over the
land? Why not just go straight for
your opponent's city? You know, And the thing that
always makes me think in terms of like, what would people say
is if they are very right, if the lands are very disputed, if
the borders flow back and forth, it must be very hyperlocal,
right? You'd say like, I live in this
village because you might not know on a year to year basis.
Am I part of Tyra, right. Am I part of lease?
Am I part of Mirror? You know that might change many
times in in the course of your life.
Yeah, absolutely. Well said.
So regardless of what was what happened what what actual value
it has, they they certainly took it and held it for a little
while at least. I suppose they probably lost it
before the end. I think the last thing they
ended up losing was Ty Rash itself.
Yeah, but that was six years later.
So they they have held it for several years.
Yeah, that's true. Which probably in in terms of
the disputed lands, a few years is probably really long.
Yeah. Probably usually doesn't get
help for very long at a time. Now moving onwards.
So they took the disputed lands. However they did and for
whatever value that held for them, which which sets up the
taking of Thai Rosh. We talked about this a little
bit, I think and how they did this.
There's there's some potential for them having taken it
internally, like setting up a a coup or it may have been more of
a straight invasion. It's hard to say.
Let's let's take a quick quote about Thai Rosh here, and then
we'll discuss some of these possibilities.
Thai Rosh and altogether harder city began as a military
outpost, as its inner walls of fused black Dragonstone testify.
Valyrian records tell us the Fort was raised initially to
control shipping, passing through the step stones.
Not long after the city's founding, however, a unique
variety of sea snail was discovered in the waters off the
bleak Stony island where the fortress stood.
Now that unique variety of sea snail is the is a real world
parallel to the Tyree in purple found in Tyre, which is called
royal purple by a lot of people. It's it's, it's super, super
expensive. It's hard to fathom how
expensive dyes were in that era and how much money it made for
the Tyrians. And the equivalent is almost
certainly true here. You can see it in their culture.
The Tyrachi dye their beards and there yeah, it's it's pretty
wild. So this is this maybe doesn't
sound like something that would make huge amounts of money, but
it made huge amounts of money. Almost certainly the case for
Thai Rosh as well. So you can see why they wanted
it. It was a wealthy city and it was
also positioned on the step stones.
In fact, it was originally designed to control trade in the
step stones by the Valyrian. So it would make sense that
someone else would want to suborn it for the same purpose.
And that is exactly what happened.
And it's also the city most associated with the black fires.
Damon's wife, AKA the matriarch of all black fires is Rohan of
Tairash. Young Griff famously refers to
the blue hair he dies in heart of his mother, which is one of
the clues that he's a black fire because his the real mother of
all black fires was in fact a Tairash Now, of course, or was a
Tairashi Now, of course, Young Griff is just that's his cover
story. But you know, that's probably
George being playful as truth. Yeah.
So talk to us a little bit about Ty Rush, why they would want it
and what kind of value it would give to them, things like that.
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple of reasons.
One, if they're trying to take the step stones, it would be
right at their back, right, and would, if left alone, be
enormously hostile to some new force trying to take over the
step stones. So you need it for that purpose
alone. The second thing is it's a huge
port city. So, you know, it gives you a
great naval stepping stone to the step stones.
It means that you can have your supply lines operating.
You've got somewhere to to dock your ships before you set out
for the step stones. It allows for all of that sort
of good interior lines of communication.
Right on. And then the final thing is, is
it was quid pro quo, right? That, you know, what's his name?
Elequo had given his support in exchange for Tyraj.
So if they want to keep being financed and they're going up a
whole king, you know, going up against a whole Kingdom that has
feudal taxation that it can draw on, and they're just a bunch of
mercenaries, they're going to need some sort of finance.
And I think that the argument that, you know, it was taken
from the in stone inside is probably right.
In fact, given that the the bulk of their forces were cell
swords, at least one of their bands might have started as the
mercenary army in, you know, under contract to Tyra.
Yeah, and the black fires were familiar enough in the area.
They may have been. The Golden Company may have been
simply allowed inside over time. They may have been just a
feature of the city people who used to them coming in and that
may not be the case anymore. They're like, well, we're not
letting y'all back in again after what you did.
But this one time before they broke their broke the not the
contract, of course, but kind of broke this this piece.
They could have just been like, well, there's 10,000 of us were
inside the walls and we're going to take this.
Yeah. Or maybe they the army is on the
outside If if they weren't let inside, it's pretty easy to
imagine that someone opened a gate for them or they didn't
have to pummel their way. In it was not a a long siege or
a a bloody assault because they had the entire Stepstones and we
know from the history of the war for the Stepstones, that's not
easy right there. There are a lot of pirates on
the Stepstones who are not going to give up without a fight.
There's a lot of other, you know, in addition to Lise and
Mir. You know, you've got Pentos,
you've got Braavos, you've got a lot of interested parties.
So you would not want to sort of waste your manpower on this in
this old siege because then all your momentum is going to be
lost. And everyone sees what you're
doing. They have time to react.
Now to be clear, I think they probably could have done it if
they needed to siege tyros. That would have been
interesting. They had two or at least 2
fleets and all these different sell sword companies.
It's not the kind of work sell sword companies are ideal for,
but they'll do it. You know, you're paying them so
much, but in this case they'd be paying themselves or or you
know, doing it on their own. Still definitely agree that it's
more likely they took it from the inside.
So As for once they have Thai Rosh, like you said, that's a
huge base for them. They get there's a lot they can
do with it. Whether the Golden Company was
allowed in before, they certainly are now once they, you
know, kind of own it. And with that, they have all
sorts of options or like you said, money is now somewhat
taken care of. They have this huge tax base.
They can perhaps who knows what they're able to get out of the
citizens. They probably could have done
all kinds of things to extort and ransom.
And yeah, the city was probably, it wasn't the best time for Thai
Rash probably. And as far as the Stepstones,
yeah, they would probably be, there might be some forcible
recruitment maybe, or at least suborning of, of goods and and
weapons and and money, if not people.
And there's so many slaves in Tairaj, so that would be another
resource that they would probably make use of.
Yeah. To build, maybe to build ships
or to work on their weapons or probably not to fight in their
armies, but maybe that too. Yeah, I mean.
Who knows? Like, if you're not planning to
stick around in Tairaj, right? This is where the sort of
different motives kick in is, you know, Who knows if if
Maelee's the monstrous thickly cared about like preserving the
property rights of Tairoshi's slave masks, he's got bigger and
and further further afield things on his mind.
Yeah, so they move out from Thai Rosh to start taking the step
stones. It's kind of an obvious next
step. Of course, like I said, Thai
Rosh was designed to and in part to help control the step stones.
So, and it's right there. Now I wonder what their plan was
though. We know that the short term,
they want the step stones, it's the next step, but it could
easily cross into Dorn from there.
But Dorn is not the best base for invading the rest of
Westeros. It's a pretty good spot, but
it's kind of hard to emerge from those passes into the Reach or
the Stormlands because they can kind of see you coming.
They know there's only two ways you can enter the rest of
Westeros, and so that's not necessarily ideal.
I wonder if they had plans to maybe invade some of the other
islands or or head straight for King's Landing once they control
the step stones. What do you think the point of
the step stones was? Beyond.
I mean as far as a campaign strategy, beyond it being
important in the short term. What do you think the next step
would have been? So I have a slightly different
theory, which is that I think the step stones were taken as
sort of a trap. Yeah.
They wanted the previous Blackfyre rebellions had all
failed in part because they were fighting on enemy territory,
right? So they're they're fighting on
ground not of their own choosing.
And it's much easy for the Westerosi to Marshall all of
their resources. Then for the the black fires to
Marshall theirs. They have longer supply lines.
The Westerosi don't. And there's also an interesting
thing that happens with speed, which is that we know with both
Aegon the 5th and Jay Harris the second that they expected the
other SoC powers to deal with them first, that the the problem
would be taken care of before they got to them.
But then things keep happening faster than expected, right?
They take the whole of the disputed lands, they take Tyraj,
they take the step stones. All of that happens before the
Westerosi actually get involved, you know, in, in the in the war.
And that suggests to me that in part the band of nine are just
moving faster than expected and they're encountering fewer
obstacles, right? You know it probably helps if
you have several pirate kings and Queens right working with
you that the Pirates of the Step Stones are not going to be as
fiercely defensive as they might otherwise be because some of
them are on your side to begin with.
Yeah, they might join up or be convinced to join, or some of
them may have already been considering alliances.
Some of them already have been allies.
The Band of Nine may have maybe already had a step stone or two
given all these pirate Lords that were part of the group.
So that's not super well defined.
So they may have already had sort of a head start, yeah.
And that's kind of interesting again, because as with the
disputed lands in Tyros, it's another example of something
that could easily bog an army down.
I mean, we saw the Kingdom of the Three Sisters, right?
Their attempts to take the step stones took a long time and a
lot of investment of manpower. Yes.
But the Golden Company do it inside a year.
They're so much better at it. Yeah, so they, they're just
they're able to sort of husband their own resources.
And then when we get to the the Westerosi intervention, I'll get
a little bit more into why I think it was designed as cool.
OK, well, let's start off, let's let's set the stage a little bit
with the step Stones themselves, a little detail about what
they're like and what's going on there in terms of general
outlook rather than before the the Band of nine came there.
I would say they're generally filled with kind of nasty
people. There's, there's, I don't mean
like everyone there is evil, but it's, it's a tough place to
live. I mean, you got pirates all over
the place. You got, it's not part of any
nation. So there's not rulers that keep
the peace, so to speak. It's, it's, it's up to these
pirate Lords to keep the peace and they have less interest in
that in general. So I kind of imagine the
commoners there are kind of like the people of Bear Island in the
sense that that everyone learns to fight.
They're used to it. It's a way of life that at any
minute, any moment, you need to be ready to pick up your spear
and defend your your homeland. And it's often a proving ground
for the Ironborn. We see a lot of references where
they just go off and decide to go raid in the Stepstones.
And part of that's because it's the closest land that isn't
Westeros. They can't.
They're not allowed to reave in Westeros.
That doesn't stop them. But you.
It wasn't always stop, but it usually stops them.
And so they have to go somewhere else and the Step Stones are
full of pirates and people that there's no nation that can get
revenge on them. And the Iron Born, the Iron
Isles are so far away that no one's going to come after them.
So it's kind of a proving ground.
They get used to it, they fight, they learn, they they cut their
teeth, etcetera. Yeah, no one cares if you steal
from thieves. That's a good.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
It's. Actually interesting that you
bring up the Iron Islands 'cause they, the step stones sort of
remind me of like Essos version of the Iron Islands, right?
They're these group of pirates who live on these islands.
They, you know, attack trade a whole bunch, but they're rather
difficult to conquer or hold, you know, maintain control of
for very long. And they're, you know, they're
slightly kind of other, right? They're a little bit mixed.
There's people from all of the different, you know, associate
islands. There are, you know, we know
that there's a bunch of Royner who live there.
But you know, I wouldn't be surprised also if there weren't
a whole bunch of people who were Westerosi, right?
If you're from Tarthur or what have you and there's no work for
you or whatever, why not go to the step Stones and see there's
an island that you can grab or pirate to to take work on.
So I imagine it's very sort of a a bit like this sort of
Caribbean islands during the golden age of piracy.
It's this very sort of cosmopolitan group of
independent minded, you know? Criminals in a very Wild West
scenario where there's like, there's no law, there's no
central authority. Yeah, that's really cool.
So we actually have a map here. It shows not only the different
step stones, but shows just how close it is to Doran and Thai
Roche. That's really useful as a visual
aid. Let's talk a little more about
what else is going on there and how it relates to other people
in Westeros and and A Song of Ice and Fire proper.
There's pockets of Rhinar still living there be back in
Nymeria's day. They passed through that area
and some of them stayed basically everywhere in Nymeria
went and then and then picked up and moved again.
There was a few people that didn't follow.
There's always a few people that stuck around and and hung out
wherever in this different location.
And the Stepstones is one of those places.
So like Steven said, it's multicultural.
They're certainly living on the Stepstones create would, I would
imagine, would create some sort of subculture there because like
I said, it requires toughness and and survival skills.
We see several characters pass through there.
The cinnamon wind with Sam and Gilead board passes through
there and appropriately enough, it's attack.
And I mean, it's it's pirates live there and it's not much of
an attack because the cinnamon wind is well, like many swan
ships is very well prepared to deal with pirates, at least
small amounts of pirates. You know, if it was like a whole
fleet, they might have trouble. But the swan ships are super
fast and they have those awesome bows.
And I believe that's exactly what happens.
They fire a few volleys at the pirates and they're like, never
mind, we'll wait for someone weaker to come through.
And of course probably the most famous and unknown character who
is probably set up there is the so-called Lord of the Waters who
sets up on an island called Torturous Deep.
And the fandom is pretty sure, myself included, that's Oraine
Waters, who made off with Searcy's freshly made ward
Romans, which were very large warships, 10 of them.
And so the good chance he's there.
Now I have no idea what's going to happen with him, but that's a
whole nother topic. Very curious though to see what
happens with him. For a real life comp I would
call I would say Sicily is a pretty good example.
Now Sicily is just one island, but it's similar in that it was
very, very, very much fought over in ancient times and and in
Roman times and Mediterranean, it's the center of the
Mediterranean. It has a lot of the same
features of the Stepstones in that it's potentially powerful
as a trade spot because it's in the Unites 2 large land masses,
but that just ends up instead of being a great Trade Center.
Well, it is a great Trade Center, but it's also heavily
fought over for that same reason.
What do you think of that comparison?
Yeah, I mean, you know, Mediterranean islands in
general, right? What it what it reminded me a
lot of is Pompey's campaign against the Pirates.
Oh yeah. Right, where, you know, all
across the sort of, you know, eastern Mediterranean, central
Mediterranean, you know, they're all of these little islands, all
these little inlets where pirates could thrive because
they could sort of, you know, run out, attack and then sneak
off. And then you don't know which
little island or inlet they're at.
So, you know, it was very difficult to to sort of deal
with the pirates all in one go. And there were attempts to sort
of take some of the bigger islands like Crete or what have
you, But you know, they would just sort of move on to the next
Cove down the road. Yeah, they're very mobile.
Yeah, exactly. And.
It took Ptolemy sort of taking this enormous fleet and sort of
using it as a broom across the Mediterranean, going West to
east where he just wouldn't allow them to double back on
him. And he just sort of hit,
squeezing them and squeezing them into a smaller area that
they were able to be defeated do.
You think maybe that's what the the Band of Nine was trying to
do here. Maybe kind of go start with the
first step stone and kind of move their way West and lock it
all down and create supply lines and all that.
You think that was part of their goal?
It's possible it could, you know, they could have done the
sort of the island hopping strategy of, of the Pacific
theater and World War 2. Or it could be that they managed
to sort of roll up the whole stepstone in one go, in part
because they did have no friends.
Friends on the inside. And they may have hoped to.
They may have hoped to cut Westerosi support from itself to
maybe keep the anything coming from the South to be able to
reach the North. If you could keep the ships
bottled up below Dorn, that might be a good strategic
objective to keep help from coming around and getting the
King's Landing, for example. Yeah, it would make it extremely
difficult for, say, the Westerlands or the Reef to, you
know, intervene in a war in the east because they'd have to
cross the whole of the continent first.
Yeah. Yeah, that may have been part of
the strategy as well. And I think as far as an overall
strategic goal for the Band of Nine, we know that all of them
had different goals. Alequo's goal was Tyraj and he
got that goal. And Malice's goal was Westeros,
which is surely the most ambitious of the goals.
But taking that one, we being successful with Westeros would
absolutely enable whatever the rest were.
Because if you have Westeros, I mean, damn, you can do a lot.
You could. Whatever the other Pyre Lord's
goals were could pretty easily be accomplished with with
Westeros backing that endeavor. I, I was going to say, you know,
mentioning that the pirate kings, you know, that may have
been their quid pro quo. Is like OK?
We want the step stones. That's going to be our little
pirate Kingdom. And so, you know each step along
the way, right, Males make sure that his friends get what they
they bargain for so that they keep supporting.
That's a good call. I like that it makes a lot of
sense as part of this males is crowning before even the
invasion of the Stepstones begins.
So obviously calling yourself a king can help you draw more
support, or at least it it kind of issues the challenge Westeros
has kind of put on notice because he's not calling himself
King of the Stepstones. He's not calling himself King of
Tairash or the deputed lands. He's calling himself king of
Westeros. And that requires an answer from
Westeros. Let's talk about the what's
going on in Westeros during all this time.
Sure, prior to Summerall, around the time the band was forming
perhaps, or Maelice was making a name for himself as a new leader
of the Golden Company, there was a there were interesting things
happening in Westeros. This was the era which Aegon the
5th AKA Egg the Egg was trying to reform Westeros.
He was a very much pro commoner and that is perhaps in part
because he lived as one for a long time.
But we don't need to get into the Wise.
The point is he was doing it. He was focused on doing it, but
he was frustrated because the great Lords, who were very
powerful, of course didn't want to give up their rights.
They didn't want to give up any. They didn't want to concede
anything to the peasants. They didn't want to lose any
power. And this is of course partly why
Aegon wanted to hatch Dragons again, because he knew that the
great Lords would not push back nearly as much or at all if the
Dragons were in place again. It's an interesting sort of
period of time because Aegon the Fifth has lost his son Prince
Duke, right? There's just been the rebellion
of the the rat, the hawk and the pig.
Whatever that was. And then they they didn't really
take the the Band of nine seriously initially that.
That's true. They didn't.
Prince Duncan says that you know, crowns are being sold 9 a
penny, and the quote in the World of Ice and Fire is.
It was thought at 1st that the Free Cities of Essos would
surely bring their power against them and put an end to their
pretensions. But nevertheless preparations
were made should Maelis and his allies turn on the Seven
Kingdoms. But there was no great urgency
to them, and King Aegon remained intent on his reign.
So in the final years of Aegon's reign and of his life, they
didn't really take this seriously.
They hoped that someone else would deal with it.
They made certain preparations, but they didn't really have all
of their ducks in a row when the war actually started.
Yeah, right on. So there was a little bit of
unrest but around Westeros, but it's not a that kind of thing
isn't a huge deal. It may have interfered with
their preparations, but Westeros was always going to unite
against a foreign invader, which is something, by the way, to
keep in mind for A Song of Ice and Fire proper.
When it comes, when this kind of thing, when, when say some, I
don't know, some person maybe with Dragons, brings the foreign
army to Westeros, that might provoke a reaction too.
But let's not get into that right now.
But it is irrelevant to keep these things in mind because
George loves to have history repeat itself.
Not exactly, but in in cycles with with similar patterns.
So sure, surely there were other factors, but this was a
contribution to the need for the hatching of Dragons.
Maybe, maybe even in the back of his mind, Aegon was thinking,
well, yeah, I have all these. I have this need for Dragons.
And hey, it might also help with this Band of Nine situation if
it gets out of hand. If he hatches the Dragons number
one in the short term, it's like a huge symbolic victory, right?
You know who's who's the rightful king of Westeros?
Well, it's it's absolutely the one with the dragon.
But if he can get a few years in there right?
Doesn't take Danny what, 2 years to get the Dragons ready for Big
enough for battle. Yeah, it'll take a little while
at least. Well, yeah, So, you know, if
he's gets two years that, you know, if he can delay things for
a little bit, he may be able to, you know, and we saw it like,
you know, with Prince Damon, one dragon can be incredibly
decisive on the stepstone. That's very true.
That's a good point to bring up. Damon Targaryen, AKA the Rogue
Prince, the famous King Kong sort of Rainiera during the
Dance of the Dragons. He before the Dance of the
Dragons, he had conquered the Stepstones, named himself King
of the Stepstones and then and just kind of left eventually he
was like he kind of got bored with it, but but he had a
dragon. That's the point is it was easy
ish It well, it wasn't easy, but it was easier for him than just
about anyone because he had Caraxes the bloodworm, which you
know, you can see how something with that name would be helpful
in in conquering. So there's a lot of other
interesting people who were alive in this era, people some
of whom are still alive now. I would say Paisel, but he's
technically not still alive. But he was alive then.
And his appointment as Grand Maester actually helps us date
some of these things because he was appointed in 259 to be Grand
Maester and he served Egg on the 5th for a few months, which
means Summerhall was not in early 259, it would have been in
at least middle or late 259. So Paisel was Grand Maester for
all of Jahari's the second reign, meaning all of the
interim between Summerhall and the war and all of the war
itself. So that's pretty interesting.
And he wrote the book on. Yeah, he wrote the book on it,
that's true. And that's where he, of course,
he, he seems to have particularly focused on Tywin
and some of the Lannisters and stuff.
But hey, that's myself for you, you know, that's the you.
We've come to expect that from him.
So what do you think it meant as a if we talk about symbols, the
Dragons would have, had Dragons been born, that would have been
a symbol. Instead, basically the opposite
happened. Instead of them gloriously
bringing Dragons back into the world, they got themselves all
killed. And if, if if you're someone
who's got a sense of destiny, mainly's maybe thought he was
destined to take the throne. And if he wasn't, maybe some of
his followers were worked up into a frenzy, feeling that same
that same destiny and seeing the king just kind of immolate
himself and and most of the Targaryen royal family, that had
to give them a big boost of, of morale, if not like a
superstitious shot in the arm saying, wow, this is a destiny
thing. You think that was relevant?
I, I was going to say like, you know, one of the things that you
notice with the Blackfyre rebellions is that they're
often, they're, they happen shortly after some sort of like
negative event, you know, so the, the great spring sickness,
right? Or that, you know, the weakness
of heiress the first or what have you.
So I, I imagine it must have influenced Malus especially.
Like, what better symbol could there be that he's the rightful
king and that the Targaryens are weak and degenerate and, you
know, they've lost the mandate of heaven, so to speak, Then
they all go up in flames. Yeah, it's really symbolic,
right? Like it's like, wow, of course
it's also, you know, concludes Rhaegar's birth and things like
that. But hey, that's another story.
But also the person who succeeds is like, known to be a little
bit of a weakling, right? It's not any of the sort of
warrior sons of Aegon the 5th. It's this sort of sickly heir
and you know, who is never expected to be king.
So he might have sort of said rates, you know, not only does
the is the sort of court distracted by the fact that
they've got a change in government, but the new
government is completely unprepared and unqualified.
So that's even further sign that I'm the the rightful ruler and
can win this war on a cakewalk kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah. Well said.
So let's see here. Whatever it meant to the Band of
nine, it was certainly a a big deal in Westeros.
It was certainly a a major memorable event for the the king
and the royal family to immolate themselves.
And, well, we've got a nice quote.
The tragedy of Sommerhall brought Jaharis, the second of
his name, to the Iron Throne in 259 AC Scarcely had he donned
the crown and the Seven Kingdoms found themselves plunged into
war, for the Ninepenny Kings had taken and sacked the Free City
of Tyros and seized the Stepstones.
From there they stood poised to attack Westeros.
So it seems that with having sacked Tyros, it seems that they
were most likely trying to exploit or extort as much wealth
as possible in order to make these next set of moves.
And well, they were very ambitious set of moves.
Carl, I'll take a quick diversion here.
Luminia M sends a super chat and says thank you for helping me
understand George RR Martin's writing.
You are most welcome. It is a bit of a challenge, but
it is a worthy challenge. It's fun and I'm glad that we're
we're doing that for you. A question from a lot of people.
What about black fire the sword? Yeah, we certainly plan on
talking about that and might as well be right now.
It's, it's difficult to be certain about Black Fire the
sword here. We, we, we, I believe we briefly
talked about it last time. But if it's in play here, Malice
would have it. But if it's not in play here,
then where the heck is it? Where, who, who would have it?
It's it's really hard to say. It's a it's a bit of a mystery
because the places it should be, it's not mentioned, which
doesn't mean it's not there, just maybe that it's not
mentioned. But if it's not in Maelice's
hand, and if it's not held by the Iron Throne, then what the
heck happened to it? That's an interesting question
because in the like official artwork, Maelice doesn't build a
sword. He's got like a a morning star,
a flail, right? Yeah, it's got a morning star,
you know, So that may just be like a weapon of personal
preference that he was just like, I mean, especially if
you're a very big strong dude, right?
You can pull a lot of force behind one of those things and
knock people out around. We also know that he liked axes,
so it may just have been a personal preference thing.
It may be that he just kept it around for sort of ceremonial
purposes, like not bringing it out on a battlefield where it
could be potentially lost because, you know, the black
fires had lost the sword and had to get it back a couple times,
mostly when, you know, they kept getting killed.
So that may have been a consideration, though, like keep
it safe until the war's won and then you bring it out.
Makes sense. Yeah.
And, and one of my no, I wouldn't say this is a strong
theory, but something that I've considered as a as a
possibility. That black fire was destroyed at
Summerhall. They may have brought it there.
I don't know why they would bother to bring it there.
They would probably just leave it at the Red Keep.
But that would if if George is decides he's written himself
into a corner, he's got that option.
He's like, wait, maybe it was just melted at Summer Hall.
Maybe. But then the.
Question is, well, how did Illyrio get his hands on it?
Yeah, I do think Illyrio probably has it.
So that doesn't really satisfy. Yeah, it.
It's hard to fake Valyrian steel.
You know what? I mean very true and I don't
even know the wildfire would be enough to destroy the blade.
It would probably it would destroy the hilt most likely,
but the blade itself not so sure about that comment from Matt
Reese George with relating to the disputed lands.
He says George might be saying that the disputed lands is
desolate because it's being fought over all the time and it
doesn't have it's unable to produce things because of the
constant war. If it were held and kept stable,
it might be able to grow food and be useful, but because of
the constant fighting, it's unable to get to that point.
That potentially makes sense. Matt says think various lands in
Germany during the 30 year war. Here's Here's the thing though.
Medieval or I should say pre Modern Warfare doesn't actually
damage like soil productivity that much.
You know, ironically, if if anything, you know, it's sort of
the reverse bodies, human bodies make for good.
Fertilizer. Good point.
All those horses running around. Yeah.
And. You know, there, there's been
actually some like academic research on like, did you know
this sort of the myth of like salting the earth at Carthage?
Yeah, right. Did.
That start was so expensive. That seems very unlikely.
Yeah. Did that actually damage
productivity? Well, no.
We know that the Romans, after they finally defeated the
Carthaginians, they occupied Carthage.
Yeah, it was a it was a a grain exporting province for a long
time. And the the thing that made the
30 Years War so destructive to Germany is really the loss of
population. It's not so much that the soil
changes that like half the population dies so.
There's no one to actually tend the fields.
Yeah, and that was really unusual for for wars.
I mean it, it's the the sort of particular nature of a very
extended conflict, right? A war that took many, many, many
years, that doesn't normally happen, usually shorter, 30
years. And that it was a religious war.
So if you were a regular Royal Army, or even a mercenary army,
right, you'd go through and you'd rob the peasants,
certainly. You don't think they would burn
any crops or anything like that? I mean, you might a little bit.
The Chevrolet's were a thing, but you wouldn't kill everybody.
Like because you want to conquer.
Them. Yeah, would really be unusual.
It's the fact that it was a religious conflict where it's
all of a sudden, you know these you don't think of people as
like peasants to be to be conquered and and taxed.
You think of them as heretics who need to die so that their
souls can be saved. No.
Right. So that's really what change.
And, you know, and one of the reasons why we know that it
didn't damage the land exactly is that in the aftermath of the
30 Years War, a lot of sort of local German Princess started
kind of advertising for immigrants.
They would say. Like, hey, come to my lands,
I'll give you these vacant farms.
I'll, you know, you won't have to pay taxes for 10 years or
whatever. And lo and behold, the the
people who are able to attract immigrants to their Kingdom.
All of a sudden saw a pretty quick turn around of economic
fortune. So that's kind of like I think
Martin might be drawing from some earlier less accurate
history there, OK. Yeah, makes sense.
All right, let's take a quick break, give some shout outs, and
then we'll come back with the actual war and then the actual
aftermath. I want to give a shout out to
our Ironborn captains. Ironborn are going to be making
an appearance in the war here very soon.
We've got the father of Euron and Bailon and bringing his long
ships over to get involved in the Step stones.
That makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?
So let's give a shout out to the history of Westeros Ironborn
captains who I am currently searching for on my page.
Here it is Black Mattos, Storm Rider, captain of the Rusted
Hinge, Sir Selvis, Red Blade of White Harbor, captain of Trident
of the North, Lord Chucklaws, captain of the Droman Night
Blood, destroyer of Evil. John Gregor is captain of the
First of the Drowned God. Sir Kiran of Lonely Light is
Surge of the Sunset Sea, captain of Naga's Breast, a Droman armed
with siphons of wildfire. Aileen is Archer Queen, captain
of the Border Collie Crimson Kate is captain of the Drowned
Queen's Vengeance, just son of the Justice Collector of Tolls,
captain of the Golden Gift. Lord Mitch of House Bailey is
captain of Widow's Blood. His heir is Lordling Mason.
House Bailey Beneath the Gold is a podcast focusing on lesser
known A Song of Ice and Fire characters.
Check them out. Krakash, the Lord Protector of
the Gallifreans, is captain of the TARDIS of the Seven Seas.
Tempest of House Brewer is captain of the Summer Storm.
Also a shout out to our Blood Rider patrons that includes
Kohoi, wielder of called Sunpiercer, Rather wielder of a
dragon bone bow, Vorsaki, wielder of the Valyrian Steel
Air Act with a dragon bone hilt, and Kokavo the Tamer wielder of
the wildfire with Gehenna. Also I would like to give shout
outs to our Queens of Love and Beauty from the depths of Flea
Bottom. Lord Ken of House Hammer has
declared for Queen Carey, Fire of the North who recovered Dark
Sister from beyond the wall, and a Laurel of glory in the name of
love to Bud of House Beresford, Knight of Tokian and arbiter of
Scotch from Sandy the dragon blood of Queen Daenerys and Lady
of Jameson. The Pot Mom's Podcast is a
weekly pot themed podcast that talks about cannabis and
parenting. The Pot Mom's Podcast exists to
help debunk the myth that moms and dads who smoke pot are bad
parents. We aren't.
We're really, really good ones. They review products and
strains, interview interesting people, and join people who
support or would like to learn more about cannabis and the
great community around it. Hopefully they'll make you laugh
too. And honestly, maybe it's just
worth a listen so you can hear their dope theme song.
Join Kate and Paul on their weekly show, available on almost
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learn. Cool shit.
Keep blazing and stay amazing. And now the war itself.
Quote, Jerry said, known that the Band of Nine meant to win
the Seven Kingdoms for Melis the Monstrous, who had declared
himself King Melis the First Black Fire.
But like his father Aegon, Jerry said, hope the alliance of
rogues would founder in Essos or fall at the hands of some
alliance among the Free Cities. Now the moment was at hand, and
King Aegon the Fifth was gone, as was the Prince of
Dragonflies, Prince Daron. That splendid night had died
years before, leaving only Jairus, the Laced Marshall of
Aegon's three sons. That's something you touched on
briefly before, but now it's a little.
Now we've got kind of the official statement for it.
And it's no wonder Jairus was concerned.
The scorn of his father and older brother was apparently
misplaced. They were, as we said before,
Dunk. Prince Duncan, who died at
Summerhall, said, you know, they're giving crowns out nine a
penny now. So they were, as we pointed out,
they did make some preparations, but mostly they didn't take it
super seriously. And now all of a sudden, the
Band of Nine has conquered 3 pretty hard to conquer places,
and it doesn't seem like it took them very long.
So 3 hard to conquer places taken in a short period of time,
that's definitely going to change the outlook and make
someone like King Jerry's sit up and pay attention.
Huh. So this is a war of conquest,
not rebellion. That's really important.
This is why people don't call it the Fifth Black Fire Rebellion,
because there really wasn't, at least initially.
There may have been eventually, had the black, had Bailey's had
more success, but at first there doesn't seem to have been any
Westerosi support for him. Is that right?
Well, I was, I was just amused because I, I was thinking that
my counterparts in the Citadel of Westeros probably, you know,
there probably are lots of like academic books and missives back
and forth arguing this point like, Oh yeah, he's a black
fire. So it's gotta be a black fire
rebellion. No, but he didn't have any
support in Westeros. So it's not a rebellion.
It's a foreign invasion. And it never actually got to
Westeros. So I imagine that there's a lot
of sort of back and forth on this.
Yeah, that's a good point. I love thinking about it.
What the what the maestros would be arguing over.
You're totally right. They would, absolutely they're.
Arguing over the War of 5 Kings where they're like, no, well,
there weren't actually 5 kings at any one point in time, so it
doesn't make any sense. And if we count this other king,
then it's 6 kings. And what about Queens?
Other people are just like, no, but just people call it the word
5 kings. So that's just what we're going
to do. Yeah.
So it's actually interesting to compare Maelise's claim versus
Robert Baratheon's claim. There are only 23 years apart,
so that might some people might think that this that these were
events were farther apart, but that's not that's about a, you
know, a little more than a generation terms of how
Targaryen he really was. You know, obviously Roberts
Targaryen blood was part of the equation for him getting the the
throne at the end of the rebellion.
And Damon Blackfyre frankly had more Targaryen blood than the
guy he was trying to unseat Daryl.
Not that's some big argument or or advantage, but it's certainly
was relevant to the discussion at the time.
And of course, Ori's Barafian. Maeulis's, you know, second
head. I imagine that the Blackfires
practiced a lot more Targaryen incest than the Targaryens were
doing at that point in time. It's entirely possible.
Yeah, especially, well, Aegon the 5th got unlucky with his
kids, but you could sort of see that there was a a push probably
speaking to like try to to diversify the gene pool.
Very true. It looks like the black fires
kind of did the reverse. It kind of does, doesn't it?
Yeah. And you see you see this that
guy we talked about the one with the filed teeth, if he had been
one of the black fires, you wonder if he'd filed his teeth
because as a result of some sort of other abnormality, he just
turned it into AI don't want to call it a strength, but turned
it into a fearsome aspect. Now we don't even know that that
guy was a black fire, but it's it's fun to consider that in the
in light of them doing bad things with incest, it could
result in, in things like that. But in terms of Robert, he had,
you know, one of his claims was being a descendant of Auris
Baratheon. And and of course he had
Targaryen blood closer in the bloodline to in fact, Egg's
children were were married into his dynasty, his family rather.
And they're both warriors. That's another important
comparison. I mean, Robert and Meilis were
both fearsome warriors. Meilis, you could say maybe was
a little more scary because of what he looked like, but Robert
could kill you just as well. I think he was, you know, in
terms of a fighting skill, I doubt we could say we don't know
whether Meilis or Robert was more skilled, but Robert was
certainly incredible as a warrior.
But here we have Jaharis has a big weakling and his son Aries
the second is also a weakling and that's who Robert fought
against. So there's some interesting
little parallels there. Now, of course, there's no
Dragons in either scenario, but wildfire of course, hangs over
both because Aries was certainly going to blow up King's Landing
near the end and this war 9 Penny Kings was significantly
boosted by Summer Hall happening.
Whatever Westeros kid Marshall to stop this threat.
Let's summarize real quickly what the Band of nine had as
they're moving into the the across the Stepstones.
So they had the disputed lands, they had Tai Rash, most or all
the step stones. We don't know exactly at what
point Westeros sent their armies to the step stones to interfere
with all this, but probably wasn't right away, especially
because of what we were saying about how quickly the Band of
Nine was moving. 2 pirate fleets plus whatever ships they
suborned from Thai Rosh itself, at least 4 cell sword companies,
including the Golden Company and lots of money.
They'd sacked Thai Rosh. The Golden Company probably had
built up a lot, a decent bit of wealth itself.
Melee's probably had some cash. We've got pirate Lords, they've
got their, they've got all their loot stashed, things like that.
And the fact that Thai Rosh is having lots of cell sorts.
Thai Rosh just has is a, is a city that is known for having
and hiring cell sort companies. So they probably picked up a few
others and along the way there, it probably wasn't just the ones
that were controlled directly by the bandit. 9 would you get,
would you? The commander of the Westerosi
armies was fittingly, Lord Orman Baratheon.
How nice a Baratheon. Jerry's the second, even though
we mentioned he was kind of a weakling, but he wasn't weak in
terms of his attitude. He wanted to lead the troops.
But Orman talked him out of it, saying, look, man, you're just
your health is delicate. You're you're not.
This is not the kind of campaign for you.
And you might wonder if Ormond was just trying to get the glory
for himself, but it sounds like he was telling the truth.
Joe Harris died in his 30s just of ill health.
There's no evidence that it was poison.
No reason to suspect that, as far as I know.
So it really does seem like Ormond was right.
Given all the things like plague and disease and and all the
different difficulties that the soldiers faced, it was probably
Ormond was probably right. Another person who could have
had an opinion on this was well, we mentioned him already,
Paisel. And here's a quote from Paisel.
Unlike his brothers, Jerry's Second Targaryen was thin and
scrawny and had battled various ailments all his life.
Yet he did not lack for courage or intelligence.
Drawing on his father's plans, His Grace put aside his grief,
called his Lords bannerman, and resolved to meet the Ninepenny
Kings upon the Stepstones, choosing to take the war to them
rather than awaiting their landing on the shores of the
Seven Kingdoms. King Jihari said intended to
lead the attack upon the Ninepenny Kings himself, but his
hand, Lord Orman Baratheon, persuaded him that would be
unwise. The King was unused to the
rigors of campaign and not skilled in arms, the Hand
pointed out, and it would be folly to risk losing him in
battle so soon after the tragedy of Summerhall.
That's a decent point. A lot of good points there.
So, Lord Orman, let's talk about him.
It was his father Lionel, AKA the Laughing Storm, who dueled
none other than Sir Duncan the Tall when Prince Duncan the
Small married Jenny of Old Stones instead of Lord Lionel's
daughter. Now the fallout of that was a
very short war that resulted in a trial by a combat of sorts
between Duncan and the Laughing Storm.
Not to the death, but Sir Duncan won and the Laughing Storm gave
up his crown. And part of the arrangement was
for him to marry a Lord Ormond, which Sir Ormond at the time
Lionel's son, to marry Rael, one of Egg's daughters.
So they redid the marriage alignment arrangement with a
different pair of children. So this is also, by the way, the
basis for Robert and Stannis and Renly's claim to the throne,
this marriage to Rael. So this has this this switching
up of things actually had some pretty far reaching
consequences. Lord Ormond's captains include
for several guys who were not named, but a few that are like
Sir Jason Lannister. Not to be confused with the Lord
of Cast the Rock during the Dance, who was married to
Johanna. This is the father of Joanna, as
in Tywin's wife, mother of Cersei and Jamie and Tyrion.
And this is also the father of Stafford Lannister, the one who
is killed at Ox Cross by Ricard Karstark.
So in other words, the grandfather to Jamie, Searcy and
Tyrion here. So that's pretty interesting.
And we also have Lord Kellan Greyjoy, who I mentioned.
That's the father of Bailon and Euron and Victorian and all
those guys. He came over and we got a quote
from him, A leal servant of the Iron Throne.
He led 100 long ships around the bottom of Westeros during the
War of 9 Penny Kings and played a crucial role in the fighting
around the Stepstones. Now here's where we're really
getting into. We really have to speculate,
were there Manderlys or Valerians or Celtic Guards or
Pharmans or the Arbor, any of the other island nations were
involved? And because they would be really
valuable in dealing with island warfare there.
They've lived on these places for thousands of years.
But there might be some internal politicking.
Who wants to be commanded by a Greyjoy?
A lot of Lords and their pride would not allow for that.
What do you think? Do you think that would have
been would have been a problem? It may be that there were like
several fleets going on at once, right?
That you know the the Grey Joey fleet of long ships is much
better suited for fast moving harassment than.
Yeah, that's true. Then big capital ships that can
hold hundreds of warriors inside them.
So it it may be that they were sort of operating separately.
One other thing that I want I wanted to touch on is that
Ormond also brought his son, Stephen.
Yeah. And Stephen was very close to
Eris. He was his his page and Squire.
That is a big deal. That's, of course, that's
Roberts and Stannis and Renly's father, rather than Ormond and
grandfather. One of the things that sort of
that we always have to keep in mind with the war of 9 Penny
Kings is like these these generational issues, right?
You know, fathers and sons kind of working together, one
replacing the other, this sort of politics and and dynastic
succession in brief, all kind of mixing.
Very true. Now Jason Lannister getting back
to him for a second. He apparently brought 10,000
infantry and 1000 nights. Now that's the Westerland's
compliment. Maybe the Westerland's
compliment was particularly large, but even if only, say,
5000 came each from Dorn, the Iron Islands, the Storm lands,
the Crown lands, the river lands, the Vale on the north,
this could be a very, very big army.
You know, it wouldn't all be in one place at one time, else we'd
be talking field of fire for the largest ever army assembled.
But still, this is a very large amount of troops.
And it contains notables like we mentioned them at the beginning.
But here's where Barristan and Blackfish, who weren't well
known at this point, well, they're about to be well known.
They're getting this is where they made their name.
Here's another quote. We get specifics about some of
the other Lannisters besides Jason, as well as a few other
important mentioned characters. Knighted on the eve of the
conflict, Sarah Tywin Lannister fought in the retinue of the
King's young heir, Aries, Prince of Dragonstone, and was given
the honor of dubbing him at knight.
At war's end. Kevin Lannister, squiring for
the Red Lion, also won his spurs and was knighted by Roger Raine
himself. Their brother Tiger, a Squire of
10, was too young for knighthood, but his courage and
skill at arms were remarked upon by all, for he slew a grown man
in his first battle and three more in later fights, one of
them a knight of Golden Company. Those who beheld these proud
Young Lions on the battlefield might rightly wonder how such
could ever have sprung from the loins of the quivering fool
beneath the Rock, Grand Maester Pycelle wrote scornfully in his
observations upon the recent bloodletting on the Stepstones.
Recent bloodletting on the Stepstones.
So it means it's it implies he wrote that fairly like right
after this war, which is pretty interesting.
It's obviously very pro Lannister.
I also love that title because it's sort of that perfect, like
academic boring title. It's like you're talking about,
you know, this enormous, you know, recent, you know, upheaval
and it's, you know, observations on the recent Bloodlette.
It's, you know, it's just so trying, trying to strip out all
of the drama, yeah. It's like, man, this was really
more interesting than you make it sound by itself.
But a couple observations from that, for example, this shows us
a lot was we, we're going to get into the details, but this was a
really nasty war. And that for someone like Tywin
to get and Kevin and Tygut all that have been there early on,
it really says a lot about their development and why they became,
well, the way they turned out. And it's, it's a bit sad too,
because Kevin Lannister squiring for the Red Lion, was knighted
by the Red Lion. It's not long after this war
ends that those two, well, all of those two houses go to war
effectively. And so Kevin's on the side is,
is, is fighting against the man who knighted him.
That's, that's, that's not fun. That's not weird.
That's not ideal by any means. And interestingly, we're told
that Gary and Lannister, the 4th brother who's not mentioned
here, Tywin's youngest brother, was, according to Tyrion, he was
sort of the the odd man out. He was separate from his other
three brothers. And this explains why almost
certainly, maybe it's just a coincidence, but he's the one
that wasn't part of it. The other three went through
this experience, this bonding experience, this formative
experience together. Garin was too young for it.
So it's no wonder that he tried to go make a name for himself by
doing something kind of crazy and unique by going to sailing
to Valyria and and such like that.
Yeah. And it also speaks to how three
brothers who are a very different personalities who
don't always get along very well could have then cooperated
during the brains of Castmere. I, I, you know, we'll get into
this more later, but I think that sort of initial bonding
experience was really important in making sure that like all of
House Lannister was on the same team when that.
Started and of course it it it's huge for Tywin's relationship
with Aries, which as we know was good to begin with it was good
for a long time. They were like best friends on
the OR or at least something like that certainly had a strong
working relationship. Of course, things went bad much
later, in part because of Aries's growing into madness and
and Tywin being his own Lord and I'm just having mother other
things to disagree on. But anyway, this is where that
started and it shows that it started well.
They started off as on on the right foot, but much later
things went bad. So let's talk about a few other
characters who would have been of age or of an age to be at
least involved or impacted by this.
Doran Martel would have been 12 or 13 years old.
We don't, of course. He probably didn't fight in the
war, but we know we have a quote here about Doran's
participation. Doran continued to be closely
allied with House Targaryen in the years that followed, with
the Martels supporting the Targaryens against the Black
Fire pretenders and sending Spears to fight the Ninepenny
Kings on the Stepstones. So John Aaron was already 40
years old. He probably was.
He may have already been lured by then.
Bronzeon Royce, who's an older man, would have been of age to
fight in this war. John Aaron being the the Warden
of the East right, The Stepstones are his bailiwick.
Good point, Good point. So, you know, he's sort of
legally obligated to do something about all of it.
Very true. Walder Frey would have been 52
years old, so he wouldn't have fought in this war, but he may
have sensed Evron Frey, the the his heir who fought in the War
of 5 Kings with Rob and died at long not long after.
I think it was Ox Cross Amy's Frey, one of the architects of
the Red Wedding. He's of age to have maybe fought
in that war, although he's he's said to be more of a commander
type. But still, he would have had to
do some, you know, soldiering before he moved up the ranks.
Luthor Tyrell, the one who rode off the Cliff, would have been
Lord of Highgarden around here. Certainly you'd expect the the
red wines or the high towers with.
The. Naval forces to be involved.
Very good point. Plus they're just such powerful
houses that it would be shameful for them not to contribute to
the defense of the entire continent, which is a different
situation than internal fight. When they when 2 houses fight
each other, that's a different look.
It's like, well, it's internal. It's a civil thing.
We, we don't necessarily have to take a side, but it's, it's kind
of cowardly for an outside invader to come and for houses
to not help. I think that's it's, it's one of
those noble sort of, it's like a pride thing.
A Hoster Tully's father would have been Lord of River Run.
And Hoster Tully definitely fought in this war.
We know that he this is when he met and apparently befriended
Lord Peter Baelish's dad. And that's how that whole
situation got started with the fostering of of Peter at River
Run. So.
Interesting because this is before him and the Blackfish
have their falling out. Oh yeah, yeah.
So it would have been sort of one of the few times where you
could see the two Tully brothers kind of getting along.
Now given their their relationship, I imagine it was
always somewhat contentious, but they were not yet not speaking
to each other. Yeah, you wonder if Hoster was
maybe a little jealous that Blackfish the younger, his
younger brother is the one that got famous from this.
He's the one that really rose in esteem and and got popular and
noticed. Whereas, you know, as the way
pride amongst nobility works and the way the elders are supposed
to be, you know, they get everything.
So it might be a, a point of pride for Hoster and a point of,
of, well, something for Blackfish to hold over his his
older brother, which could in turn be fuel some of their
arguments over marriage and things like that.
Ed Weil Stark would have been Lord of Winterfell at the time.
That's Ned's grandfather. Wyman Manderley would have been
in his late teens, Gior Mormont would have been of age to fight
in this war, Sir Roderick Cassell as well.
And we don't know that they did. It's just it makes sense that
they would have. Joe Magician brings up What
about Black Walder Afraid? Black Walder, I'm not sure how
old he is. I think he might have been a
little too young, but that's a possibility.
I think he might only be in his 40s, which would mean he was two
years old or three years old. But Rickard Stark.
Yeah, Rickard would have been. A very strong possibility
because his whole southern ambitions, right, had to start
somewhere and where better to like start building
relationships with people as far-flung as like John Aaron or
Hoster Tully then being at war. And we know that, like Richard
Stark was like a very was a talented warrior because he was
like absolutely sure that come a trial by combat with one of the
Kingsguard, I can win. So, you know, he he probably was
a bit of a badass. That's a good point, yeah.
As far as other people in the Stormlands, Maester Crescent
would have been the maester would have been a maester, maybe
at either at Storm's End or Dragonstone.
Donald Noy. Donald Noy, the blacksmith at
the Wall, he would have been of age and he was blacksmith or at
least at Storm's End around this time.
Some of the other Kingsguard, of course, because Aries is going
Prince, he's the Prince, he's the heir to the throne.
Of course there would be Kingsguard there.
Now what's interesting about the Kingsguard at this time is it
would be mostly a fresh batch of Kingsguard because Summerhall
very likely wiped out most if not nearly all of them because
the whole royal family was there minus maybe one or two.
And wherever the royal family is, the Kingsguard goes to.
And we know Duncan died there, Duncan Batal.
And so they lost their. Lord Commander.
Yeah, and so Gerald Hightower is maybe the new Lord Commander,
which would be a little unusual for a younger man to be Lord
commander when there were veterans.
But there probably weren't veterans because of Summerhall.
And it wouldn't be long, in fact, before Gerald would be in
charge of the whole army. So let's talk about what
happened, because he was not in charge at first.
Now this is where we're getting back to your idea that there may
have been a trap. So let me let's do this quote
and we'll get to that. In 260 AC, his lordship landed
Targaryen armies upon three of the Stepstones, and the War of
the 9 Penny Kings turned. Bloody.
Battle raged across the islands and the channels between for
most of that year. Maester Eon's account of the War
of the 9 Penny Kings, one of the finest works of its kind, is a
splendid source for the details of the fighting, with its many
battles on land and sea and notable feats of arms.
Yeah, I wish we had that book. So let's talk about this.
The early fighting almost right away.
Lord Ormond Baratheon is killed by Meilis the monstrous and dies
in the arms of Stefan Baratheon, his son, again, father of Robert
Stannis and Renly. So you have a a theory here.
I like this, but whatever. Just a little more background,
Lord Ormond, probably a big guy like almost every Baratheon we
hear about is a big guy. So this would have been might
have been quite a fight here. And we already compared melees
to Robert before, so I can't help thinking of a Robert like
figure facing a melees with two heads and his giant weapon.
That would have been something cool.
Anyway, tell us, what do you think?
So the fact that Ormond is among the first to die and dies
specifically at the hands of melees makes me think that this
was something of a trap that basically, you know, at least in
these early battles, Malus's whole plan was, well, let me cut
the head off the snake, right? Go after, ambush the leadership
of the Westeros sea armies, and then, you know, they're
scattered across multiple islands.
It's very difficult to have communication and coordination
in the best of case, but if I can take out the the leadership,
then it's like each little bit is fighting on its own and not
fighting as a unified mass, which is if you have to fight a
bigger opponent. And given how many 10s of
thousands of men the Westerosi brought with them, that's not a
bad way to go about it. That's a great point too.
Just the fact that you you mentioned that there were so
many men on probably on both sides, yet somehow Melius and
Orman go at it almost right away.
It does imply something was up there.
I mean, maybe there were just two just guys that just really
wanted to go against each other since they're so big and
noticeable across the battlefield that it was
something simpler like that. But I, I agree with you.
There's a lot of room for something suspicious to be up
here. If not a trap, at least a, a
well planned counter strike was like, look here, we know they're
coming. We know we have an idea where
they're going to land and we're going to be ready for them.
Likely Ormond is crossing in the flagship, so it's possible to
sort of identify his vessel ahead of time and sort of say,
OK, I know where he's going to be, let me go after.
And you can understand why they would want to why the Malius
would want to strike at the Westerosi forces quickly,
because with the step stones, it's it's this crazy chaotic
space. If you allow them to build a
base of operations, then this becomes quite a difficult
endeavor for both sides. But if you can maybe stop them
from getting that initial foothold.
It says in that quote that they'd landed armies on three of
the step stones. So they were aware that they
needed to have a broad start. They can't just grab a corner of
one step stone and kind of work from there.
You need to have a take off a bigger chunk at the beginning.
And this is partly why if they had just grabbed 1 little spot,
well, it'd be really be even easier for the for the black
fire forces to come and find that one place and concentrate
on it. So there's a lot of potential
for spying and and reconnaissance to have played a
huge role here for the pirate ships to have really made use of
their our knowledge of the area and and bring that to a great
advantage because this is something the not the the black
fireside, then the band of nine side would be.
Experts on the Stepstones. But they might be and the
Westerosi armies are definitely not.
That's the, I would say that probably using a sports term
that that Westeros was kind of the away team here.
And the the Band of Nine, even if they weren't experts on the
Stepstones, they at least had some time to get used to it.
And we know that some of their forces were used to it.
So that's a a big advantage in terms of terrain and knowing the
lay of the land. The white Pole replaces Lord
Ormond after this potentially epic duel between males and Lord
Ormond. We don't know how the war goes
from there, but we know it becomes kind of maybe not drawn
out, but a, a real back and forth.
Really nasty. You suggested that there's a lot
of evidence for protracted, maybe not like super long sieges
of years because this this engagement wasn't that long, but
maybe armies having to stick in place for a long time.
And what does it mean? What happens when armies have to
sit in place for too long? So the problem is when an army
is in seed as opposed to like marching around, you start using
the same cesspits over and over again.
Human waste starts to leak into the the water table, the water
goes bad and that's when you start to get disease spreading.
And we know that some significant people died in the
War of the Stepstones not from injury, but from disease.
Very specifically, Sir Jason that we just mentioned, the
father of Joanna, the wife of Tywin, dies of bloody flux.
Now if it got a Lord like him, there's a pretty good chance
that it got a lot of other people.
Not that diseases afflict necessarily afflict lower status
people more often, but obviously a bloody flux can get anyone but
he of all the the best water around.
You got to figure the Lord of of Casterly Rock or a scion of
Casterly Rock is going to have the best available food and
water. They've got the money, right?
He's not. Eating.
He's not eating with the common soldiers unless things have gone
really bad. Either way, something really bad
happened. Maybe it was just a fluke, but
it doesn't sound like it. We've got other examples of
people getting disease. So Roger Rain, the Red Lion
takes over. So again, this is setting up
some tragedy later. You got the the guy bravely and
capably leading the western forces who is eventually going
to be, you know, persona non grata to to house Landis.
But it also. Suggests that there is a certain
element of chaos. Right.
Yeah. It it doesn't say that the White
Bull appointed Roger Rain to lead the Westerman contingent.
They just says he sees he he sees command.
That's true. You know, part of what may be
going on is that because you have the Westerosi forces
divided in three and maybe only intermittently able to
communicate, right, You know? Yeah.
They're not. There's no Ravens going back and
forth, that's for sure. Yeah, so you know, the only way
to get messages is by shit. And if, you know, the Blackfyre
Navy seems to be doing better on a given day than than your Navy,
you may be very difficult, you know, you may be cut off.
So it certainly suggests that like to an extent, this sort of
like top down command is starting to break down.
And instead what you're seeing is that individuals are able to
distinguish themselves and, you know, partly through sort of
personal feats of arms and partly through kind of force of
personality to take command. We spoke earlier about like
Hoster and Brendan Tully, right? If you get into a situation
which the the river men are on their own, or you know, the
they're under the command of someone who dies unexpectedly,
then that helps to explain how all of these young men start to
make their reputation. Because leaving aside the sort
of fathers and sons, you get people stepping into dead men's
shoes all the time. True.
And I, I really think that you mentioned it, but I would really
reemphasize the problems of communication here.
Even armies that are separated from each other on mainland
Westeros can communicate reasonably well because they can
send riders back and forth. And it's difficult for anyone to
stop those riders because they're generally going from one
allied camp to another. But with the step stones, with
things, there's so much back and forth.
There isn't just like a line you can draw where left of this line
or West of this line is the Westerosi side, and then east of
it is the black fireside. It's not like that.
There's probably very piece meal like they have a corner of 1
island and a chunk of another island and this one's being
fought over and no other island knows what's happening on the
other islands. They get information brought to
them but it's already out of date as soon as it gets there.
So that brings us back to Sir Jason dying of flux.
Because it may have been this chaos may have created problems
with supplies and logistics. So maybe Sir Jason wasn't
drinking the best water and eating the best food.
Maybe all his fancy Lannister gold wasn't able to achieve much
because while they were cut off for some reason or another,
maybe they got yeah. Some sinks or whatever.
Yeah, there's a million things that could go wrong in a
campaign situation like this. Let's turn our mind away from
the Lords and think a little bit more about the common soldiers
and what their experience would be like.
And of course, it's not pleasant at all.
From Brienne's chapters come quite a bit of context that's
much different than the historical perspectives given
by, say, Paisel, who is focused on the nobles, especially the
Lannisters, and not thinking too much about the commoners.
So if we take a step back, this is fitting because Brienne's
chapters do so much in explaining the cost of war.
Ari is too, by the way, but Brienne's are particularly
focused on that. Her chapters are thick with
aftermath, the short term, meaning the War of 5 Kings is
the most prominent, but the long term hangs over at all.
Consider that long term when thinking about the oldest
characters in The Song of Ice of Fire, the ones who have seen war
before, ones who were already veterans when Greyjoy's
Rebellion and Robert's Rebellion came around.
So no Ned, no Robert, certainly not Brienne herself.
I'm talking about a lot of these characters we've mentioned
already, like the guys who were 55 and up when A Song of Ice and
Fire begins, people we've mentioned like Tywin and Aries,
things like that. But of all these characters, a
lot of them are veterans of this war.
That's the important thing here. It's no small thing to see war
at such a young age, and echoes of these old wars are found in
George R Martin's characterizations of these most
senior of veterans. And Brienne is our portal to so
much of that aftermath, recent and long gone.
Her chapters take us there. She encounters a variety of
older characters that have experience in war and this
particular war, from the over the top but honorable goofball
Hedge Nights, to the brutally unsympathetic Randall Tarley, to
Nimble Dick Crab to the Bloody Mummers from Podrick to our next
mini subject, Sir Goodwin. The name might not mean much,
but I would wager most of you were moved by his short presence
in Brienne's memories. The name isn't memorable, but
his deeds, his thoughts are. He's the one who trained her.
He's the one who gave her those very valuable lessons and left a
deep impression on her. He's the one who taught her to
fight slowly. Let them expend themselves, let
them expend their energy. This is how she beats Jamie and
and Roarge as well. So Brienne is from House Tarth,
which is an island in the Stormlands not terribly far from
the Stepstone. So Tarth would know the Pirates
of the Stepstones better than most.
It might have even been personal for some of the Knights of Tarth
to take a shot at some of these pirates.
It might be there. Like we've been wanting to get
back at these guys for a while. We've been enduring attacks from
them for a long time without much ability to strike back.
So if it wasn't personal for Sir Goodwin at first, it certainly
became personal when he himself fought against the forces of the
9 Penny Kings. This is from A Beast for Crows
for yen 4. When I was a Squire, young as
you, I had a friend who was strong and quick and agile, a
champion in the yard. We all knew that one day he
would be a splendid knight. Then war came to the step
stones. I saw my friend drive his foam
into his knees and knock the axe from his hand.
But when he might have finished, he held back for half a
heartbeat. In battle, half a heartbeat is a
lifetime. The man slipped out his dirt and
found a chink in my friend's armor.
His strength, his speed, his valor, all his hard won skill.
It was worth less than a mummer's fart because he's
flinched from killing. Remember that girl?
I will. She promised his shade there in
the Piney wood. She sat down on a rock, took out
her sword, and began to hone its edge.
I will remember, and I pray I will not flinch.
I wonder how many other Knights who facing their first battle
were having a thought kind of like that, like like I've been,
I've been preparing for this moment and I I I pray I will not
flinch. I pray I will do what I need to
do. So that's hugely moving.
I think this is this is a really powerful moment.
It's really interesting to think about that because this quote,
it says war came to the stepstone.
It's it no one mentions the ninepenny kings because it's not
that important what war it was for in the time during a piece
for crows. They the point is this lesson,
right? But it's interesting for us
today that he happens to have learned this lesson in the war
of Ninepenny Kings. What do you think about this,
Steven? Yeah.
I mean it very much suggests that a lot of the fighting was
quick hand to hand stuff. It was.
We see some images of sort of, you know, more traditional open
field battles, but it does seem that a lot of this is this kind
of like almost sort of like, you know, ambushes, right?
It's like small scale conflict. It's it's, I almost think of the
Dance of the Dragons because you didn't want, you couldn't have
large armies of the Dance of the Dragons because it was too
dangerous to gather a lot of men because of the dragon could just
come and cook the whole thing. In this case, it's not that
you're worried about a dragon coming along, it's just that you
can't have too many men at once. These aren't large battlefields.
These aren't flat planes where you can charge with with a whole
group of Knights. You don't necessarily have room
for Pike formations and things like that.
So yeah, they're all adapting to war that they're not used to
fighting. And for the commoners who aren't
used to fighting at all, don't know why they're there.
They don't understand the point. And it's so wild for them to be
taken out of Westeros. I mean, every other Westerosi
engagement that we hear about is a civil conflict.
The only other foreign conqueror I can really think of is, I
mean, Aegon himself. And he wasn't even really
foreign. He lived there.
He just. He lived on Dragonstone, so
that's that's a stretch to call him a foreigner.
So this is a really unique war, having commoners, levees, people
who maybe have never left their own village, not just taken
miles and miles away to fight in some battle over some castle.
They're taken off the continent onto a yeah.
A lot of them. It would be the first time and
probably the only time that they were on a ship, yeah.
It's kind of interesting. Just think about how much more
worldly there would be for like a certain generation coming back
as commoners. Like they would really would
know about some luxuries, some SoC things I don't know.
It's true they would have a much different outlook than most
money generation, you know. World War One or World War 2
where you know how, how do you keep them on the farm once
they've seen Paris? Yeah, it's.
Example though you know the step stones aren't perverse.
That's a good point. They're they're pretty bad.
They may have been worse than they.
Would have seen King's Landing. That's true, yeah.
Storm's End, stuff like that. Definitely seen more than they
would have ever expected to see. Even more important than this
Sir Goodwin and his nameless friend.
This is one of the most moving passages in the entire series.
It's a centerpiece for most anyone who wants to argue that
Feast is as good if not better than the other 4.
I'm Speaking of Sept and Meribald.
I'm one of those people. Right on, there you go.
Surely one of the most memorable parts of A Feast for Crows is
his Broken Man's speech. A live A live performance of it
by our good friend Scotty from Davos Fingers is one of my
favorite fandom moments of all time.
He recited this. He performed it from memory.
Wearing a cloak and a cat was so good.
I believe you can find it on the Ice and Fire Con YouTube
channel. Oh hell yeah.
So given Sept and Maribald's travels, he has clearly seen the
aftermath of war more than most. But as he speaks, it becomes
clear that war is even more personal to him than that.
It's not just something that he's he's trying to help out
with, something that he's seen first hand.
It's something that he experienced first hand when he
was younger. A detail that you may have
forgotten is Sept and Maribald's first experience in war when he
gives his famous quote was that he fought in the War of 9 Penny
Kings. Brienne could hear the wind
rustling through a clump of pussy willows, and farther off,
the faint cry of a loon. She could hear Dog panting
softly as he loped along beside the septon and his donkey,
tongue rolling out of his mouth. The quiet stretched and
stretched until finally she said.
How old were you when they marched you off to war?
Why, no older than your boy? Maribald replied.
Too young for such, in truth, but my brothers were all going
and I would not be left behind. Willem said I could be his
Squire, though Will was no knight, only a potboy armed with
a kitchen knife he'd stolen from the inn.
He died upon the Stepstones and never struck a blow.
It was fever did for him and for my brother Robin Owen died from
a Mace that split his head apart and his friend John Pox was
hanged for rape. Nor of the 9 Penny Kings?
Asked Heil Hunt. So they called it, though I
never saw king nor earned a penny.
It was a war, though, that it was.
There was glory for the nobles, well, some of them anyway, But
that what Sept and Maribal described just now was the lot
that fate gave to many of the peasantry.
And we're reminded of what Steven was talking about.
Two different characters mentioned in that quote died of
fever. And that's.
Yeah, so you get what we're saying.
Like these guys, three, several of these men never, it says will
never, never struck a blow. Robin and Owen maybe didn't
either. Yeah, just wild.
Just what a waste. And it was probably
unprecedented, right? Like I said, these guys have
never been outside of of where they lived.
So a related lesson from both Sept and Maribald and Sir
Goodwin is that the Westerosi armies would be full of untested
Knights and untrained levees. And in Westeros versus Westeros
conflicts, both sides have many of such right.
When you get the peasant levy, when the Stormlands rallies
their levees and goes to war with the Reach, well, it's the
peasant levies are fairly equally matched.
But on the step stones, these levees were not arrayed against
other levees. They were pitted against cell
swords and pirates and the otherwise violently ambitious.
In other words, trained and seasoned killers who perhaps
never needed to be told not to flinch when it came to killing.
They're like, Oh yeah, this is what we're ready to do.
These are men who, if flinching is out of the question, they
enjoy killing, right? This is why they're in this
business that they're in, because they, I mean, sell
swords who flinch from killing, please.
Pirates who flinch. Yeah.
There's no old cell swords. There's no bold cell swords.
There's also, there's no old bold cell.
There's also no cowardly, you know, afraid to draw their
swords cell towards Maribold Never never spoke of the journey
they took by ship to get there. But this is something we should
consider from both a military strategic and strategic
perspective and from a what was it like from the soldiers type
perspective? So let's let's briefly talk
about that naval engagements. We touched on it briefly, but
let's focus on it a little more. There's like I said earlier,
there's a significant history of Ironborn reaving versus step
stones. Specifically Harwin Hoare
mentions it the red Kraken from the dance of the dragon.
He specifically went there. Bailon specifically reaved in
the Stepstones. Asha has specifically reaved in
the Stepstones. Dagmar cleft jaw, which again,
by the way, something Theon missed out on reaving in the
Stepstones. Yet another thing that separates
him from his family, but that's another story.
So imagine the Ironborn versus Samarosan.
They all start with s s. They're all similar anyway.
So Samarosan and his fleets and the Jolly Fellows and the Old
Mother and the Ebon Prince versus 100 of Kellan Greyjoy's
long shifts. Can you imagine?
I I hardly know where to begin with thinking about that.
It, it does sort of sort of smack of like, I mean, it's
Vikings versus pirates, right? There aren't any ninjas
involved. But you know, you, you have to
sort of presume around the edges.
There must have been this a whole other side of, of this
war, which is basically the only way to keep your armies fed,
right. Yeah.
Is to control the sea lanes, which means that you know if you
can sever the sea lanes on on the other side.
So it's like 2 wars are happening at once.
And it does suggest that like given the the spread of disease
among the Westeros sea, that supplies were not the best
maintained in in part because I imagine the Ironborn are a lot
more experienced at raiding other people than preventing
people from being raided. Good point, Good point.
Yeah, they're the ones taking the supplies, not delivering
them. Also, you wonder too, if this
was part of the Black Fire Ubanda 9 strategy once.
If they saw the logistical flaws in the Westerosi approach, they
may try to exploit that, say, look, they're doing they're
going about this all wrong. If we do this and that, they're
going to start losing man to disease.
And if we just attack their supplies and avoid too many
direct conflicts and and focus on guerrilla raid, things like
that, it could be really effective.
Well, this is where I think they were kind of like reverse
engineering from the 3rd and 4th Blackfyre rebellions, where they
were the ones conducting a foreign invasion and stretching
out their supply lines across the same area, right?
If you were invading from Thai Roche into the Stormland, you're
going right through the step stones.
So they may have sort of said like we know how difficult it is
to do this because we were on the receiving end.
If we reverse the situation, then maybe we'll get the upper
hand out. Sounds good.
Yeah, well said the another just a yet another difference about
this campaign, this theater of war, is that there's much
different structures. We don't know what's on the
Stepstones, but there's not Westerosi style castles for
sure, which also means there's no maesters.
There's no guy who knows healing and communication and can send
messages at every several miles or so, or at least every
reasonable amount of distance. Nothing like that at all.
So again, this just speaks to the issues of communication and
the lack of people who know how to deal with diseases and
injuries, which helps explain how this got so out of hand.
Well, however things went, however the the strategies were
what whatever direct conflict, whatever guerrilla warfare was
happening, some at some point things came to a head.
Here we have a section that I've called the Bold and the
Unbeautiful and let's have a quote.
As the war hung in the balance, a young knight named SER
Baraston Salmi slew Melese in single combat, winning undying
renown and deciding the issue in a stroke.
Just like that, someone kills Melese and it's someone we know
very well. A character who's got PO VS and
damn it I wish he would have thought about this.
It's POV. It's not too late.
We'll, we'll see what the wind's winter.
Yeah, yeah. I really wish he just let me
think about. Boy, that sure was a great duel
I had with Melee. The monstrous.
Come on, Bears didn't give us that, but given.
That we're doing a very similar thing right.
He's riding out in in the battle of fire.
He's riding out with his cavalry to like try to smack into the
the enemy forces and take out their leadership.
So there's a, there's a, one of my head cannons is that
Barristan will fight Bloodbeard because first of all, Barristan
really wants to fight Bloodbeard.
And second of all, it would just be really cool.
And if he goes up against Bloodbeard, I think he might get
Meili's vibes. The commander of a sells work
company who's large and and savage and brutal.
So there's a chance, there's a chance.
I've got hope now, given that comparison of Melees to Gregor
that we made back in the first part.
It's not hard to for your mind to float towards Red Viper
versus Gregor vibes when you think about this, but it's
actually pretty different. This was a battle, not a duel.
There would be other members of the Golden Company alongside
Melees. Apparently Barrison killed
several of them to get to Melees.
I think the phrase is like he cut his way through the Golden
Company. What about us?
Yeah, it's really cool. I got, we got to.
I wish we could see that so many of these guys close to Melius
would have been like his closest companions, guys who had fought
up beside him for years in the Golden Company.
Some of them may have even been in the 4th Blackfyre Rebellion.
Some of them would have known Bittersteal.
These are veterans of the Golden Company, and these are strong,
experienced, tough warriors. So this is you really can't
understate Barristan's badassery here.
Is it actually a one-on-one duel?
Like were they on horseback? Art indicates they were on
horseback like you pointed out that he that's where we see him
in his flail with his flail and and no helmet.
Well. That would that would make a
certain amount of sense, which is if, if everything was like
these dug in infantry blocks, right, it's much harder to get
through to attack the commander. Whereas with a cavalry charge
that meets another cavalry charge, things are a little bit
looser and you can't really like it's hard to stop a charging
horse. And that's true.
You know, it's it you tend to see more of these sort of like
assets. One side sort of swings past the
other group, people die in the middle and then they sort of
both turn around and swing back again.
So I can sort of see in that scenario that, yeah, if if
Melee's, you know, being the half strong warrior that he was,
is, is leading his men personally in a cavalry charge,
that would be the scenario where you could actually cut through
enough people to kill him. You have the momentum.
Yeah. It's like you're going to run
into a wall or something. That's a good.
That's a great point. Yeah.
So it's which also just makes it even more brave and just tells
you more about how these Calvary engagements work and just how
crazy they are and how. Yeah, you really kind of have a
tough mind for this stuff. And Malius himself, I mean,
we've compared him to Gregor. We compared him to Robert here.
We mean we've compared him to Megor the Cruel.
And it's it's both an interesting facet and a major
flaw in having a king who likes to fight in the front lines.
It's very inspiring for the men. The men love having a king who
takes on similar or equal dangers to them.
Someone like Alexander the Great did the similar thing and he was
not a large man. But it's also, this is the big
flaw in it. You have, you can get killed
right in the middle of battle, but no one's going to tell
Meilis the monstrous not to fight.
I mean, it's the same thing with Robert.
You they tried to tell Robert not to fight to get him to
fight. They they knew it wouldn't have
the opposite effect. So it's going to make him want
to fight even more. I'm imagining that if any of
Meilis's commanders were like, maybe don't fight.
Yeah, that's just going to make him want to fight even more.
He was probably one of those guys that generally loved
fighting. I mean, he was born into a cell
sword company. So yeah, it kind of goes with
the territory. And Sir Duncan the Tall slew the
prior black Fire pretender, Damon the third.
This wasn't actually two in the two in a row for the Kingsguard
though, because Barristan wasn't in the King's Guard yet.
This is what earned him the white cloak.
He got his nickname the Bold came from before this too.
So he is well, well regarded. He was, I think, 23 years old
when this happened. So Barristan is very conflicted
over Duskindale, right? That's a big part of his
character, epic act of skill and bravery, clearly, but he's torn
over it because he saved the Mad King, and that's tough.
The Mad King went on to do awful things.
The slaying of melees, though, no conflict there whatsoever.
That's maybe part of why it's not something that he readily
thinks of, because there's no it may have been important and
defining for his life, but it wasn't anything that he's
conflicted over. He killed an invading king in
the sick of battle. That's, I mean it didn't
entirely end the war, but it ended the threat of an invasion.
So saying he ended the war in a in one kill is pretty close to
true and also of great importance.
It's a matter of honor to avenge one's Liege Lord.
And they think this gets lost in the shuffle a bit.
Not because what melee's killed Lord Orman Baratheon, that's the
Hand of the King and Lord of Storm's End, but also the Lord
Paramount of the Stormlands. That's how Selmi's overlord.
So he avenged his overlord, he avenged the Lord Paramount of
the Stormlands. That's it is really hard to win
more glory with a single kill. You end the war, you avenge your
Liege Lord. All this stuff.
I mean, let's I, I've, I've, I've been going on for a while.
Steven, let's hear your thoughts on this.
Yeah, I mean, it does help to explain, like, why Barristan is
so legendary is that all of his actions have this sort of.
Yeah. It's not just that he fought in
battles and distinguished himself.
Well, it's just, you know, almost like superhero level of
individual accomplishments, Right.
But, you know, he just does all these things on his own.
He wasn't there in the fighting when when Malos died, he went
off on his own and did it. And.
Yeah, you can. You can see why.
You know, I it's, it's rather surprising that it took a while
for him to get knighted, you know, to be given a white
clothes, although it's possible, you know, there weren't any
vacancies. Yeah, that's my, that's what I
that they. May have, you know, refilled the
the King's Guard after after Summer Hall and then just, you
know, got to wait. And especially if they refilled
it with young people, then it might there would not be some
old guy ready to, you know, like, well, just wait.
That guy will be gone soon. So in terms of that, when people
speak in awe bearest in the bold during the Song of Ice and Fire
novels, there's a lot of reasons why this is guy.
He's not. He's certainly not a one trick
pony, but the slaying of melees is really what put him on the
map. He was kind of notable for
entering a tournament at age 10, but that didn't make him famous.
That just made him kind of maybe semi famous amongst the nobility
of the Stormlands. He gave him, Yeah, he gave him a
nickname. That's just yeah.
It was definitely something he got.
He was certainly more notable than just about any other 10
year old. Too.
That's true. There's like, oh, this punk kid
who? Yeah, but Dusk and Dale was also
more recent. So that's another thing.
It's it's it's another reason he thinks of it more and it's
something people remember him for more because it it happened
during a lot more people's lifetimes.
I mean, that was 23 years ish before the the OR 22 years
before the war before the books begin, versus this happening 30
some years before the war before the books begin.
I guess. 38, Yeah, 38 years. So here's a little tidbit from a
meta perspective. Barristan the Bold was one of
the very first characters George R Martin ever created.
I don't mean A Song of Ice and Fire.
I mean ever, ever. When George R Martin was a
freshman at Northwestern, he wrote that King Barristan the
Bold was slain by winged demons within the borders of the
Dothrak Empire. So it's fun to see these
elements that George later forged into a much bigger story.
But he likes to he he gets a task to some of these character
names, I think, and likes to recycle them.
But yeah, King Bears and the Bull.
That's pretty cool. So the death of Meilis, it
changed everything in an instant.
The band of, well, eight now would still want to keep the
Stepstones, but Westeros was kind of out of the picture now.
They couldn't, they didn't have a claimant anymore.
And yeah, that's a huge thing, so.
On the other hand, the war kept going for six months of hard
fighting. It wasn't like they gave up
again. I think that that's what gives
the sense of like this grinding conflict.
Yeah, that I agree. That's a good point.
And the Sep stones being ruled by pirates, that's that's
nothing new then or now. It was the Black Fire King that
was the problem. So once Baileys is dead, they're
like, well, it'd be better if we could clean all this pirate
activity up, but honestly, they're not going to attack our
continent anymore, so this is no longer our problem.
And both sides would know that. So because it was a war conquest
without that claim, that's just it.
Everybody knows that. So like you said, it was about
1/2 a year before the disputed lands and step stones were lost.
But this was a pretty big domino effect.
It was like they Bailey's dies and it just starts collapsing,
right? You just have instant like
reversals start happening like immediately as fast as they got
going. It seems like just as fast
things started to be undone. Now somehow Alaquo the Silver
tongue despite sacking Tie Rush as part of all this, he held on
to Ty Rash for six more years but was eventually poisoned by
his queen. Now that's got to be an
interesting story because surely there was someone influencing
her to do that? Maybe she was bribed or.
Or a faceless man. Yeah.
Wow, that's a good everyone. Thinks that it was his queen,
but I didn't think about that under the face.
Good point. Yeah, very good point.
That's a great idea because they would have the money probably
for this well or or. Somewhat, you know, I mean, I
can definitely imagine there's C Lord of Bravos who's like, OK,
we need to wrap this shit up. Yeah, how how much for this guy?
The Iron Bank give us a loan. Let's let's let's make this
happen. He's wrecking trade everywhere.
Like, yeah, just like, imagine the impact it would have if the
step stones were closed off because Bravos wouldn't be able
to trade with Volantis or Lease or Karth or the JC.
I mean, that's a big deal to a lot of rich people really want
this taken care of. A lot of rich people really are
are cut off from making more money.
And you know what happens when rich people get cut off from
their source of wealth? They they tend to take action.
So we don't have a lot of info on what happened to the other 7.
Some of them may have been killed.
It's entirely possible. Like Spotted Tom the Butcher was
killed on the Stepstones as well.
We have no idea. Some of them may have just been
like, Oh well that didn't work, let me go back to being a pirate
or back to being a sell sword captain.
They may have just entirely gone back to their former perfection.
Sons are still around as yeah, good point, a significant sell
sort fleet. So they as as the sons so often
seem to do, they managed to get out of the conflict relatively
unscathed. Having made a profit, it's true
Somehow, somehow the sons are good at that, aren't they?
As some of these guys may have burned bridges, muddied the
waters, so to speak, Maybe it would be hard for them to get
contracts. You might have a situation like
the second sons in A Song of Ice and Fire proper, where either
Barristan or Jorah points out that the reason the second Sons
are all the way in Slaver's Bay is because no one will give them
contracts in the Free Cities anymore because Miro is just so
untrustworthy. So you might have that kind of
situation, but there would always be work for cell swords
because as many if they if they burn bridges with the free
Cities. Well, there's always the Jade
Sea, there's always farther E, there's always people that were
not touched by any of this, and there's always people that want
to hire killers. So yeah, they would still be
able to find work, but maybe not in the cities that formerly
hosted them. Now, here's another quote from
Gil Dane that I'm not so sure he's right about this one.
Meilis the Monstrous was the fifth and last of the Black Fire
pretenders. With his death, the curse that
Aegon the Unworthy had inflicted on the Seven Kingdoms by giving
his sword to his bastard son was finally ended.
Yeah, so not really, though, as we know, as any reader of A Song
of Ice and Fire knows, there are definitely strong Black Fire
vibes still in the books. Young Griff very possibly is a
Black fire, and of course Illyrio very candidly says the
male line was extinguished. So are you.
I don't know if I've ever straight up asked you on a
stream. Anyway, do you believe that
Young Griff is a Blackfyre descendant?
Yeah, I think with the sword it's probably the case.
Right on. Now, my personal theory is the
that Illyria talks about his lover Sarah.
Yeah. Well, I mean I have my whole
theory about the the double swap of the babies.
Yeah, women who look Targaryen that fall, whose house collapses
in, who live in the Free Cities, ending up as sex workers.
You can see how that would happen.
That's in fact what, you know, they wanted to take Daenerys and
make her into that. You know, there's a lot of lot
of those, like gross slavers. They were telling her that would
be her fate. Added on to this, we happened to
get the chance to ask George R Martin a question every once in
a while. Shay and I have been to a lot of
Q&A S and one of the questions I asked him was, did Bitter Steel
ever have kids with Calla Blackfire?
If you don't recall Calla, that's the why.
That's Damon's eldest daughter. So Damon Blackfire had five sons
and or seven sons and some number of daughters.
At least two, we're not sure how many, but at least 2 because of
the plural was used and the eldest of them was Calla and
Kala and Bittersteel were married but since but George
says they did not have kit. Well, he says I don't think so.
So he left the door open in case he changes his mind.
But it sounds like no. There's another theory out there
that Boris himself could be a black fire orphan, could be a
descendant of all that. It would explain his softness
for noble bastards. But you know the the what
happens when a family falls apart like that and they get
tossed out of the? Street.
I just think he he is who he's his story, OK?
You know, certainly Illyrio's story makes him out.
Right on. Yeah, I believe it.
I believe it. I mean, it could.
I think both those stories can work together.
But yeah, it's we don't really need to get deep into that
theory. Certainly that that's one that
one's out there for people to check out.
We don't need to debate that here.
So let's talk about the Westerosi side, victory and new
friendships. There's a plenty here.
Of course, we talked about Barristan and Blackfish, and we
know that Barristan got it, got his job when the next opening
presented itself. Iron Islands closer to being a
part of the realm than it ever was.
You know, the Iron Islands actually uniting with the rest
of the realm to fight a war and then being on the same sides.
That's pretty unusual. On the other hand, when Robert
Rebellion broke out, Kellen Greyjoy did not take sides,
which I think is quite interesting.
Everyone else seems to have immediately had a side to take.
They had friendships and relationships and that really
determined what side they were going to take.
But it was only because of Bailon and Euron arguing,
pressing their father to enter the war, to take a side, that
they finally did take a side. And they didn't have much of an
impact on the war. But they definitively sided with
Robert. So you could argue that the
Greyjoy's weren't exactly embarrassed by him the way Tywin
was over Taito's, but they definitely didn't like the way
he was ruling the Iron Islands. But he was a powerful man and
and not easy to overcome. So it wasn't until his death
that things changed. So this is also a set up for
southern ambitions. Of course I mentioned some of
these. These alliances were sort of
predetermined. We talked about Hofstra, Tully
and and Peter Baelish, John Aaron and Richard Stark.
Quite possibly this is where a lot of this got set up.
But and as you said, Tywin and his brothers and and the Prince
Aries at the time future. King Aries and Stephen Baratheon
know that the three of them were really close, so that could have
been a sort of alternative power block forming, but due to
various reasons, right Tywin? Sort of love for monopolizing
power. Eris's sort of paranoia.
It didn't. It didn't really shake out that
way. Their sort of initial closeness
in this era sort of eventually kind of fell apart.
Right on. Yeah.
So let's let's talk about the set up for the reign Tarbek
Revolt, AKA the reigns of Cast. What the thing that ended with
the reigns of Castamere, what motivated Tywin for all this
was, was maybe, do you suppose maybe Tywin slash Joanna was
upset that Jason was killed while Lord Taito stayed home
being lazy as he always does? Or maybe people were maybe
there. Maybe there's a little pride
issue on Tywin's side that he was that the Lannisters were
outshine by Roger Rain. Or do you think it's just
something simpler than that? I mean, I think it it goes back
further than that because like, we know that when Tywin was sent
off to King's Landing to be a Squire and a page and a
cupbearer, he had hit his father.
Oh yeah. I think like he had already
established in his mind from his childhood, right well before he
he becomes a fighting age. My father is weak and this
situation is unsupportable. And I'm when I get strong
enough, I'm going to take action.
And it's with the worth of Nine Penny King is that he feels that
he's strong enough in part because he distinguishes
himself. His brothers distinguish
himself. But we also learn the extended
Westerlands section of World of Ice and Fire that Tywin came
back to Casterly Rock with 500 hardened Knights, right?
So he had his own private army. And we're having.
Got those Knights? Well, if you're are a hedge
knight, right, a sworn sword who no longer has a master because
the war's over, you're looking for new work.
And Tywin's there with all the gold of Casterly Rock saying
come join me. You know, that's also fairly
similar. You know, you see a lot of
veterans of World War One found that they sort of liked
fighting, right? So, you know, you're taking all
of these veteran soldiers who are like, oh shit, I've got
nothing to do now and saying, hey, kill the people I want you
to kill. So here's a quote that that
really sets up what we're talking about here.
Hardened by battle, and all too aware of the low regard in which
the other Lords of the realm held, his father, Sir Tywin
Lannister set out at once to restore the pride and power of
Tasterly Rock. Yeah, there's this this line
where Jamie is telling Sir Kevin to be careful when he if he's
going after Sandor Lagaine, who isn't actually Sandor Lagaine.
But Kevin kind of looks back at Jamie like, are you kidding me?
I have been hanging robber Knights since before you were
born. And it's true.
This is this. Kevin fought in the war of 9
Penny Kings and he is a big part of that.
This last line here in that quote, Tywin Lannister set out
to restore the pride and power of Catholic Rock.
Tito's rule had allowed the Westerlands to become in a not
chaotic, but in a state of not. It wasn't well managed.
There were robber Knights. There were bandits, things like
that. And so this is when Kevin talks
about he's been hanging Knights, robber Knights and and bandits
since before Jamie was born. This is what he's talking about.
This is how he got started. So Tywin immediately gave Kevin
a lot of these Knights that Steven just mentioned and said,
hey, go clean all this up. And Kevin did it.
He was very good at it. And that's part of why Tywin has
always trusted Kevin, because Kevin is very competent at
things like this. Yeah, he's the loyal soldier,
Yeah. That's a really big deal.
And like you said also, Steven Titos was a weak was was kind of
weak and Tywin was strong and they disagreed on a lot of
things and this just made it worse and.
Jason was dead. So then.
And Jason was dead. You're right.
Sort of strong, older Lannister. It was just these sort of
younger men. Yeah, Jason was maybe been a
bridge like a help them kind of relate to each other that was
taken away. That's a great point.
And Tywin would be even more different than his father after
like his after his this this quote says he was hardened by
battle. So he was tough and then he was
tougher and he even even more different than his father and
even more willing to to spill some blood.
And his father would would still be the way he was.
So there the gap between their attitudes would have widened.
I'd say the 9 penny Kings is an example like very few others.
It gives us an example as to how the country reacts in the face
of a foreign invasion. Like I said at the beginning,
this could be extremely relevant for Young Griff, but even more
so for Danny because her army's even more foreign than his.
And to many traditionalists in Westeros, the idea of a queen is
pretty foreign too. So a lot of things they might
that might unite Westeros against her, and maybe that
creates new alliances and friendships as these people
fight alongside each other. Who knows?
Lots of interesting possibilities.
So we're going to move into our final.
Just a few questions and our thanks, but I want to give
Steven the chance to say any last bits that we may have
missed or any wrap up points you have.
All my theories. Awesome, awesome.
OK, well then we have a shout out from Teflon TV, our friend
Tony Teflon sending a super chat saying show him some love, peace
and stay sexy. Absolutely.
Thanks to you Tony. Appreciate that and y'all check
out Teflon TV when you get the chance.
Good stuff going on over there. Also a super chat from Nina.
Hey, popping in and out. We wanted to give a shots of my
favorite people in the fandom. Well, thank you for that Nina.
You're one of our favorites too. So Steven, what is next for you?
We've we've, we've heard where to find you, but what are you
working on next? So I've reached the 50% mark in
A Storm of Swords, so I'm taking the time to do some sort of
little side essays. I just did the first Duncan Egg
essay about hedge knight. I'm going to do 1 about Swan
Sword. I have the like a fanfic The
Hour of the Wolf that I need to finish up.
It's been sort of like incomplete for for God going on
a year or so now. But I also want to like, make a
dive for the Red Wedding and just like knock a whole bunch of
chapters out 'cause I'm not that far off, right?
I'm, yeah, John I, I did John 5. And you know, the Red Wedding is
just like what you know. Not long after that, I can't
remember exactly. We're not quite there in Valor.
We read us ourselves. We're more.
We're around. Chapter 51.
So I've only got 10 chapters to go. 11 if.
You include Aria 11 as sort of showing the what's going on
outside. Right, right.
Yeah, there's, there's all those related chapters close together.
Yeah, yeah. 10 chapters. That's not very far.
So cool. Well that's great.
Looking forward to that. Then thanks also to Shaya for
they were, we had some, she managed some difficult technical
stuff today. There's always something to to
worry about and she's always on top of that.
Appreciate that so much and reading quotes and managing the
chat all at the same time. When people say a Shea is the
best, well, that's not hyperbole.
Also thanks to Michael Clarfeld for our music, finding our music
through Kevin McCloud and our maps and the video intro that we
have for all of our episodes. Very awesome.
Check him out at claradocs.de that's with AK.
Also thanks to Jesse Koal and Joey Townsend for our intro
outro music. Thanks to our Ben Geneer for
audio editing assistance and thanks to everyone who came
live. You guys had a great looks like
the chat was booming as it often is.
Lots of great questions were coming out, lots of curiosities
and related topics to the 9 Penny Kings and all these
different characters that were some of them we like briefed,
touched, touched on briefly. So you can't really, we can't do
deep dives on characters that are only barely part of this,
but people in the chat can do whatever they want and talk
about those things. So a lot of times really good
side discussions happen on there.
And thanks to everyone who likes and shares history of Westeros
podcast as well as liking and sharing Race for the Iron
Throne. And let me do some Patreon shout
outs as we say goodbye to y'all. And we'll see you hopefully for
Valerie Ritas on Sunday, or if not, a future live stream or
game stream. Thanks again, everybody.
Thanks to the mysterious BR Hand of the King, Lord Stephen Stark
titles titles Hand of Queen Ashea, who is known as the best.
Also make sure to check out the Here be Dragons show that's his
every Sunday after Valerie Ritas.
They are they have a variety of great things from Game of
Thrones talk to Expanse to they talked about the Oscars.
They talked about different superheroes to lots of just
great topics. But my favorite is when they
talk about the Expanse. But hey, they do lots of things
well. Lord Jim the Fortuitous of Wars
and Politics of Ice and Fire blog is Warden of the West.
Lord George Stormsville the Cunning is Lord of the Chiliad
and Warden of the East. Kabeth the Unfrozen is Lord of
the Bricks and Castle Crimson Light, Defender of the Old Gods
and Warden of the North. Lord Brendan Lannister is the
Blood Lion, ruler of Castle Everroar, Warden of the South.
Lord James Tuttle is King of the Stepstones and the Narrow Sea
commander of the Royal Fleet, consisting of the Narrow Fleet
led by flagship Caraxes and the Bloodstone Fleet led by flagship
Prince Damon. He does not understand all this
bickering over the Step Stones. If he were to come for the Step
Stones, they would be his in a short order.
King beyond the Wall, Sydney Jesse is the fall born, Lord of
Blue Spring in the Haunted Forest.
Wield the dagger of dragonglass and the Valyrian steel blade.
Red Frost, he says, send black fire up there to him.
He could make much better use of it than those silly black fires
themselves. Lady Sarah Connelly, the Willful
is says wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure and she
is Jenny's patron. Our White Walker patrons include
Arraya Flint of the Mountain Flints, captured by the Weeper
only to be raised in the Valley of the Milk Water, Blue Eyes,
Golden memories. Alexander Greyblood is first of
the First Men now crowned in ice called Silence, Bringer, Wood
Blinder and the Snow of Night, wielder of the Ice Ford great
sword, Pale Frost. Our Small Council includes Lord
Daniel, the sneaky Russian Master of Ships, Lord Benjen of
House Hornwood, Master of Laws, Lord Fabian Flowers, the Bastard
of Greenshield, Master of Coin, and Lord Johan of House Orcos is
called Shadowhawk. He's Master of Whisperers.
Lady Dial is of Castle Nachi is the alpha patron, Lord Dan of
the Red Mountains and Castle Great Bell is breaker of the
second stone. Gregor the Toasty is Lord of the
Bread Fort. Lord Ryan of Castle Stonegate is
guardian of the Rocky Mountain Pass Ashland Winter is the Hawks
eye lady of Castle Skyfall. Lady Mckell of Moonacre is
leader of the Weirwood Protectorate Alliance.
The Lord of the Hill of the Halls rather of Castle Hillcrest
is wielder of the Valyrian steel machete.
Everglades Lord Alistair Whittaker is Lord of the Dawn
Hold. Lord Bemi Snuggle Bunny is
guardian Ranger of the hidden 100 acre weirwood.
Dual wielder of the Valyrian short swords, Glorious morning
and little light, wise sharpshooter of the weirwood and
ironwood laminated Longbow. Todd von Oben.
When you fear things cannot get worse, Snuggle Bunny enters the
fray. The Bastard of the Wolf Wood is
first forester of the old God, sworn to house Iron weirwood.
Listen for the silence. Lady Liana Kelly of Wolf Iron
Wolf Island, Excuse me, is protectors of the Steel Hold.
Lady Casey Stark of I'm sorry, Casey Stark is of House Acres.
There's no lady attached to that.
Lady K of House Archer is Lady of Earth Dog, a hall huntress of
the Wolfswood and guardian of Matty Squirrel's Bay and the
mighty Dire Ween. Lady Raywin of House Dils Dane
is the star Spear. Peter Rivers is the Pale dragon
and heir to Bloodraven. Lady Carlin Carey of Castle
Stone Sharp, whose horses shot in Valyrian steel, is Lady Rider
of the Rising Hills. Lady Maura of how Stark is arch,
mistress of apothecaries and woods witch her castle features
Where would doors with painted moons.
Our King's justice is Sir Troy, the Steady wielder of the
Valyrian steel blade. Fate.
Our Queen's how high council is bloody?
Ben Blackwood, master of whisperers.
Rupaeus, star eyes, Lady of waves and mistress of ships,
Captain of the Iron Shadow Cat. In these shadows we bear our
claws. Catherine the Wise of House
Trondheim is Master of Coin. Grand Maester Elizabeth is
middle daughter of Lana Mormont, First Lady to forge both the
silver and Valyrian steel. Link.
You you could tell yourself that the Queen's High Council was all
getting ready for our meeting in about 5 minutes.
No, in actuality, I just wasn't ready.
And Laura Burrows is the Lady of Infinity, Master of Laws, our
Kingsguard led by Lord Commander Miriamar, backed by Sir Glennon
of House Leon called Lion Cloak, longest tenured white sword, Sir
Dean the White Knight of the Black Star, Sir George of House
Pepsi, the beverage Knight Gregor Snow called Snow Bear, a
Bastard of Winterfell, Sir Jen Seaworth, Knight of the Southern
Snows, and Lisa Water, Witch of Dorn.
Our Red Wedding band is led by Sir Newt of the Rock wielding
Dwiemer Mote. Gwiemer Knote.
Rather a whale. A where would loot with Valyrian
steel strings. Our Queens guard is should I
read that one or are you? Yeah.
OK. Lord Captain Commander.
Hey. Mahelmith is the cell sword
Sentinel Alexander of House of Tradies from the seat of Dune.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer.
Sir Rambo Knight of House Gannon is first blood.
Sir Leon of House Walker, wielder of the twin Valyrian
steel blades fire and ice and the where would bow rain, Amber,
the Adamant, the Knight of the Mist and Mother of squids, The
wintry Wolverine motto. We finish what you begin and
Nora Neko, our beard guard, is led by Lord Commander George the
Golden, backed by Sir Joshua Oakhart, the White Oak, Lady
Rita of the Copper Mane, the Unbound Dance, the Fervor.
Sir Jeff, Warden of the IAC is wielder of Triad, the multi
faceted beard of platinum, red and brown.
Stay frosty. Sir Tim Corgile is mad boy of
the Western Desert. A few recent joiners.
Yeah, real quick. Yeah, why don't we have a cat
guard? A cat guard.
Yeah, I thought of it because the big reason I'm distracted is
I have Xerxes just rolling around on me.
It's a pretty good idea. I bet people would join the cat
I. Don't know it has to be cat
guard. It could be a cat, something
well. Something to do with cats, yeah.
Exactly. But you know, tell us your
suggestion, Xerxes, once. I don't know the cat.
Mistress I I don't know. He wants love.
He doesn't need guarding, is my point.
He wants just love and affection.
And treats. Yeah, we also have Sir Mikkel of
House Redwood, wielder of the Valyrian steel blade, forest
fire and a Redwood Longbow. Reese the Renewer, the Lady of
Ash in Rebirth. Archmaester Austin, whose ring
and rod mask are made of oily Blackstone.
That's cool, Maester. Luscious of the Alluvia Lady
Kelly, mistress of the old Bay of Crabs bullwear the purple of
heavenly myth head house Taurus Ricky Ale belly of house Bell
motto ring the bell House Azura of elsewhere touch not a cat
bought a barge. Justin the patcher called salty
Justin, healer of salt shore. And last but not least, the
history of Westeros Nights Watch led by Lord Commander benjin
Umber the silent giant wielder of the Valyrian steel great
sword Winters Kiss first builder Magor Snow AKA Magor the Cool,
the fire in the snow, 1st Ranger source Sir Delica of House
Gramercy and a couple others like Sleepless Jacob Snow, the
Celtic hedge knight, eater of the Salmon of knowledge.
Sir Adam the loyal Lady Estrada of the Green wielder of Roses
kiss dual crossed Valyrian steel blades.
Thanks again everybody. Thanks again to Steven and Shaya
and everybody who came live. We'll see you again soon, Valar
Ririus.