In a story where magic is limited but gradually
increasing, Melisandre stands out in both categories as a
practitioner of rare powers, powers which are growing in
scope and potential. As the story continues at The
Wall, for example, she thinks about how it empowers her more
than any place she's ever been before, how it will enable her
to do things she's never done before.
She considers that the Wall gives her more than even Ash
Eye, the supernatural ancient city she's associated with.
And the biggest but not only key to her past, which is our
subject for today. We have no scenes from her
history, though we do have memories and her words, so it
will be her present that we will quote and use to leverage our
imaginings of her past. It is likely a lot of past that
we're dealing with here too. This episode is dedicated to her
time before arriving in Westeros, but the moment she
arrived in Westeros might be the moment she became the oldest
living being in, well, human being in Westeros that that
single day. So, and also arguably she's not
human anymore, but that's a topic for another day.
That's a whole different category.
Her age though, or rather agelessness, is but one of many
mysteries surrounding her. She claims to surpass her peers
in many areas while also possessing powers that other Red
Priests do not, such as Shadow Winding.
So we're pretty much going to have to go through all of her
powers and abilities and talents to help understand how they fit
into her background. Like who taught her how to do
that stuff? Much of the intrigue around her
hidden upbringing, lies, and possible connections to those
and other related supernatural elements.
Like what does she know about people like Quaithe, who's from
Ashai and is a shadowbinder? And if Ashai has such a deep and
ancient connection to dragon lore, well, what does she know
about Dragons? She was raised and educated in a
place that's steeped in dragon lore, yet she has yet to speak
much about Dragons at all or even think about it.
But we will, and we have all that and more on this episode of
History of Westeros podcast. Hello and welcome back
everybody. It's another episode, History of
Westeros coming at you. Very excited to talk about this
very fun, interesting and deep character, one that we couldn't
possibly cover in one episode. We got a lot of notes on on Mel
aside or just on her past. But as I said in the intro, we
have to use her present to get at her past since we don't have
direct access to that. But we're going to delve deep
into that. I assure you, you will enjoy it.
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covering all these fun things that y'all voted for.
Sean, how's it going? You're getting ready to talk
about Melisandre. I see you're wearing red.
Appropriately, I've got the Fiery Heart of Stannis, which is
right on .2. Yeah, I think this is my reddest
shirt, and I've also got a red drink.
I usually have magic mind, but today I wanted to honor
Melisandre. This is the Rainbow Naked Drink,
which is a deep red color mixed with black Raspberry spark.
That is very, very richly, richly red there, that beverage,
yeah. And I I should warn viewers that
my unsoliedness might come through this episode because I
haven't done a thorough Valerie Redis.
I've done some Valerie watches, but man, I was mind blown
rereading some of the chapters. Melisandre saw Bloodraven in one
of her visions like whoa. And then he saw her back.
Whoa. Yeah, that's.
Quite the topic we're on today. But I, you know, I was caught up
in some enlightening moments on rereading it again.
You know, you say this all the time, but I'm telling you it's
things you I can't possibly. I don't know if I know who Blood
Raven was when I read that chapter the first, like I maybe
had this big idea in my mind or something, but yeah.
Yeah, you've learned a lot since then too.
That's right. So yeah, this'll be fun.
We're coming at you with someone who's relatively new to the
material and someone like me who's who's been versed in it
for more than 20 years now. So hopefully that comes off well
for y'all getting multiple angles on that.
And plus we have a Shay here weighing in every once in awhile
with some good takes. So let's get to it.
I have the best insight of all. I'm someone who's cosplayed as
Melisandre. You are kind of a red woman
yourself. Yeah.
Nina, not as much red, but also a big presence in this episode.
Her notes are here and her notes are usually in in pink.
So they're. It's kind of like it's almost
red. And look out for her blog over
at goodqueenalley.tumblr.com, 1L and Alley.
And the latest blog post is a question about what if Viserys
had married Lena, a young Lena instead of Allison.
Would that have made the Valerians kind of like the
Hightowers, basically? And yeah.
You want to read her answer on that?
It's pretty interesting. It's it's a good take for sure.
Not quite, maybe not quite what you would expect.
You can, of course, send us questions.
We're at westeroshistory@gmail.com.
Or if you're watching live, why not shoot us a question live and
we will very likely answer it. Trivia.
Let's start with the trivia question and then I'll read you
all the different sections we have for this episode.
There are multiple scenes where Melisandre sings, a notable
example being at the wedding of Alice Karstark and Sigourne, the
Magnaar of Fen. Most of the time she sings in
the common tongue. That's the language everybody
can understand around her. But in one case she sings in
another language. What is that language?
Like most trivia questions I read on this podcast, the answer
is somewhere during the episode, but you might already know.
Good for you if you do. I will reveal at the end so the
the section headers this episode we're going to talk about
firsts, her first mention in first appearance, her early
life, her time as a red priestess of all the things she
might have learned with that, that's going to take us a little
while. Then we're going to talk about
her age and appearance, her glamours and her grand
presentations, her flame and heat control, things about
sacrifice, offer burning offerings, things like that.
Flame reading. Of course that's a big deal for
any relor, priestess or priest. Then we're talking about her
time in ash eye shadow binding her Ruby, then her influence on
Stannis ahead of time. Like what did she see in the
flames about him? Why did she come in the 1st
place? What brought her to to Westeros?
And then a section called Dreams of Dragonstone, which directly
relates to that. And then finally, we'll close
with a few identity theories, ideas that maybe she's a little
more than we think or maybe connected to some other
characters in ways that haven't yet been revealed, whether
that's through an ancestral connection or just having
knowledge on certain people or or otherwise people knowing of
each other, that hasn't been revealed yet.
So that's that. Let's do it.
Despite not knowing how old she is, we'll draw a similar line as
we did for Amon. We did the Amon Before the Wall
episode recently and we almost called it young Eamon, but we're
like, yeah, he wasn't really young.
In this case, it's even more distinctive.
Alessandra not young when she gets to Westeros.
In his case, it was his life before heading to the Wall.
We're just doing her life before Westeros, which very long amount
of time. We don't know how much, but she
came to support King Stannis, who she believes to be Azor
High. And coincidentally, like Maester
Eamon, she is on the Wall. Not to take the black,
obviously, she's got her color-coded system, right.
Red, you know, no black needs to be used.
They're all red. Red only, you know, none of
that. She was quite possibly a century
or more old when she first arrived in Westeros, but we
really don't know. Something we'll talk about a
little bit, but ultimately we have no final answer on that.
And I recall back in maybe 2008 or 9, I don't remember exactly
when, but well before Dance to the Dragons came out, which was
2011, George revealed that Melisandre would be Apov.
And that was a very surprising thing.
People were like, really, because he had said for so long
that characters who know too much will not get POV's were
like, well, so Melisandre doesn't know too much.
That was a surprise. Like, well, she and then when it
came the actual chapter, there was a lot more surprises and and
some clarification. One of the things that we
expected was that, well, we would never learn a lot of these
supernatural things. She knows too many supernatural
things for us to get in her head.
Well, apparently George just made an exception.
And it's not like she has a lot of chapters.
There's just the one, though. Apparently we're getting at
least one more in The Winds of Winter.
Or, or it's just the simpler thing that her knowledge is not
as spoilery as we might have guessed.
Or now it's the time in the story to reveal these things
that have been hidden for so long.
And the other surprise was the sincerity, Sean, when you, when
you first read Melisandre, you had already watched the show.
So maybe you would already understood that she was pretty
sincere. But maybe early when you were
watching the show, did you wonder for a long time if if she
was just a complete scammer or anything like that?
I believed her, if you will, but I didn't.
I'm trying to think how to say this.
I believe that she believed what she was saying, but that doesn't
mean it's right or that she doesn't have ulterior motives or
on and on, you know? And that's one thing I like
about the story in general. There's a lot of Gray area
mysteries, a lot of ways to interpret it.
Regardless. I didn't know she had a chapter.
I didn't know if George had announced that she would have.
I didn't know any of that. So I was a whoa when I got to
that. Whoa, Melisandre.
Really, That was a exciting moment when I got to that, and
it was a lot of exciting revelations that came through
there, even as little as I understood about it.
It was so much more meaningful to me reading it this past week
so. Yeah, her introduction's pretty
villainous, right? Yeah, well, I was going to say,
you know, when I read that chapter, I think I didn't think
she was a scammer, but I thought she was delusional.
OK, Do you know what I mean? Yeah, that makes.
Sense yeah, she's fervent, but I still thought she was not in her
right mind a little bit about some of her beliefs, I guess.
And it took the show for me to be like, OK, she was, she was
all in and she was right ultimately, like she was.
And I that made me view that chapter very differently.
I think I believe her more reading that chapter than I did
on 1st read where I think I'm just a natural skeptic.
Yeah, and so is Cresson, who just our first view of her, He's
everything's negative. He sees her in this dark light
that she's evil, and he tries to kill her, and she kind of mocks
him. Then later we learn that the
first thing she does every day is to look for danger to
herself. So we know that she woke up that
day, looked for danger to herself and said, oh, Crescent's
going to try to poison me. So like, why is she going to be
nice to this guy? You know, it's like, yeah, she
put the helmet, Patchface's helmet, on him.
And that was really mean, right? But like, she knows he's trying
to kill her. So, like, look at it from her
perspective. Like yeah I mean it's still
cruel but it's not so 1 sided. A couple other little comments
there is that she might not necessarily have wanted to be
mean to him or be a mean person. She several times talks about
the idea that it's important to present yourself as powerful,
that it is at least a part of power is the trappings of power,
right? That there is some a Venn
diagram there, but so she partly needs to present herself with
the ability to belittle this respected person in order to
make herself seem more powerful. Whether she really is powerful
or not, she still needs to present herself that way.
And I think that I another thought I have is if if she is
hundreds of years old, she would have a legit different
perspective or maybe even a legit different morality.
I think the morality can slide on scales based on like, I don't
know what, what wealth is. You have a different morality
when you're starving than when you're a billionaire or
whatever, right? So you might have a different
morality when you're 400 years old.
You just have, you've seen so many people live and die and the
reasons for it. And, and, and if you also have
this vision of everyone dying, the idea of the life of one kid,
when you've already seen hundreds of adults die and you
have visions of all humans dying, it might not be quite as
evil for one kid to be sacrificed.
Right, right. Yeah, yeah.
So, so with this case, it's an old man too, and it's weird
because she's older than him. So we see he's like, oh, she's
tormenting this old man. No, she's older than him.
It's like, no, you're, you're the the babe in the woods here
Crescent. But anyway, we'll get to that
scene. I have more to say on that scene
and I know you do too, but let's get to that.
Let's build up to that 'cause there's, there's a mother
important context I want to lay out when we're discussing that
scene and what. And you're right, she uses it.
She uses that moment to to gain more attention from the man
she's trying to get attention from in the 1st place with
Stannis. The other thing, not so much
about that scene per SE, but just, you know, my, might be my
perspective of her in general and how it evolved, is that I,
sometimes I feel like maybe she has this bigger mission of
saving humanity, but other times she's burning innocent people,
at least relatively innocent, you know.
So I, I, I, I, I wanna say that some, in some ways that chapter
made her seem not so evil 'cause she wanted to spare Davos's
fifth son, but also she still burned people.
So she's still evil. But also maybe evil has a
different meaning when you're that old and you're trying to
save humanity. So it's she's an interesting
character. We'll talk about.
So she's also the way she's introduced and the way she
appears now. There's been a lot of change in
the way we view her as readers. And some of that is probably
George's intent, others is probably that he's actually
changed a little bit of his conception for her.
He's probably grown his idea of the character over time.
It has been a long time and that's changed how she's been
written and that's more meaningful to a character of her
ilk because she's so ancient and supernatural.
There's more space and time to be filled in.
There's only so much back story a 20 year old can have, and with
A Song of Ice and Fire we have PO VS as young as seven in
Bran's case. Bran is an interesting
comparison here because he's the most explicitly magical
character POV, other than perhaps Melisandre who is the
oldest POV. So probably so the youngest and
oldest PO VS the being the most supernatural.
That's pretty cool. I like that little neat little
little bookend there. So let's go to the first we we
like to start with first, lots of mystery in her back story.
We can at least say that when she appears on screen for the
first time on page, she's a fully formed character.
Yes, she's changed a little bit over time, but she's extremely
well defined, like in terms of her own personality, what she's
there for. She's got goals, she's got plans
and pretty much no one she encounters is is ready for that.
She's constantly back footing people with her preparedness,
her dedication and, frankly, her power and her appearance, which
those two things are linked. So she's developed.
Yeah. And keeping with the brand
comparison, she's also about as far from a child as we could
get. Let's talk about her first
mention. This is Tywin to Kevin and
Tyrion. Tyrion 9A Game of Thrones quote.
I have felt from the beginning that Stannis was a greater
danger than all the others combined, yet he does nothing.
Oh. Varys hears his whispers.
Stannis is building ships. Stannis is hiring cell swords.
Stannis is bringing a shadowbinder from a shy.
What does it mean? Is any of it true?
As an aside, it's interesting that he mentions a shadow
binder, not a red priestess. The shadow binder is the part
that got their attention, or at least the part that George
wanted to point out early on. And we later here, she's been
there for years. It's not she got Santa's
attention kind of for the first time in that scene with
Crescent. Like he was aware of her, but he
kind of ignored her. But she's been a little patient.
But it also shows that she's years ahead of this curve on the
Azora High thing. Like in in A Dance with Dragons,
the HUD priest of the Red Temple of Volantis, the biggest one in
the world is openly preaching that Daenerys is Azora High.
So things have progressed quite a bit, but Melisandre had been a
Dragonstone for years ahead of Danny getting there.
Maybe. Again, she's probably jumped the
gun thinking this stuff is about Stannis, and that's just by
itself pretty interesting. This is a great example of.
You got to consider the source because let's just assume Varus
got accurate information, which might not be true, right?
But assume he did. He still might have wanted to
present her as a Shadowbinder instead of a Red priestess
because that is easier for Tywin to dismiss, right?
A shadowbinder is this magical thing from far away, whatever,
just like he's doing, he dismisses it.
But if he said a red Priestess, he'd be like, oh, that's a
religion. It comes with some real power,
even though he would have thought a different thing about
real power than Melisandre's magical power.
But I think it's a great example of how Varus might have
presented this to Tywin in a way that he wanted him to react the
way he is. Yeah, it's quite possible.
So for example, one of her proofs to prove who she is,
that's one of the things that takes her a while, is to
establish that she really is who she says he is, that she really
has power. All that and we get an early one
example here with a A1 line quote.
Melisandre has gazed into the flames and seen him dead.
This is said by Solis and the hymn in question is Renly.
And that's what happened. So that proves she proves her
her value there by predicting this death, predicting and then
making it happen. And then she actually appears
shortly after this. So we've we've heard from her,
we've heard her name said, but her actual first appearance.
This is a nice lengthy quote. A great moment when Crescent
bumps into Patchface, falls down, and then we meet her.
He felt strong hands grasp him under the arms and lift him back
to his feet. Thank you, Sir.
He murmured, turning to see which night had come to his aid.
Maester, Said Lady Melisandre, her deep voice flavored with the
music of the Jade Sea. You ought take more care.
As ever, she wore red head to heel, a long loose gown of
flowing silk as bright as fire, with dagged sleeves and deep
slashes in the bodice that showed glimpses of a darker
blood red fabric beneath. Around her throat was a red gold
choker, tighter than any maester's chain, ornamented with
a single great Ruby. Her hair was not the orange or
strawberry color of common red haired men, but a deep burnished
copper that shone in the light of the torches.
Even her eyes were red, but her skin was smooth and white,
unblemished, pale as cream, Slender.
She was graceful, taller than most nights, with full breasts
and narrow waist and a heart-shaped face.
Men's eyes that once found her did not quickly look away, not
even a maester's eyes. Many called her beautiful.
She was not beautiful. She was red and terrible and
red. Oh, yeah, most, a lot of people
remember that specific line about Melisandre.
Red and terrible and red. It's just such good writing.
You know, it's like, wow, you make that repetition so
meaningful. It's really good.
They really, really get the vibe from Crescent like, oh, this,
he's so intimidated and and frightened and worried.
The Ruby, the implied glamours, how she makes use of her
appearance and how that might have been part of her training.
Remember, we're focusing on how she learned all this, what it
does, what it means for her, where, why she learned it and
how it's guiding her and her her task.
These are all topics for today. She's so strong that he thinks
she's a knight, right? He doesn't see her.
This isn't glamour, right? So he doesn't know it's her.
So this is real strength. So she really is strong.
And this is backed up by other things.
It's a notable detail, like she carries Stannis's banner at
multiple times, which is banners are really heavy and it's really
important that they stay up because it's looks like the
royal symbol, especially in battle.
Now, she doesn't actually carry it in battle because, well, we
don't. She's not in at the Battle of
the Blackwater and there is no other battle for her to
participate in. But still, it's a notable
detail. Soldiers, Marines who can do 100
push ups and run for miles. When they carry the flag, they
have a harness that it mounts into.
They don't just walk around holding it.
You know, I believe it not so heavy you can't just pick it up
and hold it. But if you're going to carry it
around and, you know, like in an entourage for, you know, hours
or whatever, yeah, you need, you can't just do that.
You need some strength. It's usually done by a knight,
like it's usually like a position of honor.
So the fact that Stannis let her do it also is is kind of
meaningful, like taller than most Knights is also like wow,
like that's really tall. I mean, it's not Brienne or like
Tanzel, but it's up there. That's.
Probably close to 6 feet tall. I would guess yes.
And just to put it into context, like taller than most nights,
it's probably taller than like five 10511.
I agree. Yeah, definitely agree.
Cool. And it maybe it's exaggerated,
you know, and it's only 5/8 or 510.
Still, she's got impressive. It's special.
Only pressing or most people, yeah.
Isn't that possible that she's like, she's just got a really
long gown and she's wearing some tall heels?
High heels, yeah. There's.
Really. 3 red priestess underneath the gown.
She's 3 red. She's Mel is and Andre.
Yeah, there's Andre. And yeah, Lis and Andre.
That is, Mel is. Andre.
Mel is Andre. She's actually Andre.
Yeah. Mel is Andre 3000.
She is not Mel is Andre 3000. I use that.
See, I wrote that joke later in the episode.
I had to use it here because because we're talking about how
old she is because Mel is not Andre 3000.
She's not 3000 years old. So it it's it's practically,
like I said, it's going to have an impact.
She maybe she added a few inches through glamouring, maybe not.
Maybe she really is that tall. Either way, nights you know,
it's a it's a might makes right world.
It's a strength comes first kind of world and and Knights.
Men aren't used to women who are taller than them.
They you you they expect to kind of physically dominate all women
or just all people. And she's looking down on them
and not afraid and they're afraid of her.
It's just, it's a role reversal. They're used to like I can
dominate any woman, you know, like, no, well, you just met 1.
You can't, you know, and, and she can dominate you.
And so they just, they just don't know what to do with that.
You know, it's this is the whole thing about Melisandre is
everybody is backfooted by her, even Stannis, who is extremely
proud and and got a lot of confidence and stubbornness.
And even he is kind of backed into a corner by her in ways
that maybe he doesn't like to admit, but seems pretty clear if
you look at how things play out now, Thoros and Macoro are also
very big, like big, tall and thick men.
Banero, who is the again, the head priest at the Red Temple in
in Volantis, who was Macoro's boss.
He's not big, but he is tall. So we have another tall so far,
you know, what is it? We haven't seen a lot of red
priests, but the ones we've seen, they're all tall.
The taller the priest, the closer to relor.
That's what I've heard. That's how they recruit.
Nina adds that Stannis being tall, it might have an impact on
his view of her that she's not so tiny compared to something
like most people Stannis encounters are just a lot
smaller than him. He's way taller than most
nights. Like don't think of show Stannis
book Stannis is as tall as Robert, but not nearly as
muscled or thick, but still pretty muscled and thick, just
just less so than. And then of course, he loses
some of that when he the shadow babies make him lose some of his
his physicality, which we never get a good look at because that
doesn't really the show Stannis also doesn't really get the the
drained look to him so much. So when we meet her, she's cruel
to Crescent and does the helmet thing.
And did she is she actually immune to poison Sean?
This is an interesting question we have.
Or did she because she saw the danger in the flames that
morning when she looks every morning to see if anyone's
coming for her, she's like, OK, this guy's going to try to
poison me. I'm going to take the antidote
in advance. It'll look like I'm immune to
poison when reality I've just played it up a little.
I can believe she might be immune to poison or this poison
or something, but I I definitely got to wonder if this isn't one
of the examples of her making herself look powerful by using
something a mundane that makes it look magical.
Was there just like a generic antidote she could take, or did
she know exactly what he would try to poison her?
With that's a good question like she might have known it was the
strangler, which is made in ash eye or the OR the plant comes
from that. Shawn's ready to give an answer
here. Go for.
It yeah, I, I, I've thought about this I and I don't have a
direct confident answer, but I have a lot of thoughts to put
into it. They give a lot of description
to Crescent pulling his poison out.
They talked it like the little purple crystals and dot, dot.
So she might have seen that. That might have been her vision
as these purple crystals, and she knew what that was.
Oh, that's the strangler. Oh, someone going to poison me.
Who would do that? Oh, probably Crested.
She might have not this. Does that make sense?
Part of her quote UN quote power is beyond magical.
Even if she's magical, she still has a certain experience,
knowledge and shrewdness to be able to use her magic or magic
like powers. Right?
Like some other person with the same vision.
Some other person seeing these purple crystals get rolled out
might not have known what that meant, but she knew.
Oh, that's the ingredients for the Strangler.
Maybe I'm going to be poisoned. I'm looking for danger.
Who would poison me? Kressa might poison me.
Let me get ready for this, right?
That she could put a lot of her life experience together to
properly interpret this vision that someone else wouldn't have.
Whether she's immune to poison or not, that is powerful, right?
That that knowledge, that preparedness, that deductive
reasoning and everything else. So I think it's very possible
that she's not immune to poisonous.
She just was prepared for this. Flip side, whether all that is
true or not, she might also be not exactly immune to poison.
She might be a sort of undead creature that just can't be
poisoned or stabbed or get cancer.
Or does that make sense? She.
Doesn't need to eat or drink. So it's not, it's not a stretch,
Yeah. The fact that she doesn't need
food, right, that she feels like she just eats food to maintain
the illusion for people. But she the Rellore gives her
all this stuff and sense she that's freaking magic, that's
powerful and that's tragic. And the fact that that is part
of her might also meet like I wonder when she does eat food,
is it like does it make her sick?
Like that part of the vampire lore?
They get stick when they eat food.
And what we do in the shadows when they eat food and they're
like, they just projectile vomit.
Projectile vomit. You know, maybe she just has an
uneasy stomach when she eats bread, and maybe this poison
does the same thing. Like it could also be that she's
not. Whether she has some sort of
immunity poison or took some antidote.
We also know that sometimes she struggles through these moments
that she presents this strong facade.
But really her Ruby is burning her when she tries to maintain
Mance's illusion or whatever, right?
So it could be the inside she is feeling the effects of the
poison, but she has strong enough of character to keep calm
and keep cool and make it through this moment at dinner.
And then afterwards she goes and pukes.
But that still is more than Joffrey or what else could do
with the Strangler. So I I think the answer to the
question is almost, it doesn't matter.
She is powerful. Whether it's from knowledge or
magic, she is powerful. Yeah, And she used this moment
to project that power. She's like, this is what got
Stannis to really take notice of her.
Like, wow, she just drank poison in front of everybody and lived
like, that's just like, dramatic and.
And grand, like everyone saw it. It was like impressive.
It was probably like the the talk of the castle for the next
week or so. And before that moment, Stannis
had not paid her a whole lot of attention.
And you're right. Like, it's, it's not just
dramatic. It's like her power triumphing
over the power of the maester. Like the maester is a wise
regarded man, someone who's deeply knowledgeable, who's
helped Stannis a long time. His knowledge has helped a lot
of people, his healing. Everyone in the castle probably
owes him some thanks. You know, I got Melisandre just
like completely undid him. And that's, that's, that's it
was very, it was very much like a stage performance.
And he, not directly, but very much also sort of represents the
seven. Yeah, that's true.
She. Just crushed him aside.
She just crushed him. Yeah.
And then the next scene we got is him burning the seven.
Stannis is burning the seven. All right, so, so this is easier
to to dial this all back to sort of the point of our episode.
These are things she learned. She learned how to use her
powers great effect, the the mixture of real power and fake
power to have an impact on a crowd of watching people of
witnesses of people that she seeks to draw into her belief
system to convince them of what she's saying.
These are things that any religion that sends out people
to recruit will do things like this.
She's just a lot more capable because she has real power and a
lot more experience. And she's beautiful.
Well, not beautiful. She's red and terrible and red.
Well, however you want to phrase that it's effective, it's it
draws the eye, right? Like Crescent doesn't deny that
everyone looks at her. You know, it's like, wow, look
at damn, she's scary and beautiful or not beautiful or
whatever you want to call it. You can't not look at her.
Let's talk about her early life. Let's move back in time now that
we've done some intro stuff. Nearly everything about her
orbits around Relore, but she stands out from the other Relore
worshippers in some significant ways.
It's very much in line with George's style in a way.
I've gone on in many times about how he loves to give us the
answer before he gives us the question.
We have mysteries that we get an answer to before the question is
even reveals. We're like, oh, what's the
answer to this question? Well, you actually got that a
book ago, you just didn't recognize it at the time.
This is a similar version of that where George introduces
Melisandre and kind of, we knew Thoros a little bit before
Melisandre, but, but really Melisandre we get to know a lot
better than Thoros pretty quickly.
Most of what we know about Thoros comes a little later.
He's just kind of barely introduced early in the Game of
Thrones. And then we it's Clash and
really Storm where we get to know him.
But Melisandre, we get to know her right away in Clash, and
we've only seen other 4 red priests with names.
There's only 5 total and one of them hardly counts because it's
just like this drunk guy in Braavos that Arya gives a name
for and no other detail other than he's a drinker and a red
priest. So like, what do we do with that
anyway? Yeah, I don't even know if he's
tall. He's even tall.
He has two ZS in his name. So I like that because I also
have two ZS in my name. Basically, what I'm.
My point here is that we meet the exception to the red priests
before we find out what a normal red priest is like.
Melisandre is an exception, but we meet her first.
And they were like, oh, Thoros, Banero, Macoro.
They're they're still pretty outstanding, but they're closer
to normal than Melisandre by far.
Like especially like the things like the shadow binding.
But that's not nearly the only thing.
So that's a, that's a very George thing to do.
So she's pretty atypical. And but other things are maybe
kind of normal. Like some of the things that
most would add about her are actually maybe kind of normal,
like the age thing, like Macoro, who knows how old that guy is.
He's not. He might be really old.
We don't know. Bonero.
I suspect Bonero is pretty darn old.
He's pale like her, which kind of gives that.
Like the pale paleness kind of is a sign for ageless cyclic
blood Ravens albino. So it doesn't really count for
him, but. He's an old soul.
Yeah. So Benero might be older than
Melisandre, I've no idea, but I would, I would not be surprised
if that was the case. And another thing many have in
common is being enslaved red priests.
They're all slaves basically there.
So there's little childhood to speak of before their time with
the Red Priests. And whatever they would have is
a distant memory of like, who remembers before they were
seven? Very well.
Like, maybe a few things here and there, but most, most folks
don't, especially if you're like 200 years old.
That would be farther away, right?
So there's a strong reason to suspect that while Thoros was
sold, he says, given his family gave him to the Red Temple, is
that really it's still enslavement?
I mean, it's like, oh, there's no financial transaction that
makes it ethical. No, of course not.
It's still slavery. So Melisandre was just sold in
general on the slave markets. Maybe that's kind of how all the
interpretation works and that the the buyer just happened to
be the Red Temple. It wasn't that she was directly
given to them. And here's where we get that
idea. Here's the quote.
It's a distant memory of it when she's looking into the flames.
The fire was inside her, an agony, an ecstasy filling her,
searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns
on her skin, insistent as a lover's hand.
Strange voices called to her from days long past.
Melanie. She heard a woman cry.
A man's voice called. Lot 7.
She was weeping and her tears were flame, and still she drank
it in. So she's staring in the flames,
getting visions, and it's just she doesn't always see what she
wants. This is the nature of flame
reading for someone who's very experienced, it just kind of
dances around and swirls. It's very chaotic and this is
part of what she says on multiple occasions.
It's a long, difficult process to learn and to read the flames.
And even when you get really wet, good at it, you still, it
still goes places you don't want it to.
It's like memory, your memory just sometimes your brain goes
places you're not really wanting it to go.
You have trauma, you have memories that are intrusive,
whatever you want to. Call it long, difficult and
painful. Painful, she points out.
Yes, painful. You're right.
That's really important. So she in this context also,
she's wanting visions of Stannis, but she gets lots of
other things. She gets this this vision of her
past, the vision of Alice Karstark, the vision of ominous
towers crumbling into the sea. And then you know this.
So there's a strong hint that her given name was Melanie.
And Melisandre is a like a adaptation from her original
name. And that was her mother calling
out for her. And then this man who yelled Lot
7 is just like the auctioneer or something like that.
It seems like that makes sense. So these are probably these
might be overlapping memories rather than the mother
witnessing her auction, but that's possible too.
And it's really important all this because so much of the end
game of A Song of Ice and Fire is focused on the question of
freedom versus slavery, right? Like that's a big deal.
Like the others are an enslaving force.
They seek to, you know, control, kill everyone and rule them as
dead people. Like that's that's an an
allegory for slavery. But arguably what the red
priests are doing is a little similar.
They just kind of drink their own kool-aid like Madero
preaches how when the long summer comes, no one will die
and there's a summer without end.
That doesn't doesn't sound good. Maybe it'll maybe it sounds
slightly better than the others invading, but it's also it
sounds pretty bad. So I think that's fascinating
that more Melisandre is is so immersed on in both angles of
this that the horrific reality of slavery is something she's
actually lived through. And that gives her a lot more
context and and maybe motivation to to stop this fate for all of
humanity, because that's what she believes is happening.
And she might be right or close to right.
And yeah, so Melisandre might be kind of like her new identity,
the the the being that emerged like a phoenix almost from from
slavery and and her humble origins to become this powerful
priestess of her lore that might be instrumental in saving the
world. And that's probably how she sees
herself. And maybe she doesn't have a
whole lot of ego in it. But still, this is at some
point, this is what would have been developing in her through
her early years. This this slow realization that
this is how the world is, that there's a Great War going to
happen. And that slowly but surely she's
realizing that maybe she's a little more equipped than most
of her peers to do a lot of the things that need to be done.
Flame reading, she apparently was really, really good at.
Also, this kind of reads like a little bit of just like standard
sort of blocking out trauma, doesn't it, Sean?
Like the whole, the distant memories that she doesn't really
want to face. And then like, because later she
thinks dreams are the whispering of the other who would drag us
all into eternal night. And she doesn't like sleeping,
doesn't like dreaming. This is she's she's this
negative view of dreaming. That's kind of like, I don't
think dreams are really that bad.
You know, they're bad for you because you have horrible
memories. But like, in general, I don't
think dreams are just like the whisperings of the great other.
That seems like a bit far. Seems like very personal to her,
right? Is that?
Is that kind of how you read that too?
Yes, and and in another layer to it, if she's older, she would
have been a witness to more tragedies, right?
She would have seen friends and companions die of old age or
battle. You know, she's been in hell,
researched and traveled and she's been and you know, I can
imagine some other kind of dark things that were Lord priest of
her Lord might do. Like, you know, maybe every
person isn't pure evil, but every person isn't pure good
either. And she's probably seen some of
that had some some bad things happened to her, she would have
more stuff to repress, you know, and remember too, she she did
say that she doesn't have time for sleep.
And it might be there's a song. I don't have time for the pain.
I think that's the name of the song.
You know, like I've got other things to worry about.
I like, even if she is time to repress memories and you know,
maybe that's problematic, but she's worried about saving
humanity. Like, look, my personal dramas
don't matter right now. I can see how she there's
multiple reasons for her to not want to sleep.
No sleep till the long night. Yeah, as just like the Beastie
Boys wrote it. Yeah.
So this is a super interesting thing to think about.
Like how her, she she has to somehow reconcile this like this
awful trauma with this was the path I belong on.
I came to relore. I'm doing the things we're
supposed to do to save the world.
But how do you reconcile like her being enslaved and
traumatized as a child as part of that journey?
It's like, oh, that was all a necessary part of my path.
Like maybe it is because someone who's been enslaved would is
perhaps better equipped to teach the world or lead the world out
of that kind of outcome for other people.
On the other hand, yeah, it it also changes her view of normal
things like dreams, which are they're not so bad now.
A banero high priest of the Red Temple of the Lantis.
Again, this guy keeps coming up because he's one of our few
points of comparison. He was also a slave child bought
by the temple. We don't know that for sure
about Macoro, Just a safe assumption given how that seems
to be the norm. And Jorah tells Tyrion that the
Red Temple quote buys them as children and makes them priests
or temple prostitutes or warriors.
So apparently based on their skill set and some of them
probably cross train. Like given Melisandre's ability
to seduce Stannis, it's quite possible she had some of this
sex work training as part of her upbringing.
We have no certainty on that whatsoever.
It's just seems like a valid. Possibility, but clearly she
moved beyond that because of her ability and magical meanings,
magical doings, which was like, well, let's have you focus on
reading the flames instead of earning money for the temple
through sex work. You know, that might be may have
been a part of her journey in her early years.
And you know much in a way that some of the men in the
priesthood might excel better if they're all so big and strong,
they're smart or they've got some mystical ability and also
they're big and strong. If she's attractive and
seductive that that's like her her bonus in addition to be able
to read in the flames. True.
I was going to say too, I think it's possible that she is older,
maybe even way older than Venero.
He maybe is in a higher position, but I can imagine
Melisandre being passed over for higher positions because she's a
woman, you know? That's possible.
Yeah. That seems very possible.
Absolutely. Now, of course it makes a lot of
sense that they buy them the the as children because they're
susceptible to being taught like you.
Their upbringing is what you give them.
And all children are very susceptible to being taught and
educated. And so you lock them in for life
if you get them young, right. And that's that's the idea.
And now one thing though, here's a little curveball.
Melisandre was not initially purchased by the Red Temple in
Ash Eye. We can be very sure of that
thanks to one of the last things we get from her singular POV
chapter as she's convincing John to allow Mance Ryder, who is
glamoured to look like Rattle shirt to go rescue Aria.
We have this quote. She made it sound a simple
thing, and easy. They need never know how
difficult it had been, or how much it had cost her.
That was a lesson Melisandre had learned long before a shy The
more effortless the sorcery appears, the more men fear the
sorcerer. Now of course it's not actually
Arya that she's going to be Alice Karstark and Mance doesn't
find her anyway. But that's not the point here.
We know she misinterprets sometimes.
There's plenty examples of that. There's more examples of her
being right, and there's a lot of examples of her being kind of
close, like in the ballpark. This is a good example of that.
She's sort of right. The point is, though, that
phrase a lesson Melisandre learned long before a shy.
What is she learning all these things as a child still?
I don't think so. So she spent significant amount
of time at a different red temple and then at some point
moved on to a shy. Maybe she was sent there.
Maybe she went there of her own volition, Who knows?
And it makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons.
One well, she's been learning about sorcery since long before
she went to Ash Eye, as it says. Thus, Ash Eye is a reasonable
place to go to learn more sorcery.
It's such a sorcerous place, like not only does it have
connections to Relore and the ancient prophecy of Azora High,
which you'd think that lots of Red Priests would want to delve
more into that. But yeah, there's just more
sorcery there. And there's the notion that
there's no children in Ash Eye. So that's another thing we're
told, which may be exaggerated, but it would fit with this, that
Melisandre wasn't there as a child.
So probably she was bought by one of the other Red Temples,
probably one of the ones far to the east.
Like I doubt she was bought by the Red Temple in in Norvos
like, you know, or, or Mir like Thoros was and went all the way
to Ash Eye. That's so far, but maybe, maybe
Volantis, maybe something and maybe even in ET, I'm not even
positive they have relore worshippers in ET, but that
would fit. Or or Morac, a great Morac is
the island, the large island South of Karth that is pretty
much never mentioned. But lots of people live there,
you know, So it fits, yeah. I wanted to say something.
There was a subtle thing, you know, we talked one time about
like, how powerful she must be because she said that she was
more, she was better at reading the flames than anyone in her
own. Order, she said.
Order. Yeah.
Order, right? But yeah, in fact, I've got the
quote here because she said there was no one even in her
order, who had the skills that seen secrets da da da, da, which
kind of implies her order is extra good at it, or they're
extra trained or extra old. Some reason you might expect
people from her order to be good, but even in her order, she
was the best. That's a good catch.
Like what does her order mean? We don't get a title for that
order, but. It makes me wonder though, maybe
since she was is excelling in this one thing, they sent her
there because they specialize it in it, and then even in that one
she is or became the best. I very much agree with that.
I think it's a very strong theory.
Now, here's another thing you can think about.
Like she's introduced as Melisandre of a Shai.
So that's why people think she's from a Shai.
But no one's from a Shai, right? No one was born there.
If you don't have children there, then you can't really be
born there. You can establish your identity
there. You can live there so long that
that's kind of what you associate with, but no one's
born there as far as we know and anymore.
How long since anyone's been born there?
Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, maybe, maybe 1000.
Yeah, maybe, maybe Melisandre 3000 years ago.
I don't know. But yeah, who knows?
But that's a good point, Sean, that even when people aren't
from there now, they might have been from there when she was a
little girl. Or Aziz's theory here might be
true, which I actually like. A lie I was about to tell you.
So she likely lived in Ash Eye a long time, right?
Because it does seem to be not only where she identifies as
being from, even though she wasn't born there probably, but
she has a Jade C accent. We're told.
I don't know what Jade C accent means, but it's like a
Mediterranean accent. It's like one of the things
where if you live in that area, you'd be a lot more specific.
No one who lives in the Jade C would call it a Jade C accent.
It's like no one who lives in Jersey calls it a Jersey accent.
There's like probably 8 different Jersey accent, like a
Southern people say Southern accent, but like I live in the
South. There's a lot like, what does
that mean? There's 1012 different Southern
accents. Easy, you know, so So to a
westerner, she sounds like she has the accent of the Jade C,
but that doesn't actually help us a whole lot.
That's the accent that Mazaria was doing in House of the
Dragon. That's the generic Jade C
accent. That's a good point.
ET is Jade C, so that that does work, yeah.
So maybe her actual country of origin, the one she was born in,
is also in the Jade C Maybe she is actually from that region.
Again, I mentioned Great Morak, that giant island that's South
of of Carth, that that's a strong candidate for where she
was born. She could be Lengy, she could be
of of have languish descent. This is what I really like
because she is tall and willowy and that's what the Lengy are
known to be. Yeah, I just think that would be
a cool detail if she was actually from there.
If her glamour ever wears off and we see her what she really
looks like, this kind of stuff might come out.
We might actually get it. It might.
It's not initially important, but it's something a lot of us
would would love to know, you know, So maybe George will give
us that. So we get a little hint as as to
what the first year relore slave children start with in their
fiery and shadowy education here with our entry to the Red
Priestess section of our episode quote.
It was never truly dark in Melisandre's chambers. 3 tallow
candles burned upon her window sill to keep the terrors of the
night at Bay. Four more flickered beside her
bed, 2 to either side. In the hearth.
A fire was kept burning day and night.
The first lesson those who would serve her had to learn was that
the fire must never, ever be allowed to go out.
First lesson is a key phrase here.
It's not magical. We don't have to do anything
magical to keep a fire going. I mean, you can, but it's not
required. Like just get some wood, you
know, throw some more wood on the fire.
But we all know the night, the, the red priests are big about
their night fires. They do them, they, they
celebrate the dawn every morning.
Yay, Velour has given us another day.
And at night they light the night fires to get through the
night, sort of as a a ritual, like a micro long night thing
every day, every day as a gift from relor.
And this is a big deal. They so like a young acolyte,
just keep that fire going, add more wood to it.
Maybe a 20-30 fifty years from now you have some supernatural
means of keeping a fire going. But it's it's the it's the
ritual before the magic. You know, you learn the basics.
Nina points out a great parallel to the real world here.
George is probably borrowing some of this from the Vestal
Virgins of ancient Rome, who were responsible for keeping the
sacred fire of Vista eternally lit.
And they would get severe punishments if they failed to do
that. So we do have other red priests
in the story that help us corroborate some things, even
though there aren't a lot of them.
None of them are Povs and we've only got the one Melisandre POV
so we we sometimes have are are digging into uncertainty to to
find to figure things out. But other things seem pretty
well established. Like some of their beliefs and
certain prophecies they believe in.
But if she's raised in ash eye it's different than being raised
in Volantis or mirror. Like these are different cities.
They have vastly different cultures.
Just compare any religion in in a very different place.
Like compare, I don't know, Christianity and we'll keep
using my part of the country and the American South to
Christianity of of Europe even now or Christianity of Europe
300 years ago or yeah, just very different.
I mean, there's so many different versions of
Christianity. You get the point there.
So these versions aren't necessarily categorized and
annotated in A Song of Ice and Fire, but they surely exist.
There is surely differences between the red priests of a shy
and the red priest of Volantis. Maybe just minor cultural
differences, but maybe major ones, like the kind of things
that would, I don't know, cause a schism between popes.
And like that kind of thing has happened in the real world where
the, the two popes kind of, it's more of a political thing, but
it's rooted around differences in interpretations of the
scripture in a lot of, in a lot of cases.
Or one label side labels the other as blasphemers.
You know, no, you're the blasphemer.
No, you're the blasphemer. I don't know if I've read
priests have ever had that kind of schism before, but.
Quite possible. And and candles and the other
kind. It's like.
Beeswax tallow. Beeswax tallow.
Candle schisms, I guess. I don't know.
I could see that sort of thing going on to get really upset
about the type of candles. So I I think this is fairly
obvious that these differences exist.
We just don't have the details as to what those differences
really are. George confirms this very
distinctly without really elaborating.
At one point, before A Storm of Before a Storm of Swords was
published, someone asked him, do Thoros and Melisandre worship
the same God? And George said yes and no.
There you go. Right.
That's not an answer, but it is an answer.
It's like, yeah, they are seeing, they're interpreting a
lot of things differently, but they both it's it's they both
call him Rellore, and it's the God of flame and shadow.
It's still the Lord of light. But wow, do they see that
differently. You know, potentially to confuse
the issue even farther, does Thoros really worship that God?
Like is he answering the question about God or the
question about worship, you know?
Good question. Yeah, Nina, as this may have
been a natural development for rellorism, You know, there's the
wide world happens and religion spread to different places and
it's going to take hold in different ways and each culture
that it takes hold in. And that means, like to convert
a person with a certain upbringing, you need to use
certain methods. To convert a person from a
different country, you might use different methods because you're
teaching them different, you're unlearning them of different.
Like how Melisandre preaches to free folk is probably different
than how she preaches to the Kingsman, right?
Or 'cause you're trying to convert them from worshippers of
the Seven instead of convert them from worshippers of the Old
Gods. It's a different starting point
that you're trying to bring them in from, so it makes sense that
you would maybe use different methods.
She even relented to not going with Stannis because she knew
that her presence would upset the worshippers of the old God
like that. She's like, it's gonna in the
big picture at this moment, it's gonna hurt the cause.
So I I just won't even go right so.
Well, I think she thought that was a mistake, but it either
way, she wasn't there and it had a big effect.
Yeah. But but if she had gone, she
probably would have treated them differently than Solis or
whatever. But and maybe this isn't even
the time for that treatment. But she she acknowledges.
Yeah. And and you know, The thing is
it like in a real world, you know, especially if you go back
100 or whatever years, there were religions that weren't
aware of the variations of their own religion, right?
You can just imagine like some small town in Maine and some
small town in Alabama started off with preachers from England,
But what they started preaching in their churches over 100 years
ahead of all, then it's something different.
And then eventually we called it, you know, Baptist or all
these other things. There was one sect of Christians
that a missionary had gone down the Nile deep into the Congo and
established a mission there, like, I don't know, like 200 AD.
And no one knew about it until like the 1970s.
And they found these people. And there were obviously a lot
of beliefs that were in line with Christianity.
And a lot there were like very varied and there was some
difference. Their Bible had some different
scriptures in it and stuff like that, and no one even knew they
existed. Does that make sense?
So like certainly there's going to be some worshipping over
allure this in different in different parts of the world,
different people's interpretation, time passing,
all that stuff, assuming there is even just one God in the 1st.
Place, right? A good example Nina gives us
here is that in Volantis all the Red Temple slaves, well all the
slaves in the whole city, not just the Red Temple ones, get
face tattoos. It kind of marks them as slaves
and what their job is. Macoro has them, Banero has
them, all the five fiery fingers have them.
Melisandre might have tattoos, we just don't know.
But she probably doesn't. She probably doesn't because in
Ash Eye, tattoos are extremely normal for regular people.
The shadow men, the people of Ash Eye, cover their body in
tattoos. So why would they mark slaves
that way? It's like, well, mark in the
same way. It doesn't, it doesn't fit.
So that it's sort of doesn't work there to do that.
And of course, the Mirish Temple doesn't seem to put tattoos on
their slaves. Thoris isn't tattooed.
So yeah. So this is just small examples
that imply much greater cultural differences that we're just not
aware of. And it and perhaps more on to
the point too, what sort of hierarchy exists between the
different red temples? Howden half Maester refers to
Banero as the first servant of the Lord of light in the world
or just at the temple of Lantus, which is the biggest temple in
the red red temple of the world. So like their hierarchy is still
a little hazy to us. Like how does do the Red Temple
and Volantis interact with the Red Temple and a shy?
Do they have, does Venero have like primacy over them?
Or are they does they had to see an equivalent first servant over
there? You know, and these are just
things that we don't know yet. And it's very wide open, but
surely these these hierarchies, these systems exist to some
degree, Whether they're well defined or not, we don't know,
but they surely exist. So those four, those red
priests, are really the only ones we have any info on.
And as far as we know, they don't know her.
We don't know if Makoro, Thoros, or Benero have ever heard of
Melisandre. Decent chance they have.
Maybe Thoros less so before Westeros, but once he's since
he's been in Westeros and she has too, he's probably heard of
her, but before that he probably hadn't, especially because the
sheer distance like Ash Eye Premier, we're talking like an 8
month journey by ship because it's roughly a year from
Westeros. So from Premier it's probably
pretty close to the same, a little bit less maybe as much as
like 10 months or something. So yeah, pretty wild early years
as any any kind of any acolyte or novice to a religion,
especially one that maybe expects you to live longer than
normal human span of time. We'd probably have a lot of
tedium, like a lot of studying texts, basic indoctrination and
just chores, you know, keeping the fires lit, sweeping.
I I imagine that's what a lot of the kids do, just basic
devotional tasks that they just use them as your cheap labor for
the most simplest things. Like, like, I mean, they are
slave children after all. So this is actually better than
what they had to get if they were taken as slaves to some
other household, most in most cases, which had a very, very
low bar for that. And they're orphans.
So they they really want to belong somewhere because they
don't have a place in this world.
They're very susceptible to indoctrination, to being given a
place to be and just some some place to belong.
And they're skilled at that. This is an organization,
organization that's very good and impressing people with
grandeur. They're ancient, they're
empowered with magic. They're boosted further by their
tricks. All the things Melisandre knows
how to do. I have no reason to assume she's
the only one that knows how to do those things.
None at all. I feel like it's probably very
common. You want to impress people and
press the rubes? Get them to buy into your
religion. It's the story as old as time.
She might know how to do more different things like that,
right? She's been older.
If she's that much older and has done it that much longer and
maybe traveled to different temples and made a point of it,
every priest might not have the same dedication and ambition
that she does. So she might be better at
certain things and no more different things, but certainly
not the only one that knows any of these.
Right. Yeah, totally agree.
Well put. Well put.
Like in fact, Thoreau's like lighting is sort of even if
there's some pure magic, there's probably some trick to it.
Also he probably has some special oil or something.
It makes it a bigger flame or last longer.
Well, at first it was wildfire, but then as magic increases,
it's like, well, he doesn't have wildfire out in the woods like
the brotherhood. He's living in a cave.
Where is he getting wildfire? Like he's clearly, it's, it's
the, the rise of magic is kind of like Melisandre is like he's
enabled to do things he wasn't able to do before.
You just reminded me of something I wanted to point out
earlier. I wonder if this is at least a
piece of what's going on when she thinks that her powers are
more are stronger at the wall. I wonder if it's also at least
partly that her powers are stronger at this moment in time,
that if she was at some other place in the world, her powers
would still be stronger. Maybe it's amplified by the wall
too, but I wonder if it's she. She said something like they're
more powerful here than even in a Shy, but I wonder if really
they're more powerful here than even two years ago.
Maybe it could be both. Yeah, I suspect it's the place
matters, but you could be right that there's multiple factors in
play. So going back to just like the
early days of the temple, we get a sort of an example of this,
which is Aria being a novice at the temple, black and white or
House of black and white. And that's kind of what they do.
Like she's just like pulling coins out of the out of the
fountain, dressing up bodies, just basic chores until they
slowly bring her into the greater mysteries of things.
I gotta guess it's pretty similar for the Red Temple.
And the ones who who show natural aptitude for certain
things would be singled out and promoted faster, kind of like
Aria was. She was very talented, a lot of
these things and and maybe there's more going on there than
just that, but Melisandre was probably ahead of the game,
ahead of the curve, talented, etcetera.
I doubt this came later. But then of course, you, you
learn basic scripture and and dogma, right?
All the basics of her lore, flame and shadow and whatever
that entails. Why shadows are actually
creatures of light. You know, all their dogma, like
I said, just all the, all the clever phrasings and
philosophies they've put to words, things that you can use
to win arguments or to impress people or to back people into a
narrative corner with your with your words, you know, kind of
things like that. And of course they'd learn about
Azurai, right? That's part of their basic, you
know, legendarium Yandel Maestri Andel said the legend of Azurai
spread W from tails kept in annals in Ash eye of the Long
night. So it's like Ash Eye is maybe
one of the only places, if not the only place in the world that
actually has written records of what happened in the first long
night. So again, it makes so much sense
that a red priest would go there.
It almost almost makes you wonder why more red priests
haven't gone there. And actually maybe a lot of them
have and we just don't know it. And maybe just again, and
Melisandre's excelled or she's just a cut above or she just had
a lot more bravery, a lot more faith, a lot more zeal, a lot
more certainty. That's a certainty that she had
more certainty. But why?
Well, we'll continue to get into that.
Now recruiting, that's another thing that's got to be part of
her training how to bring more people into the faith.
That's something almost any faith will teach is how to.
Make more followers. We've already talked through
some of those with the basics of how you indoctrinate the
children in the 1st place. Well, they would in turn learn
to indoctrinate others using those same tactics and same
methods and like how to have a strong presence, how to appear
powerful, how to show No Fear, how to project your voice.
Just like non magical things that could be enhanced by magic.
But the basics of that are it's like teaching someone how to be
a good public speaker. You know, like, those are real
world things. Lots of real world preachers,
priests, reverends, ministers are very good at public
speaking, very good at it. And where was Melisandre?
They're very good at surrounding themselves with the trappings of
power yachts and suits. And rings.
And so I will see examples of of this throughout the rest of the
episode of how Melisandre yes, yes, uses the trappings of power
and other things like that. Another thing they would use or
do is just basic priestly functions that would make them
more acceptable into a wide variety of communities.
It's kind of surprising, yet not surprising, that of all the
people to perform the marriage of Alice Karstark and Sigourne,
the Magnar of Fenn is Melisandre knowing that the Wall seems all
that surprised or put off by because hey, she's a priestess.
Valid priestesses, priests. They do marriages.
That's just how it works. So run with that, but they would
have expected probably to be married by a Septon or something
like well, I don't know what Sigourney expected.
He's a Magnar of fan. I don't know.
No idea what what he was guessing.
It wasn't Melisandre. He wasn't expecting that.
So she knew what to say. She had all the right words.
She was very practiced when she did this ceremony.
Probably wasn't her first time, probably wasn't even her 20th
time. So another thing that she would
have learned in her basic days that not the most relevant story
wise, but still it's a big on the list of important things or
or or lesser things that that she learned how to do in her
training at the Red Red Temple. Red tremble, I almost said.
She knows multiple languages too.
That's another thing that she would have learned either on her
own or by the temple's teaching. Very true.
All right, let's take a a quick
break, get back to it. We got a lot more about
Melisandre. We got more red priest action.
We have barely scratched the surface of her supernatural
training and how that will play out a little more.
So stick with us, my friends. We've got way more to come This
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Do you have any anything to add to that?
I was gonna say that I have a, you know, usually I'm drinking
on a stream, but like I said, I have my, my Melisandre red drink
today, but I, I still drank it this morning and I, I have said
in the past, I found it helped me when I was working out.
I feel like I didn't get as tired as much when I was running
or going to the gym. I've gotten more accustomed to
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But I, I don't know if the taste has changed the formula or if
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Like before it was like, oh, I thought it was kind of too
bitter. But now I'm like, ah, it tastes
OK. I can just drink it like a shot.
It's OK. It's funny you say that, Sean,
because I add magic mind to drinks to make them taste
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And then I find that it, it gives like kind of a, a, a depth
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to it. It's more nuanced.
I don't know if that makes sense.
It does in terms of the actual effects of it.
I find like I, I love drinking it everyday period.
But when days when I partied a little too hard the night before
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night before. Nothing makes me feel more just
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refreshed than when I like pour my drink with my magic mind.
And I do like a little bit of a juice or whatever.
And I pour that drink and I drink and I'm like, I feel so
much better. That's that's my testimony.
Right on. I like a little bitterness.
I like the the the sharpness of it.
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you. Also, every Friday check us out
on Twitch. I play CK3 streams.
That's Crusader Kings three with the song of ice and fire mod.
It's so well detailed. We're having so much fun with
that. My character is Lynn Corbrae,
not the Lynn Corbrae from A Song of Ice and Fire, but this is
would have been an ancestor of his and we're living in the time
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Worked out a lot differently and we're hoping maybe that Dragons
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very interesting. But either way super fun.
Every Friday 6 eastern twitch.tv history of Westeros.
Pyramidion says the the Lot 7 flashback is a memory from the
skin she is wearing, just like the Arias flashback.
That's an interesting theory. I don't know if I agree, but I'd
like the idea that it's a flashback from a person that's
not her, which is possible. It's it's established like you
said, Aria had flashbacks of a person that is not her.
It's that explicitly happened 100%.
I'm not sure that's what happened here, but it's a valid
idea. At a certain point, what's the
difference If you're having those flashbacks, those
memories, it aren't those your memories too?
You know, like. You didn't experience them when
they were new, but you're still having them.
Yeah, you're. Still affected by them?
I don't know. Where did her Ruby come from?
Are there memories in the Ruby you know?
Interesting. That's an that's an entirely
possible memory to store there. That is a George R Martin thing.
That's a great theory Sean, because I I hadn't thought of
that and we are going to talk about the Ruby separately, but I
don't have this particular point included to talk about.
George created the concept of Whisper Jewels in his sci-fi
setting, which are jewels that contain essence of memory.
There you go. That's very much what you just
suggested here. So you you just like a hit.
A hit on a George RR Martin invention without even.
Got that for me. Dom Tartaglia says that is a
good comparison to read vernacular Christianity as I
always read Melisandre as expired by Catharism, now
Catharism. The Cathars were a sect of
Christianity and I think in France in middle age early
Middle Ages. I forget when but yeah good call
Dom Tartalia, appreciate that. Shout out folk wise on twitch
and YouTube. Guilty, Undertaker says.
I could see the Riverlanders who follow relore seeing Barrick as
a kind of messianic figure or something associate followers
would have no reason to do. Yeah, that's true.
Why would associate people care about a Westerosi agent is,
well, that would still like, maybe honor and respect him as a
servant of relore, like a special champion of relore.
But they wouldn't follow him, right?
Like not initially as much but maybe taking it as proof of his
power is like yes relore is great but what do we care about
Westeros? Yeah, I knew.
I mean, there's so much at play here.
I doubt this is where George is gone, but I can imagine a
scenario where a relore sect established itself in a
Riverlands that with Barrick being their their champion or
their God or their prophet or whatever, and they not even
knowing all the other trappings of relore.
Yeah, they never. Knew about it, Yeah.
And no one in the Temple of Atlantis knows anything about
Barrick either. And so, but it's still you could
have this relore religion crop up, Yeah.
That's pretty interesting. I have a comment I want to put
in here that I don't think we're going to get to the bottom of,
but it's just something I was like, it's just, it's not really
what we're looking at here, But it, it really intrigued me one
time time when Mel is talking about the, the idea of how part
of the spell, part of the glamour is people's
expectations. And she's talking about she
wants Mance to wear the bone. She's worried that, you know,
the spell is not going to work as well, you know, and she she
names off some things she's like, you know, like a certain
suit of armor, a sword or, you know, a hood in your garment or
a bag of finger bones. What there's sort of an
implication there that she has or would disguise someone as
Davos. Is that is there any?
There are theories about that comment, but I've never seen one
that I was like, oh, that's got to be it.
It's, it's a very peculiar remark.
I mean, she's aware of Davos's finger bones.
She certainly knew he wore that all the time.
Figured it was just set up for the future.
It might. Be that's where I'm at right
now. What, You know, I'm like, yeah,
it could be set up, but what? Yeah.
It was too much before this episode for me to investigate
every Davos chapter and wonder if that was really him, you
know? I have always, I guess, assumed
that at some point there would be a false Davos that they would
use finger bones for that for. Maybe to convince Stannis of
something because Davos is well moved by Stannis.
Anyways, I just I figured it was foreshadowing for something we
have not yet seen from a shadowbinder.
Foreshadowing for a Shadowbinder?
It's interesting too, because we have seen Davos outside of his
own POV only in since POV. That's the only time I think we
ever see Davos from someone else's point of view.
It's always because he's the he's our insight into all those
things on that he's seeing like no one else is in those
chapters. Like Davos hasn't been at the
wall because he went off to go to Skagos.
So we haven't seen Davos through.
We've seen Melisandre think about Davos, but not in his
presence. Because in her one chapter,
Davos is, you know, she thinks Davos is dead or no, she no, she
doesn't. She thinks she knows he's alive
because she keeps his son alive and specifically thinks of
treating him well anyway. But Stannis thinks Davos is is
is probably dead because of the the lost ships or whatever.
The ship crash. Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, so let's talk about more about age and appearance and
further red priest training and powers.
Thoros doesn't seem old enough to even want to hide his
appearance. We don't know that he could
though, if he wanted to. I don't know that he has that
power. He may never have learned that.
Macoro and Benero, I don't think they're hiding their hiding
their, the parents 'cause they look very shocking and they have
the face tattoos, they have the same tattoos they were given
when they were younger. That doesn't mean they don't use
glamours, but I don't think that they're hiding their appearance.
They're naturally, you know, whereas Melisandre almost
certainly is. And as I said before, Bonero and
Melisandre both have very pale skin, which is kind of telling.
Meanwhile, Macoro's is like so black it looks like he's been
burned, not like the euphemism for, you know, black people.
No, like actual black, you know, not brown, which is what people
usually say, right. So it's possible Melisandre is
several centuries old, if not maybe more like a blood ravenous
age, like a century, century and a half.
I wouldn't go beyond 4 centuries.
To me, that's getting a bit kind of like, I don't know, it just
feels wrong, but it could definitely be.
I'm my guess lands in the 1:50 to 200 range, but I don't have a
strong opinion on it. I'm curious what the rest of
y'all think. Weigh in on what you might think
for Melisandre's age is, if you're feeling it.
Any any guesses, Sean or Shaya? Not more than two.
No, not more than two. So you're kind of in my range
then. OK, cool.
My thought is that once you get past somewhere around 150 ish,
probably even less than that, that it might as well be 34500
because I just don't think a human can naturally live that
long, right? And so once you get past that,
some new supernatural thing is taking over.
And when you add in things like she doesn't need food, right,
then I think, OK, easily could you be 3-4 hundred?
I I, I don't I think he's already dead or isn't a natural
natural human Or is there some other thing going on that
doesn't have the Kappa in life? Like she her cells aren't
degenerating and she doesn't need to absorb protein for
mitochondria or whatever. She's just a being that exists
and isn't growing older. Does that make sense?
Yeah, I always get hung up when it comes to long lived age.
I get hung up on the memory aspect of it on be able to
remember all of these things and, and have such a long life
and just how that functionally could work.
I felt that the show The Good Place actually delved into that
in an interesting way for me. Just like in terms like what can
humans process like in terms of of a length of life, where do we
start? Just like, where do our brains
just start like degenerating and we just don't remember our early
lives. You know what I mean?
So the supernatural maybe makes that excusable, but that is more
reason why to me, it's more feasible, more possible for
someone to live 200 years and remember their life.
Whereas when you get to 405 hundred, I'm like, I feel like
they would be crazy. Like I feel like they would be
functionally insane, you know, in some ways.
Maybe is keep in mind. The other series that gets into
that at the Stormlight Archive a bit where they show that these
long lived beings who, you know, it kind of really messes with
your brain. Yeah, like the the greenseers
very slowly become part of the tree.
So at some part they're not, they're not human anymore.
I don't know when that line, you draw that line.
And maybe it's a similar concept here.
It's like at some point she's just not human anymore.
Don't know if she's reached that point yet.
But not eating, not drinking, not eating, sleep.
You definitely can see how it's approaching that if it isn't
already there. And as far as her appearance,
yeah, like she's concealing what she actually looks like.
She's probably concealing her age and other things, but it's
not that she's just hiding that. She's still sculpting an
entirely new look. It's like a double whammy.
She's a hiding her appearance and her look and making one
that's very dramatic, that draws the eye, that has a lot of power
just in and of itself, which, as we've seen from her inner
monologue, is something she very much values and was probably
taught to value. You know, if you're just, you
walk in the room and you look like her and have that charisma
and that presence, that's going to win some followers for velour
and and allow you to move up the ladders of power.
And thus, when even more followers of velour, it's like,
yeah, she didn't show up in Westeros to start preaching to
the masses. She went right for a king and
was like, I'm going to convince this guy.
And then it all flows down from there.
He converts people. I don't do the conversion.
I use him to leverage more conversions.
Also worth noting, that's not necessarily even her goal.
Like maybe it's part of the master plan, but I I don't know.
Not to say she hasn't been ambitious in the past, but it
doesn't seem like she's on this mission to spread relore or
become the head of one of the temples.
She's on this mission to put Stannis in position to save the
world from the others. Right?
So it's a little bit of a different motivation she even
has from spreading the religion. You know, that's not that
there's not crossed over the Venn diagram, but it doesn't I
don't think of her ever having expressed.
I mean, she is burning people at a state for not joining the
religion, but I don't know how much of that is because she
wants people to join a religion as it is.
She just knows that this is the right religion and you might as
well join and Stannis, you're supposed to be the one.
So I guess you should get people to join.
It's all like wrapped up in this idea of stopping the other
there's. Carrot and stick she's using the
the carrot of of like we all get to live and and relore is the is
the savior. And there's also the stick of
don't do it and you're going to burn and and she doesn't feel
bad about it because like, well, look, you're going to die anyway
if we don't save the world. So like there's no no skin off
my now off my hands. I don't feel guilty about this
because you're all going to die if we don't, you know, like,
what's a few extra burnings of long way?
Accidentally, inadvertently, very helpful because every
person burned is not going to be a white right.
That's not something that they're doing on purpose, but it
is actually the greatest benefit that she's doing.
It's not really that she's helping reward converting
people, it's that there's fewer foot soldiers for the others.
It's a it's a grim way to look at it, but you're not wrong.
It's true. It's like, don't leave those
bodies behind. She knows that part.
Yeah. So, yeah, it, it.
Nina puts it as. It's almost like the politics of
appearance. She's a foreign outsider in
Stannis's course, so she has to distinguish herself as
independently powerful. She can't just only rely on what
Stannis does for her 'cause then she seems like she's just like
cozying up to power and, and getting those benefits without
providing like a, like a remora or a suckerfish.
You know, she what, what, what value do you bring to the table?
But she demonstrates a lot of value.
And that's probably what gets her attention from Stannis in
the 1st place. And she knew to do that.
She's like, I'm going to have to make a splash.
I got to show that I'm really valuable.
This is a king that cares about merit.
I need to show that I have merit.
Not not a splash, an ash. An Ash, Good point.
Good point. And you know, that coin goes
other ways too, because she, she might not have been happy about
it, but that was part of why she wasn't brought to Blackwater
Bay, because Stannis and whoever else didn't want it to seem like
she won that battle. Stannis needed to win that
battle on his own, and if she went with them, people might
attribute it to black magic or whatever.
He needed to be the one to win the battle.
Yeah, This is why she said people shouldn't care about
that. If I had gone, he would have
won. It's better 'cause like, well,
it's better to win than have that.
Like, yes, that's not the best thing for people to think, but
it's worse to lose. Yeah, that's.
True. Yeah, so you'd rather win and
have people suspicious of the reasons why you won?
So I can believe that she really is tall and red headed and maybe
even beautiful. Just that this is enhanced by
magic because the best glamours have truth to them.
They're not, it's not whole, not invented at a whole cloth.
So maybe like she really is. And I definitely think she's
strong because I don't think you can fake that, which does imply
that she's a bigger person. So which leads you to the tall
thing you know Anyway, and again the not eating and drinking
stuff. She prays that she will never
dream again one day. And that is implies like a slow
process of transformation is happening here.
I was just saying, I will say you're saying like if if under
the glamour she's really it's some of these things, right?
Yeah, I think that makes sense with her being taught like
strong, like you're saying if she takes the glamour off and
she looks decrepit like for in Game of Thrones rather, right?
If that's what she looks like, do we picture that woman as
strong? You know, like that woman
holding a banner and. Like so that's kind of
interesting to think about. Like what we think like when the
glamour drops. Like is the strength A is the
strength part of her magic? Yeah, it might be like the
Ruby's empowering that somehow. Yeah, it could be right.
Like I I don't think we should assume that she's that strong
with her glamour. It's not from the glamour that
she gets the strength, but it's from other supernatural means.
I think, yeah, I don't, I don't know that glamours give you can
because they're it's a light bending like how does that make
you stronger? You know what I mean?
Physically at least. But let's talk more about
glamour. Let's get into that specifically
and grant list sections called Glamours and Grand
Presentations. I know we could go on about this
forever, but pointing out that she could be drawing power from
multiple sources. Like she could have these real
powers from relore to like read flames and power this glamour.
But she could also have some shadow binding power that has
nothing to do with relore that lets her birth the baby.
Some potion she takes it makes her muscles regenerate or you
know, absolutely. We know she has certain powders
that can or poisons and etcetera.
So she can have power coming from multiple sources.
The glamour get makes her look a certain way, some other thing
gives her a certain strength. Absolutely.
And this is a good, good segue to glamours because glamours are
one that does seem to have that overlap.
It seems to be a power of relore, but not exclusively a
power of relore. Let's hear from John 1A, Dance
Dragons, the execution of Mance, who was actually rattleser with
the illusion from Melisandre. This comes after the death,
after the burning and we have the scene.
Mel has the crowd and grips them by the throat like a like the
world class religious performer she is quote.
I just want to say we had people ask for a cat and I, I have a
cat all over me right now and they read.
This quote and there is a cat, just not on camera.
The red woman's robes of deep dyed scarlet swirled about her,
and her coppery hair made a Halo round her face.
Tall yellow flames danced from her fingertips like claws.
Free folk, your false gods cannot help you.
Your false horn did not save you.
Your false king brought you only death, despair, defeat.
But here stands the true King. Behold his glory.
Stand. As Baratheon drew Lightbringer,
the sword glowed red and yellow and orange, alive with light.
Sean had seen the show before, but not like this.
Never before like this light bringer was the sun made steel.
When Stannis raised the blade above his head, men had to turn
their heads or cover their eyes. Horses shield and one through
his rider. The blaze in the fire pit seemed
to shrink before the storm of light, like a small dog cowering
before a larger one. The wall itself turned red and
pink and orange as waves of color danced across the ice.
Is this the power of King's blood?
I think this is the power of glamour, John.
It's like now this is. A woman who genuinely loves
pageantry. This is a woman who genuinely
loves pageantry. Yeah, lots of tricks and skills
probably being used here. She described or the you know,
the chapter described the different powder she had hidden
in her sleeves and one of them was to make of of the flames
glow a certain color or whatever.
I I wonder if she applied something to the fire to his
sword, maybe a glamour. But I get, once again, I see
multiple things could be coming into play to exacerbate this,
this light show, you know? Yeah, this is, this is very much
like a fiery sermon, literary fiery like with the actual fire
quite, quite present. The brimstone is there too, but
it's the fire and the light that really could shine out.
And there's fire. It's this fire dancing from her
fingertips. Like that's just, that's part of
the showmanship. Macoro does this through his
staff, which is now lost. Presumably it fell overboard
when he did. He didn't have it when he got
picked up by Victorian. Banaro does it too, but his is
fancier. He does like when he's doing it
in front of the crowd. The Tyrion and and Jorisy,
they're they're Valyrian glyphs. The little flames come out and
turn into glyphs and the glyphs are dark and like gloomy and,
and speak of doom. And it's like, oh, it's called
Lightbringer, but it's like, blindingly light.
So, yeah, a bright enough for a horse to almost throw its rider
like that. It's hard for me to imagine how
bright that is. Yeah, it did throw.
It did throw. You're right.
It did throw a rider. You're right.
Not almost. And that's interesting too, that
that means it's going beyond just like expectations, right,
Because the, a horse doesn't have the same expectations.
I, I can see like Ghost might not be getting tricked by this
glamour, but the horse was, you know, so there's some realness
to it and not just a glamour. Well, it's funny you say that
because Ghost is fooled by one of her glamours later, if you
recall. OK, so John's like, oh, wait,
you know, don't do that. And she's like Ghost.
And then she comes up, Ghost comes to her and is like all
friendly. And it's like, well, that's
interesting because Ghost is of bearer of red flags.
Ghost warns us about bad people and bad things.
And it's like, well, is this a is this George tricking us?
Is Melisandre fooled ghost or is this a sign that Melisandre, you
know, maybe? Is not that bad.
Not that bad or a little somewhere in between.
Well, I think it's just like, oh, her intentions towards John,
right? That is also perhaps yeah, she
has and doesn't intend John any harm.
Yeah, that's the what goes to sensing usually is is less, it's
not as much just general intentions.
You're that's a great point because what does Melisandre do
every morning? Look for danger to herself,
Ghosts looking for danger to John.
There you go. And but it's but again, this
isn't just about sight. Melisandre shows the ability to
use other forms of illusion besides light illusions like a
there's one example of sound illusion that she uses when she
undoes the glamour on Mance to reveal or on rattle shirt to
reveal that he's Mance. She says a word.
John hears one word. Mance hears a different word.
She thinks neither is the word that left her mouth.
So, so that is a whole nother angle to this.
So she's already got, she's got light and sound that she can
manipulate. It's that Yanny Laurel sound
thing all over again. Is that a red?
Is that a golden blue gold dress or a blue dress?
Did he say, did she say Yanny Laurel?
Did she say this or that? We don't know.
So she's learned how to do those things as part of learning her
glamouring. And she says that light is the
dominion of relore. So that's how glamours work,
right? It's like, that makes sense.
Yet Blood Raven uses glamours. That guy is not a red priest.
So we definitely know that they are not exclusive to relore.
Conceptually, Melissandre may be describing them correctly as,
yeah, it's light. You bending light, it creates
illusions. Like, yeah, that makes sense.
Controlling light, controlling what you see.
Yeah, that that tracks. But to say that only the Lord of
Life, Lord of like, can give that gift, that's where we can
pretty explicitly say that's not true.
Just like I'm supposing that she could draw on power outside of
relore, someone outside of relore could still draw on
relore's power. Yeah, or they're drawing from
something that they have labeled relore and it doesn't really
have a name, it's just more. Neutral or what?
Yeah, it's just some some life energy, some fire elemental
power they can draw from. Who knows, Who knows what to
call it, But yeah, you would guess though, that that the
relore would kind of push the the notion that it's theirs,
that it belongs to their God. Well, there's only one God, so
you might be claiming it comes from somewhere else, but we know
it comes from relore. Yeah, Bloodraven is just
channelling relore. That's what they would say.
But that's a that's a philosophical question, I
suppose. Back to briefly to the idea of
masks. It's funny that she's not
wearing a mask like a lot of people of a shy, but she is kind
of wearing one. It's a mask of light.
It's not a physical mask. It's a glamour mask.
So there is that and to back that concept up, we have Clayf,
who is a shadowbinder, who when she appears to Danny in the
Dothraki Sea, she's wearing a quote mask of Starlight.
There you go. That's a pretty good parallel,
right? Let's talk about flame and heat
control, something that Red Priest seemed to have an ability
to do. She is always hot and that's not
an illusion, nor is it a euphemism for her appearance,
although that is an accurate thing you could say about her.
That's not what I'm talking about.
When she's walking around, she's just melting the snow and ice,
like just just standing there. It's just melting.
She's just hot all the time. She doesn't need coats.
She's not doesn't seem cold at any point.
She's like, Nah, I'm, I'm good. And that's not fake like she
really is. Perpetual menopause, actually.
It's not hot flashes, it's just, she's just hot.
Yeah, there's no flash. It's just so with the swords
Catching Fire thing. We we must return to that
briefly. We haven't even seen her do it.
Let's not forget like you see her do it in the show a lot, but
set that aside because she has not done it in the books at all.
But I bet she can. Thoris does it like as we
described like she he seems to be doing without wildfire now.
So it seems low level or she can do much more fancy things than
that. I can imagine she can do this
like she engulfed oral the eagle in flames.
He was just flying up there and she's like burn.
But she can do that. She can probably put a sword on
fire, right? I mean, to be fair, eagles are
more flammable than swords. But like the distance, like he
just, he just like didn't even point at him as far as we know,
Just like you will burn now. Like whoa, damn.
And Veramir like felt it so 'cause it was he, he was
controlling Veramir at the time or controlling the eagle at the
time. He just, like, collapsed in
pain. And John's like, what the hell
happened? Oh, the eagle's on fire.
All right. On time for me to get away.
This is my, this is my chance to roll.
And yeah, she says, returning to this briefly, too.
She claims Stannis would not have lost at the Blackwater if
she had been there. It might be a boast, but given
she can just explode birds at a you know, I can believe she
could do some pretty astonishing things to ships or to ballista
or men. She might have been able to
direct the wildfire as it came. They might have been feeding her
powers like, oh, thank you. Now we're definitely winning
this battle. Yeah.
This is my domain. Like you.
You just walked into my you. You tried to trap us, but now
you trapped yourself. So yeah, I can see that.
Maybe Nina writes the same thing.
Maybe she could have protected the ships from the wildfire or
or something. Because Mary Mazdour was was
maybe trying to stop the burning of her own self when she was in
thrown into the pyre by Danny. But it it wasn't.
She wasn't able to stop it, but it seemed like she was trying to
do that. Bottom line, though, Melisandre
can do things we haven't seen yet.
She's implied it, and there's other reasons suspected outside
of what she said. Just given what we've seen from
other red priests, the fact that magic isn't increasing, the fact
that she says that the walls made her more powerful, we
haven't really seen the extent of that yet.
So there's more to come and we might see it through other red
priests. But yeah, and these are things
she learned a long time ago. These aren't new things, except
for in the case of literally when she says I'll be able to do
things I've never done before because of the power at the
wall. So but she knows about that.
She knows she can do that. I think it is important to keep
in mind with what you just said, that George believes that magic
should have a cost. So.
You can do things we haven't seen yet, but they may have
costs we haven't seen yet also. Good point.
Now she has found, at least in some cases, ways to outsource
that cost other people. Like Stannis is the one that
suffered from the shadow babies, not that she didn't, but he we
don't know if she did. Maybe it drew some of her life
force off too. Maybe it did some harm to her
long term. It definitely did to Stannis.
So we just don't know. And she was trying to get Davos
to do it too. And Davos was like, no, I'm not
doing that. No, it's like, oh, I can't cheat
on my wife. You know, it's like, that's what
it would be, you know. So Thoros doesn't seem to do
this, like sacrificing people to the flames or sacrificing
objects to the flames like Melisandre does.
Both. How much of this is red priest
education? How much of is it ash shy?
Probably both, because there's definitely sacrifice and
rollerism, you know, it's pretty explicit.
But she doesn't just sacrifice people.
Like I said, she sacrificed the the ship's masts that they
carved from into the Seven. That's like Davos's first
chapter. And of course, she gives all
sorts of people to the flames on top of that.
But she also burns the Weywood at Storm's End as a sacrifice to
relore. That's that's not a person you
know. But she's not the only one who
does that. Now, Hartree may not be a
person, but it is still a sort of an entity.
And it's, I think, a sacrifice. You know what I mean?
Like in many ways, it may be hard for us to understand.
Maybe Melisandre doesn't doesn't understand him.
I can imagine she might have a notion but just doesn't believe
it. That's a Bad Religion anyway,
you know. But yeah, Bloodraven, Bloodraven
might have felt that, you know? So she learned that somewhere.
She learned that there's power and sacrifice.
There's power. And, you know, like she says
it's like, well, if you have a man who has 1000 cows and
sacrifices is one that's no true cow, that's no true sacrifice.
She's the one who says that. And that's part of her argument
to Stannis to sacrifice Adric Storm.
He's like, yeah, he's your he's your nephew.
But that's part of what makes it a great sacrifice is that's
that's that's a good thing, not a bad thing, you know, and like,
but this is what she was taught. This is her education.
This is how she was brought to believe.
Like, yeah, the more powerful the, the bigger the sacrifice,
the more response you get from the man upstairs.
It might not just be like her education which she was taught
to believe. It might be her experience.
She witnessed this to be true over and over again.
So. Good point, good point.
Now like again, Thoris doesn't do this, so it isn't.
This is another example of not all red priests have the same
cultural values. Not all red temples teach their
priests the same things. They don't all worship the same
way. They don't all feel the same way
about certain aspects of what their brethren at other red
temples might believe. If some of that's cultural, some
of that's just the way it developed, yeah.
You remind me of something else I meant to say earlier when we
were talking about like how some people drafted enslaved,
whatever brought into real or they show a certain aptitude or
talent for something and they to get promoted or advanced or
focused in on one thing they might show is a willingness to
do it. Like, Hey, kill these kittens
and you can, you know, make the flames burn longer.
And some little girls might be like, I don't want to kill the
kittens. All right, you're not promoted.
The the mean little boy's like I'll kill kittens.
I don't care. All right, you're getting
promoted, you know. That's very similar to the
Unsullied dog killing thing that they have to do, which is
horrible. Yeah.
So maybe that's part of her lore upbringing is they they do some
they, they they devise these tests for the young folk to get
them more acclimated to sacrifice and giving up the
earthly things to to further the the grand goal of relore.
I mean, yeah, it's not just Edric Storm.
She wants to burn and she burns leeches and does the whole
Joffrey's going to die. Renly's going to die, Rob's
going to die. Like, where did she learn the
power of King's blood? Like that isn't something we
hear the other red priest talk about.
Maybe we just haven't had the opportunity, maybe just hasn't
come up. But Thoros doesn't say anything
about King's blood. Neither does Banero, neither
does Macoro. Again, we haven't exactly had a
lot of conversations with these characters, but this might be
more of an Ash Eye thing or. It's also something like, how do
you get trained in this? How do they get King's blood to
test it out or to train the acolytes or see who's good at it
or whatever? How do I identify King's Blood
101? Yeah, it's a class she took.
Entry level. Yeah.
Flame reading. Let's talk about flame reading.
That's one of the biggest, most glaring, pun intended powers
that Red priests have, one that we explicitly all have.
It's maybe the only power that all Red priests seem to have is
reading the flames. And all three, like I said, all
three besides the Bravosi guy, we don't know if he can read
flames, probably can, but these other ones all can.
So let's let's get her insight on it from her internal
monologue. Quote.
It was an art, and like all arts, it demanded mastery,
discipline, study, pain that too relore spoke to his chosen ones
through blessed fire, in a language of ash and cinder and
twisting flame that only a God could truly grasp.
Melisandre had practiced her art for years beyond count, and she
had paid the price. Years beyond count definitely
gives us some of that hint to her being a lot older than she
looks. Some of that sense comes from
this and the pain of paying a price.
This is a form of sacrifice, suffering for a greater goal or
a greater good. And yeah, we've see this in
other places. It's a it's like you said, Sean
earlier, very, very sagely that yes, this is a a recurring theme
of George RR Martin, that these powers have to be paid for.
Danny had to be willing to step into the fire to hatch those
Dragons. Barrick gave his life time and
time again and then finally gave it away to to Stoneheart.
And Nina says for all the real moral complexity of Melisandre,
she certainly understands that it's supernatural is not
something that can be handed to her.
She treats it with respect, not as a it's a tool, but it's a
fool that she has to respect. It's a it's almost a wild
animal. It's uncertain.
It's changing like fire itself. Fire is unpredictable.
Fire is is chaotic. So it it makes sort of sense
that you would personify these things in a similar way, like
using fire as sort of a model for a lot of how things in the
rest of the world work. Again, the first thing they
learn to see in the flames is danger to themselves.
So the first thing they learn is to keep the fire going.
That's the first basic thing they learn.
But the first magical thing they learn is to see flames, See the
danger to yourself in the flames, Being confident in that.
Melisandre's old enough that she's probably had several times
where she's like, Yep, I saw that danger to myself.
I prevented it how many times before.
She's like, really confident in there.
I was like, yeah, I, I would have died half a dozen times by
now if not for my flame reading. And that would make her very
confident. It's like, yeah, I'm not going
to die because I will see it coming.
And that's, yeah, that's really important.
It might be really important because we've talked a few times
about the idea that she seems to be kind of ahead of the curve on
these visions, so much so that she's like gone to Westeros and,
you know, married up with Stannis, right, Where other
people are kind of behind The thing is part of that part of
going to Westeros and inserting herself into Stannis's court,
there's some danger involved, as we saw with Crescent.
Maybe some other dangers have happened and are yet to happen,
right? Because even Crescent is someone
you maybe you wouldn't see danger coming from like an old
man, right? But there's a bunch of other
like Knights with swords and you know, violent people around.
Other priests might have not dared put themselves into this
situation into the 1st place because it's so dangerous, but
she is so confident and skilled at reading the flames, she's
more willing to do it than other people.
Does that make sense? Yeah, it might be.
It might be a combination of her being better reading the visions
to let her think Stannis is there is the one or the a bigger
threat is coming. But also she's more willing to
go do something about it because she is more confident in danger.
And then the other people are because they're not as good at
detecting danger to themselves. Some people maybe tried to do
something and got killed because I didn't see the danger coming.
Or other people have been nearly killed or afraid to try again
because they're not good enough for reading that.
But she is, so her confidence and her skill combined have put
her into the position she's in now.
Competence and confidence, yes, yeah, I like it.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And after so many iterations,
yeah, her confidence would just continue to grow.
And it's also just rotated faith.
Like, no, I have, I'm here for a purpose, I have a destiny, etc.
I won't die before that. But of course you have to cross
your eyes and dot your TS. Yes, I said that backwards on
purpose. Now she says, or thanks to
herself. There was no one even in her
order who had her skill at seeing the secrets half revealed
and half concealed within the sacred flames.
We quoted that before, but important enough to say again,
it doesn't really come off as boastful.
Like, it's confident, but not boastful.
It's not like I'm better than everybody else.
No, it's just this reads to me like someone who knows.
Like she's compared herself specifically, she's seen how
other red priests do this and they come up short, like she is
better. On the other hand, like how
many, like there's this a big world, there's a lot of red
priests. How does she really know that
she's the best? Or you know, and is that still
true? Was it true one day and not
anymore? I don't know.
Magic has changed the the waves of magic in and out.
I don't know where she gets such confidence that she's the best,
but I do understand why she has confidence.
By the way, one way you might get that confidence is if you're
significantly better than the other people who are respected.
For it. That's true, right?
Good. Point like if you if you run a
race in, I don't know, in like the the US national tournament
and you blow everyone else away, you might think I'm the best in
the world. Like, like maybe if there was
someone else faster, how much faster are they than all the
other? I just, I just beat everyone
else easily. Does that make sense?
And the United States is a lot of competition, so probably not,
you know? You don't know for sure, but you
just everyone you've ever competed against, you beat by a
mile. You're just like, you get that
kind of like, well, it's hard to believe that someone else is
fast as me. Yeah, you might be wrong, but
you have a. Certain if it was at the
Olympics, at the Olympics and you easily beat everyone.
I mean, I guess maybe there's some dude in Jamaica and come to
the Olympics, but everyone that was here, I beat them easily.
So I probably would beat them too you.
Know. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So again, I want to repeat that while Melisandre has gotten a
lot of interpretations wrong, just going through rereading
every scene she was in and and getting like AI didn't make a
list of all her predictions, but the number she gets right is
kind of astonishing. I've never focused just on
Melisandre's only like this. And so I didn't, I didn't have
this awareness before. But yeah, she gets so many of
them right. It's yeah, the wrong ones stand
out more, but that's why I want to reiterate how many ones she
gets right. Because of that, I think more
people have noticed the wrong ones.
This next text is called Straight out of Asha.
At one point she went or was sent to Asha.
Again. We don't know which it was,
whether the Red Temple sent her because of her talent and wanted
to develop it more. Asha would probably have a lot
of talent there already. It's such a sorceress city, but
maybe she's just stood out and was just that good.
It's also the place by quote UN quote, the shadow, which is,
yeah, you'd think that's Relore's dominion.
He's a God of flame and shadow. And you're like, well, that's
maybe closer to him in some way or closer to the heart of him.
I don't know what how you would see this as a zealot, but if she
went on her own, the entire in place again is is tied to her
flame reading skill. She's like, yo, I'm just better
than this at everybody. I'm going to develop this even
further. I want to learn more about what
I might be able to see what I'm seeing here.
Delving into the ancient mysteries, learning more about
history, learning more about a shy and the things that a shy
has to teach her would help her interpret her visions even more.
She would broaden her horizons, learn about what else is out
there to you know, and thus be more able to comprehend what
she's seeing. Or at least that might be
thinking. I'm sort of vamping here, but
that's it. It reads that that sounds
intuitively right to me. And there's just power itself,
like A Song of Ice and Fire is among many things, talks about
power. One of the main themes is power.
Power corrupting the pursuit of power, the use of power.
The wall increases her power. She thinks of it as a hinge of
the world. And the only place that came
close before it was Ash Eye, which implies that Ash Eye is
maybe the second most powerful. So that's a reason to go there
too. Like, well, I use magic.
If I go there, my magic will be powerful.
And it seems kind of straightforward when you say it
that way. But there's also other little
hints that might tie in. Quaithe again, a shadow binder
from Ash Eye tells Danny to reach the light, you must pass
beneath the shadow. Is Melisandre aware of that
phrase, of that concept within the prophecies?
Is she trying to follow that same path to try to unearth some
of these mysteries? Because not only is it an
ancient repository of sorcery, again, it's probably the best
place and not the only place in the world to find old texts on
Azora High. So you would think Relores would
want to work on that or learn about it.
And maybe even more so in these last few years when there's
maybe more reason to suspect that these things are coming to
a head. Azora High, the birth of Azor
High may be closer to coming. Or maybe it's already happened.
According to her, it has like she thinks it's Stannis.
According to Banero, it's it's Danny.
Now we get an example of this when she's burning the seven
wooden gods in a Clash of Kings quote.
In ancient books of a shy, it is written that there will come a
day after a long summer when the stars bleed and the cold breath
of darkness falls heavy on the world.
In this dread hour, a warrior shall draw from the fire a
burning sword, and that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red
Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azorahai.
Come again, and the darkness shall flee before him.
She prays to the relor in at least three tongues when is one
of which is the speech of Ashai When she sings in Ashai at one
point, which is must sound really creepy.
Is this where she learned about the power of King's blood Ashai?
I figure it's more likely she learned it there than than from
the Red priests, but maybe again the Red priests.
No other Red priest refers to the power of King's blood.
The only other person who says that is Maester Eamonn, and it's
in the context of Melisandre may be Burning Manse's child.
So yeah, so this is a bit of a mystery that maybe goes off the
beaten path of just relore stuff and maybe another example of her
cross training in other magical disciplines.
I like to say that if this were D&D, she's multiclass.
A lot of red priests are clerics.
She's cleric, slash sorcerer, and maybe multiple types of
sorcerer, maybe multiple types of cleric, I don't know.
But she is cross trained. She whatever, however you want
to phrase it, she's got skills outside of what normal red
priests learn. And that is a lot of this right
here. For example, dragon lore.
I brought that up with me in the intro and haven't said it since.
Ash Eye is filled with knowledge about dragon lore.
Danny was originally going to go to Ash Eye.
George wrote it that way. That's his plan was to send her
there, but he didn't. So in a lot of ways, you wonder,
maybe Melisandre is bringing Ash Eye to Danny since she's not
going to Ash Eye. Who else knows more about Ash
Eye than her? Who else has this collected
knowledge? Mary Mazdor was burned to death.
She and she didn't spend nearly as much time there.
Marwin. OK, Marwin has been to Ash Eye
and he supposedly is going to Danny, but is that enough?
Is that you know? Yeah.
So I think this could be this could be a huge key to her long
term role in the story, her untapped dragon lore, which I
imagine is there, but she has very little reason to have
spoken of it yet. You know, that might be some
seed planning for Marwin to meet with Danny and tell us some
certain things that Danny is able to shrug off.
But then she encounters Melisandre saying the same
things that Dan's like, OK, I guess I have to address this
now. I have to.
I can't just blow this off, especially if Marwin and or
Melisandre shows some real power.
Never mind what Quaithe might have a role in all this still
too, right? So.
Right on. Yeah, well said.
Let's talk a little bit about shadow binding.
Let's add this into the mix now. Quaithe, Miri Mazdor, and maybe
Marwin are the only ones who have explicitly have knowledge
of shadow binding or the ability to do it.
But only Quaithe is actually from Ash Eye that we know of or
has spent like a large amount of time there.
Miri Mazdor has studied there, Marwin studied there, but they
didn't like live there for super long periods of time as far as
we can tell. I kind of doubt Marwin is
actually able to bind shadows. He just knows about the the
magic. I don't think he actually cast
the spells, but maybe she summons a shadow twice that we
see and it's clearly no simple thing.
We get a really good look at it in that Davos chapter when she
sends the shadow to kill Courtney Penrose.
We've already seen the shadow kill Renly by this point, but we
see that from Brienne's perspective and we don't see the
shadow being birthed, we just see it enter the room, kill
Renly, and that's that. This is a different angle when
Davos sees it being born, and it's super creepy.
But this is also maybe part of the reason she glamours herself.
If the creation of shadows takes a toll on her, like we talked
about earlier, it might she might want to keep that under
wraps. But just think about the
implications of your. How the heck do you, like, learn
the skill? How do you practice this one?
Like, what's the test run of a shadow baby?
Like, yeah, just where do you, like, get pregnant from a
hapless slave person and then just send that out?
Like, yeah, where do you like, how do you test run this crazy
to imagine? Might be dark to imagine.
I can imagine some of the red priests are excited to test this
out right? Like, oh Alessandra, hey, we
need to test this. Yeah, do they have like
volunteers from from lesser figures within the already of
like the fiery hand, like the warriors or the the sex workers?
Like there'd have to be male sex workers to have a shadow baby
with Melisandre. But yeah, like it's weird to
kind of think about the nitty gritty of this part.
Like, I don't know. So again, there's no evidence
that Thoros and Macoro or Benero can do anything like this.
I mean, they're men, so they can't birth shadow babies.
But like any kind of shadow binding can they do no evidence
they can't. And it's interesting to think
about this though, because This is why it all slid under the
radar. And maybe it's hard to notice in
the 1st place, this difference because rewards the God of flame
and shadow. Shadow binding kind of fits with
what they would be able to do but it but there's strong
evidence that she is an exception yet it would make
sense. And Nina has this great idea
that I love that given relorists attention to shadow and the ash
eye being a place cast in shadow with all these ancient mysteries
and other lore that are associated that quite possibly
there's like a a sect within relore that really values the
shadow and thinks this is a big part of it.
So shadow biting is part of their arsenal because it fits in
with their viewpoint and people all the way over in mirror who
don't live anywhere near the shadow, who don't have access to
this magic in the 1st place. They never got into that, you
know, why would they have? Like, where would you learn
that? If you live in mirror, how are
you going to learn how to shadow?
Who's going to do? Who's the shadow binder that
teaches you living out there? Right.
But the, the, the women, the, the gender thing also kind of
makes it a little confusing because it's like the other red
priests we've seen, even if they could shadowbind, they aren't
women. They don't have wombs.
Like they can't, they can't do that.
So it's it's hidden behind other layers of of mystery here.
Maybe a moon is not required. Maybe a womb isn't required.
Don't limit the men's ability here, Aziz.
You could grow a baby in your sack.
Yeah, that's how it works. Hey, we're already over the line
here, right? Yeah.
So it we're also told that only shadow binders travel up the Ash
River. Is this like a a rite of passage
or like why do they do it? You know, Or is it just some
rumor that's twisted by the game of telephone?
Hasn't Alessandra done this? I'm really wondering like this.
Melisandre gone to the to Stig eye.
She gone up the ash river to the the darkness where Dragons and
demons live in caves and darkness.
It sounds exaggerated, but maybe there's a reason to go there.
Maybe she's learned things there, resurrections of power we
haven't seen her do except on the show, but it seems not
unlikely. Again, she seems way more
powerful than Thoros and Thoros has done it.
But consider this cross training again comes up.
Melisandre has access to two at least forms of magic that seems
to have some form of necromancy involved.
A the relore version that we saw yes on TV, but more relevantly
we saw with Thoros resurrecting Barrack multiple times and then
Barracks somehow taking charge of that himself and passing it
on to Catelyn. But what about Khal Drogo?
Miri Mazdour used shadow binding to extend his life.
And of course it was a little bit of a trick, like Danny
didn't know what she was getting into, but it did work to a
certain extent. He was kept alive, yes.
He was basically a had the brain of a horse or whatever,
catatonic and what is life when all is gone?
Like all these metaphors. But technically his heart was
beating. He was alive.
So Melisandre might know how to do that too.
So she might have two different forms of magic that can animate
somebody, which is a lot of implications for John and and
maybe other people. It's also worth noting that
Thoreau's didn't really have any training in that he.
Just did it. Yeah, it was kind of an.
Accident, an accident almost, right?
So whether Melisandre has the ability or knowledge or training
or whatever, she still might be able to do it without realizing
it. And, and you know, that might be
the case with someone for other powers too.
They might have just been bestowed a punch.
She might have stumbled into it, right?
You know, I can imagine she seems like she has trained and
learned and sacrificed her way along all this, but it doesn't
mean she couldn't have had an aptitude due to being the chosen
one of some sort in the 1st place.
Like thoroughs, you know? Agreed.
Now her Ruby.
Her Ruby is of enough interest to have its own page on the
wiki. She has a page and then Mel's,
then then Mel's on. Ruby has a page now.
She has it from the beginning. And by the beginning I mean from
the first scene she appears in. It's a safe bet bus that she
arrived in Westeros with it. Pretty safe bet.
It has glowed on several occasions.
It gets mentioned a lot as drinking the light or reflecting
the light or whatever, but it pulses when she's explicitly
doing magical things and it's pretty clearly connected to
glamours. It likely has a role in the
illusion around her appearance, but it probably does more than
that. That's probably not it's only
role. For example, she touches her
Ruby on her neck to break the glamour on Mance.
So John can see that he's not rattle shirt that he is actually
Mance and he is bound to her in some unknown way by the Ruby
bracelet that that he's wearing. And it's sort of it's like she
thinks of it as a master Ruby and a slave Ruby.
So there's some sort of gemstone sorcery going on here.
And he she can feel things through the bond, like she can
feel things that's happening to him or, you know, like just kind
of like how she felt the the burning of actual rattle shirt
when he was in the cage there. And as she thought that the Ruby
was blackening and she thought that her skin might burn and
smoke and people might actually see that she was so worried
about that happening. And then John kind of saved her
a bit from that pain and that reveal by killing Rattle shirt
with arrows. So Thoros and Macoro don't use
rubies. Madero doesn't seem to have any
sort of gemstone either. So this is interesting.
This is yet another maybe like difference between her and the
other red priests. And again, Ash Eye seems like
the the reason to for this difference.
Ash Eye is known for it's the readiest supply of gems perhaps
in the entire world. It's it's a one of the reasons
traders are willing to go there despite all the darkness and
sketchy things that go on there is there's big profit to be made
because of the food supply issue that they have there.
They are willing to trade golds and gems in great amounts for
food because it's hard to grow food there because something's
wrong that region, something's very magically wrong with that
region. So gemstone enchantment being a
like a common ish thing and Asha makes so much sense given all
that right? If not Asha, I still think that
she may have searched far and wide to get this special Ruby.
Asha makes a lot of sense, but she talks about having come
across with this chest, this running low, right?
And it was in the context of the different potions and powders
and stuff that she had hidden. And she, she kind of said my, my
real spells will be enough. My, my power here is greater.
She, she wasn't too worried about running out of some of her
tricks, but she knows how to make them, but doesn't have the
rare ingredients, is what she said.
And so she may have had to go far and wide to get these rare
ingredients. She might have got the Rubio on
the way. Yeah, that's true.
The magical gem might have been one of those things.
Yeah, absolutely. I like that idea.
So let's talk about the influence on Stannis.
We've got a few things left for this episode.
Now, she doesn't know Stannis until she gets there, but she
had seen him in visions or kind of had an idea of what the
person she was looking for would be like.
Now, clearly she got some things wrong, but Stannis does have an
awful lot of qualities that that Danny has like in in Danny has
them in Greater quantity or the quality even.
But Stannis does echo a lot of those things.
And of course Dragonstone is part of that, which we'll talk
in a minute. So she but she knew what to do.
She knew how to work her way up the hierarchy.
She started with Solis kind of a weak link, maybe the the the
queen, the impressionable person that's a little desperate
because she wants to have children and she's traumatized
by having miscarriages and all this.
She badly wants to have a son. So there's this.
She's kind of a mark, you know, in that sense from a religious
perspective, like there's there's my in route and then she
works on Solis for a while. Solis is converted.
That gives her an in route with Stannis.
These are things she had to have learned back in either from the
red priests or from this is more likely a red priest thing than
an ash eye thing. Sorcery.
I tend to lean towards the ash eye, but just like how to
infiltrate a hierarchy that sounds like red priest business,
like how to convert people and, and all that.
Now Stannis is iron and because of that, we're told he will
break before he bends. I have recently read the Red
rising series, which I love. Just one of my favorite become
one of my favorite series of all time.
And it's a great parallel here because she's red.
But the, the metaphor and this guy Pierce Brown, who wrote Red
rising, heavily influenced by George RR Martin.
There's so many Easter eggs and, and, and homages to George, and
one of them is this. He's like, well, he uses that
metaphor of iron. We'll break before he says,
well, you need to become a blacksmith and soften the metal,
then it will bend. He's like, oh, great response to
that. And that's what Melisandre does.
She's a freaking maid of fire. She softens the iron that is
Stannis in order to move him and get him to do things.
The only other person we really see soften him is Davos, and in
a different way, like Davos doesn't get him to cheat on his
wife, you know, or to sleep with him.
You know, it's a whole different form of relationship, y'all.
So it's, there's things that Melisandre gets and to do that
no one else can do. And I think it's this metaphor
works really well. It's because she's the fire,
he's the iron. And only a hot fire hot enough
to soften iron will, will move a man of iron.
Davos can get Stannis to think about what's really right and
change what he was going to do based on it.
Melisandre can get Stannis to do things even though he knows
they're not really right. Does that make sense?
Not that she only always does that, but that's the influence
that she, the potential sometimes 'cause that that was,
she did convince him, I think, to go to the Wall, right?
Like, don't become keen to save the Kingdom.
Save the Kingdom. Davos brings the idea.
And Melisandre? Yep, you're right.
And that was like, oh, you agree with me?
Hell, yeah. All right.
So yeah, yeah. It was a great moment because
she's like, oh, Davos was like, oh, all right, I didn't expect
to have your support. But that's going to make sure
that means we're definitely going to convince him if both of
us are both the angels on Stannis's shoulder agree, that's
probably going to probably going to move him.
And indeed, it did. So.
And the other. The other thing is interesting
is Stannis is also a little bit of a mark.
Not as much as Solis, perhaps, but Stannis hates the Seven
because of his parents drowned in front of him or nearby.
And that's just like he's got the kind of highborn pride that
you can actually reject the gods for the most people just don't
have that kind of like it's too much to reject the gods.
Like, I'm not, I'm not a king. I can't do that, you know?
But he, he's that got that kind of strength, that pride, that
stubbornness to do such a thing like that, even though in the
face of so many of his followers being against it, right?
Most people just wouldn't have the the guts to do something
like that. So, but yeah.
And let's let's be honest, Stannis is absolutely moved by
the way she looks like that's a thing, right?
Her appearance moves. Stannis.
He's attracted to her. He won't admit it, but everyone
knows it. You and I, you know it, I know
it. We all know it.
It's it's part of it. And that's part of his.
It's part of her value, her demonstrating value.
She has powers, she has ability, she has skills, but she also has
personal like charm. He, he, he wants to be around
her. He wants to be accepted by her.
He wants a beautiful woman to like him.
You know, this is a very basic thing that you might not apply
that kind of thinking to Stannis, but you should, in my
opinion, he is, he is unloved. As much as he talks about how I
don't, I don't know why I don't need love.
Why can I, why would I care about something I've never had?
All that stuff, you know. But he's a bitter, he does want
to be loved, you know, and this isn't love.
But what does Stannis know about real love?
He just is as close as he gets to it.
He's not getting it from Solis and he didn't get it from his
brothers. She knows that's lacking and and
she fills that for him to move him.
That's the that's, that's the melt.
That's the softening of the iron that I'm talking about South in
terms of preparations, like did she see Stannis or just the
place? Did she see Solis?
What are these things she see in the fire?
There's so many possibilities because as I said multiple times
in this episode, going through all her chapters or the chapter
she's in, because she's only has the one, right, all the things
she says. There's so many times where she
predicts something accurately. Little things, big things.
So did she. It's, it's, it's not a big thing
to think that maybe she saw Stannis or Solis or whatever
before she came to Westeros. And that's part of why she came
in the 1st place, because something kicked it off.
Something, some straw that broke the camel's back, some final
vision. Something happened that made
Melisandre say, OK, I got to go to Westeros.
Some final moment, some final confluence of events, or maybe
whether it was confluence or some singular event, I don't
know, but something made her finally decide to set sail for
Westeros, and she went to Dragonstone, not anywhere else.
She didn't go to Drift Mark, she didn't go to King's Landing, she
didn't go to the North, she didn't go to the Wall.
She didn't go to wherever else. She went to Dragonstone very
specifically. Let's have a quote under Dreams
of Dragonstone to kick off this section.
He could see her, the heart-shaped face, the red eyes,
the long coppery hair, her red gowns moving like flames as she
walked, a swirl of silk and satin.
She had come from a shy in the east.
She had come to Dragonstone and Juan Solis and her Queens men
for her alien God, and then the King Stannis Baratheon himself.
He had gone so far as to put the fiery heart on his banners, the
fiery heart of Relore, Lord of Light and God of flame and
shadow. George said back in 2012 that
she came on her own. She was not sent.
So when we asked the question of whether she was sent to Ash I or
not by Red Temple hierarchy, we know that's a possibility.
But she was not sent by anybody but herself.
And perhaps what she saw in her visions and what George actually
said was that she, quote, has her own agenda.
I mean, it's not some deep dark agenda from seeing inside her
head. We know that she's sincere in
some things, but she's definitely, there's definitely
some things she's doing that maybe haven't fully been
revealed as to her agenda. My best guess is pretty
straightforward. She saw things in her visions
that convinced her to come to Westeros, to Dragon Son
specifically, that other Red priests weren't seeing.
If other Red priests were having these visions, they would have
conferred, commiserated, said yeah, I saw that too.
I saw something like that. They might have compared notes,
but no one else was on board with her.
She came alone. That by itself is very
interesting. How does she?
How is she? Both very powerful within her
order. One of the most powerful Flame
readers, if not the most, yet unable to convince anyone else
of what she's seeing. That is a big mystery that I
assume is going to be revealed at some point, but it's there's
got to be something to it. Like she is wrong about it being
standard. Maybe that's what it was.
They're like, no, you're just wrong.
Like we that's wrong. But is it really that simple
that just they're like, Nah, I can't be that guy, you know?
Because she was wrong about some piece of it, it was easier for
them to reject the entirety, just like she was wrong about it
being Arya. So John's like it's easier for
John to dismiss other thing that she's saying.
Beware of the daggers in the night or whatever, you know.
So. So maybe they knew from some
vision or something happening that some other piece that she
predicted was wrong. Especially if they had seen some
of the other stuff and had their own interpretations.
And for a minute she got their attention but then turned out to
be wrong about some peace. No, no, they just missed it all.
But she still knows or believes. Yeah.
Etcetera, etcetera. So more recently apparently
since she's come to Westeros is when Benaro and Macoro and some
other red priests potentially have started preaching that
Daenerys is his Ori. Like that wasn't happening when
Melisandre first came to Westeros, so that is happened
since then. So Melisandre was a little ahead
of the curve on realizing that the time is now, but she's
identified the wrong figure that's going to lead humanity
against the darkness or that will be vital, Although maybe
they'll both be vital. Stannis is doing things that
matter. There is a singular figure.
Yeah, that is a whole nother ball of wax.
I totally agree with it. There is a good reason to think
there's multiple Azores highs. That would explain a lot.
Mache and I have been on beating that drum for a long time and it
certainly applies here. You can find I think an episode
if you're a Patreon only Or is it on public?
I don't recall it was. It was a panel we did at Econ of
Thrones a long time ago, and a lot of those are not published
as regular episodes anymore because the audio quality is not
as good on some of those. But you can definitely get it.
If you're a patron, I think you might be able to get it.
Otherwise, I forget, yeah. That's what you would look up
the many faced Azora High, yeah, through Westeros and see if you
can find it. But I think that's the main
place we've talked about that. If you have trouble finding it
or any other episode, always feel free to reach out to us.
We can point you in the right direction.
And if we look at mistakes Mel Saunders made, as much as I've
pointed out how many times she's been right, obviously she's been
wrong. And if we look at some of those
mistakes, we've got to get an idea of how other people might
not have trusted her and said or they're not seeing the things
she is like, well, I, I don't, I can't corroborate your vision.
So I'm not going to go. I'm not going to follow you.
Like she saw it like you. You brought up earlier, Sean,
she saw blood Raven and Bran and didn't know what she was seeing.
She saw the horrors at Heart Home to some extent.
We talked, we quoted her and we did our Heart Home episode and
she didn't exactly know what she was seeing.
But we had a better idea as readers because we've seen some
things that she hasn't. She sees the towers crumbling
into the sea and isn't sure, but constantly says, yeah, E watch,
which gives us an insight into how she she gives confidence and
things that she's not confident in.
And she's like, OK, well, what other things have you said
confidently that you don't actually have confidence in?
And we're pretty sure it's not E watch.
It could be, but it might not be.
And she and her and her lack of certainty is telling.
And of course she mistook Alice Karstark for or Arya for Alice
Karstark, whatever backwards. So that wasn't so much as a
mistake as it was a missed guest.
You can call that a mistake. She shouldn't have been so
confident. But she was right that it was an
important person and she saw the part.
She got a lot of the details right.
She was just kind of wrong about the identity and this might be a
sign as to how she thinks. She's like, oh, who else could
it be? She's it was it was kind of
illogical. She's like, who else could it
be? It's a girl in grey on a dying.
What's got to be Aria? Like what?
Why does it have to be Aria? It's like.
What? It doesn't have to be, but the
there is a strong likelihood. It makes sense in a lot of ways.
Kind of like I was supposing that she may have just seen
those purple crystals laid out and pieced together.
I'm looking for danger. The Stranglers made out of
purple crystals. OK.
Maybe this is the danger I'm facing with someone poisoning
crust in my point. Yeah.
She could get one little bit and make a lot of solid conclusions.
It didn't have to be true. Right.
I wish I maybe in fact, maybe she was seeing a vision of
Joffrey being killed and got lucky, right, You know, but but
you can see how sometimes you know, what's most likely to be
true usually ends up being true. And you'd be right a lot of
times. And especially when you're like
trying to protect your life or exude confidence and power, all
these other things that it's, it's worth it.
The times that she is confident when she shouldn't be is worth
it for the times that she is right or that she maintains her
position of power and everything else.
But every now and then it bites her, you know?
Sure. Yeah, I like that.
Here's a quote. Candidate for what might
resemble, or the basic idea of what she might have been seeing
in her flames before she came to Westeros.
He is the Lord's chosen, the Warrior of Fire.
I have seen him leading the fight against the dark.
I have seen it in the flames. And as we've said, like she's
had so many things to be confident in, why not believe
her? So it's a dichotomy.
Like, yeah, she's got confidence because she sees so many things
other people don't, but she's maybe not great at the
interpretation. Like maybe the best at seeing
things, but not the best at interpretations of what those
things are. So maybe not enough humility
there. Although I got to say these
things that she's making mistakes with, she might be
stretching the limits of her power, right?
I can see like when she's on at home, if you will, and looking
for things that are more standard or normal or expected
or or observable. She might hit more often.
But she's reaching. She's in like a new land
surrounded by new people looking for this big power future event.
It she's just in a realm where she's more likely to get it
wrong. Does that make sense?
It's like, I don't know if this is a big example, but maybe a
sports commentator or a gambler that usually studies football
and suddenly they're being asked to look at basketball.
They have a lot of groundwork. They're going to get a lot of
stuff right, but they're in this new environment that's going to
make them more likely to make get some things wrong, but they
might still be doing better than anyone else.
You know, but. Difference in better than anyone
else is not the same as. Perfect, right.
And some people are doing it better than her in that Benero
believes Danny is Azor High, which I think that's a lot more
likely to be right than Stannis, even if, yeah, maybe there are
multiple Azor High figures, but I still think Danny's more
important. And where did this come from?
Like, is he having visions all of a sudden?
We have we have an even less idea of where he got this idea,
even though it does seem more true, but it's it's just by the
fact that Melisandre hasn't had this realization has never
perceived Danny at all by itself is a showing her blind spot or
showing that she has blind spots, even though there's
plenty of other examples. That's probably the biggest one.
Now that the cross training also might explain why she got ahead
like the fact that she knows shadow binding is other things.
That might be why she A has more confidence in her abilities and
sees things that other people don't and B why they some of
them don't believe her or don't didn't follow her because she's
a little too rogue. Perhaps in her her cross
training or her overlap. Maybe they don't trust some of
those non relore elements. I don't know.
I could see that she stayed in Ash Eye for a century or more
until the flames, just the thing she was seeing told her that now
is the time or now is it's starting or it's about to start.
Time to make your move, get ahead of things rather than
react to them as they're happening.
Certainly by then she would have graduated, whatever that means
from acolyte status and gone up the hierarchy, whatever that
even is, and in in addition learned all these things at Ash
Eye. But she doesn't have followers,
which by itself is really interesting that she doesn't
have followers. That by itself continues to
baffle me and make me curious, and I wonder what why that?
Is she might have had a glass ceiling matter.
Realize I'm only ever going to get so high in this religion.
They're never going to give me my own followers.
I'm never going to be the high priest, etcetera, etcetera.
I'm striking out on my own. Yeah, I think it is interesting
to think about. Like, yes, in Game of Thrones,
the show, we see Kimvara, right? In the books, we don't see
another red priestess that is high in the order of things.
Whether they exist or not, we just can't say, right?
So I think it's as good of a reason as any, right?
You're right. Yeah, Like where are the other
ranking female high priests? I mean, we've only got 5 total.
So like, yeah, four men, one woman.
It's not necessarily a pattern, but it could be.
It could be. When Canvaro was in the show, we
didn't get any word of God from George.
It was like, that's wrong or anything like that.
I think there are lots of high priestesses.
I just don't think that necessarily they are in the
upper echelons. Yeah, I agree.
And even if there's lots, I'm making numbers up, but let's say
there's 50 or 60, there might be 500 male and only 50 or 60
females. Yeah, right.
Yeah, that's that's not unlikely too.
Like kind of like how many ladies versus Lords there are
for a lot have been for a lot of these castles, like there's not
none. Well, in a few cases there are,
but yeah, the disparity is huge. So Melisandre, if we think about
possibly where the disconnect is and what she saw in her visions
versus what the reality is or the reality as we perceive it,
is that she didn't see a person so much.
She did see Stannis fighting the other.
She didn't see Stannis leading the fight against the dark
because that is going to happen. It's just that he's not the
going to going to be the one that wins it.
And she saw where this person came from.
She may have even seen the eventual savior at Dragonstone
and mistaken Stannis for Danny because she had already assumed
it was Stannis because of he's the guy that lives there.
He has some Targaryen heritage, salt and smoke, his dragonstone,
blah blah blah. So you can see why she reached
that conclusion because he does check off the boxes.
It's just that Danny does it better.
And in some ways, even though Banero or Macor or whoever might
be looking at Danny, they still might be making a mistake that
Melisandre is also making, is overlooking John, and her
mistake of going after Stannis is still getting her closer to
John. She might still come to a
revelation that they're missing quicker than they will, you
know? It's leading her in the right
direction if it even if she hasn't, it hasn't clicked for
her yet. Yeah, 'cause you really, as you
probably noticed when you were rereading, you saw she's like, I
keep just looking. I keep asking for a vision of my
love, my savior and all I get is snow capital S like.
That was something I did notice on the 1st.
Three, yeah, Capital S, you say? Yeah, that that uppercase S
really does a lot of work there. So, yeah.
So that's a big deal and big possibilities that she saw a lot
of Dragonstone in her visions. And Dragonstone is so like epic,
like the volcanoes, the gargoyles and the carvings and
everything. It's such like, you could see
why that would stand out in what she's seeing.
That would really be distinct amongst so many other things
that might not be so unique. You know, like Dragonstone is
very like, what else looks like that?
You know, very little in the world is like that.
I can imagine her or maybe even some other Flame reader having a
vision of Dragonstone and taking it metaphorically, not
realizing, oh, that's an actual building, that's actually what
it looks like. You know, they might have
misinterpreted some of that because they thought it was a
metaphorical image that represented something else.
But when she realized, oh wait, that's actually a place I need
to go there, right? Yes, yes, I like that.
All right, so our last little bit here is identity theories, a
couple ideas that are thrown around here in the in the
fandom. Is there evidence that she's
connected to other named figures of the past either through
personal or professional or ancestry or or multiple of the
above? 1 idea I like is that she
actually does know Banero and Macoro and she just disagreed
with them. They like parted sometime in the
past because we've been told that Macoro is Banero's right
hand man. Oh, maybe Mel was the left.
Probably not, but I like the idea in theory and even though I
don't think it's super strong likelihood, the most popular
theory that I think is that she's the daughter of Cher, a
sea star. This has its origins in egg on
the 5th egg sending out candidates sending out for
knowledge about dragon lore. He he commissioned, he wanted
Ash eye, he wanted knowledge from Ash eye.
So maybe he sent her, but that's just one theory of someone he
might have sent. She might have had nothing
involved. She might have been dead by
then. And but the ages don't line up
that well either because Egg didn't become king until 232.
Chiera would have been in her 50s by then, which means makes
it hard for her to be the mother of someone that's taken into
slavery there. Why was she travelling with her
seven-year old daughter going all the way to a shy or her five
year old daughter? That doesn't make a lot of
sense. And she couldn't have had a
daughter on the trip if she's that old.
And if that. And again, that would make
Melisandre like 50, which isn't really that old, you know, so.
Also, it's worth noting we don't think Mella's not just really
from a shy, we don't think she was born there.
So yeah, Cher having gone there and haven't had her, that's not
doesn't add up with other things We.
Sure, I guess the idea would be Cher was would have been taken
captive, enslaved on the way, not in a shy and then, but still
it still doesn't. The ages don't line up super
well. So that's one connection that
that is, that exists. There's a couple other theories
out there that I don't give as much credibility to.
This one's possible. Nina also points out George was
probably drawing on Melisandre as a as a familiar character to
create the image of Melanie Piper, who was close, meaning
probably had a relationship, a intimate relationship with
Reyna. Reyna Targaryen, a favorite of
hers. A favorite of hers, yes.
There's the literally a movie called The Favorite.
That's, yeah, the gal pals. Yeah, they were very likely
lovers. Yeah, and the fiery red haired
Melanie Piper. I mean, of course fiery is very
often ascribed to people with red hair, but Melanie, that's
what Melisandre's birth name was apparently.
So it's pretty hard not to think of that one like as a as a
parallel. Some people think maybe this is
even the same person Melanie Piper somehow ended up being
like, yeah, it's it's kind of a stretch, but it's not.
You can't, you can't with with magic and all you can't.
It's hard to like, some people think, entirely eliminated
possibility. The daughter of Melanie Piper?
I don't know. Yeah.
It's it's not out of the. Question.
Maybe it's Melanie's Ruby with her memories.
Oh. Yeah, I mean.
True enough in terms of the idea that these are not her actual
flashbacks but another person's. And yeah, I think that is that
that is the only way I think that you could make Melanie be
Melanie Piper to me. Yeah, so there's other ideas
connecting Quaithe to Danny and there's a little bit of a meta
here. Again, I I touched on this a
little bit earlier. Quaithe being a shadowbinder who
studied in episode, which means she has a strong association
with Ashai. She's Quaithe of Ashai.
Basically. Does Quaithe know Melisandre?
Do they know each other? Both could be very old, have run
insurance with each other in the past.
No, no reason to assume that Asha is a very, very, very large
city. Yes, it's low populace, but it's
still huge and there's no reason to assume that people it's like,
oh, you're from China. Do you know, you know John, it's
like, yeah, no, I don't know John.
From China. Yeah.
It's like just 'cause I'm Chinese.
Yeah. But still there is a chance.
Like it's not just being from the same country.
There are shadowbinders. That's a much more exclusive
club. I think so.
And since Quaithe is talking to Daenerys through visions or
maybe through glass candles, which by the way, the glass
candle is perhaps a little similar mechanism to the Ruby
that's being used as a, as a, a fire of the earth concentrated
into a hardened form, because glass candles are Obsidian, you
know, frozen fire, right? Similar concept to a Ruby.
So since Quaithe is advising Daenerys, who because she
probably thinks she's Azora High, but Quaithe isn't a red
priestess, so there's at least a shadowbinder tapping into this.
Well, who wants to save the world?
Probably because there's doesn't seem to be any ulterior motive
for Quaithe. We have not seen any reason to
suspect she's in it for herself or she's trying to mislead
Danny. Maybe she is, but I've seen no
evidence of that. So again, you got this.
Maybe Quaithe is doing things that Melisandre is also kind of
trying to do from a different angle.
And they're both they both emanate from the same city with
the same very rare magical skill of shadow binding.
So there's room there for a connection, even though there
isn't any specific connective tissue there for us to to lean
into. And I'll repeat briefly this
idea that yes, George was going to have Danny go to to ash eye
and he changed his mind on that. So maybe Melisandre is the way
to get Ash had to come to her. She's the one that would have
this knowledge. The dragon idea.
Yeah, I like that idea a lot too.
Like who else has lore? Who else is going to know the
things that she would need to get from there?
Like Marwin maybe like there. So there are at least there is
is at least one other person that could know a few things,
which seems like Melisandre would know vastly more.
And it allows it allows into cultivated character, which is
more interesting, right And and shore up the timeline with Danny
and having to invent a whole new culture and describe the
buildings. It it, you know, it just saves
him like hundreds of pages, you know, and he gets extra drama
and character developments. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well said. So we might get more of this
from from her. We might learn more when she
hopefully eventually meets Danny.
Maybe she won't. Maybe that'll just never happen.
Azor High, Nisa, Nisa, Lightbringer, all these things,
a long night. Like all this lore could could
get dropped like more things that come out, someone that's
more willing to listen, someone that's got APOV.
Like we miss a lot of these things because Stannis is being
told these things behind closed doors by Melisandre.
But Danny is a character that we have a lot of PO VS for.
So it'd be more it might be more front and center and it might be
more appropriately placed in the story later on than you know, in
the first few books when the stuff is still developing.
But here's another factor with Quait that I think is a really
interesting wrinkle. Quaithe warns Danny of a lot of
people, including Mokoro. She's like cracking in dark
flame. Lion and Griffin trust none of
them. She doesn't mention a.
She doesn't mention Marwin, which we've talked about before.
She also doesn't mention Melisandre.
Of course, Melisandre is not coming to her as those others
are including Marwin, but she's likely to encounter her and
eventually. There's no warning there, so.
That's interesting. I think the fact that Quaeth has
warned her of all these being people that she doesn't know.
She's only seen them in the visions or whatever.
I don't know how Quaeth knows these things, but supernaturally
clearly, but she issues no warning about Melisandre or some
of these other things that might be that we might think would
come up. I do want to say real quick that
Quaeth might not even understand why she's giving these warnings,
right? Like don't trust them doesn't
necessarily mean they are evil or they are out to get you.
It might mean they are mistaken, they are naive.
That's. True.
Very true. Yeah, you're right.
And that's what Eamon says about Melisandre to to Sam.
She's like false light will lead us deeper into the darkness.
And that's what she has to know. Light bring her no heat.
You know, she has to know. It's it's Danny.
He thinks it's Danny too. He realizes that when he hears
about her, he's like, it's Danny.
It's we got to tell her. We got to tell her.
Will they? So Melisandre in our beginning
of our conclusion here, she's surely a mystery that we'll
never fully have the answers to even when it's all said and
done. But it's not as incomplete.
It's it's going to be less incomplete than it is now.
We are surely going to learn a lot more both about her, the
mysteries she represents, the, the, the culture she represents,
the the supernatural of elements that she represents, the the
places she's been. And I'm excited for that.
I want to say one thing and and I, you know, I, I don't want to
be too, too much of A naysayer or poo poo on people's
speculations too much, but I think a lot of the idea is
trying to figure out who Melisandre is.
Maybe she's Sierra Caesar. Like a, some of that stuff is
interesting and very likely could be meaningful or something
that George ties together. But I don't feel like those are
the mysteries he's presenting us.
I think those are things we're latching onto because it's so
long since we've had more information.
You know, it's, it's fun and it's interesting and might lead
us to some neat conclusions and George might do something with
it. But I, I, I find myself
intrigued by different things. So I don't know how to say that
otherwise. Right on.
Yeah. Cool.
Well, yeah. Well, we've got a lot to come,
I'm sure. I'm sure that the mysteries to
be revealed are going to be both satisfying and kick up a whole
set of new mysteries. And that's part of the.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. A couple more questions from
y'all. Darry's read it before.
Says her beauty slash attractiveness is part of Mel's
value to Stannis is that having her at his side makes him look
more manly and desirable by extension.
That's a good point. She is a trapping of power
herself. That's a good point.
Very good. It's it's there's levels to
this. Good catch.
Doris, James says is the birth of Dragons.
What makes Banaro and the other red priest think it is Danny?
Or did they see what Mel did and believe it meant Danny?
We don't know. That's a good question.
I would say I think it was the Dragons that made them realize.
I think so too many timing that. Yeah, I think that's it because.
Mel is constantly saying Stannis, like, give me the kid
and you can awake the stone Dragons and then you'll have the
weapon you really need, a dragon.
That's what's going to really help you win, you know, And
that's, this is part of all my theory is that she knows more
about Dragons and she just hasn't had any reason to talk
about that because the dragon doesn't exist yet.
It's not there in front of them to give information about.
Well, I find it the weirdest that Melisandre doesn't hear
about the birth of Dragons and pivot at that point.
Yeah, that she is so like locked into her current belief.
Like it just seems crazy to me to hear about someone birthing
Dragons and not be like wait wait.
Yeah, she hasn't heard. Yeah.
And it's it's only believable because they went to the wall.
Like if they had stayed a dragon.
So they would have heard by now probably, but they went to the
wall where news is really remote, really slow going.
She. Truly just doesn't know right
now. It's just weird to imagine.
And even if she did hear, she might be suspicious.
It's just a rumor. Who'd you hear?
This all sorts like Tywin dismisses 3 headed dragon.
Come on, that's nothing like you gotta be kidding me, you know?
She might be more susceptible to that type of thing than Tywin,
but she still might be suspicious of it as a rumor and
still clinging on to what she already believes might make it
even harder for her to accept it.
She might search the flames for further explanation, but I don't
think she's you're right. I think that she won't take news
over what she sees in the flames.
I think what she sees in the flames is going to trump
anything she hears. But the news might cause her to
look for new things in the flames.
Yes, absolutely. I might give her.
I might kick her off in a new direction and then then she
might have discovery. It's it's a certainty that
you'll learn eventually. It's just when and where and
how. It's going to be really
fascinating. Derry's Read It Before also says
it may also be a question of new symbology.
She's familiar with the symbols that represent concepts in Essos
but isn't as good at interpreting Westerosi symbols.
That's a clever idea. Yeah.
Like the the cultural touchstones that form these
visions are are translated differently in a foreign realm
perhaps. It's a different context.
It's I think Dairy's read it before is making a better
example of I did with the football gambler trying to
gamble on. Basketball, you know, like,
yeah. There's there's some
similarities, but there's some nuances she hasn't learned yet,
so yeah. Yeah, like one person would be
like, oh, obviously this symbol is the sigil of this house, and
she might not jump to thinking she.
Doesn't know the sigils of all the houses.
Even if she knows the sigils, she still might not jump to it
like she's not like she. Might not occur to her to make
that. Something else?
Yeah. She doesn't think of.
Who has a fox in their family history?
Etcetera, Yeah. Makes sense?
Like she knows Jon Snow's last name is Snow, right?
Like like his bastard name is Snow.
But she's not thinking. Oh, if I see Sand, I might be
thinking of a bastard from the from Doran.
If I see it, she's not thinking in.
Those those bastard names aren't as deep in her like cultural
understanding as they would be for, and Westerosi would know
that back and forth like it would.
It would click, but for her maybe not.
That kind of ties into what you were saying, is Shea, about
getting really old. You can only process so much
information in your brain, like some of this stuff you've
learned is buried in the back or cluttered up with other stuff
you know. She's just got relore on the the
brain. It's all just red.
Red when? I was 18.
I knew my calculus. I don't know it now.
Our trivia question again. What language, besides common,
do we hear Melisandre sing in? The answer is the tongue of
Ashai. People guessed High Valyrian.
That is the other language he knows, but we don't hear her
sing in that one. So yes, Ashai.
And it's like it's she says it. It goes like really high and
really low. Davos is like a little creeped
out by it. I'm picturing like the, you
know, like the undulating, like the, you know, like that.
Or ululating, I forget. That thing when they like, oh.
Yeah, yeah. It's like, I wish we had kind of
got something like that on the TV show, but they didn't.
They didn't want to. Like, I don't want to invent.
Ashai is a language. Forget it.
You know David J Peters, one like, no, let me do.
Oh yeah, give me that. Another What We do in the
Shadows reference today I'm picturing Naja when she's like
doing this, like they're doing like a seance or whatever and
she like starts, oh, I can't do it.
You know what I'm talking. She was like, really?
High and low. Really.
Yeah. If you look up what we do in the
shadows, Seance, see, I swear that's what Melisandre is doing
here. Relar knows what we do in the
shadows for sure. Yes, yes, next time.
We don't have a live stream next week, but we do have the
abduction of Liana in a couple weeks.
That's another topics moot topic.
And we will be releasing not on Sunday, but around the next in
the next little while. The Part 2 of the red Kraken
episode, it's called the Lioness, the Kraken and the
seahorse. It's a patrons only episode.
If you are a paid subscriber, either through Patreon or
Spotify, you will get access to that episode and if you aren't,
well, I'm sorry, you won't, but you can sign up and we'll, we'll
you can get it that way. A one time donation will get it
sent to you as well through PayPal.
The link is on our website, historyofwesteros.com.
You can also find links to a lot of other ways to support the
show there and find other links to our content as well.
So you can go there for both more content and to support us.
Hey multi purpose. One time donation of $5000.
Or that would be enough, but less would also, yeah. 4990.
Nine that would also work. Yep, Yep, that's right.
So we we mentioned a few other episodes that were in this one.
You might want to check out. We have an we have a full
episode on Ash shy that we did years ago.
Of course, I mentioned the Eamon be before the wall episode that
is in this same class. It doesn't necessarily relate to
this one as much, but it's the same style episode.
Of course, you mentioned the Many Faces Zora High episode and
later this year we'll be doing an episode on the shadow by a
shy. We have an episode on a shy by
the shadow, but we want to do the reverse, the Shadow by a
shy. So let's we're going to talk
about what that is the influence on it.
There's a lot of Lord of the Rings influence in that, but
plenty of just original George stuff too and a lot of mystery.
So we look forward to that. We look forward to you having
you all around for that and your feedback from these episodes and
more. And that's it for today.
Let's let's say thanks and Sean's going to run off and get
a cat for those of you watching, maybe we'll see another cat.
Thanks to Nina for her valuable thoughts and notes.
We she and I chatted a lot about this topic and it was very
helpful to me to get my thoughts organized.
It's always difficult when we have these off the beaten path
topics, these supernatural topics that are a little hard
to, you know, what order do we talk about these things and
what, what magical things do we put in what order, what magical
things to connect to other magical things.
It's a fun difficulty though. Of course I'm not complaining.
I am very lucky to be able to do this.
And that's why we like to thank folks at the end, because we're
thankful. Thanks to Joey, Jesse and Bran
for our music as well. That's a great thing that we
have. We've got a Kitty on screen with
Sean. Look at that.
Hey, look at that. She's jumping up.
So well. Trained rubbing her, rubbing her
face on his beard. That's a good cat.
Thanks as well to Michael Klarfeld.
You can see the map that he made sitting right behind me, and
there's lots of other maps he's designed that you can get one at
claradox.de. That's KLARADO x.de.
You can order the files from him and get them printed yourself at
your local print shop. It's pretty, pretty cheap that
way. Good way to do it.
Yeah, it's a great way to do it, especially because you can get
it whatever size and and material you want.
In our case, we got it printed on cloth, which you couldn't
have gotten at your local print shop, but you could get it matte
or saucy or real big or small. I you get real tiny, you could
do what I've done and printed on clothes.
I've printed dresses of his maps and you with the files.
You could print your own personal clothes as well.
So just want to throw that out there.
I, I love his designs. And yeah, you should definitely
get the files for your own use. That's right.
Support Michael, support the community.
But first and foremost, Valar reread us.