Hello my fellow Westorians. We are all hightowered today
when all of Westro saved Dorn and beyond the Wall knelt to
Agon the Conqueror himself in turn knelt at the star except in
Old Town to receive the blessing of the High Septon as the New
and 1st Lord of the Seven Kingdoms.
Though the Reach is ruled from High Garden, the center of the
face in all of Westeros was ruled by House Hightower.
I say was because it's no longer the center of the faith in
Westeros, though it's still very prominent in that regard.
But it was the Center for thousands of years and still was
for a few generations. After the conquest it it
gradually shifted to King's Landing.
So in this era we're discussing today the early phase of House
Hightower under the Dragons well.
It's going to still be the center of the face for that
time, and with Agon wielding so much of his, your arms are to
get tired there, Sean. For those listening.
Sean's been holding a House Hightower sigil shirt up over
the camera, so you couldn't. You can only see it.
And again, his arms. Not much commitment to house
Hightower. You couldn't keep it going for
more than two minutes. We don't really light the way,
we just light the way as long as it's convenient.
We cover the way we. Cover the We cover the camera.
You make me feel guilty because I want to be loyal to House
Hightower. Yeah, you should be.
Your wife is House Hightower. Yeah, that's what that was
actually not assured. It was a bag from her Lynette
costume. Anyway, with a gun wielding so
much of his power through the faith and the Hightower presence
at court, which includes several marriages to House Targaryen, we
have a house with significant influence over the most the two
most important powers in all the realm.
But of course, it doesn't stop there.
They rule the second largest city on the continent, but at
this time it was the largest city on the continent.
King's Landing didn't surpass Old Town for a little while, and
not in those first 45 years of its existence.
So we don't actually know when King's Landing surpassed Old
Town. But it wasn't this early, and
they're accordingly wealthy. Not quite Lannister.
Wealthy, perhaps. Some estimates say they are as
wealthy as a Lannister. It doesn't really matter.
They're ridiculously wealthy to a degree that we couldn't even
counter fathom. And of course there's the
Citadel. They have a huge amount of
influence there too, though it's entirely possible they wielded
greater relative strength in ancient times.
The arrow we're discussing today in The Conquest to halfway
through Megor's Rain was probably the peak of their
power. Add it all up now, Royal
influence. Religious influence, financial
might control over knowledge, if not communication.
Because the, you know, all the Ravens go through Citadel the
Citadel as well. They're trained there.
And then of course their military strength, which we
haven't mentioned yet both in manpower and in ships.
Well, we got all that and more on this episode of History of
West Rose podcast. Hello and welcome everyone.
Time for another deep dive into somewhat recent history of.
House Hightower, One of the most powerful and prominent houses in
all of W 1st, especially among those that are not technically a
Great house but wield the strength and power of 1.
In fact, they're probably a lot more influential than saying the
Great joys who were technically a great house, I think.
In fact, I would wager to say that's not even a question.
I'd say they definitely are more powerful, but technically they
don't have that same rank anyway.
There's a lot to discuss with them, as often is the case.
I underestimate how long an episode is going to be.
You'd think I'd learn, but no, no, I haven't.
And I started off thinking we'd do all of the era prior to the
dance in one episode. Yeah, no, Not even, Not even
close. Not even half.
Although we do know more about this phase than we know about
the latter phase, the middle phase, really the latter phase
we know a lot about. Because that's predance.
And that's that's a juicy time. But we'll be discussing that
one. Next time, this one will be
focused on those early years, right after the Conquest and how
you doing, Sean? What's happening today for you?
Yes, you got a green shirt. I've got a black shirt.
It's kind of funny. We're not actually talking about
the blacks and the greens, but my black shirt is the Hightower
shirt. You have a green shirt.
That's the office shirt. Yeah, Office Beatles shirt.
Really. That's just a mashup.
Yeah, I like it. So it's a 3 way mashup without
even realizing it's a Hightower office Beatles.
I got to ask some of the office cast a couple questions at the
Denver Comic Con a couple weeks ago, so it's a little extra on
my mind. Hell yeah.
That's cool. I mean that I also have a green
drink here in honor of the Honorable House Hightower.
It's. Difficult to have a black
beverage like you can have a rest so dark it looks like like
actual black. Like black coffee isn't actually
black, it's brown. You know, sometimes.
Coke doctor pepper look pretty black and yeah, it looks like
white you've got on it. But it's brown too, right?
Yeah, anyway. This is definitely green.
It's the green machine naked drink with Mountain Dew and
apple juice and Peach mango bank.
You've been finding your bangs. Good for you, yeah?
Bangs Getting back on the market there, huh?
Reappearing without the Creatine advertisement.
Big shout out to Nina, her blog is good.
Queen Alley with 1l.tumblr.com. Her notes are in here as usual,
and you're going to want to check out good
queenalley.tumblr.com for her blog post where she answers a
lot of questions and does other fun stuff.
Lately there's the most recent post is about Littlefinger and
Sansa and how that's going to all work out logistically, like
how the army is going to move. From the veil to the north,
Like, how are they going to get there?
The show, of course, just skipped over that, like it often
does with logistics, but it's no small thing to go from the veil
to the north, especially in winter, which it presumably
won't have stopped. Winter, well, it's already
started, so I don't suppose it's going to let up in time for the
the veil forces to get up there. So that's a good question.
Yeah. This episode was voted on by
patrons. We have a high level vote coming
up soon because we just put out our episode on Mantares, which
was for patrons and subscribers only, and we'll be voting for
another scripted episode. But we have the weekly scripted
scripted episode votes as well. And next week will be Part 2 of
this one. But after that we're going to
have an episode on drum roll please.
Craster. Yes, I put up a I put up a poll
on Villains and y'all were just like Yay Craster.
More than 50% of the vote went to Craster.
I never know how these polls are going to go.
Sometimes I think I have a handle on who's going to win,
but y'all surprised me sometimes.
That one was a surprise. I I kind of thought people would
pick Kyburn maybe, or maybe even Joffrey.
Joffrey got like 3% of the vote, so that was not even, not even
close. As bad as Joffrey is, he's not
as bad as Craster. He's not as much of a bill.
He may have become so if he lived in A.
Lot like Joffrey had had it in him to do way more damage than
Craster had, wielding power over far more people.
But yeah, I can see. But also there's no supernatural
element to to Joffrey. I think that's part of what the
draw of Craster is like why there's more unanswered
questions, I think, with Craster.
More speculation to be had about crashers and.
Yeah, and things around him, like, why is he doing the
sacrifices anyway? So, yeah, well, we'll discuss
all that when the episode's up. And until then, let's talk about
House High tower. House high, tower under the
Dragons. But first, a trivia question
that we will answer for you at the end, unless you already know
the answer, in which case, good for you.
The question is, May Gore wanted to ambush some of the Faith
Militant by publicly executing one of their leaders via.
Burning to death. Very pleasant.
He expected more poor fellows to rescue this condemned
individual. His plan was to ambush the
rescuers and thus kill this condemned person and capture and
kill a bunch more poor fellows. Who was this person given the
death penalty? Bonus points if you can name the
poor fellow leader who fell for this trap which he was a
successful trap. Spoiler alert.
And of course, that's something we'll be talking more about in
our Fire and Blood Valor. Rita Switch starts in only a few
weeks. Y'all getting pretty close.
Also, a super chat from TKOK podcast network.
My own nonsensical head cannon is among the many inspirations
for House Hightower. Chief among them is Cadet Moses
Hightower of the awardwinning and beloved cinematic juggernaut
that was the Police Academy franchise.
That's right, that guy that did all the.
Was it the guy that did all the voices that?
No, no, it was the big. No, I don't think.
It was like the the big, intimidating black guy was
Hightower, right? Yeah.
He was actually like, really tall.
Yeah. OK Yes.
Moses Hightower. That dude was, man, They made a
lot of those movies, didn't they, like?
I think they were like 7 or something.
Yeah, a lot of Police Academy. It was like the big franchise of
the 80s. Anyway, check out.
Head of their time. Check out the TKOK Podcast
Network for great shows like. New Dad podcast and the Pot Moms
Podcast. The Movie Club Podcast was most
relevant to the Police Academy. Oh yeah, good point.
I. Suppose good call, good call.
I think of Shay and I have each been featured on that podcast.
I did The Graduate with Tommy and Shay.
You did Fantastic Planet, right? Do Fantastic Planet Aziz,
meanwhile, is the New Dad Podcast.
That's right talking about his own home life, family life.
Yes. Knew he had an episode where he
interviewed people that don't really know their dads, like me.
So. Who did it?
Who don't know that new dad? You know new dad KNEW.
I should get new Dad. I should have been on the No Dad
podcast. So this one's a slightly
different format from the northern one.
The north, of course we covered in two episodes under the
Dragons, but it was the whole N this is we were able to focus on
each Stark Lord and turn Here we're we're more focused on the
Targaryen rain. We're not going to go Hightower
Lord by Lord. Because the high towers were far
more closely tied to the Targaryens and the Starks ever
were or have been since the the the North is, in a sense, the
Targaryen rule almost made the North more isolated in some
ways, whereas House Hightower almost in reverse became more
embroiled in global continental politics than they'd ever been
before. So the full story of House
Hightower, of course, much, much longer than one episode.
This Under the Dragons series should take us two episodes.
We'll see, But that's. What I expect, although I'm not
great at these estimates, so I'll take that with a grain of
salt or several grains of salt. They've always been pretty
important, of course, outside Tower, But interestingly, they
haven't been that big in A Song of Ice and Fire.
Their role has more increased over the last 10 years, partly
because, well, there's been so much time to talk about what's
going to happen in A Song of Ice and Fire.
And they are pretty big on the yet to come stage.
They're like they're on the cusp of mattering a lot.
Like we've got you're on getting ready to do stuff in Old Town.
We've got chapters there. Sam's at the Citadel.
Jake and Higar. Jac and Higar or some faceless
man is there as well. So yeah stuff is happening there
now, whereas it hasn't so much before.
So it it's not like their time has passed.
In fact their time on stage is is still coming but obviously
beyond that they've gained so much more clout in the fandom
because of. The world of fire, fire and
blood, and obviously House of the Dragon has really propelled
them to prominence within the community and the real world out
there. In the real world, a lot more
people have heard Hightower now than they ever have before.
A lot of that is not only a lot of new material that Martin has
given us about them, even if it is more rooted in the past than
the, you know, the main Song of Ice and Fire series, but that
material also shows you. How integral they have been in
the past, which maybe adds to the potential relevance of them
in the future. Like it did.
We could probably do entire episodes on it, but they were
sort of like the Vatican of the world, right?
This is the it's like the center of religion is in Old Town and
was for thousands of years, you know, So it's hard to measure
that influence. And the Citadel, right?
They stopped just Citadel, which is also like a center of
learning, but not just the center of learning, but if they
send out people from there to all the other castles, like once
again hard to measure the the influence that that's had over
time and will continue to have. Yeah, there's probably no house
that has their fingers and more important, influential like
centers of culture or just society.
What power. Knowledge.
Religion trait, Yeah, just everything.
There's there's probably no one besides because House Targaryen
of course rules over all that stuff.
But as far as directly influencing, it's more like,
yeah, they just rule it all. It isn't like they're not in
there like making moves in this in the way.
House Targaryen said Hey, how a Hightowers do X and A Hightower
said, you know, actually we're going to do the opposite of X.
House Targaryen would be scratching her head trying to
figure out what to do right? Even with Dragons, it would be
trouble for them. Hightower went against instead
of with. And also their house.
Targaryen's influence over all this is relatively new.
Whereas the high towers, even though their their situation has
changed, they have the faith. The Old Town, the Old Town, the
the city that's all been there for so long that a lot of it is,
is just has much more history to it.
And history that we're not talking about today but
certainly is relevant towards by the high towers, who are who
they are and why they have so much power.
So starting with Egg on the Conqueror of course.
Meagan prior to the Conquest. He is said to have visited a Old
Town and the Citadel prior to launching his conquest as well
as going to the Arbor. We surely wonder, did he go to
the Citadel? Did he check out any books you
know? Did he look for anything to do
with his dreams? Anything to corroborate them or
more information? Possibly.
I mean, it doesn't have to have been that at all.
He he quite possibly hadn't even had the dreams yet.
At this point we don't exactly know when he visited Old Town.
But it certainly is interesting, and it's even more interesting
because Vasenia was with him and Vasenia's.
Of the three Rainy's, Agon and Vasenia he seemed, she seems to
be the one by far the most associated with magic and the
occult and things like that, although we don't know if she
had any dreams of her own. So the notion that Agon had
dreams actually makes two of them more salted towards the
supernatural, and we're we're less sure about Rainy's.
But anyway. It's just compelling to consider
not just what interactions he would have had with these old
books, even though it is, as we acknowledge possible.
He didn't really care for that at all at this time.
I'm guessing he did. But how he met the Hightower,
she would have visited them. They would have, you know,
feasted, hunted, hawked, whatever.
You know how these nobles do their fancy activities.
Gone on pleasure barges sailed. But you know on the Honey Wah, I
don't know what they would have done, but it's.
I'm sure it was expensive. But they would have judged each
other's character. These a lot of these things are
are theater. To draw out the character of
each other and for them to, like, make decisions about what
kind of person they're dealing with here.
But as well, you have the Dragons.
I don't think they took ship there.
This is something that will come up later, I think.
Given how the High Towers behave when the war breaks out, I'm not
convinced. Everyone knew what they were
getting into and they've decided to stand up to Agon.
Did they? Some of them had probably never
seen Valerian, and if they had, they might have thought twice
about going up against him. You know, and then his you know,
and not, let alone Moraxis and Vagar.
But we know for 99% certainty that the Lord of Old Town had
seen the Dragons, and that may have been a big part of what
came next, and why they had nothing to do with fighting
against the Targaryens during the conquest.
Aegon might have been pretty aware of the high towers even
before he ever went there, right?
There's still, like, the most among the most coupled part of
why he went there, yeah? And also, even if they didn't
see the Dragons there, which I agree they almost certainly did.
But Old Town is probably more likely to have an understanding
of the power of the Dragons that that the level of education and
history that is centered there is greater than you know.
Some random small town in the middle of the North, like even
Winterfell, is so separated and not really center of learning.
They might not have had the same awareness of Dragons that Old
Town would have had whether they'd seen him or not, you
know? Also, he supposedly visited
Landis Port. So if you look at the places he
visited, there seems to be like, yeah, he went to visit the
population center, he went to Old Town and Landis Port on the
West Coast is the most prominent place.
He also went to the Arbor, which is important, but that's, you
know, that's a center of wealth. So it wasn't all about going to
the cities, but that's still kind of, it's kind of telling,
especially since you founded King's Landing not that far in
the future from there. So maybe he was trying to learn
a few things about how cities are made or how they're laid out
or. Just getting into all that
stuff, there's a lot of possibilities.
Like we we definitely shouldn't limit ourselves to just a few
possibilities as to what he was doing there.
Probably just let your mind run wild.
All the all the reasons he might want there to be there, to suss
it out, to judge the leadership, to look at how cities are made,
just all these things they the list could be that plus more
quite easily. I imagine he had a lot of goals
in mind. I want to give him credit for
where my logistical mind goes. Is things about a city, huge
populations of people? Where does poop go?
How do they get water there? These are things that you don't
have to worry about with a village of 100 people when you
start talking about 100,000 people.
Those are issues that a good leader has got to anticipate.
And there were probably some books in the Citadel that
described how they designed the streets in the sewer system.
And I would like to think that's something as much as you wanted
to know about some prophecy. Some magical sword.
If he has some plan to build a city.
I hope we really learned about the infrastructure that was
required. Great point.
You could have just asked Lord Hightower like well how do you
do this how do you manage this? How do you manage like it just
asked a bunch of questions about cities and you would have
wondered like the Lord Hightower in response to these questions.
It's like this guy building the city or what's going like why
does he want to know? Is he just curious like he would
have been very like peaked by those questions like I wonder
why what his what his mind is like because what?
And this leads us to another topic like I wonder if the
Hightowers. Lord Hightower figured out that
maybe this guy was going to make a movie.
You might have sussed it out that this Aegon fellow was
awfully ambitious. He has a lot of he's very put
together. Like he's smart, capable, like
here's his bad ass sister with him.
She's also smart, capable and dangerous like.
What are they thinking here? He's thinking about cities and
and stuff like that. He might have figured it out.
You're looking for knowledge. They're here, you know, like
feeling us out as allies, Yeah. Smart.
Sure. Or anyone.
Yeah, start spinning ahead on where this might go, You know,
even if it's a small chance, it's a it's a chance it's worth
being prepared for. Yeah, the idea of them kind of
sizing each other up, I think it's important to consider, even
if they're sort of putting on a show.
Right. Putting our best foot forward.
That still is something to judge, right?
The things that you want to show off or try to hide, even if you
see through it, it's still noteworthy what they feel like
they need to be presenting someone like Baylon.
But Baylon Greyjoy, even when he puts his best foot forward, he
can still tell he's a jerk. You know what I mean?
You can still tell he's not really your plan or what, Yeah.
Yeah, I'd be like Robert trying to hide his penchant for
alcohol. Like no, Yeah, this is no hiding
that. We can see what this guy's
about. Yeah.
Like, and they they, you know, like Marjorie and then Elena
kind of trying to question Sansa about what's going on.
They kind of knew they were really looking for confirmation.
They knew Joffrey was. You're right.
They were asked their questions, were leading.
Yeah, they had already. Yeah, That you're right.
They weren't looking for. Information and the things that
Sansa didn't tell. Was giving him the answers they
really wanted the fact. That she didn't want to, like,
talk about about Joffrey said everything.
Yes, you're totally right. Like, so you can.
Imagine there'd be some of that the things that that that agon
or the high towers or whoever. Even the things that they were
sneaky or quiet about is still. Telling because these are people
who have wielded men's power for so long.
His dad taught him like the proper way is not to screw it up
and all these things and going back ad nauseam through prior
generations. Yeah.
I I wonder too if Agon was wondering if the Lord of the
Hightower was was like out of touch or you know way up.
Because we we hear that about the current Lord at Hightower.
Like that's an idea floated about him.
It's not confirmed but people say that he hasn't descended
from the Hightower in 10 years which is like whoa, that's
that's wild to think about, you know.
And then it's what kind of effect does that have on your
personality and your you know, like your all your information
comes from what people are telling you and yeah.
Or maybe some of your information comes from glass
candles. Yeah, that's true.
They do have those in Old Town, so.
It might not be quite as removed from what's going on as people
think good. Point.
Good point. So either way, the high tower is
way up there, and you know whether that makes you more
aloof or more paranoid or more worldly or some combination of
the above. Anyway, it's going to have an
effect on your character one way or the other.
So the conquest, the histories tell us that.
Lord Manfred Hightower was the man in charge when the conquest
began. This may have been the same Lord
that met Agon and Vissenia when they came through.
We don't know when that was. We assume it wasn't a huge gap,
but we also don't know when the previous Lord Hightower died.
Now we do have a good whole handle on who all the Lord's
Hightower were going forward until the reign of Jaharis, when
there's more peace and less specificity there.
But anyway, Manfred would have been.
Present for Agon's visits, even if he wasn't Lord so he knew he
would have seen the dragon just like his father did the Dragons
because he would have been around 34 at least.
This was the youngest Lord Manfred could have been when the
conquest began was 34. More likely he was in his 40s.
So yeah he would. Either way he would have the
information his father had or he was the one to collect it
initially. And one of his younger sons,
Lord Manfred was already in the warriors sons and another of his
sons was already a septon. And he had at least two other
sons, one named Adam and one named Garmin.
He also had at least three daughters.
And we're told he was a godly man.
Now, we should always take Hightower history with a grain
of salt because these are the like, history is written by the
winners is the thing, or history is written by victors.
Now that's, you know, you can't take that.
There's more nuance to that saying than on the surface.
But here it's particularly true because.
These are powerful people. They're often the winners, and
they literally, like, control the people writing the history.
So it's even more direct than it is.
And like, not just recent history.
Like a lot of times a dynasty will write the history of
something and then the next dynasty will write a like a
corrective thing. And maybe the truth lies
somewhere between. But how high towers have ruled
the citadel effectively or through influence for thousands
of years and that hasn't, that's never really shifted away from
them. So it hasn't been a break for
someone else to like. Cut through the bias or
whatever. So one thing I wrote a note for
myself when we were doing, when doing my my research and reading
for this episode was like, I doubt I'm going to find a lot of
critical takes on House. I'm having trouble saying that
name House High Tower in any of the histories because they're
all written at the Senate all. And I mean yeah, that seems to
be true. So we might have to just insert
some criticism. Imagine that these.
Guys and gals are probably some negative things about them have
probably been omitted. Probably like if you were to
write a top ten list of houses, most likely to receive positive
source bias. How the hightowers would
probably be #1 even more than the Targaryens.
But still it's believable that this Lord Hightower was godly
given his actions. Now it's pretty easy and common,
I think, for like a Lord to. Make all the right noises and
pretend to be faithful and all that stuff.
But this guy seems to. I kind of get the sense this guy
was genuine, but we'll see your Your mileage may vary.
Let's go through it now. Yeah, go ahead.
Can I say another thing here? Is it, given what we just said,
right, that that there would be certain biases in the history
that's written and maintained, and it's been that way for
thousands of years. There are some people who might,
but not just some people, Most people probably just.
Believe it, Yeah, they do. Like, see, if a Hightower child
is born and raised and studies at Citadel, there's like,
they're not necessarily being dishonest about the history.
It's just what was taught to them their whole life and
everyone else their whole life. Like, whatever.
The truth is that that's not necessarily this evil bias of
the Hightower side cover up that.
See, it's just what everyone has learned and believes.
You're totally right. Effectively, just as truth, it's
a two way St. the high. SI really can't say it House
Hightower has. A strong influence over the
Faith. It's a two way St. the Faith is
a strong influence over House Hightower.
You're totally right. So I I totally believe that some
of these Lords are very devout because that proximity to the
Faith. You're right it's a two way St.
they live near the center of Westerosi worship of the Faith
of the 7th. So yeah of course it could rub
off in a in a non cynical way. Right.
So yeah the list of Hightower Lords influenced by the High
Septin would be massive like the High Septin would know where to
go to influence like well we know who the powerful ones in
this city are. Let's and a lot of times the
High Septin maybe not a lot of times but often there have been
several cases where the High Septin literally is a high
tower. I mean there you go that and not
just high towers but the most about who are the the highest
rank. They're like the Archbishop's
the equivalent or the Cardinals and a lot of them are often high
towers so. This is a little bit hazy
because as we know, high septons aren't called by their original
name, which I wonder if the high towers just now occurring to me
that maybe they're part of the reason that that's done, that
that policy was implemented to hide how many high towers are
are in this organization. In fact that would make a lot of
sense. Yeah, I like that anyway.
And even aside from high towers, to hide whoever was in charge
because some certain bike you know.
I don't know if they made a Blackwood, the High Septon,
where there's some people who don't like the Blackwoods and so
like this, he's not really a Blackwood.
He's it's also not it's like there's precedent for that in
the real world too. The popes and kings often just
change their name once they get that.
Position. So it looks like the in the
scenario we're dealing with right now, the beginning of the
conquest, it looks like Manfred Hightower was one of those Lords
that was influenced by the High Septon rather than the other way
around. Like who had more power in this.
Two way St. relationship. In this case it looks like the
High Septon had more power, although can't be certain, but
here's the quote to kick us off on that.
When word of Aegon's Landing first reached Old Town, the High
Septon had locked himself within the Starry Sept for seven days
and seven nights, seeking after the guidance of the gods.
He took no nourishment but bread and water, it was said, and
spent all his waking hours in prayer.
Moving from 1 altar to the next, and on the 7th day the Crone had
lifted her golden lamp to show him the path ahead.
If Old Town took up arms against Aegon the dragon His High
Holiness saw the city would surely burn, and the high tower
and the citadel and the starry set would be cast down and
destroyed. Manfred Hightower, Lord of Old
Town. Was a cautious Lord, and godly
one of his younger sons served with the warriors sons, and
another had only recently taken vows as a septon.
When the High Septon told him of the vision, vouchsafed him by
the Crone, Lord Hightower determined that he would not
oppose the Conqueror by force of arms.
Thus it was that no man from Old Town burned on the field of
fire. So the High Towers were
bannermen to the gardeners of High Garden.
So it's awfully convenient. It happened.
The vision came on the 7th day, the whole, you know, seven days
obviously for the seven. So this is like, this sounds
very engineered, but I I'm with it.
I mean, you really shouldn't go out there and stand against the
drill like, yeah, like common sense says you would lose this,
this battle slash war. So yeah.
They needed a cover story. They needed an excuse.
And this was it. I imagine that as much as that
seven days, it probably didn't take 7 hours for them to be
like, all right, we're not trying to fight the Dragons,
right? No, of course not.
Okay. Well like how do we pitch this
to the people? How do we deal with the
targarians? How do we you know, they they
they were probably planning details of.
What they knew right away was going to happen that that's what
I expected. Yeah, it's still.
And because they have to go against their Liege Lords.
Like they have to not support the gardeners who would rule the
Reach for a long time and like with Garth the Gardner and Garth
Greenhand, like all this, they really, as we've discussed in
other episodes, there was little challenge to their rule.
The Gardeners were just the pinnacle of Reach, culture and
and heritage, and there was really no no one else even
close. So not backing them was a really
big deal. Nina writes it as a crisis of
faith. Like not only is it the Gardner
Liege Lord, but the gardeners are practice this worship of the
Seven for thousands of years, whereas Agon hadn't yet, like,
publicly converted to the faith. He or maybe he had sent missives
out that he was going to, but until he knelt at the Starry Sep
to receive a blessing of the High Septum, well, they didn't
know he was going to do that. They didn't know he was would
have done that, so they they couldn't have seen this coming
specifically. I mean, even if he had done
that, you got to imagine it's still a little suspicion, right?
Sure, he did that, but I mean, he just showed up, right?
Like they're they're still, they would still want to make plans
that have questions to ask and they know it's going to be a
shift and everything the way things have been.
And it makes sense that they would want some time to send
some Ravens out to ask some questions to get their ducks in
a row before this. Where this change comes?
And he has a responsibility to the people of Old Town too.
I mean, yeah he's like, well, I want to protect my house's
power. But these two things are very
tied together. Like if Old Town falls, a lot of
innocent people are going to die.
It isn't just going to be we all surrender and and no one is
suffers. You know we just no, no,
especially not according to the dream, but according to the
dream, the Starstep, Old Town, all of that would burn.
So yeah so if they put that out there.
That the high step that had this dream.
People will believe that. And they're like, yeah, well, do
the. You don't want to walk right
into that. Sure.
Yeah. Well let's not fight the
Dragons. And given the way things went
like the aftermath only justified their decision.
The field of fire wiped out all the gardeners.
I mean, it was worse than they probably could have guessed.
So they're like, well, that and that was a silver lining for
them because they didn't have to face any sort of.
You know, justice from House, the gardeners saying, hey, why
weren't you there? You know, why didn't you help
us? You betrayed your Liege Lord.
Well, now there's they skirted that issue entirely.
And the Tyrells had been named Lords of High Gardens.
So that's like, all right, well, yeah, we have.
We answer to them, if anyone. And the Tyrells are fully in
Agon's court. So they're not going to take
action against the high towers for not supporting when they've
already bent the knee. So that worked out as well as it
could have, really. Once again, it makes me wonder
if that was something they were plotting through those seven
days. Like we got to make sure the
Targaryens take out all the high towers.
We got to make sure there's not an air.
There's no. Repercussions, which like, I
don't think they could have engineered for that.
They were like, what do we do? Like if hopefully they bend the
knee and there's no pushback against us.
But yeah, just worked out probably better than it could
have because they could they couldn't have known all those
gardeners would get wiped out. Although Aegon may have
intentionally been trying to wipe out all the gardeners.
That's something I. Like they sent letters to.
Yeah, they might have sent letters to high gardens, say.
All the gardeners need to mobilize.
Make sure you guys are united front.
Everyone needs to be in that battlefield to face these.
Through some intermediary, like it wouldn't just be from the
High Tower, Yeah, but yeah, I like that.
Yeah, so that's a pretty big deal to think about that.
And Nina makes a similar point to you.
Did you as well, not just seeing the Dragons, but having read the
books about them and how devastating they are, which is
these rest of these reach Lords, the gardeners, everyone else
would not necessarily have gained.
To read their histories, let alone again.
As we said already, not physically, not having met the
Dragons in person, which alone is a way to change your mind.
House Tyrell regarding them. While the Hightower in Old Town
would remain A vassal of High Garden.
This is a point of pride. We've talked about that.
How I gone to this on purpose to you kind of neutralize the reach
against him. It would be more concerned with
infighting by appointing someone who had been the High stewards
above them all. They would they would wrangle
and and not like that. And be like those High Stewards
are above us now, we're not happy about that.
So the High Towers will be amongst those Lords, perhaps the
most prominent amongst the Lords, saying we don't, we don't
love this new state of affairs, but what are they going to do
about it? They bent the need, egg on the
field of fire was lost, You know, there's not much they can
do in this case other than just go along with it.
I can imagine them being okay with it, too.
It's like, you know what? We still have the step we saw
The Citadel. We're still the biggest, richest
city as you go, yeah. That's true.
You cute. Tyrell.
You think you're in charge. That's nice.
Yeah. Go.
You go ahead and do that. You're right, that's a good
point, because the Tyrells wouldn't be able to wield as
much authority over them even with, even though they're the
same rank technically as the Gardeners without that prestige
and history. Like, yeah, the high towers
could, they can't summon as. Much They won't be, yeah.
And they won't be called on as directly to send soldiers off to
battle or whatever else the charges you want to do.
Like, yeah, Tyrells, you go be their stooges.
We're just going to keep doing what we've been doing for
thousands. Of years, not to mention the
Tyrells were slash high Garden was severely weakened after the
field of fire. They just lost a lot of
soldiers. So there's that too.
Regardless of how Lord Manfred felt or what he thought he
wanted to do, this is what he actually did quote.
Lord Manfred rode forth to greet Agon the dragon as he approached
and to OfferUp his sword, his city, and his oath.
Some say that Lord Hightower also offered up the hand of his
youngest daughter, which Agon declined politely lest it offend
his 2 Queens. Three days later, in the Starry
Sept, His High Holiness himself anointed Agon with the seven
oils placed a crown upon his head.
And proclaimed him Agon of House Targaryen, the first of his
name, King of the Andals, the Roynar, and the First Men, Lord
of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm I.
Wonder what the seven oils actually are Like?
What are the each individual oil?
Is a Crone oil stranger oil? Made in oil.
What the Hell C. BD Oil.
Now it's thinking olive oil. Peanut oil.
I don't know. If they have.
Peanuts in Western or something. They do have olives.
I don't know if they have. Peanuts.
They're missing. Out peanuts when they find the
new world. I guess so.
That would have been an interesting three days, it says.
Three days later in the Starry stepped His High Holiness
himself. Annoying and like, what were
they talking about in those three days?
Just, I'm sure it wasn't simply just.
How many people do we invite for the coronation?
Where does everyone stand? That would be part of it because
these, you know, they care about these ceremonies and stuff.
But there would have been other negotiations behind the scenes,
certain concessions or requests or certain things that would
need to be settled behind closed doors to make sure everything is
smooth and to make sure you know a lot of power is changing hands
here, a lot is happening and there would be need to be
assurances and and diplomacy, just a lot of things going on.
Even things that aren't necessarily cynical maneuvering
for power, there would have been like legit concerns about like
this shipment of grain is going to this village.
These people will starve to death if it doesn't get there.
Can you make sure we had the same troops here?
Your Dragons might be flying. Is this village safe?
You know, I can imagine and times you know 20 villages that
I I can imagine some very legit concerns of.
The people in logistics, even if behind that, they just want to
make sure they can collect those taxes.
Even if there is a cynical reason behind it, there are
probably were still a lot of maneuvering to maintain peace
and safety of the people. Yeah, now this marriage offer.
Highly interesting. I love how it's said the a gun
declined politely. Like, no, it got declined
rudely. Like get your daughter out of my
face. No, But it's interesting to
compare that towards, they say. What happened with the Dance of
the Dragons? Where two offending the two
Queens, you say? Imagine that.
Upsetting both your Queens and causing a civil war.
Yeah, Aegon had bet it was smarter than Becerras and had
better advisors most likely. Nina points out that Aegon had a
difficult position to navigate here too.
I mean, it would have been. You could see why Aegon might
have wanted to accept taking a third wife and been like.
Lock up House Hightower in his corner when he's trying to
establish power over the entire realm.
You can see why he might want a marriage alliance with House
Hightower, even though, as he says here, apparently he doesn't
want to offend his 2 Queens like his Queens would understand if
it was for power. I think so maybe that's maybe
that's maybe there's other reasoning going on here, but but
maybe not. Maybe they would be offended, I
don't know. And not to mention you might.
As much as you might find an alliance with Old Town to an
act, you might find a rival in Old Town to an act.
And the faith is not going to be happy about a third one.
Two is bad enough. You're right, two is bad enough.
And a third one. He can't say I'm not allowed to
have a third one. Like, that's obviously not true.
It's like 2, but not three. And I know you, you're in a
polygamous marriage like and we know, but this is we have the
Citadel here in our town. We know y'all.
Have had more marriages than that, you know, we know, we know
your history. So yeah, he he might not have
wanted to boost the high towers that high.
He might want to have kept them at arm's length a bit.
There's a lot of reasons why. Also, there's apparently there's
a chance this didn't even happen, although I suspect it
did. The way the high towers are and
the way a lot of houses are, ambition is just a currency for
them. It's so common that of course
they're going to take their shot at marrying into the royal
family. You know, like what?
Couldn't hurt to ask, and no, it it didn't hurt to ask.
He declined politely, but he probably expected it.
He probably was completely unsurprised by the offers.
Like, Yep, here it comes, here comes the marriage offer.
I've gotten lots of these. So that of course, is a tried
and true method of power and influences advantageous
marriages. Now you would you could argue
that the it's very desirable to marry to the Hightower family.
There's plenty of other families that would jump at the chance.
And of course the same is trooper house.
Start carrying now. In this case, it's a matter of
who benefits more from it, and I think Agon decided that it would
be more of a boon to the high towers than it would be to him
and his family and and might be more worthwhile to keep these
things open. We've also noticed how often it
is that the high towers have large families.
This is partly a factor of you can have larger families when
you have certain amounts of wealth.
You can afford it. Kids are not cheap, you know, in
any timeline or setting really. So in some ways, that's why
there's so many of them. Recall that this Lord Manfred
had at least seven children, minimum.
And Lynette Jarra's exwife, was the 10th child of her siblings.
She was the 10th. So it's crazy how many so many
kids right now. Jumping ahead just for a second,
it's possible that Donald the Delayer, a Lord, will discuss in
the next episode, Lord Hightower.
Is one of these other seven children or beyond seven?
Because he was born around 17 A/C.
And yeah, so this is all about halfway through Aegon's reign,
is AC17. So yeah.
You know, you might be. I'm.
I'm trying to compare Hightower to Fray because they're also
like a large family. But they seem to have diminished
their value or their prestige, where the high towers do not
have, or at least not as much have.
Is it new for Fray to have a big family like that?
Is that something Walter put into action, or have they always
been that way? They're a little not.
They're younger as a house. Their house has only existed for
about 600 years, so they don't have a huge long history.
And yes, they were considered more upstarts early on to like
the 1st century was them just kind of getting bigger and
spending reinvesting their money into the castle.
It used to be just be a wooden bridge.
And they made their money off the tolls and over time they
spent the money to make it a stone bridge.
And then the two wooden keeps on either side were stone cast.
So they were reinvesting in themselves early on and then
eventually they became powerful and wealthy.
And yeah, the Tyrells are a good example though as well As long
as the fire, they're they're maybe the second largest family
that we know of in current times.
The prayers are pretty clearly the largest in terms of like a
Lord with the most children, so. It's another example of a house
that uses sheer quantity of family members to gain power and
standing. There's so many of them, they
can hold office. You know it has different
there's so many of them that you can put here and there, like the
Tyrells. They've got city, like Old Town,
they got the city watch captains and maesters and they wanted to
send the new Master of Coin up. And there's so many, right the
Cersei just like. Hates this.
It bothers her. Whereas Tywin was just like,
well, we just got to lean into it and like, well, let's be
allies with them and make this part of our strength, right?
You know, he's like, we can't fight that.
So let's let's make it ours. Like it's better to do that.
So maybe this is some of part of Aegon's thinking as well, but he
had a different calculus than these houses that are not at the
top. He's the new king with Valerian.
He doesn't have the same considerations as Rob Stark.
Who? Needs to cross the river.
So he's like I'll agree to a marriage.
Aegon wasn't you know wasn't forced into anything here.
He had all the all the power in terms of violence and and
standing like that. So as well let us recall there's
no King's Landing yet. Again this keeps coming up.
It's super important to consider one very likely conversation.
That was held in Old Town while he was there as Where are you
going to rule the Kingdom from? Where's your capital?
Are you going to rule from Dragonstone?
Have you considered making your throne here in Old Town?
Have you considered making the capital here?
He probably had. He may have already decided not
to. He may, but this may have been
when that decision was made. He may have heard them all.
He's like Okay. Tell me your reasons for doing
it here or doing it elsewhere. It might have been a really big
deal, like people trying to argue for or against it.
There might be some forces, some powers that be within even maybe
some of the high towers might have wanted it, some others may
not. A lot of considerations.
A new royal family is nothing like this has existed in
Westeros before. It might be good for them to
keep that power close to them, but they might not want that
power to over shadow their own. In their city they might see
themselves getting squeezed out, so I I'm not sure which meant
more to them, but it's it's a very huge consideration
regardless of where you fall with your guesses on what the
high towers might have seen as a possible future here, because
you really could see it both ways, right?
It's kind of a conundrum, like what would they have won?
Would they have wanted the king to have his thrown there or
would they not have? I'm not sure, but there's a lot
of pros and cons. It's pretty interesting
decision. I bet that the cons outweigh the
pros. Even though there were a lot of
pros, I bet the cons outweighed it.
Based on that on a couple of things would actually happen.
I think if they had really wanted it, if the the pros have
been strong enough, they would have made it happen and it we
would have heard more of a story why it did or didn't, right.
And also just thinking about in the World War, for example,
Washington DC was just kind of carved out rather than, you
know, we kind of bounced the capital around.
Like early American history, like Philadelphia and New York,
whatever. But eventually they chose like
sort of a neutral spot. And there was a lot of
negotiation around that. But I'm sure that I'm sure if it
was better for New York to have been in New York, they would
have made that happen. But they didn't.
And they're like do it somewhere else.
Let us do our own thing. Go on here.
We don't want you to interfere or take.
From us, rather than one state having undue amount of power.
Yeah, and they did. And that.
That's a really good example. I wrote a video for In Deep Geek
on why it's called The Seven Kingdoms, and I made a similar
point like. A crown land agon created the
crown lands which is the royal thief for for his lands you know
to to taxes and soldiers and all that and it was a new carve out
and it's kind of like DCDC Washington DC isn't part of any
of the 50 states nor is it a state itself.
The crown lands isn't really a Kingdom but it is a carve out
and that isn't part of another Kingdom so it is it's kind of a
similar thing in that sense. The crown land is a lot larger
relatively than Washington DC but it's still it's a it works
as a parallel there. So by the same token, if there's
forces in Old Town, high towers and maybe other people arguing
for the capital, be put there or not.
There might be people from the Crown Lands that you know in
Aegon's entourage that are like arguing against that they're
like, no, you should build it back.
Where close to your seat of power Dragonstone do back up
there, like that's where you should be.
So there there would be forces arguing for it to be near them
as well. Like like Duncandale and and
Rosby and places like that. They may have also had similar
considerations, like some people want it there, some people
don't. Yeah, a little, A little column,
A little column B. You got to ruffle a lot of
people's feathers. A lot of people are going to
feel like, why not us, right? You're going to make this one
family, this one town, very happy, but assuming you even are
actually making them happy and make 20 other houses jealous and
frustrated or like, all right, like none of you.
We're just going to make our own little.
Spots and that that is what happened.
And so that that in the short term you got to wonder what the
high towers thought of that in the long term, well, that's
another huge population Center for them to trade with might be
a good thing, so. They can get ahead of it.
They can get ahead of establishing trade routes and
send some carpenters over there. Let's make sure we're the ones
building those buildings and setting up those.
Getting that inside track, yes, you're right.
So they would, they would see that opportunity which is one of
many of the possible opportunities.
I mean we got a new power structure being built.
A new entirely new 7 kingdoms and this house that Hightowers
who were very practiced and experienced with wielding and
holding power and gaining power. They would see the opportunities
that come with a giant new power structure being built over
everything. They would want to be a part of
that Speaking of the change in Westeros, a massive change that
would be a huge boon for House Hightower as along with most of
the West Coast of Westeros. Would be the end of the old way.
Aegon shut that down hardcore by invading them directly.
Valerians flames had a bit to do with it.
Lord Vicon Greyjoy was named new Lord of the Iron Isles.
They had like a little Lord's mood there.
Aegon allowed them to choose and they chose the Greyjoy.
And he famously told his son, don't be stupid, don't fight
against the Dragons, you know? We're particularly vulnerable
yo. We have ships.
Those things burn, you know. We really cannot go against
them, you know. Bravery cannot.
You can't be brave enough. It's not going to matter.
Like bravery will not carry us here.
As best as we know. This is something we covered in
our episode on the Red Kraken in free dance era, which he he
what? He's not going to be born for
another 100 years or so. But that's when the old way fell
out, returned under the dance because these laws were no
longer enforced. So shutting down the old way
would have been huge for western trade.
Just no more piracy. Except, you know, there'd be a
few holdouts that didn't obey the law.
But this would be a giant change from like state sanctioned
piracy to the state made it illegal, right?
That's a huge difference for them.
So like, trade's going to flow a lot more.
Like smaller scale merchants could get going.
They would not have to worry as much about having their ship
stolen and their entire livelihood lost to a a random
pirate. Just.
Massive change in the outlook for the city.
That's something that everyone, pretty much everyone in Old Town
would be thrilled about it. It was assuming they realized it
or assuming it was relevant to them, which to a lot of them it
would be. And of course, landsports.
Same deal for them. They're even closer to the Iron
Islands. It might have mattered even more
to them. The royal house whore dynasty
that built Heron Hall and was ruled the Iron Islands before
Egon came, They were more concerned with landbased stuff.
Than prior Ironborn, which which you could say, oh then they
probably didn't reduce much rate.
No that that probably means that they didn't care.
That probably meant that the Iron Islanders back home were
let to do whatever they wanted which well, you've Ironborn to
do what they want and they will go rating.
So it's pretty simple I think. And it's not just the
implications in that region. This is a global impact on trade
right. It would be just ships from
Essos would also be like. Not so.
Not as dangerous as it used to be over there.
Like the journey is still really far.
Sailing South of Thorn is still a little bit perilous, but a
massive difference in the outlook.
And you know, if you're considering it as like, well as
it's worth it, it might completely change it from not
worth it to worth it. And the people in charge of High
Tower, Lord Manford, his court, his entourage, people, they
would. There's no way they didn't fail
to notice this or see this coming.
They would be aware of that change, like, oh, you shut down
the Iron Born, did you? Well, yeah, that's great.
So they just the rich get richer.
But also some of the people who aren't rich got a little richer
too. One of the way the rich are
getting richer is through this increased stability, which also
means the poor get richer and safer.
You know, like it said. This is a rising tide.
Lifts all boats kind of thing, Pun intended.
Yeah. Except for the Ironborn, except
for the ones with the boats. So yeah, except for the.
It seems to me that generally speaking, the people that were
like. More receptive to this where the
people that depended on trade and or were thinking forward
about the future and or actually cared about their people.
Someone like the Ironborn are shortsighted and don't care
about people and you know they just want to take stuff now.
But Old Town centered around trade you know the land of
support like all these other people were like we could either
have this strife and this conflict and this destruction.
Or we could have security and stability and peace.
And like it's almost like an easy decision.
You know, like even without the dragon, there's a lot to be
said. The dragon makes it more
obvious, right? For Dragons make it more
obvious. But even without that, it seems
like in the long run, the more established.
And I'm going to say forward thinking.
Or or I. Want to say moral, and it's not
quite the right word I want to use.
But like at the point where they're making decisions beyond
like attack and don't start right at the point where you're
making decisions about how do we make our land better prepared
for winter. How do we make our trade routes
more safe with other entities. You know the those people are
like. Yeah, of course we've been in
any. Yeah, absolutely.
Put our pry and ego aside. Yeah, you're right.
They would have seen the benefits.
They were like, well, yeah, I could see how this would go
badly for us. But the benefits are so strong.
Like the negatives would have really have to be bigger than we
think they are for this not to be a windfall for them and in
terms of influence at court. So of course, they would want to
make sure things stayed favorable to them.
They would want to be like, yeah, let's make sure tax
policies this and that. Maybe not a huge deal under
Agon's reign, because Agon, his policy was to mostly let the
individual regions carry on as they had before without
codifying the laws there would. That eventually became a
problem, and other kings had to deal with that, mostly to
Harry's. But he dealt with it by not
dealing with it by like let's let this transition be a little
slower. We're not going to force all
this change at once. Or maybe he just didn't see the
benefit to it either way. His first small council didn't
include any high towers that we know of.
It's possible there were the Masters of Coin.
His first 2 masters of Coin are complete unknown.
There's a there's a chance there was a high tower in there
somewhere. Those super rich houses always
seem to have the inside track on the Master of Coin Job, although
there's obviously exceptions like Littlefinger, No King's
Guard that we know of either. Until Gerald Hightower and
that's way later obviously at the White Bull.
Queen Rainey's did arrange the betrothal of one of the tarth
triplets. There was tarth triplet girls
born around this time, and one of those 3 married a Hightower
son, which again, there's so many Hightower kids we don't
know which Hightower kid this was, but that's something that
the Iron Throne did a lot of early on was make these was
doing a lot of marriage, brokering across Kingdom lines
that normally weren't. Done like usually houses married
within their own region because, well, these other regions were
like separate countries to them, and there wasn't as much to be
gained in alliances with houses that are halfway across the
continent. Well, here that's exactly what
they were trying to make happen. The Ironstone was doing that.
You wonder if they tried to involve themselves in the other
Hightower marriages, and if there was any sort of logic
behind Tarth specifically as another island holding on the
other side of the continent. Maybe there may have been some
specific thinking here or maybe they were just trying to make as
many matches as they could from houses and that were didn't
share a Kingdom. And Lord Manfred's Fortunes, as
good as all these things were, we talked about all these
obvious benefits. We talked about why they
probably engineered that vision because it's all seems so
engineered because they, like you said, Sean, like the
benefits to this arrangement are just so obvious.
But they don't want to look like cowards and they don't want to
go against the face. So, like, how do we do this Just
right? But they know what their end
goal is, Bow to this new king and reap the rewards of it.
And long term, arguably they did.
But in the short term there were some big setbacks.
What looked like the great path forward had some serious bumps
in the road and those row and that road ran right through
Dorn. The invasion of Dorn began in
four a C2. Things of immediate interest
come to mind here. One having so many children.
We talked about how that's an advantage when you're marrying.
You can marry make so many marriage alliances.
Occasionally it's it backfires because of entangling alliances.
Like what happens with say, the phrase or some of these other
cases. Or when you're allege is like
it's time for war and you have to send ten children off to war
or fight like you would rather not have so many children in war
at once 2. The issue of pride in the new
Tyrell Lordship. Like you have this Lord Harlan
Tyrell leading the reach armies in the Dorn with the high towers
Be like chafing under having their soldiers led by a Tyrell.
Maybe not, maybe I make too much out of that, but we do hear that
there was chafing under Tyrell leadership and the high towers
is are the most prestigious house in the Reach, even more so
than the Tyrells at this point. So if anyone's pride is ruffled,
it's a good place to start is with the high towers.
You're more likely to have that chafing the more people are
involved. Some of it is going to depend on
the personalities of the people involved or whatever.
So if you have two sons and they're both like reasonable,
even keeled, educated, you know. But if you have seven sons and
one of them is a loudmouthed arrogant, you know, yeah, that
guy's going to get his ruffles, his his ruffles feathered.
His ruffles feathered. Yes, if there was ruffled pride.
Pride ruffled here. Then it would have gotten worse
given how things went. Dorn like they wouldn't have
looked and like, well, he sure did a good job with losing the
entire army in the desert, you know, because that is what
happened. This is that Lord, this is the
scorpion canopy Lord that was killed this way.
So they're probably high. I did it again, high tower
soldiers in this host. It was a large host and I can't
imagine the high towers didn't supply any of it.
It was like it was like 20-30 thousand men, like none of them
came from Old Town. That seems super unlikely.
There was probably like officers and lesser lordlings in that
host and they all, just as we'll see shortly, they just all died.
And this is also a host that struggled through the prince's
past. It was brutal and and difficult.
And then the desert itself before getting to Hell Hole
before everyone banished in the desert.
So it was bad before it got worse.
And the high towers that were in that host would have suffered
along with the rest. So what happens of course, since
the darnish didn't fight back. The way that Westerossi normally
do. They engaged in guerrilla
warfare and ambushes and all this stuff.
Aegon, decide, OK, we won. They we went to Sunspear.
No one stopped us. So that means we won, right?
No, but for a while, that's what they told people.
And of course he appointed A variety of nondarnish Lords to
rule Dawn. Apparently none of them were
high towers. Good for the high towers,
because that's obviously didn't go well.
Like all of them were murdered. So the high towers escaped that
fate. So that phase of the war maybe
wasn't too bad for the Hightowers.
Maybe it was because of the soldier, the unnamed soldiers
that we still know about. The second phase of the war was
definitely terrible for House Hightower during the progression
of this war. Another item of note is the
creation of the position of Gran Maester.
That position didn't exist before, of course, why would it
have? There was no central Royal
Court. Of course, this is right up the
Hightowers alley, They already have this huge influence over
the citadel. The Grand Maester is chosen by
the Archmaesters. If you think that the Lord of
the Hightower isn't going to, like, stick his finger in this
voting process, well, I've got a bridge to sell you.
I mean, certainly some of them probably did and some of them
probably didn't care, but there's if they wanted to
influence the choice, they probably did right?
And they may have even came up with the idea of this position
like, you know, we need, we need a Maester.
A maester above the other maesters to advise the king.
We've got one for all the like this.
Someone had this idea. It may have come from the high
towers or maybe just came straight from the citadel like
that. Makes sense, but could have been
a joint creation of the two, you know?
Wherever the idea came from, and however genuine or unbiased
different leaders would try to be, there would still be this
passive influence coming through.
All of it, right there, There still would be.
Old Town and the Citadel are still so tied together that even
if someone else came up with the idea of someone else, someone
from the Citadel should be the Grandmaster.
And whoever's in charge of old towns and you guys decide I
don't want any part of it. There's still people in the
Citadel that are going to be and have been their whole life
influenced by old towns. Even people trying their best to
be genuine and stay out of it and do whatever's best.
Just do the right thing. There will still be this
influence. And and you know, there's not
everyone being purely stepped back, genuine, honest about it.
So I guess this would have happened around the same time
when Agon declares victory over Dorn is around the same time the
position of Grandmaster was created.
And that's also when Doran erupted.
Like basically when Agon gets back to King's Landing, maybe
meets his new Grandmaster. Just as that's happening, Dorn
rises up, murders all the people appointed to rule over them, and
kicks out slash murders the Garrisons held but to rule over
them. That's when Lord Tyrell moved
out of the Hellholt. His army vanishes.
And then four or five more years later, this is going to have
consequences because the Hellholt is going to be more the
site of more failure for the Iron Throne.
In 10 A/C, Lord Fowler emerged from the Prince's past to attack
Knights Song, the Castle Knights Song and captured it.
Lord Manfred of you know, Hightower Lord not.
It's kind of far from Knightsong, but not so far that
he apparently had some responsibility here.
He dispatched his heir, Sir Adam, with a large army to
retake it, and it was a huge failure.
By the time Sir Adam arrived with his army, the castle had
already been burned, all the nobles have been taken hostage,
and Lord Fowler had returned to Doran already.
He was already back through the prince's past meanwhile.
This appeared to be maybe a a, a faint or an arranged maneuver
because as these troops were drawn off the Night Song Lord or
Sir Joffrey Dane emerges from the Red Mountains presumably
from some secret passes because it's not the Prince's Pass of
the Bone Way. There must be some way.
There's a lot of mountains between Starfall and Old Town.
There's got to be some ways through.
And if you're a local you might know the ways they might have.
Don't. Yeah, she has got the map up if
you if you're watching on video or watching the video.
Elsewhere, looking at the map yourself, you can see it's it's
there's no obvious way through, but there is a way through
clearly because that's what happened here.
So they pillaged the surrounding towns and farms.
They didn't have enough manpower to take Old Town itself, which
is not surprising. Old Town is a severe and large
place and this is an army that emerged from the mountains.
So it's, you know, it's not a giant host, but.
Lord Manfred had to do something.
He couldn't just allow this host to run around and destroy the
countryside, so he dispatched his others.
One of his other sons, this was Garmin, and Garmin went to
confront Sir Joffrey now. But remember, most of the army
of Old Town was away at night song.
So Sir Joffrey Dane did not turn and run.
Instead he faced the High Tower sorting quote.
All towns walls prove too strong for the doornish to overcome.
The Dane burn fields, farms and villages for 20 leagues around
the city and slew Lord Hightower's younger son Garmin
and the boy led a sword against. Him.
So apparently Joffrey slew Garmin personally, which, I
mean, that's pretty nasty. So this is just when they
thought they were done with raiding, right?
The Ironborn are are cut off from raiding them.
But here comes the doornish, you know, but the doornish in this
case were provoked by the same people they just bent the knee
to. So it's.
You can't. I mean, I'm not saying Joffrey's
a good guy here for burning the farms and villages of innocent
people, but the Seven Kingdoms are the aggressors here pretty
clearly, right? As for Sir Adam, he didn't do
the dumb thing. He didn't run into dorm with his
army trying to recover these hostages and punish this army
that that would have been pretty foolish.
He tried to run back to Old Town to try to confront.
Sir Joffrey who had just killed his brother because he got news
of that like a rider ran up the road and told him about this.
He moved quickly to run back to Old Town.
But of course Joffrey knew again this was probably planned.
They knew that the army had been drawn away tonight song and this
was enabled Joffrey to make his move.
So once that the larger force is moving back to Old Town, well,
Joffrey's everything. Now it's time to get the hell
out of here through our secret mountain passes and.
Yeah, so spies and scouting and planning really worked for the
Dornish here. They really fooled the high
towers and then got them to move their men away and attacked
while they were weak. And yeah, just to they got own.
They got really out thought here, outmaneuvered badly.
Intelligence. The value of a battlefield
intelligence, right? Now it may just be a
coincidence, but maybe Lord Manfred felt responsible, felt
the loss of his son. You know, it may have.
He may have thought like his decision making was the reason
for that. Maybe his son wasn't ready for
this responsibility. Maybe he felt guilty.
Who knows. Either way, he died within
within the year. So it may have, just may have
been completely unrelated. But yeah, this couldn't have
helped his outlook, his disposition, his stress level,
etcetera. So Adam, who had run a wild
goose chase trying to chase down Darnish Raiders, became the new
Lord of the Hightower and Old Town was presumably.
Angry for revenge against the Darnish, particularly Starfall,
even though even though Dorn wasn't the aggressor, they kind
of were in this sub theater of the war because they did invade.
Kind of kind of counter invasion you could call it.
And they did get it. They got their revenge.
Not directly, not by their own hand, but Vasenia brought Vagar
to Starfall and gave it a good baking.
Wasn't as vicious as Valerian burning hair and all because
Vagar's flames don't burn as hot.
It didn't melt the castle, but that happened so.
Nina writes. That's really important.
It's really important the feudal relationship, the the overlord
and vassal connection. While you're supposed to punish
the people that attacked you, your feudal Lord is supposed to
you hand over the keys to violence to them.
They're allowed to do that. They're supposed to be the ones
that handle justice and and things like this.
So burning Starfall might have seemed like sufficient payback
for what had happened to them, but.
Things only got worse on the revenge side for the Targaryens
because Meraxis was shot down over the Hellholt, the site that
the Tyrells had on lockdown for a little while there, and of
course Rainey's and went down with Meraxis and they were never
heard of again. No word on if Sir Joffrey was
ever killed or if he lived out his life normally or what
happened, so he he may have gotten away with it.
It's an outside possibility. He was a Sword of the Morning
that you kind of think that would have been mentioned.
The reason I bring this up, even though it's not really related
to the high tower stuff, is you would like this guy burned
villages and stuff. How could he be?
Sort of. Come on, y'all got to be a
little more cynical. Human beings vote for who the
Sword of the Morning is that human beings can do all sorts
of. Stuff, you know, like they don't
have to and they can be a coerced into choosing this guy.
You could have. I think we're going to see that
in a song about this fire. I think we're going to see Dark
Star Sees Dawn. You're like, Yep, I'm sort of
the morning and what are you going to do about it?
You know, the King's Guard, ostensibly or perfectly.
Symbol. And you know, nightly.
And yet we know they are not consistently or not.
We have literally an undead monster is in the King's Guard
now. I mean, she's like, come on.
Maybe Joffrey was a dead undead monster.
Yeah, sure. Yeah, it's possible, right?
Yeah. So regardless of whether Lord
Adams felt like that was sufficient vengeance for his
brother or not, we don't know. Or just if enough had been done
to Dorn. I mean, Dorn was messed up by
all the burnings of the the Dragons, so it's hard to say
that they weren't sufficiently punished.
But you never know. Again, humans have a large
capacity for revenge. Either way, the war ended three
years later when Aegon just gave up the war after getting that
mysterious letter that caused him to say all right, he got
real frustrated, went, flew back to Dragonstone, came back and
was like all right, no more war, No no high towers are mentioned
at court when that happened. Still, whether they wanted
revenge or not, or whether they felt satisfied, this is the the
quote that describes that moment.
The Dornish victory if victory it was.
Was seen to be dishonorable, and the survivors of the fight, and
the sons and brothers of those who had fallen, promised one
another that another day would come, and with it a reckoning.
Their vengeance would need to wait for a future generation and
the accession of a younger, more bloodthirsty king.
Though he would set the Iron Throne for another 20-4 years,
the Dornish conflict was egg on the conquerors.
Last war. So whether or not they got
enough vengeance, they certainly got extended peace.
And that's a pretty valuable especially in this new raid,
nearly raid free environment, no Dornish raids, no iron born
raid, nothing, at least nothing on a large scale.
Surely there were some exceptions here and there, but
nothing that would cause a, you know, policy changes or anything
like that at this phase if we jump forward to the year 25.
This is when we know King's Landing had was growing fast.
It was already the third largest city by this point.
So still Old Town was larger by this point.
Old Town could probably see the writing on the wall and was like
this new this King's Landing is going to surpass us, whether
that bothered them or not. Like it's it's probably not a
big deal. Like it's a small point of pride
maybe. I doubt it was a huge problem.
You know a bigger city to them that might be even a benefit
like we talked about earlier. I might just be more trade that
might actually be good for them. I'm not.
An expert on this sort of thing, but I think it's a good thing.
Even though even though some pride may have been involved,
ultimately it's probably good for them.
I also feel like a city is old and wealthy and educated as them
might recognize that we're at capacity, like we don't
necessarily have the land or food for more people.
You know, a good job if you can make more, but we're at
capacity. We are at capacity.
Yep. So Lord Adam had two children of
note, perhaps only two children total, though we don't even know
who he married. So there's just some unknowns
here. A few.
These two kids that we do know of are very interesting though.
The elder was Patrice Patrice Hightower, and she has a lot in
common with the current, A current member of House
Hightower. That is Melora Melora, who is
called Melora the Mad Maid. What they have in common is
both. Being the eldest, Although I'm
not sure if Melora's the eldest or just the eldest daughter.
Patrice is actually the eldest and they're both rumored to be
involved in sorcery. They're both maidens, which only
enhances their reputation as using magic because of all these
superstitions that you have to be a virgin to practice magic,
which is a tradition rooted in some real world superstitions
and Melora is. Supposedly helping her father
research books and spells to deal with these Ironborn raids.
So Patrice wouldn't have had that issue since the Ironborn
had stopped. But all these things they have
in common. The son that Adam had was
another Manfred, so he named his son after his father, and that
Manfred also became Lord. He was the next Lord after Adam,
but we aren't quite there yet. It's possible this Manfred was
the one who married the tarth triplet, though certainly don't
have a lot of possibilities there Manfred had.
The second Lord Manford had sons Martin and Morgan, as well as a
daughter named Cyrese. Cyrese might ring a bell because
she is pretty famous. You'll see why in a moment if
you don't already know. And again, probably some other
of the unnamed children. These high towers, as fertile as
they are, but they don't all make the history books.
There were seven different high septons during Aegons 36 to 37
year reign. All of them apparently stayed on
good terms with him, which likely benefited the high
towers. That may have been in part
because of the high towers. They may have been like get
along with him, just we need you to get along with the king.
You can see why it would be good for us.
Like, don't don't be too religious.
People, they would get along with him in the 1st place, coach
them on how to get along with him.
Once they're in position, are substance.
Position for life did all seven of them.
Die and get replaced or is there some?
Yeah. They are.
It's like it's like the Pope or whatever, where you don't you
you're not you only it's a position you hold till you die.
I like king scarves that although there's probably been a
few exceptions where someone got booted, I can't think of any.
I mean for the King's Guard I can well I can think of B1
example, but I can't think of any examples of a High Septon
being booted before his time, except also in a song by some
fire when the High Sparrows people just like.
Interrupted the choosing, so maybe even technically the new
high stepped in. Hadn't been chosen yet.
Anyway, that's that's the other here nor there.
It just seems like that's a lot to die in that span of time.
Well, they're usually old in the 1st place because it's usually
like you know, but still, you're right.
Maybe they're picking older people, but I I also wonder if
maybe some of them weren't playing ball and got some poison
in their wine or whatever. Possible, but it says they all.
There was no animosity between them so if that but that could
have been covered up, they may have just.
Poisoned quickly. But they're also chosen by vote.
It's not like they're just like the oldest guy gets nominated so
that the voting process that would have been concerned with
that. Pleasing the king before
choosing him, not after now. There's always the chance of you
elect someone that says all the right things and then they
completely flip on you and do with it.
Like we've all seen that happen in the real world.
We've all seen politicians break like all their promises.
Only Nixon could go to China. You know, that's We got to keep
that in mind. A healthy dose of cynicism
always, always comes in handy here, always seems appropriate.
Now, one of those high septons did object, though there wasn't.
It wasn't like it was all smooth sailing entirely.
They stayed on good terms, but it wasn't like they didn't have
conflict. One of them objected.
To the notion of Megor marrying Rayna.
Now remember, let's Megor uncle of Rayna.
Megor didn't have, didn't have any living children of his own,
but his older brother, a nice, had plenty of kids.
So what is the High Septon say? He says we object to Rayna
marrying Megor, we're against incest.
Why not marry my niece instead? My niece Cerise Hightower and
this was accepted, they were like, yes, okay, let's do that.
This kind of shows that Agon was like he was interested in a
Hightower marriage but not to himself.
So he's like, yeah, let's do that.
He had the Hightower marriage to the junior branch of his family
because a nice branch is the one that was going to inherit throne
or so he thought, well, a nice branch didn't inherit but his
kids didn't. That's super interesting because
that's whoever Lord Manfred Mary, we don't know who his wife
was. It's the same house that this
high stepping came from because that's his series is his niece
so. We can make that connection.
So they got their connection to the royal family.
It wasn't through the main line, but it still was a big deal.
Megor wasn't in the line of succession, but he was
eventually handed the king to Amy.
So there's a lot of, you know, he was a great warrior, one of
the finest Knights in the realm. And Cerise married Megor, so she
was 23 and he was 13. That's important, not because of
the age capital that's relevant, but because.
People didn't know what Meg or was yet.
They didn't know what they were dealing with.
The full like the his, his inner psychopath hadn't fully
manifested yet. They were the red flags.
But those were mostly kept under wraps.
Like people didn't necessarily know that he'd already like
killed a horse and a nearly killed a stable boy that, you
know, screamed at him or just just in shock and whore.
Yeah. So like they didn't know what
they were dealing with yet. Yeah.
That didn't turn out to be so great.
Tying yourself to Meg or. Yeah.
Now, Megor boasted of his many attempts to make an error on
Cerise. They never had a child, and this
was a big problem for him because he thought of it as a
manly thing to have kids like a lot of Westeros he men do.
They're like, you're not man enough to have kids and he
didn't have kids with Cerise. Meanwhile, his brother Amy, who
by a lot of measures was not manly at all, according to
people like Megor, he had five kids by, you know, just kept
hopping more kids out. So, like by that measure.
His brother was far manlier than him.
Yeah, there was actually a sixth child that died as an infant.
So, you know, there's that too. So let's move on to to Amy's.
In fact, Amy's like his father. He was crowned in the star.
He stepped. And a number of revolts happened
like soon after Aegon's death, in part because.
Well Aegon was strong and powerful and no one wanted to
rebel against him, but Amy was seen as a lot softer and weaker
so thought people thought maybe they could they could get over
on him whereas they couldn't on Aegon.
But most of these aren't terribly relevant to house
Hightower. the Vulture King maybe had been because that's
sort of in their sphere, but maybe not a big deal.
They may have been worried though if the Vulture King is
going to emerge and and savage other parts of the reason they
might have been worried about something.
Happening another army like Joffrey Danes emerging from from
the east and and causing problems, so they might have
been wary of that. They also would have been maybe
wary about what was happening in the Iron Aisles because after
the latest Ironborn rebellion was put down Amy's offered them
a boon and the boon they asked for was to kick all the septons
and septas out of the Iron Islands.
And Amy's is like, oh, I guess I have to accept that.
That might have made them nervous about the Ironborn
starting their raiding ways again.
It didn't, apparently, but it did bring them closer to that
point again and they might have been worried.
They're like, okay, well, we're tied to Megor and this weak King
Amy's. You wonder if they thought maybe
Megor would have been a better king too.
And of course that is what happens.
But you wonder if did they do anything to maybe make that
happen? Or did they?
Did they? Tell Megor they'd help?
Or was there any sort of back and forth prior to these next
set of events? Because Megor was a problem?
Like, you don't just say, yeah, yeah, you look at him and say
he's stronger than Annie's, but that doesn't mean you look at
him and say, oh, he's our ticket, because he obviously
became very problematic over time, very murderous, and not to
mention not having children, which puts the stability of his
line in question. So we're jumping forward to the
year 39. Where he's Meg or is now at this
point hand of the king to Amy's he declared cerise Baron and
took Alice hair away to wife. He's like well my father was had
a polygamous marriage why can't I do it And Vasenia backed him
in this Vasenia was like yeah go right ahead do it son.
But obviously the face was like no and house I tires like no
that's our daughter slash sister you can't do that to her.
This is embarrassing. Like you're embarrassing our
whole house. Like, think of that.
We just set his wife aside and declares her Baron.
Pretty embarrassing, right? So the High Septon demanded Meg.
Or return to Cerise. I want to clarify, it's worth
noting that there is. I mean they can't compete with
Dragons, but the Faith has like a military arm right at this
time it's it's not a complete. Hollow statement for the high
septum to say I don't want X. He can't say I'm going to send
troops if you do X, right? He didn't because he didn't.
He didn't want to have it come to that.
But he was trying to use social slash religious pressure rather
than the threat of violence. Because yeah, the threat of
violence wouldn't be wouldn't benefit them.
It wouldn't work, probably work for them.
They didn't want to take on the dragon.
So though they could, they could skirt that line with Amy's on
the throne because Amy's was unlikely to bring things to a
head. And Megor obviously a different
matter. If Megor had been king at this
point they might have done things differently or not
because this Isep and didn't back down.
So let's yeah, let's move on here.
He demands that Megor return to Cyrese and and we accept her as
his lawful wedded wife and and bring her back to his household.
But he also went so far as to call Alice Haraway who he had
married as a second wife. He went and called her The
Horror of Haraway. I was like that's pretty harsh
like it's not her fault. Lord Manfred was also loudly
against the polygamy too, unsurprisingly.
I mean, Cerise was his daughter, so he would not have take kindly
to all the insults and the the fraying of this connection to
the royal house as well. So he and the High Septon were
together on this. They were united on it.
Meg or Amy's pushed back on his brother and was like, you have
to take Cerise back and set aside your second wife or face
the consequences of exile like, all right, exile.
And he went. Packed up and went to Pentos.
Meg or obviously had to abandon his post as his hand to the
king, and Amy appointed Septon Murmison in his place.
Septon Murmison was a creepy old weirdo who said he could fix
Cerise's fertility by laying his hands upon her.
Hanging his hands upon her To fix her for like that is some
real creepy stuff right there, right?
And Cerise got tired of it and left.
She's like, I'm not going through these.
Quote UN quote Fertility treatments anymore.
I'm going back to Old Town. Leave me alone, you creepy
weirdo. Like a side anecdote.
Time, folks. When I first moved to Atlanta, I
got a hold of this magazine that's only distributed.
To people that go to strip clubs and people who attend like adult
entertainment and this, this magazine is full of
entertaining, hilarious, hilarious.
Oh, no, of course, because. I wasn't at this trouble.
No. 21 year old me would never have gone to a strip club.
Never. Not in Atlanta.
The like the the capital of strip clubs.
No. But in this magazine was this
man with his hands like this, like like he's getting ready to
grab something. His pitch was he through his.
Massage techniques. He will make your breasts
larger. He was trying to get women to
pay him to fondle them. Like.
What the hell, man? So this is what I think of,
except in Mirmus. What's his number?
Where? Where?
It's horrible. Where is he?
Where is this man? How do I find him So I can
complain? No.
Anyway, but the price problem was inflamed even further by
Megor. Because rather worse than what
Megor had done, because anus is like, yeah, the faith is mad at
us. They were mad at what Megor did.
So I know I will just marry my son to my daughter that that
won't make things worse, will it?
So of course that was a huge problem.
The High Septon went volcanic on that and was like what the hell,
you know, this is an abomination, blah blah blah.
He said all the thing he said, all the things he said before,
but louder and and more forceful.
And Amy's again, because he's kind of a softie was unwilling
to threaten them or say shut up or I'll burn the starry Sept,
which is what Vasenia told him to do and what Megor would have
told him to do had he been there.
And Nina's like, yeah, just her notes were like, yeah, shaking
his, shaking your head here what are you doing, Amy's Hey, God's
marriage was accepted by the faith because it already
happened. It was already there before the
conquest. So they didn't have a say in
that one. They weren't going to be like,
you have to divorce your Queens. Like, yeah, they just, that
wasn't going to happen. They didn't try that.
But this before it happens, like they announced the intention of
this. It hasn't actually happened yet.
They're like, so they of course they speak up and say, are you
kidding me? Didn't you accept our religion?
This is so against our religion. Remember the doctrine of of
exceptionalism hadn't been written yet.
Hadn't that's that's the thing that happened under Jerry.
So this was completely out of nowhere and crazy that Amy's
would. I think it was accepted.
You wonder if the senia was just like egging him on like yeah,
don't listen to them just do it. Just do it.
You know because that seems to be the senia is definitely the
Angel on the shoulder that's choosing violence.
Like if you've got I don't I don't know if she I don't know
if he had anyone on his left shoulder saying no don't do that
and the other non voice that doesn't exist at all, you know.
I can imagine Amy's or Vesenia feeling like it's out of nowhere
for the step to tell me who I can marry, you know?
Yeah. I agree.
I mean Vesenia would not have that's that tends to be her
attitude. Like you can't tell us what to
do, you can't. You have no say at all.
Like how dare you even suggest you have a say in this like
that. That feels like her attitude.
Accepting your religion and following the the rules of your
religion's leader are different. Yeah, you've got Dragons, buddy,
yeah. Absolutely, Yeah.
Yeah. Vesenia is so awesome.
I love Vesenia. She's.
She's a maker of fun events. In the year 41, all these
problems came to a full on head. The faith uprising became kind
of official at this point. Like it was already burbling,
like I was the high step that's been complaining for a while.
And super relevant to the high towers because the commander of
the Warriors son's chapter in Old Town was Morgan Hightower,
and that's the son of of Manfred, and Manfred dies.
Shortly after this was succeeded by his eldest son, Martin,
Martin would face an entirely different problem, because while
Anes is not a violent man, Anes wouldn't be around much longer
and Martin would have to deal with Meg or the Cruel as king
instead of this dude in exile. So about a year later, as the
early stages of the uprising continued to progress and Anes
was just like, I don't know what to do, he throws his hands up in
his hair like. Call a council to deal with
these problems. Wait, don't call a council to
deal with. Just wait.
Send you. He just yeah, he just effed it
up pretty bad. And he died after having some
health issues in the care of Vasenia, so it's pretty sketchy.
But that's a whole another story and that's our stopping point
for halfway through the episode. Can I ask a quick question?
So Martin and Morgan were brothers?
Yes, Manfred was their father. Yeah.
Is Martin the older brother? Yes.
Say he died would have been gone to Morgan.
Has Morgan not given up his rights to be in the faith or
whatever? It depends on.
I don't. Probably not, because by that
time Martin probably already had his own children.
But if not, yes, yes. And then Morgan would have had
to either been passed over for a son that hadn't committed or
would have had to have left the Warrior Sons.
But the warrior Sons wasn't like a lifetime commitment.
And I don't think in this era, so I don't think it's like the
King's Guard or something like that.
So I think that would have been accepted, especially for such a
rich house that could have gotten around any sort of.
Yeah, consequence for that, like, yeah, it was.
Yeah, it was a little. Leverage.
Who's our? Yeah, let's, let's settle this
our way anyway. That's a lot.
That's a very active part of the first rain.
We covered Eggon and Amy's In the second-half of this episode,
we're going to get to its Meg or covers even more time.
I just want to say, you know, y'all we're only a few weeks
away from fire and blood. Reread us and in that time, as
you as I've been saying the last several weeks.
It's it's the time is dwindling for you to get in on our $2.00 a
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get access to that episode as well as all all the other bonus
eisodes like the Red Kraken, like the Gossos.
Like they where are they now? Is like some other ones and I
can't remember them all. Can I share a funny anecdote
about the creation of mentors? Absolutely.
I just cracked me out. When we were making that
episode, I had Shawn do the quotes for it because I did the
editing and I didn't really want to listen to myself to the
quotes. So I had Shawn do the quotes and
there were eight quotes originally and he sent me an
e-mail with the quotes and then we said, oh sorry, we added a
9th quote that you don't have. Can you send us that one too?
And well, I got an e-mail from Sean that said mantari's now
with the shocking 9th quote. You won't believe it.
You won't believe you know subscribe to hear what the
shocking 9th quote. Is.
Quite amused me. Also want to make sure people
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Also thanks to Davey Mack who sends a super chat and says
thanks History W Trust for your great content.
And well we appreciate that Davey.
We will keep it coming. And Jenny P says, I know this is
a tat off topic but just popping in to say I've been rereading
and listening to the Valor or readers.
So good, love your content. Well thank you Jenny P and we're
happy to be getting back to Valerieta's pretty Soon for Fire
and Blood. It's a long way out, but we will
redo the entirety of Valoretus one day, and that day will come
after the Windsor winter. It'll be a good time to do the
whole Rereadus once we have a whole new book to consider in
light of the previous five, but we'll see when that is.
Who knows? Okay Megor.
Wow. The reign of Megor, though
relatively short, was extremely active for House Hightower and
launched events that would continue after his reign.
The dual problems of Meg or the Cruel and the Faith Militant
became A1 big combined problem as the two factions embarked on
a bloody campaign against one another.
The high towers were caught in the middle.
On one side Cerise was married to Meg or on the other side they
were estranged and they had a long association with the Faith
and thus some elements of the Faith Militant.
It's not clear, especially at this era.
Where the faith begins and where the Faith Militant begins, like
how much overlap, It wasn't as well defined thing because,
well, it's like people are out there wearing their allegiance
badges and like they're carrying around a flag to say which side
they're on, right? No, of course not.
In fact, the Faith Militant practiced a lot of subterfuge
because Mega started hunting them down.
So they had to, they had to keep hidden for reasons of just basic
strategy. Now, again, Morgan's Martin's
brother, Lord Martin Hightower's brother was Sir Morgan,
commander of the Old Town Warriors Sons.
That's really important so that the Faith Militant would be even
closer to orders like this, the ones who are already kind of
violent and maybe more willing to get bloody in the defense of
their beliefs. The swords and stars were
everywhere. The swords are basically as the
short nickname for the the Warrior Sons and the stars were
nicknamed for the poor fellows were the two.
Categories within the Faith Militant.
Remember the swords are the more are the usually the ones that
came from decent families, meaning money to families not
decent like in their behavior of course.
And the poor fellows are more of like the the common born members
of that organization. So before and after Megor
claimed the crown, Cerise continued to put it out there
that she was his only true wife. Like this is not a quiet mousy
individual who just like took what happened to her.
Lying down now, she was outspoken about the scenario
that she was faced with. She was like, Nope, I'm his one
wife. That's it.
Like I'm married under the eyes of gods and men.
That's the only one that counts. This second marriage is
completely invalid. Is, which, by the way is an
interesting argument to put forward.
Like is the second marriage valid or not?
That might become relevant in In A Song of Ice and Fire.
Maybe not. But maybe it will be.
And this is true. This continued even after.
Meg or took it even farther, because when he came back from
exile, he had a third wife. He married Tiana of Pentos.
He's like, well, what's better than two wives?
Three of course eventually would be 6, but that's that's not even
in this episode. We're not even going to get that
far. Gran Meister.
Miros even told his king he's like your true wife is Therese
Hightower. Gran Meister, keep in mind,
influenced maybe by the Hightower.
But Meg or killed him. So he's like, yeah, OK, it said
that Meg. Or listen to him.
Let him say everything he was going to say, then killed.
It's just like, yeah, OK then. But the High Septon, that didn't
stop the High Septon. He kept condemning the
polygamous marriages. It's it's not clear that Lord
Martin did though Martin's father Manfred did.
Manfred was out there complaining, but Martin didn't.
And but oh, we don't know that he did.
And there's a reason why he might not have.
And that's because. Manfred was complaining to Anies
Martin. If he's complaining, it's to
Megor. And Megor just like killed the
Grand Meister and Megor actually Megor killed three of his Grand
Meisters throughout his reign. So perilous position to be in.
Apparently any proximity to Megor is perilous I suppose.
So that's fair for Martin to approach things differently that
his father had. There's there was really no
danger of Anies going ultraviolent.
But Megor it's like, yeah, like drop of a hat.
This guy could do that. But yeah, again, the, the and
the difficulty, it's like a tightrope walk, like Meg or is
getting increasingly bloody and brutal.
Like, how does the High Tower stand on this issue of, like,
the faith being persecuted, but also the faith, like breaking
laws. Like some of what the Faith
stood for, the Faith Militant stood for was just pure
zealotry. But some of it was, yeah,
they're, some of them are criminals, but some of them are
like have the right of it's it's not.
It's this is a very Gray. Scenario.
There's not a lot of good guys here, although it's I think you
could make a case that Meg or what's worse, but that's not
really our job today. We're not really here to discuss
that. But from the Hightower
perspective, they're like, well, what do we do?
Like we're tied to Meg or because of this marriage, but
even that isn't really working out right now.
Like, he's estranged from her. But do we even want to fix that
like Charisse does but do? Is that really what we want?
And we maybe want to like? Cut the cord here, let this guy
go down in flames. But at this point maybe it
wasn't clear that he would. It wasn't clear that like Meg or
his reign selfdestructed over time, right?
He just lost the lost so many of the Lords and that eventually it
all just fell apart for him. But this is so early in his
reign that had not happened yet. He had not lost anything at this
point. He was.
Everyone was afraid of him, even his own, even the the half of
the family that he had usurped. They just took it.
At this point, they hadn't made any move yet.
They were still just like, yeah, all right, Megor is the king,
and Megor was content to just let that lie.
He didn't go pursue his nephew to murder him, to say, to make
sure nothing happened. He seemed just confident that no
one would move against him. And you can see why.
The guy was terrifying and he had Valerian, so like, And
Vasenia was still alive too, because a lot of lot of what
went wrong for Megor happened after Vasenia's death.
What a weird spot for the high towers to be in.
Like do we want to be in this arrangement?
Do we want to make the most of it?
Do we want to find our way out of it?
Like, I have no idea how they would have viewed it.
So much depends on the personality of Lord Martin,
which is a complete mystery to us.
But he couldn't have just been like la di da, you know?
It's fine that much I think is pretty safe.
And things came to a head though in 43 A/C, Megor and Besenia and
and Valerian. I wrote in my notes Megor and
Besenia and Megor. Yeah, two Megors came to Old
Town. Oh God, two Megors.
That's terrible. Maybe it's a double negative,
maybe it would have cancelled out.
Megor the cruel and Megor the nice.
You know, Megor the cool. Megor the cool.
Yeah. So he and he he, it's not like
like why is Megor coming? No, no, he he had the intent of
incinerating the star he set he like kind of.
Said he would do that. I guess that's what the
expectation was. Here's the quote, anyway.
As fullers of smoke rose all through the Westerlands and the
Riverlands, Begar and Blerian turned S another Lord Hightower.
Counseled by another High Septon, it opened the gates of
Old Town during the Conquest. Now it seemed as if the greatest
and most populous city in Westeros must surely burn.
Thousands fled Old Town that night, streaming from the city
Gates were taking ship for distant ports.
Thousands more took to the streets in drunken reverie.
This is night for song and sin and drink.
Men told one another for come tomorrow the virtuous and the
vile burn together. Others gathered in steps and
temples and ancient woods to pray they might be spared.
The story set high, stepped and railed and thundered, calling
down wrath of the gods upon the Targaryens.
So this is a very different scenario.
It says that another High step than another Lord of Old Town
you know surrendered to the Dragons.
But this Lord Hightower not it will.
It will remain a mystery what he really thought.
But this High Septon did not play ball.
Clearly. This High Septon seems to be
like one of the true believers. He's like calling for the gods
to intervene. Like that's not something a semi
believer expects to happen. You got to really, really
believe to think that's going to happen.
Like this guy seems to have like kind of gone up a deep end even
maybe. So, yeah, it was Lord Martin's
great grandfather Manfred that. That obeyed, that listened to
the High Septum when I accepted his seven days.
By the way, I didn't mention it at the time.
The High Sparrow mentions that vision mentions that the High
Septum preached surrender. He tells that to Cersei.
So that's kind of interesting given all the potential for the
Cersei to maybe blow up Sept or that get blown up through some
other means. Maybe we got maybe Danny does it
after after all, Megor. Did torch the Sept of
remembrance which also would have looked odd to the high
towers like you're burning entire septs man.
Like that's not good. Like yeah, the Warriors sons
were like all camped out in there and yeah they're fighting
against you but it just that's too much man.
But it also showed no this guy is not just talking like he he
has already burned a Sept. So when this threat to burn the
star except you can see why people took it seriously you can
see why. Thousands of people fled the
city. You can see why thousands of
people treated it like the apocalypse.
Because they're like, yeah, well, this guy is proven
multiple times that he will burn what he says he will burn.
At first, Martin seemed to be backing the High Septon.
Like, yeah, you're right. Call down the Rose of the God.
Maybe he didn't see a way out of it.
Maybe he couldn't figure out a way to to maneuver the situation
to something more peaceable. Yeah, so when High Septon says
things loudly that you agree with, you let him go.
But what? What do you do when the High
Septon like you agree? Not only do you agree with him,
you you say, yes, it's the will of the gods, but what do you do
when the will of the gods is going to get you killed?
Like you got to, like do something right?
Maybe you have faith that the gods will intervene you.
Yeah, like you might. There's no way Stannis could be
Renley, right? Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
So maybe that's what he thought, But then as.
The days went by and the gods didn't intervene, and it became
clear that Negor was going to arrive soon.
Well, maybe you just got to find a new will of the gods.
Like maybe we need a new will here, someone else, right?
As one. Anyway, quote.
The men of the city watch, filled sacks with sand and pails
with water to fight the fires they knew were coming along the
city walls. Crossbows, scorpions, spit fires
and spear throwers. Were hoisted onto the
battlements in hopes of bringing down the Dragons when they
appeared. Led by Sarah Morgan Hightower, a
younger brother of the Lord of Old Town, 200 warriors, sons
spilled forth from their chapter house to defend his high
holiness. Surrounding the starry Sept with
a ring of steel atop the Hightower, the great beacon fire
turned a baleful green. As Lord Martin Hightower called
his banners, Old Town waited for the dawn and the coming of the
Dragons. And the Dragons came beg our
first as the sun was rising, then Valerian just before
midday. But they found the gates of the
city open, the battlements unmanned, and the banners of
House Targaryen, House Tyrell and House Hightower flying side
by side atop the city walls. The Dowager Queen Besenia was
the first to learn the news. Sometime during the blackest
hour of that long and dreadful night, the High Septon had died.
So just like the High the the first High Septon that
surrendered his thing seems so engineered, this seems very
clearly engineered as well, right?
Like, pretty clearly straightforward.
Like, no way was that a coincidence, especially because
this dude was healthy. He was known to be someone who
just had endless energy. He could preach for a day and a
night without getting tired. He was famous for his energy
level. So yeah, maybe he just burned
out drop dead. But so unlikely, so unlikely.
I I mean, it's hard for me to believe.
It's almost hard for me to even consider that as a possibly.
It's only in there because it is technically possible, You know,
a person can die at any time. But no, I I mean, yeah, the
timing is we we, we expect he was murdered.
But who Who did it? Like more did Martin just like
pretend like he was going to fight just to show his strength
And then Oh well, I stopped and died and now well that's that
changes everything. So he doesn't want to look like
a coward or I don't know. But but the text gives us a lot
of options. Here's some more quote.
Some say that his high holiness took his own life.
And what was either the act of a Craven afraid to face the wrath
of King Meghor, or a noble sacrifice to spare the good folk
of Old Town from dragon fire? Others claim the seven struck
him down for the sin of pride, for heresy, treason and
arrogance. Many and more remain certain he
was murdered. But by whom?
Sir Morgan Hightower did the deed at the command of his Lord
brother, some say. And Sir Morgan was seen entering
and leaving the High Septons Privy chambers that night.
Others point to the Lady Patrice Hightower, Lord Martin's maiden
aunt and a reputed witch, who did indeed seek an audience with
his High Holiness at dusk, though he was alive when she
departed. The Archmasters of the Citadel
are also suspected, though whether they made use of the
Dark Arts and assassin. Or a poison scroll is still a
matter of some debate. Messages went back and forth
between the Citadel and the Starry Sept all night, and there
are still others who hold them all blameless and lay the High
Septon's death at the door of another rumored sorceress, the
Dowager Queen Vasenia Targaryen. The truth will likely never be
known, but the swift reaction of Lord Martin.
When word reached him at the Hightower is beyond dispute.
Yes, it's notable that the High Septon was calling for the gods
to intervene against Megor and to send you, and he's the one
who died. And people are like, that's the
will of the gods, that's who the gods struck down.
That's funny, the Citadel is an interesting possibility.
Like, I don't think they poisoned the High Septon,
although it is. Again, can't dismiss it, can't
rule it out, but it is. Interesting that they had all
these messages going back and forth all night.
The Citadel's like trying to reason with him.
Like, dude, this can't be the right way to proceed.
Just yell at Meg or until he comes and burns the city.
Like, how is that going to result in a win for the faith?
Like how? How can we possibly go down this
path? But the Citadel has limited
means to do anything about it other than reason with him.
Except if we take this notion of a poison scroll seriously,
which? We don't know if that's even a
thing. I don't know of any examples of
poison scrolls, although I wouldn't put it past, like, The
Faceless Man to come up with something like that.
Still, it seems kind of like they're just throwing darts at a
dartboard here, like, well, it could have been the Citadel,
because it could have been the Citadel, not because there's any
direct evidence, like messages. Isn't much, isn't much evidence.
Almost anyone has motivation because everyone's scared of
just getting burned. Yeah, you're right.
That's why it's so hard. It's like every single person is
like shut up, bicep and. Not just personal fear, but
they're afraid for like their city, their families, their
compatriots, their history and never everything else is
connected to it. Like, not, but maybe also
themselves, which I imagine just to be the makings of a really
intriguing episode, at least of a of a TV show, if not a movie
or whatever, but just. To see the inside, to see this
interaction. And I thought a lot about it
too. I think another you know,
suspect is there's some other septum or group of septums they
might like. You might be preaching all this,
but all the people under him are like, look man, like you got it
and and maybe they were like, hey Citadel, is there any
precedent? Can you research your books and
find something to tell him? Can we get?
Hey, can we remove him from office somehow?
Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah.
Send us some poison. What poison?
I can imagine multiple people like.
Coming and going and maybe even some people around him being
convinced by all the other arguments, going to him and him
not accepting. But everyone else is realizing
the danger that they didn't know was there because the Dragons
were the options they have to do something different and on and
on. You're right though, that's a
really, that's a good catch. And the the Faith aren't
mentioned. His fellow faithful are not
mentioned as the potential murderers here, which they
should be. I mean, I'm not saying they're
any more suspect than the rest, but.
Like you say, pretty much everyone had the incentive to
get rid of this guy. The only one I don't believe is
Besenia because like she's on her dragon flying bear.
Like how is she going to arrange for this guy's death and a part
of her? Angie.
Yeah, yeah, she's casting spells from dragon back.
Yeah. Like, yeah, that doesn't that
doesn't really work for me anyway.
Patrice Hightower again, she gets mentioned as a witch and
you know, she was in his presence, so that's
circumstantial, but. I I mean, I wouldn't cast her
aside like if she's if her nephew is like we got to get rid
of the high septum, she might be a a means to make that happen.
On the other hand, it's already an established prejudice against
women in Westeros that poison as a woman's weapon or a Gornish
weapon. So yeah, that's that's more
likely why she's suspected. But she's more likely than a lot
of these other ones. At least she's an individual
where the rest is like the Citadel, like, well, who?
That's like the Citadel's. A lot of people.
Morgan Hightower, though This is the guy that I think we should
be most suspicious of. Yes, he explicitly went into the
Chambers and left. He was definitely the high
Steppens presence. That by itself doesn't tell you
the story. Nina agrees.
And let's get into why he's the most suspicious by far.
Martin immediately ordered the arrest of his own brother.
But not just his brother, all the warrior sons.
But his brother was the captain of the Old Town chapter of
Warrior Son. So he orders them all arrested,
which is interesting. Why did he order them arrested?
Was it because to to for Meg Or's benefit, to show that he
had the, you know, these these people locked up or whatever,
even though these these particular group wasn't probably
guilty of anything? Unless they were guilty,
potentially, of murdering Lord Hightower.
I mean, sorry, the septum, the high septum.
Either he felt strongly with regard to who to blame, or he
was doing a show for Meg or, or it was a setup to hide the real
killer. There's a lot of possible just
like because it's so hard to pin down the real killer, it's so
hard to pin down Martin's motivation in his angle here.
But they definitely waited for Megor to hold the trial.
Like they had him preside over the trial.
And that was important to let. He's the king, he's the one who
dispenses justice. So they didn't want to do that
without him. That's his authority.
And while before Megor got there though remember it said Vesenia
arrived 1st and Megor arrived like at the break of day.
Martin immediately sent a bunch of spearmen to the most devout
and was like. You're choosing a new High
Septon before May Gore gets here like we have we have we got to
do this now now now now kind of not quite like Stannis locking
the the Knights watch in a room and being like you're choosing a
Lord Commander today. You know we're like this we're
done with this. But it it's somewhat similar to
that. So of course they're like
reminding them, these spearmen. I'm sure the captain whoever
Martin sent was told, given some very specific orders as to what
to say is like. If you choose unwisely, we're
all going to burn, you know? Make sure.
And what I mean by unwisely is choose someone that's kind of
soft or is going to do what Meg or wants.
You know, like this isn't hard. Y'all like it's this isn't.
Tricky. Someone that can interpret the
faith more symbolically and less literally or whatever.
It is, yes. So they picked a 90 year old man
who could barely stand the weight of the crown.
He's so like old that he couldn't even remember all the
words during the coronation coronation ceremony.
So this is clearly a figurehead guy.
But the ceremony was official and they went to did another
coronation making Meg or Crown Meg or again to like
authenticate his usurpation which that had to make him like
that was a plus for him. He liked that like this is CC
Meg or this is what you get, you get you get an official
coronation that. Kind of legitimizes your reign
here rather than burning us all. Isn't that better?
You know, that was a big deal. Vasenia was satisfied with that,
and she went back to Dragonstone while Meg or proceeded to stay
and dispense justice. He was there for six months.
They chose a nine year old man. They could only could barely
take the weight of the crown. That's the crystal crown.
Yeah, that big crystal crown that that that the High Sparrow
later sells for to feed the poor.
Yeah, I I I was, I was trying to remember if that was still in
existence in current times. It seemed.
And I I I had this idea in my mind that the High Spur would
probably just sell that to help. It was.
It was a new one, actually, the one that was sold under by High
Spur. It was a new one because the old
one, which might not even be this one, but the the highest,
remember the High Septin died in the riot, the bread riot, when
Joffrey started the riot there. And they dragged him off of his
litter and killed him. And he was wearing the crystal
crown. So the crystal crown was like
destroyed and pulled into a million pieces there if I
remember correctly. So they so that maybe that was
this crown, but. Because I was thinking a crystal
crown doesn't seem like something that would last
century. It's the it's the Crown of
Theseus. It's been it doesn't have any of
its original parts. So the High Septon of course
taking. Orders or or the advice of the
most about and or Lord Martin dissolved.
The warriors sons and the poor fellow like they're gone.
Like they're no longer an official order.
They're all anyone in that order that doesn't lay down their arms
is an outlaw. You got a year to comply, Okay.
So they gave him a little bit of time.
So this is almost certainly one of the behind the scenes
negotiations made with Meg or like yeah, we'll give you your
coronation. And you do this, you don't burn
us. But Negor's like, but we got,
you got to like also get rid of these orders.
This has to be an official thing like we, you know, we're done
with them. I stepped in the most about.
We're like, yeah, we agree. And of course Valerian was right
there. So of course they were going to
agree. As an aside, I wonder, is
Valerian too large to land atop the high tower?
We know Silver Wing landed up there.
So it's not out of the question, but Valerian might just be too
big. For that.
But boy, would that look cool, landing next to that green flame
if it was still green when they may have changed the green back
to normal by the time Meg were got there.
Because they're like, no, we're not.
We don't want him to think we're fighting it.
Turn that off. But man, that would look cool.
The warriors. Remember some of the warriors
sons were arrested right away. Like that's what Martin did
immediately upon the death of High Septon.
Not only did he rouse the most about and force them to choose a
new leader, he rounded up all the words.
Remember, he rested his own, his own brother.
And they were given a choice. Of course they had to renounce
the order because the order has been dissolved.
So they had to renounce the order no matter what and either
and take the black or face execution.
If they didn't renounce the order slash take the black, they
would die. 1/4 of them chose death.
The the seven who were seven of them came from families, famous
families and Meg or executed them personally with black fire.
The rest were executed by their former brothers yet somehow.
Somehow one person was pardoned. Only one person was pardoned.
And it was Sir Morgan Hightower, the former captain of the
warriors sons and brother to the Lord of Hightower.
Somehow he was spared all this, which is of course, Yeah, gosh,
doesn't look fishy at all, does it?
So this might have been part of the deal, like whatever behind
the scenes negotiation. OK, so Morgan gets a pardon.
The warriors sons are dissolved. The rest go to the wall.
This and that you. But there was another thing.
And most of these things seem to be in Meg Or's favor.
What did the high towers get out of it?
Well, there's a thing or two. We'll see in a minute.
But yeah, like, ultra fishy, like, come on, like, doll,
that's so blatant, right? But who's going to do anything
about it? Well, I'll tell you, Someone is
going to do something. About it, is it?
It shows how. About legitimate, Yeah, that
deceptin was for not accepting, you know, willing to burn or
whatever. It it's crazy, as it seemed to
us. There's a bunch of other crazy
people with them. Yeah, it just goes to show that
you can. It also adds to the like, why
certain High Tower Lords would be legitimately pious because
they like this. It's a strong cultural element
there. Yeah, like, you're right.
Like a corner of them. It shows death instead of the
wall going to the wall, which they might have been like, yeah.
Which might be death also, yeah. So you can kind of maybe see.
And that eventually became a problem, too.
This is outside the scope of this episode, but recall that a
lot of warriors, sons, and former faithful were sent to the
Wall, and then a bunch of Megor supporters were sent to the
Wall. There were.
Certainly the people at the Wall are going to be in conflict.
We don't like each other. You you got.
You sent us here where? Yeah, we did.
Now we're here with. You a follow up.
A follow up thought is how many was that he he executed 1/4 and
the other 3/4 went to the wall. Out of that was like I think it.
Was 200, Yeah. So it would have been like 40
plus. That's also pretty awful, but
yeah. It's true, yeah, it's it would
have been a bloody day. Yeah.
Remember, the coronation's a big deal.
As I said, there is still the usurp line, completely untouched
to sitting there. Megor wasn't threatened by them
in part because they weren't even with their Dragons when
Megor made his move. They were just in the West
doing. Royal progress stuff without
their Dragons. When Meg or seized King's
Landing, their Dragons were there, so they didn't have
access to their Dragons, except they maybe did while he was in
Old Town, and that's kind of what happened.
We'll get to that in a second. But it was almost certainly part
of the, you know, the arrangements.
The Faith was already predisposed against Agon and
Reyna, as we said, the Isepton was like.
Are you kidding me? You married to a brother and
sister after all this other stuff?
That's part of what got this started.
So of course they even though Megor was awful and brutal and
murdering faithful. Well, the other branch of the
Targaryens was engaged in straight up incest and weren't
threatening them with the dragon, the biggest one.
So you could see why they, like, had to go along with Megor.
They may have wanted to, but they kind of also kind of had
to. So remember Cerise?
She was back in Old Town at this point though she had returned
because she was sick of the healing hands of Septon creepy
Murmisson. And this was an opportunity.
And I'm guessing that among the things they negotiated with Meg
or along with yeah we'll do these things you want but you
have to take Cyrese back, which he did.
But there it came with some extra considerations that they
they had to concede a few other things.
So here we go quote. During his time at Old Town the
King was also reconciled with his first wife, Queen Cerise,
the sister of his hosts Lord Hightower.
Everybody agreed to accept the King's other wives to treat them
with respect and honor and speak no further ill against them
whilst Megors, while Megor swore to restore cerise all the
rights, incomes, privileges to her as his wedded wife and
queen, a great feast was held at the Hightower to celebrate the
reconciliation. Rebels even included Abetting in
a second. Consummation so all men would
know this to be true and loving union.
True and loving union. Yeah, it's anything but that.
So all people would be convinced of this bold lie.
This was backing them up. This was like also a way to make
sure Meg or would have their support if it came to war
against the other branch of the family, which it did soon after
this, because yeah, they while he was down in Old Town, Agon
and Reyna realized they could make their move.
And either way, the Hightower shouldn't want to make an enemy
of him, especially when he was right there.
But Megher wasn't an idiot. He he did kind of go maybe
there's there's there's evidence that maybe he lost his mind a
bit as things went on, like power went to his head, cruelty.
Maybe he had went crazy over time, like Aries may have.
Maybe he had some mental health issues that caused him to lose
his grip on reality. Who knows?
The thing is, early on, yeah, he was brutal, but he wasn't
stupid. He did a lot of clever things.
He knew he needed allies. He knew he wouldn't be able to
hold the throne and rule Westeros without powerful houses
behind him. So with the high towers in his
camp, he could proceed with a lot more confidence.
Like Okay, I've got the high towers behind me now.
I'm a lot more formidable than I was.
And it was natural for many reasons, this alliance, because
as we said, they were already together.
They already had the preexisting marriage.
But of course there are these issues.
The war against the Faith Militant.
Despite the way they dodged this bullet it still isn't popular
that he's at war with the faith. Like that's not a good thing you
know for for their relationship with him.
But so you kind of wonder some high towers might have been
like, oh this is bad we didn't want Cyrese to be close again
with Meg where we wanted to further separate ourselves from
this guy. But again they we're not sure
what they really thought of it and Despite that.
They may have realized they weren't really getting into bed
with Meg or too much because this marriage hadn't produced
any kids and they weren't any younger, right?
Cerise was like 40 by this point, so it didn't.
The odds weren't getting better of her having children, So it
seemed like this alliance might have had an expiration date.
If kids are going to be brought into it, then it could like, who
knows? Like you've got family members
born and that could keep this in place for generations.
But it with no kids, you can see it ending.
And then the high towers are like, okay, well, we're free and
clear of Megor because we don't, we won't actually have a family
connection anymore. So they may have looked forward
to that day and just been like we got to wait all this out.
Also, this is before Megor's horrific infants were born.
The ones that had just creepy things wrong with them, some of
them a little draconic, some of them just like missing eyes and
limbs and all the none of that had happened yet.
This is later in his reigns, and people started calling those
children like abominations, like the punishment of the gods.
That would have also really altered the picture here of
their desire to be in a relationship with him, in an
alliance with him, because things just turned South so bad.
But they hadn't yet, so that's really important.
Just like it was a problem regarding the incest of Rainies
and Agon, though they were against him, Megor's polygamy
was against church dictates, and he was going to get worse with
that as well. He was going to marry three more
people. And do it in a really horrible
way. But that also hadn't happened
yet. That's going to be in our next
episode. That won't, we won't even get to
that today because. The next episode's going to be
horrible. Yeah, it's going to start off
pretty horrible, yeah. But I mean, it's Megor the
Cruel, right? So yeah, this is the year 43 and
Megor's reign was six years. This is only the 2nd year of his
reign. So while he's in the South
before he's fully established, they Agon and Reyna may not even
known that Megor was pretty successful down there.
How it all was going. Either way, they made their
move. They snuck into King's Landing
in disguise and there was no dragon pit yet and the Red Keep
wasn't finished. So this isn't like now where
it's hard to sneak in places. This was a city under
construction. These things weren't complete
dragon. I guess the dragon pit wasn't
even started, let alone finished, and the Red Keep
wasn't finished, you know, it's not as locked down, tight
security kind of thing. So they they get, they get into
the city with some help, grab their Dragons, fly out and with
their Dragons. They're able to raise an army.
It's like okay now we're a serious threat.
Megor did not doubt he left Old Town quickly and presumably news
would have arrived by Raven. And you wonder, like did the
citadel, do they delay giving this news to him or do they rush
it to him? You know you wonder is this room
for some some manipulation here. I mean this is this is the
center of communications for Westeros.
The ravenry like this is where they hand out the maestros chain
link for ravenry skill and and where they're all trained.
Yeah it's it's. Pretty important.
Knowledge is power. That's no conspiracy.
What what they do with that knowledge just all sorts of
conspiracy. We can we can imagine some of
which might actually be true but the actual knowledge that's
that's truth. So.
But in this case I can't see any reason for them to mess around
too much. Megor's there.
They just recommitted to him. You know I think they would.
They probably still wanted him to win at this point because
again he wasn't as awful as he was going to be.
So he you wonder if the High Towers supplied any troops for
this. I'm guessing they didn't, or if
they did, the troops never got involved because Megor flew N to
on Valerian. The troops couldn't have
possibly kept up with him, so maybe they were marching to join
him later. But the whole thing was.
Only easy for them to say. Like, yeah, we'll give you all
the troops you want. They're not going to hurt
anyway. Because the thing was over
before, they couldn't have marched in there anyway.
So they even if they didn't, even if they did help, they
couldn't have gotten there in time to matter.
Because Megor again, not an idiot.
He understood the scenario, especially when it comes to war,
the guy that definitely understood battle and all that
stuff. So he realized that Aegon needed
to win a victory. He needed to have a win under
his belt in order for people to take him seriously.
There were a lot of Lords on the fence that wouldn't have taken
either side because they're just like we have no idea who's going
to win here and they don't want to get caught in the middle.
There's not really that. It's not that big a deal to sit
out like Meg or isn't probably going to kill every single
person that sat on the on the on the sidelines.
So a lot of people just sat back and we're like, we're not doing
anything. But if Agon had won a victory,
they would have joined him and Megor knew that.
So he was like, well, I'm not going to, I'm going to get to
him as quick as possible and make sure he doesn't win a
single victory. So he can't bring any new houses
on his side and just dip this in the bud quickly and and he's
going to do that personally by flying Valerians into the heat
of the action. So there was a conflict and
yeah. If there were high towers on the
March to join him, which is entirely possible, yeah, they
didn't get there in time because Valerian just killed Agon and
that was that. The war ended by 44 A/C the
following year, and Megor was firmly entrenched and Cerise
came to court. She moved back from Old Town to
the Red Keep, which was only almost finished then, and she
went, and she this will be her first experience living with the
other Queens. There'd be Tiana.
And Alice Haraway there, that super old High Septon who did
all the things Meg were wanted died because he was really old,
and he was replaced by a man who came to be known as the High
Lick Spittle. So this guy was even more of a
Patsy. And the poor fellows in revolt
were so unhappy with this choice is that they in response to the
naming of this man, they named their own High Septon.
Septon Moon of an infamous guy who we've talked about in some
of our fire and blood coverage in mock response.
So the so they basically have like a papal schism the
equivalent of that where there's 2 popes out there or the
unofficial one and the the chosen one of the of the chosen
one of the nobility and the chosen of the of the people or
some people just. Cast the two popes.
Most ideal form. Yeah, the most ideal form of
leadership is 2 leaders. So it had been a full year.
The the, the amnesty for poor fellows and were sons was over.
So you had they had a year to lay down their weapons, but
clearly the ones who hadn't laid them down by then weren't gonna.
And Megor had already put out the bounties.
A gold dragon for a warrior's son, a silver for a poor fellow.
Surely no one killed innocent people and claimed they were.
Otherwise, no, there's no way that happened.
We didn't see that with dwarfs under Cersei and then Tyrion,
did we? No, that never happens.
Yeah, the Red Dog of the Hills. Sir Joffrey dog.
Another Joffrey here. It was one of the key leaders of
the Faith Militant uprising. And mostly he was active in the
north. Not the north, North like
Winterfell, but like far north of Old Town.
Like the Golden Tooth area. North of the Golden Tooth.
So. More like in the Riverlands and
part of the Westerlands. But he was powerful enough to
have a lot of reach, and they began assassinating people.
They began killing people on the road, people they saw as
traitors, nobles that weren't pious enough.
And one of these that they killed was Sir Morgan Hightower.
They were like, you got away with that.
No, you didn't. They killed him.
They murdered that dude on the road.
Not pardoned after all. He was pardoned by his brother,
but not pardoned by the people, not by the faith militants.
So that guy was killed and he had been a former, you know,
obviously commander of the warrior's son.
So that was like they clearly killed him for being a turn
Clover. In their mind, he was, yeah, he
was a traitor. Now he, I don't know what his
role was at this point. He clearly wasn't commander of
the warrior's sons anymore. He may have just been a knight
of House Hightower, you know, which is pretty prominent
anyway, but either way. That's a pretty big deal.
They killed him. And you wonder and only wonder
what Lord Martin's reaction was to this.
It wasn't far away. This was close.
This was on the road from Old Town to the honey Holt.
The honey Holt is the seat of of the bees berries.
The bees berries will have, of course, a reasonable yeah,
right. A reasonably important role in
the next episode because Lord Breesbury, the one killed.
And House of the Dragon, that guy is master of Coin for like
what 50 years or something. So way he's Lord of he's master
Coin from way before the events of House of the Dragons start.
And we know how the dragon starts 30 years before the war
almost 30 years. So they're going to have some
issues later Honey Holt will have issues with their with
their Lord at the at the Old Town because of these these
clashes. Not to mention a night of Honey
Holt. Was among the warriors sons
slain by Megor when he had that famous trial of seven, which by
the way I didn't even mention as one of the reasons Megor had
some claim to the throne. He won a trial by 7 saying I'm
the king now who's going to who's going to say otherwise?
And the warriors son said we will and he beat them.
So like if you're some faithful gods have already spoken.
You're devout enough to die. Rather than go to the wall, you
got to be devout enough to accept the.
Trial of the seven right, but. Yeah, so it's really a weird
spot. You pick and choose.
It seems like everyone just picks and chooses.
So you can see why there's issues between Honey Holt and
the Hightower at this point maybe and and and maybe more
issues later. So he's murdered on the road
there and that's like so far from the golden tooth.
Like if you look at the map, like where Joffrey Doggett's men
were nowhere remotely near this. So that just goes to show how
powerful the faith Milton were and and how many high-powered.
More important, people were getting assassinated by them in
this area. Like, the roads weren't safe for
for a lot of people unless you really traveled in force.
And so that's that's a pretty huge deal.
And yeah, what did Martin do? Did he send men out to hunt down
the killers? Probably did at least that much.
But he may not have expected much result from it because
these men just vanish into the hedges and forests and live in
caves, like the Brotherhood Without Banners are just it's
hard to hunt them down. It's like chasing guerrilla
fighters in Dorne. If you go off the beaten path,
you're in their turf and all of a sudden you are subject to
ambush and being in full plate mail is a disadvantage.
And all these just changes the theater of war like it's a whole
different type of scenario. Meg or actually relaxed his
campaign against the faith because he was concerned with
establishing his power and finishing the Red Keep and maybe
planning the Dragon Pit which got kicked off.
Not long after the Red Keep, the same year.
So he he finished the Red Keep in the year 45.
Later that year he started the Dragon Pit, which he might have
started even sooner, but remember he killed all the
builders of the of the Red Keep so they wouldn't do the secrets.
So which made it? Hard to, you know, find new
builders. They're like, well, no, I don't
want to work. For not only are there less
builders to find, the ones that are there are less experienced
and more suspicious. Yeah.
Now. Less likely to kill them because
there's no, there aren't these like secret passageways in the
dragon, but they're not. They're still like, why take
that chance? You know?
So from afar, the high towers are like, this dude is just
slowly getting worse and worse. He's slowly frittering away his
authority, What he won by intimidation and and outright
violence, he's losing through intimidation, outright violence.
It's like it is A2 edged sword and it's black fire.
So it's a very sharp 2 edged sword.
And it gave the high towers reasons to maybe reconsider if
they weren't already reconsidering this relationship
with Megor because of the killing of the builders and the
recurring all the brutality against the faith which is kept
escalating and escalating. At this time though, 45 A/C
cerise dies of a sudden illness, so they say, but no one believes
it because apparently. Megor ordered her tongue
removed, and we know she was outspoken, and we know she
didn't seem to be afraid of him like a lot of other people were.
So she seemed brave, but but apparently maybe it went to
Maybe she went too far here because he ordered her tongue
removed, apparently, and one of the King's Guard in the process
of doing this killed her by accident.
Later it's we're told that this is story was considered false
later by later generations like they're like, oh this is just a
way to Black and Meg Or's name. Like black and Meg Or's name
like how can you make it any blacker like it's like it's like
y'all remember the the movie Spinal Tap when they wanted
their album to be just black as possible.
They're. Like.
People will say how much blacker can this get?
None. None.
More blacks. You know it's.
It's so I was thinking about a Metalocalypse Blackest black.
Yeah, like like how can this be worse?
So a different kings guard, the one who supposedly held her down
while she was having her tongue removed, said, oh, she didn't
die because of being stabbed, she died because of her shrewest
Nish, which is like confirming it.
Like you're confirming that she didn't die of an illness.
You're confirming that Meg or was tired of hearing her talk
and had her killed because he's an asshole, you know, and.
So that's probably what happened.
And it doesn't almost doesn't matter what really happened
because it's it's said yes, later generations questioned
that story. But in the moment, everyone
believed it. Everyone believed that's what
happened. Which means the public
perception was that Megor murdered series Hightower.
How can the Hightowers be like, oh, OK, that's that's fine.
Like they no longer have their tie to him.
That's their connection to Megor is yeah, we.
Crowned you here. But we don't know what.
We no longer have a family connection to you, and you're
falling apart here. You're just like, frittering
everything away. You're blowing it.
This is our out. This is our exit now.
Yeah. So there's no immediate reaction
that we're told about from the high towers.
If they had any soldiers at court or nights or whatever, you
got to think they would have come home.
They were like, okay. Well, that's that.
We can't, we can't support this guy anymore.
But they wouldn't have maybe wanted to make a big show about
it because he's so violent and nasty and you don't want to
like, provoke him needlessly. Like the guy still has Valerian.
Wow. So that's that's where we're
going to leave it for today, because it's a the turning point
in the relationship with the high towers and House Targaryen
here in the early reign of the Iron Throne going to completely
change the picture. And then of course, we're going
to move into Harris's reign and all these other things.
So though the Faith Militant uprising is cited as beginning
in 41 A/C, which is before Mega or took the throne, Mega took
the thrown in 42 A/C. It would also continue after his
death. So we're going to be covering
that the extended continuation of the Faith Militant after his
death. And yeah, throughout all this
though, the heart of West Rossi faith in the Seven is still at
Old Town. Remember, we're still a ways
away from that shift happening where the heart of the faith is
in King's Landing. Like King's Landing, it still
isn't the largest city in the realm at this point, although
it's getting closer and closer and we don't exactly know when
it passed. But yeah, so I have so many
questions. Where the high towers starting
to keep their distance? Were they more aggressive in
their distancing themselves from hot?
From Megor Where is it continued tightrope walk where they're
like? Well, we definitely don't want
to piss this guy off. He still could come and burn the
starry step like there is nothing we could do if he did
that. So they still have like a lot of
pragmatic reasons to just take it lying down.
Even though these insults are are hefty and they murdered a
member of their family, he murdered a member of their
family. They have a lot of influence too
and they aren't necessarily monoliths.
You know, one of my thoughts is that they probably.
Anything that's very public or visual or that they would expect
Megor to be paying attention to, they just keep it like it is.
But Megor might not understand, like the building contracts and
the trade routes and the taxes being collect things that they
can manipulate just peel back on, you know what I mean?
To get less involved or even to work against the Crown or pull
into their own resources. Like I guess these soldiers that
we already have there will just leave them.
But hey, if someone gets sick. We're not sending any more
soldiers. There we go.
We're not going to fund this, the defense of this, this trade
route. We're not going to send taxes
from this spot anymore. Like any angle they could find,
they didn't want to get noticed, which would be a lot like the
influence they have through the majors and through the steps and
through the trade and. They would have all the avenues
to look for other options. They're like, they're like, who
do we talk to? Well, whoever we want to.
We've got everyone. We can talk to anyone like they
have. That's the thing.
They have those lines of communication.
Yeah, that's a great point. They can, they can send a Raven
to the Starks if they want to talk about it.
You know, they can send iron islands or something.
Yeah, the ESOS, you know, who knows?
Yeah. Did you guys know Megor did
this? Are you sure you want to send
more troops for that? Yeah.
Why don't you sit up tray route with us instead of King's
Landing? We'll give you this bonus and
you don't have to worry about Megor.
Because if we're all together in this, even Megor and Blurian
won't be enough. Like, we can beat him if we're
united in this, you know he can't burn everyone you know.
And we don't necessarily even have to, like, overthrow him
violently. We just have to wait it out,
man. I just have to wait it out.
He'll die eventually. Maybe someone poisons something.
Not that we're donning that. But hey, if it happened, you
know, it said it all. Can give you some advice, you.
Know a thing or two about poisons?
You're right. And then, and it's as it turns
out, may Gore's death is a mystery.
Issues like it's very suspicious.
We don't know what happened. It probably wasn't poison,
because, you know, you just found.
And similar to that, except then lots of people have motivation,
yeah. Absolutely.
But yeah, so it's very interesting.
But I'll and consider the other side like, well, who?
What side will they take? Will they will they take?
Right now there is no side to take.
Like Jerry isn't isn't really in the available option.
Jerry isn't even the oldest living member of the other
branch at this point. Male member of the other
branches. There's visceras.
Who is Meg? Or Squire?
That's the eldest after Bagon, who was killed.
So Jerry was third in line before his elder brother was
killed riding Quicksilver. And then.
There's a whole another one in between them.
Negro Force is going to kill him too.
But that hasn't happened yet. The high towers are in a tough
they don't want to side with the Faith Militant.
The Faith Militant killed Sir Morgan.
They're not, like excited about those guys either like and plus
they have no like noble clout and no money and any of that.
It's not It's not what the high towers are generally getting
mixed up in the 1st place. You'd think that rather than
side with the Faith Militant, they would just step aside.
Side with nobody but. It is possible some elements of
House Hightower, if not even the main elements, were secretly
supporting the Rebels. It's possible they preferred
that to, you know, rock and a hard place.
Maybe you got to pick someone. They thought maybe they
supported both sides, like later instances of House Hightower or
House Swan or other houses done like the Butterwells, like
support both sides that way we come.
Yeah, that's right. So I could have been the way
they they did. So yeah, as as we wrap this
episode halfway through Megor's Rain, it should be said that
things got much worse before they got better.
But they did get better. So if we look back at these 45
years, we can assume the continued progress and
prosperity of the city itself, even while these other things
are happening. The city itself is probably
doing pretty darn well since it didn't get burned and the
darnish incursion stopped. The Ironborn raids had stopped a
while ago. The city was probably doing
great other than that big scare of of Megor, but that would have
been pretty short term, all things.
All told, right. So yeah, that's pretty good.
And so they have room to do other things and an example of
which we'll see next episode as well like naval exploration
that's going to be a part of of next time we'll get to think
about other ways that might have come out.
Other things like this is basically a preview of next
week. The fall of Meg or the rest of
faith militants rebellion. The golden age under George
Harris and Alison. The passing of Lord Martin, The
rule of Donald the Delayer Hightower.
Like I said, the seafaring. That's Eustis and Norman going
with Alyssa Farman. The Shivers hits Old Town.
Then we get to things like Otto Hightower and Viscera and
Allison and Brendan Hightower, Wayne Hightower, Hobert
Hightower, Lord Ormond, all that stuff.
That should be good times. I'm looking forward to that.
Power shifts more towards King's Landing and away from Old Town.
The faith shifts more towards Old Town.
You want, I mean towards King's Landing.
You wonder if the high towers were concerned about.
Their influence waning a little bit.
Maybe they did some moves to try to retain that.
Yeah, you know, a lot of things up and under G Harry and then
the Sarah's after him, so a lot of interesting stuff to come yet
we shall get on that next week. Couple of episodes I mentioned
that are relevant to this one that you might want to consider
listening to. To stay involved.
There is several of our fire and blood topics that are relevant
to this one mentioned. I guess the Shivers would be 1.
Our episode on the Red Kraken, which is a subscriber's only one
that came up as well, of course, is the the beginning of the old
way and some some respects there, and I'm sure there's some
other ones, but I'm spacing out on them at the moment.
Our full Dance of the Dragons coverage as well is worth
mentioning. That's of course with Radio
Westeros and is fully scripted. Yeah.
So next week we'll continue down the timeline and probably finish
it off. I guess there's a chance that
it's too much for one episode, but I think we'll be able to
cover it. Famous last words.
Famous start of lots more words. Famous mineral words.
Anyway, anyway, we'll deal with that.
So thanks everyone for coming. Thanks if you watched live or if
you're catching it afterwards, whether you consume it on
YouTube or on one of the many podcast platforms that hosts it,
we appreciate that. So you can give us a like or a
thumbs up or a subscription, voluntary subscription, that's
the. For someone of the best ways to
support us, but there's lots of ways to do that.
Tell a friend. That's one of my favorite
methods. You as a person with friends.
Those friends value your opinions, so if you tell them to
listen to us, well, that'll go farther than just about anyone
else, I would think. Making that same request?
Yeah as well. Thanks to Nina for the excellent
notes. Lots of great thoughts that help
me sort through some of these difficulties.
Lots of. Different things happening all
at once. A lot of times it's hard to sort
through all the different possibilities, especially with a
fair amount of unknowns thrown into the mix.
But I think we did a solid job here.
I'm pretty pleased with the way it came out.
Hope you are too as well. Thank you too.
Those of you who support us financially, that's the best way
to support. Like I said as well.
Thanks to Joey, Jesse and Bran for the intro music, outro
music, video intro and all the various things that make our
show seem more professional, yes.
And Michael Clarfell as well. The maps behind me that you see
variations of over the years. It's usually this known world
map, but we have other ones up from time to time.
You can go to his site, claradox dot DE that's KLARADOX dot EE to
get copies for yourself. Lots of different rooms out
there. And last but not least, thank
you to the engineer for doing the sound quality.
Management before he hands it over to me for the final
editorial cuts and final version of.
The episode, yeah. All right, everyone, that's our
show. We'll see you next time for
more. And you know what to do in the
meantime, Valor 3 weeks.